July 11th email....

Well, I can't believe it!! Time has once again flown by here in Portugal!! I am now in my last week of the transfer!! I can't believe it. It feels like I got here yesterday!! I think I will stay, but who knows with the combining of the mission? I don't know what to expect. There will be a lot of changes in the mission!!!

I have to apologize for not writing yesterday!! We had a Zone Conference sneak up on us that we didn't know about until Sunday night. So we went over to Lisbon and spent the day there at Zone Conference and President gave us permission to do email and groceries today!!! It was good. He just got us all excited to have a week of miracles before the transfer ends!! I think we might just have a miracle as well, because we met a Brazilean girl a couple of days ago that was living and going to school in England, and apparently, she was receiving lessons over the phone from sisters in Salt Lake!! She had been reading the Book of Mormon online. So when we talked to her, we had the opportunity of giving her her own Book of Mormon to read!!! She is a really special investigator and we have already prayed about her many times!!! She is ready guys!!! We are totally going to mark her for baptism this night to be baptized this weekend!!! We have so much work to do, but we are ready to do it because we both felt strongly that she is ready and needs to be baptized this weekend. We have a small window of time to work with here because she goes back to England soon, so please pray for her!!! We set up a family night with some members and invited her to it!! We will be doing that tonight!! We will be using the dart gun you sent me to make the lesson fun for the 7 year old Gabriel!! It's going to be sweet!!! As for Nicholay, we went over with a member and taught and talked to him. We discovered a bit more about his problems. His wife really doesn't like us at all and so it's a little weird when she is around. But one of the things we offered to do was combine his family with the family of the member that taught with us, and have a big old family night so that they can see how important families are in our church. I think that will really help him. He said he will talk to his wife and see what she says!!!!! I sure hope she agrees!!! Other than that, our search for new investigators goes on!! and what a search it is.

This transfer has been a very good transfer!! Me and Elder Banks have fought and fought (not with each other,but in the Lord's battle ha), but haven't seen much success on the baptism side. I won't say that this area is weak because I know that there are elects here and that we just have to find them. I did however grow, and learn a lot this transfer. Me and Banks set some pretty cool goals. For one of them, he wanted to get better at Portuguese, so we set a goal to speak nonstop Portuguese the whole transfer even in the house... not a lick of English. It helped us both. Sometimes I feel like I'm special because I finally feel comfortable with the language. But there is ALWAYS, more to learn and I learned a lot!! Needless to say, it is super weird when we would speak English on pday, and we have both caught each other sleep talking in Portuguese hahahha.... pretty funny stuff!!! My testimony also continues to grow. Wow, the mission has done sooooo much for me!!!! I am truly thankful that we are all a part of this one true gospel of Jesus Christ.

Well, I feel sorry for you guys over there in the heat but I don't know what happened over here. All of the sudden, the weather has been incredible. We finally have nice cool breezes, and the sun is always out, but somehow, it isn't too hot!!! I don't know how long it will stay like this though... hopefully until winter hahaha!!

Well, that's about all this week. I'll let you guys know how all of this works out next week. I love you all. You are always in my prayers!!!

Love Elder Willes