Our Main Purpose Here....Our Mission!!

The Distinguished looking man in the middle is President Amorim of the Porto Mission...He is really a dynamic man who we have gotten to know and love.  It is a bit odd, but we actually know him much better than we know our Mission President here in Lisbon Mission.  The other distinguished man to the left is our 'Boss' Antonio Paulo.

We are beginning to see some of the missionaries we have gotten to know and work with go home.. it adds a personal touch but they are all great!

 Just in case anyone has forgotten, we spend most of our days (sometimes 7 out of 7) doing what we are here to do.....being SR missionaries.  Over the past four months, our P days have been non existant because the weekends were jammed up with meetings & training sessions.  That may slow down quite a bit now summer is here.  It sounds like the whole country of Portugal takes at least a month long holiday sometime in the summer so it will be hard to pin people down.  It may look like we do nothing but sight see, and eat - (well truth be told...we probably eat more than needed) but most of the pictures posted here are in route to or from an assignment.  It just happens to be a beautiful, interesting place!

We only get to know the missionaries in Porto mission when we travel there to teach the ones leaving then we meet their companions and all the new office Elders.

 The first part of June, we held a National Seminar for SR Specialists and Stake Presidents for training on the new PEF program now available in Portugal.  We had an assignment to cover a 30 minute section in the 5 hour conference.  Elder Anderton did great and I struggled through a short prewritten part in Portuguese.  (everyone smiled politely)  This pic shows the European PEF manager, Miguel, explaining policy and procedure.  We work in the PEF office with him two days a week.

As with any activity, there was food involved and Sister Neiswender and I were able to put our skills of feeding large groups of people to good use!

Elder Anderton talking Self Reliance to a group of Bishops

After training a new facilitator, we stayed to visit a SR Education group meeting.  We are trying to get around to visit all the groups that are functioning to support and help them along.