Freedom! (April 11)

Elder Valentine was transferred out of the office! This is a great message from Elder Valentine of a significant change in his mission life!!

Here's the message:

Dear Everyone,

So I'll be staying in the office for transfer #7.

Just kidding!! I'm going to be transferred to the farthest-south zone (pardon my poor grammar) in the mission, Santarém. My new companion will be Elder Carrelo, who is from Lisbon - Santarém is like an hour from Lisbon, but it's in the other mission haha. I'll be serving with him as a Zone Leader, which I'm sure will be a great experience! I've heard Elder Carrelo is awesome so I'm super excited!

I'm still in the office for this week because I'm training a new Executive, Elder Peterson. Elder Peterson was the Zone Leader in Santarém with Elder Carrelo, so we are basically just switching places. The office has been forever full of awesome missionaries - I think all but two elders (since the Porto mission opened in 2015 right before I got here) were either Zone Leaders or AP's, so I'm glad that I'll get to go get another great companion! It's been a huge blessing to have awesome companions in the office and I'm excited to go to Santarém! Even though this week is transfer week, I'm staying here to train Elder Peterson, so I will have officially stayed for the longest amount of time in the office - six tranfers + one week! 

In other news, Bruno and Liliana have kind of decided to drop us. They sent us a text a couple days ago about it and we haven't been able to talk to them since - there are times when I wonder if I've done everything I can for people and what I could have done better, but it's also important to understand that not everyone will accept the Gospel right away. I hope they'll regain the good Spirit they had later. Besides that, we ended the transfer with a lot of progressing investigators, and I hope to see some baptisms out of this area after I leave! 

Conference was also amazing! Personally, I thought it was very focused on the nature of God and Christ, and how to be more like Christ - it was amazing to hear the testimonies of the Apostles, and it helped me know the power of my own testimony in missionary work. Being a missionary is the best. 

Have a great week!

- Elder Valentine​​​​

Foto 1 - Mission Leadership Council with an area seventy, Elder Leimer

Photo 2 - Porto 1 ward. I love all of these members! I'm hidden in the back left.

Photo 3 - we played mini golf last week - Elder Judd and I tied for first, Elder Wait took 2nd, and Elder peterson (in the blue) took third. Elder Trindade is on the right. Fun stuff.​​​​