Madeira Islands: Week 44

Hello!!! How is everyone??

Happy St. Patricks Day! We're all wearing green today don't worry. Keeley happy birthday cousin! Wooooah you're 19. Stop growing up! :) Also Happy Birthday Jane Halladay! :) Hope all is well with you and Roger and the rest of the family. :)

Mom and Dad thank you for the birthday package! I really have zero patience so I opened it like while I was still at the mission office and it's not even close to my birthday. Whooops. But I loved it!!! I needed all of that awesome stuff so THANK YOU! We will take pictures with all the fun stuff when the real day rolls around. :)

So since it is March we are doing our March Madness competition in the mission. We dominated almost everyone and yesterday we were in the championship round (who can get the most references from people). We thought we took it hands down because we as a zone were getting more references than the rest of the mission combined, but somehow some other zone beat us yesterday. SO MAD but that's okay I will get over it. We in the overall week got more references but yesterday alone they got like a couple more than us. I still will just pretend we won.

So on Saturday we were walking to one of our investigator's houses and I felt something hit my head. I was walking under a tree so I was like hmmmm maybe it was a leaf. I touched my hair to see if there was anything on it and when I looked at my hand it was covered with green bird poop. SO gross. We don't have time to just go home in the middle of the day so I had to rince my hair in a sink at a grocery store. Yeah I felt gross all day but I washed it out when we got home that night don't worry. I can now say I'm a true missionary. Had to get initiation out of the way.

Yesterday at church Margarida gave her first testimony. Our branch president asked her a few weeks ago to do it. She was SO nervous (she is really shy) but she did a great job and it was really way better than I could ever do. So cool!!

Saturday night Estêvão told us he couldn't go to church the next day because his family was all going fishing together and it's an important family activity for him. We told him if he didn't go to church he couldn't get baptized next Saturday because he has to go to church at least 2 times before. We explained the importance of the Sabbath Day but told him we would let him think about it and make the decision himself, and we could change his baptism date if he needed to.  After a couple seconds of thought he said, "I will go to church tomorrow so I can be baptized on Saturday. I can fish another day." WOOHOO! So he's still on his way to baptism this weekend! Can't wait.

This guy Luís, one of the recent converts in the other branch is Cristiano Ronaldo's second cousin. That is crazy. He's from Madeira so there are pictures of him EVERYWHERE and a museum down the street.

The other sisters made cupcakes the other day and had them in tupaware in the chapel. They didn't know if you don't put stuff in the fridge the ants get it, so when they went to look at it they were completely covered in ants like thousands of them. We dumped them in the garbage but then I remembered there's an elder in my district who LOVES sugar. I was like, "Watch this Elder Poteet will eat them." So I asked him if he wanted them and showed him they were in the garbage and everything. He pulled them out and was like what the they're still good! He ate all of them hahaha. That kid. If he doesn't gain 50 pounds on his mission I'll be surprised.

Our trip to Lisbon was quick but fun. We landed at 11 pm, elders picked us up at 11:45, and we got to bed at about 12:15. I felt like a rebel staying awake past 11 haha. The next day we woke up and I got to help one of the senior couples in the office. It was fun. Then I went on a split with another sister because her companion is injured so we street contacted for a couple of hours until Sister Lofgreen got back. Then we went to the mall and got lunch. They had mexican food there which is like crazy. I haven't eaten at a mexican restaurant in almost a year! It was good. Then we flew home. When we landed everyone clapped and cheered for the pilot because it's one of the most dangerous landing strips in the world haha. Zone Leaders picked us up and we got home about 9:45 pm on Tuesday. It is crazy I was only gone for a couple days but I was like homesick for Madeira I missed it! I love it here so much. 

Hey so Ana and Cristiana are struggling with lots of things right now. Please keep them in your prayers!

That's about it. Guess what!? General Conference is in a couple of weeks!! I never expected to be excited for that but I can't wait hahah! Love you guys! Have a great week!!

Sister Carroll