Happy Easter from Leiria!

THIS WEEK WAS GREAT!! HAPPY EASTER!:)

I love my new area and my new companion! Her name is Sister Foote and she is from Utah #thefactory. That is what they say here if you are the typical missionary from Utah. Haha, but Sister Foote is awesome! She has been out for a year and four months... so she is pretty experienced. I have already learned so much from her. She went to cottonwood high school and is literally my twin. We are so similar it is crazy.  I love her!

We are living in a house with two other sister missionaries and it is a blast, but it is awesome because we have more hands to do the work. Sister Fortunanto is from Brazil and this is her last transfer.  She is great and she speaks really good English that she has pretty much just learned on her mission. Then Sister Huntsman is from San Diego and she came on the mission just one transfer after me and so we are pretty much at the same spot. It is great!

Tuesday I left the good old Viana and was on my way to Leiria. It was a five hour bus ride from Viana to Leiria with an hour wait in Porto to switch buses... man it was weird being alone as a missionary haha.  I am used to having someone glued to my side, but it was fun though.

The ward here is awesome.  They have a super cute chapel that I will have to take pictures of and send next week.  The ward is so happy to have six missionaries! Everyone that talks to us talk about how happy they are to have us and how excited they are to work with us. From what I can tell and what I have heard this ward is awesome with missionary work!

The highlight of the week was Sister Foote and I were helping this couple in our ward with a their reception because they just got married in the Madrid temple, but wanted to have a reception in the chapel to invite all of their non member friends to get to know the church and see them all dressed up. Then they had this idea to have the missionaries there to meet their friends and as they were leaving give them The Family Proclamation. So we had a little ceremony. One of the counselors in the bishopric gave a talk and right as we were all walking out of the room the fire alarm went off!! Yep the wedding reception was LITerally LIT,  hahaha. One of the decorations caught on fire from a candle and it burnt a huge hole in the table cloth. But we got the fire out and the decorations were okay and we still had a great time:) 

 

Then we were able to teach one of the investigators that Sister Foote has been teaching. We taught him the word of wisdom and he totally agrees to live it! This investigator has been going to church for year and a half now because his daughter loves it and just got baptized, but now he wants to be baptized. So I am excited to be able to help teach him:)

Saying good bye to some dear friends

This week was Easter and I just want to express the gratitude I have for my Savior! I know that He lives and because He lives I can live again.  I know that because of Him I can be forgiven of my sins and return home to live with my Father in Heaven after this life. I know that because of Him I am never alone. He is always there for me to help me with whatever struggle I am going through and He is there to rejoice with me when I am happy! I am so grateful for my Savior, Jesus Christ and I am so grateful to be a missionary and be able to teach others about this Gospel!!

Anyways, have a great week!:) Tchau for now!:)

Com amor,

Sister Sampson

Her District in Viana

Her 5 hour bus ride on her way to her new area, all by herself!

The 4 sisters

Sister Sampson and her new companion

This is the view from her apartment:)

Just a castle that she sees out her window

Esta semana foi uma semana maravilhosa! Transfers this week!

This week was awesome!! I loved everything about it! But first of all I am getting transferred!! AHHH! I am so sad! I love it here in Viana, but yet I am soo excited and I can't wait to see what happens. I am going to Leiria, which is where Sister Gilbert served before she came here. So I have already heard so many good things about it.

I gave my mom my address just in case any of you want to write me a letter;) 

 

Anyways, back to this awesome week! So it started off right after pday. Sister Gilbert and I went to find this address of a lady that we had contacted on the street, but when we rang her door it wasn't really her house. She lied to us haha, but the person let us in the apartment building anyway. So we just decided to knock there. One of the first doors we knock was this cute lady and we asked if we could say a prayer with her to bless her and her house. With out hesitation she said, "Of course! Come on in" So then we prayed and just started teaching her a lesson. She is one of the nicest ladies ever and later this week we went back and gave her a Book of Mormon and taught her another lesson.

On Wednesday we had zone conference and that morning we found lice in my hair... haha yay. So we told President and he was like...you can come to zone conference still, but don't touch anyone and after conference you have to get it out as soon as possible. So we had zone conference and we couldn't touch anyone. So Sister Gilbert and I just chilled in the corner. Just kidding we talked to people, but President wouldn't even come near us haha.   He joked with us and said..."Don't touch me!"

That day we spent most of the day getting all the lice out of my hair and the rest out of Sister Gilbert's. So we listened to the rest of conference during it! It was awesome. I loved conference! One of my favorite talks was the one by Elder Choi about looking up to heaven when it is raining. I loved how he talked about enjoying the hard times and having an eternal perspective. We only get to live this life once so we should enjoy every moment we have:) and even when times are hard we have Jesus on our side to help us through and we have this Gospel. The reason we are so happy in this church isn't because we all have easy lives it is because we have a greater knowledge of the Lord's love for us, why we are here, and where we are going. More of an eternal perspective. 

 

Then that night we had an appointment with this guy from Africa, and he has a friend that is a member on a mission and a cousin that is member.   So we weren't his first time hearing about the church. He was really receptive to our lesson and wants to hear more:) so yay!

I already told you all about this, but Sister Gilbert and I run to this basketball court every morning and play basketball for a little bit and run home. Well, we see this same guy every morning and he always says hi to us. One morning this week he asked us who we were and where we were from (he thought I was from Brazil... that is the first time I have gotten that one. Most people think I am from England, Germany, or the Ukraine) and he was really curious about our church and so we set up an appointment with him on Sunday to meet in the park. It was awesome! 

Crazy story. On Saturday Sister Gilbert and I were knocking doors and we knocked on this one house and the wife answered and we told her who we were and then she told us one second. She came back with her husband and he was like are you guys Mormons (he said that in portenglish. half Portuguese half English)? I worked in Utah! I know Mormons! I worked in Salt Lake. Whoa! What a small world! He wasn't interested in our lessons, but they were really nice and gave us this little bunny thing with chocolate that their little boy made in scouts, haha. 

 

Then we had a lesson with this really nice lady that we found in the area book. She is super catholic, but she has a lot of faith and loved talking to us and told us we could come back. 

Sunday was great! At church this guy (someone we had taught in the past) showed up with one of our members and so hopefully Sister Gilbert will be able to teach him sometime this week. Then after church we went to the park to meet our friend. We invited one of the recent converts to come help us teach. And our investigator SHOWED UP! A miracle! Usually people don't show up when they make plans to meet you somewhere, but he came through! woohoo! We had a really great lesson with him and he really connected with the member that came with us.  They were like best friends by the end of the lesson haha. We made an appointment with him for Wednesday and our member friend is really excited to come help again. 

Esta semana foi maravilhosa! The Lord really blessed us this week! I loved everything about this week and I am excited for my next adventure in Leiria!:) Love you all! Tchau for now!:)

Com amor,

Sister Sampson

"Isso é bom"

Heyo!

So this week was a good one and full of gratitude! Sister Gilbert and I started gratitude journals so every day we write in our journal something we are grateful for or one way we saw the Lord's hand in our day. I have realized that as we receive everything with gratitude we are so much happier. We are always talking about the small things that we are going to put in our gratitude journal and it changes our whole day. The elders in our district meeting talked about how after anything bad happens or something doesn't go the way that they wanted they would just say, "Isso é bom", which is "this is good." Just because they know that after anything bad happens something good will happen. And so this week we have been saying, "Isso é bom." So even though we haven't been able to really find anyone to teach we have still been happy and we have had a lot of "isso é bom" moments!:)

We had interviews with President this week and it was awesome to be able to ask him for advice and help. 

 

Also... our little friends returned... this week Sister Gilbert got lice!! Isso é bom! Haha! So we had to spend one day brushing all of the lice out of her hair and washing all of our clothes and sheets. What can we say? Bugs love us! Hopefully I didn't get it, but we are with each other 24/7 so don't be surprised if next weeks email talks about getting lice out of my hair.... again... haha.

So with the goal of getting 40 baptisms this transfer as a mission, last week we were at 18 baptisms with 34 people with a baptismal date! So we are doing awesome:)

Conference! We got to watch the morning Saturday session with our branch in the chapel, but Marlino let Sister Gilbert and I watch it in the office in English. Then we got to watch the Sunday morning session in the chapel with the branch, but it was in Portuguese... So I am excited to listen to them during the week cuz sister Gilbert downloaded them all.  We weren't allowed to watch the second session cuz it started at 9 here,  that is too late for us sister missionaries to be out:) This morning I was able to hear Elder Hollands talk. I loved it about having sunshine in our soul.  It isn't always easy, but we always have the Savior on our side.

Anyways, It was a great week! Sister Gilbert and I knocked a ton of doors and called everyone in the area book and we are just still loving it here in Viana and we are praying that we will find someone that will want to progress.  This is the Lord's work and everything will happen according to His will. I love being a missionary and I am so grateful for my opportunity to be serving the Lord in this way!

Have a great week!!

Com amor,

Sister Sampson:)