The baptism of Ester

It was an exciting day for Elder Jensen and Adams who began teaching Ester many transfers ago, and now the fruits of their labors are being realized!  It was especially wonderful for Elder Jensen who was technically not in our mission anymore, but who was travelling with his parents and returned to Porto just to baptize Ester, before he and his family departed for home!

Porto Mission Thanksgiving 2009

Every zone in our mission celebrated Thanksgiving with a traditional American football game, a district/zone meeting focusing on gratitude, culminating in the big feast with all the trimmings. These photo's are from the Porto zone, but if the other zones will send Irmã Walton some photo's, she will publish them on our blog so we can see just how each one celebrated.

November 2009 Departures

Nine of our finest missionaries concluded their missions and we were left to say goodbye as they move on in their lives to great things.  Four Irmãs and five Elders all finished with honors and were sent home to America, Brazil, and England!

November Transfers

November 19th found us sending 3 missionaries out to the island of Madeira, and saying goodbye to 9 missionaries - 4 Irmãs and 5 Elders.  It was extra difficult because we had no missionaries arriving from the MTC.  Irmã Ray and Elders Vidulich and Imbuqui were very excited to be going out to our tropical island.

Mission Life

Missionaries always love being together since they don't get to see each other very much.  Here is a sampling of some of our missionaries.  Look in flickr for more miscellaneous pictures!

October Departures

We say good-bye to 5 of our best missionaries.  We are grateful for the examples of Elders Ewing, Jacobe, Tidwell, Ramsey and Cibrian.

October Arrivals

On October 8 we had 5 arrivals from the Provo MTC.  Two Sisters - Beckstead and Bateman, and 3 Elders -  Abreu, Jenkins and Wood.  Then on October 28, Elder Coxi arrived from the Madrid MTC.  We put them right to work with their trainers.  The two sisters are with Sister Maddox in Braga - a tripla!  Elder Abreu is being trained with Elder Lovell in Coimbra.  Elder Jenkins went to Vila de Conde with Elder Beard.  Elder Wood is way down in Leiria with Elder Lolofie.  When Elder Coxi arrived he went to Vila de Conde with Elder Beard.  What a great new group of missionaries for the Porto, Portugal Mission.