Cape Verde Week 32

Bom dia,

Well this has been a busy week with Zone Conference and a mini missionary activity with the district. Zone conference as usual was enjoyable, seeing all the missionaries together and meeting the new missionaries. President and Sister Tolman were here for District Conference which was well attended. I believe the chapel was full to capacity. We enjoyed a nice luncheon with the Zone at a Brasilian restaurant on Monday.

The week moved forward with us working hard to prepare for the mini missionary training. President De Costa had asked that we assist in putting on a missionary experience for the seminary students. I thought he was going to running the program but he has a way of turning things over to me. So we planned a day long experience. We use the fulltime missionaries and had training on temporal preparation; packing a suitcase, iron shirts, sewing buttons, cooking and then spiritual preparation. We broke the 24 students up into groups of 2 or 3 and assigned them to missionaries. The missionaries helped then learn the first discussion and practice contacting skills. Later on President De Costa did a seminary scripture mastery exercise with the students and they knew their scriptures. After eating and some games the missionaries took a number of the youth and went contacting and teaching. They reported great success and all the students committed to prepare for missions.
We had a fleet of sailing vessels come into the harbor as a group from France and England. Also a Royal Navy Ship in the background.
Saturday was a busy day as we had 4 baptisms in Ramo 1. We had well over 50 people in attendance. The missionaries did a good job in having investigators they to feel the spirit. It was a very good meeting. Today they were all confirmed members of the church and all bore their testimonies, quite impressive. We also have another 2 or 3 baptisms set for next week, so the harvest is great here in Mindelo!! Sister Vaterlaus and Carla at the baptism on Saturday.

Today we had Elders Ence and Monteiro over for lunch and we were discussing the new couples that were coming around the first of the year. Elder Ence asked me if there would be a new nurse. I was trying to speak in Portuguese so Elder Monteiro would feel like a part of the discussion. I basically said, “Sim, nós temos o novo casal e a Irmã é um inferno como Irmã Allen”; which interpreted means, in bad Portuguese, “yes, we have a new couple and the sister is a hell like Sister Allen”. Now I meant to say uma enfermeira which can sound like um inferno. So actually what I wanted to say was, “yes we have a new NURSE coming” and we hope that she is a helluva nurse like Sister Allen, and not a nurse from you know where! Sorry but you had to be there to hear the laughter!!

Well that is it for this week. Hope everyone is happy and healthy.

Love

E/S Waller, Mom & Dad, Bama & Bampa
More pictures of the rough mountains of Santo Antao.