Draping

The fabric stores are amazing here.  First of all, there are a lot.  Second, their window have manikins that have the most gorgeous draped dresses.  Here are just a couple of examples, but it is like this all over town.  I always think of Project Runway when I see their ability to visualize a dress or gown by just draping the fabric over the model.

Baptism in Caldas da Rainha

Mauricio Braz was baptized in September.  It was a wonderful day for his family and for our branch family.

Called To Serve

October 21, 2014 the European Mission Presidents' Conference was held in Cascais, Portugal.  Our area authority, Elder Teixeira asked that we have mission choir sing Called to Serve.  I was put in charge of the choir.  Sr. Fluckiger asked that we have a select group of good singers sing in 4 part harmony and I wanted to have a unison choir of as many missionaries as could possible.  Here is our collaboration choir.  They sounded great and it was truly a wonderful moment for all of us who performed.  The spirit was very strong and many of the mission presidents in attendance said that it was a wonderful, inspiring way to begin their conference.

This photo is representational of another choir that I directed, or was supposed to direct, on November 2 at our District Conference.  At the same time that we were holding practices for the Missionary choir in Lisbon, we were traveling all over our Santarem District to different branches to rehearse their individual choirs  to sing in a combined  large choir for District Conference.  We actually had 2 different choirs, a youth choir on Saturday night and an adult choir on Sunday morning.  Things were going pretty well until Saturday night.  I was overly exhausted and unmedicated to the point where I ended up in the hospital with Addison's crisis.  Very scary.  Sunday morning a sister Maribel from the Carregado branch volunteered to direct the choir when she learned that I couldn't be there.  She is amazing.  She was very nervous, but she had the courage to do it anyway.  We had a missionary sister, Sr. King, who went home on November 9 who played the piano for the meeting.  I feel that everything worked out for the best because the members got to participate more.  The Lord helped us all.

An interesting thing about Portuguese church choirs is that they do a "uniform" every time that they sing.  So I had everyone wear a white blouse and dark skirt, the men in suits with any tie that they owned that had yellow or gold in it.  I made 35 corsages out of yellow napkins and that was our outfit because had no money in the budget.  One choir that I saw in this district where the women wore orange scarves and the men wore orange ties, very fancy and beautiful.

Another thing that I have been doing at this time which really added to the stress was taking language courses from BYU on skype.  Those lessons were excellent, but there is much preparation to be done every week for each teacher.  

A Service Project

The Sisters in Carregado 

We visited the Carregado Branch in August.  I was amazed at the energy and enthusiasm of the Relief Society sisters.  They are small in number but big in their desire to serve others.  They made pillow case dresses for little girls in Africa.  It is beautiful thing to see sisters all over the world reaching out to help others.  They don't have much, but what little they have, they give.

A Long Journey

Carmen and Carlos Fanese

Over eight years ago, Carlos Fanese had a dream.  In his dream, his great, great grandfather appeared to him and told him that he was the one to "save" the family.  He spoke to Carlos in Italian and Carlos answered him in Italian, but Carlos was Brazilian and only spoke Portuguese.  He had never given his ancestors much thought and up to that moment didn't even realize that he was of Italian descent.  Carmen and Carlos had 6 homes, 3 expensive cars, 3 businesses.  They sold everything except for one home that they could return to, left Brazil and 3 married children and grandchildren and moved to Italy to find the names of his ancestors.  At this point, Carmen was not a member of the church. 

They moved to the town in Italy where the Fanese family was originally from, they had success and found 8 generations of Fanese names. Carmen joined the church in Italy. They were running out of money and needed to find work.  There was none for them in Italy so they moved to England where he became a chef.  It was a great job and financially they were doing much better, but they were inactive because he had to work on Sundays.  They had an impression that they should move to  Portugal and so they did. 

They moved to Caldas da Rainha, Portugal...the town where we are working.  They moved here about a month after we arrived .  We quickly became friends and their story started to unfold.  Elder Sommer took Carlos under his wing.  He taught Carlos the about the Melchezidek priesthood, and in June he became an Elder.  Then we began teaching them the temple prep classes.  We set a goal for them to go to the temple by the end of August.  We taught them how to enter and submit their ancestors' names for temple work. We contacted the temple in Madrid, Spain and made the arrangements for them to receive their own endowments, to be sealed for time and all eternity and to have their youngest daughter, who is 13, sealed to them. Imagine the wonderful feeling that we had to witness such a moment when those ancestors who came before finally had all the blessings that they had desired for so long.

 

Some things that I will miss about Portugal

Dawn over Caldas

Big sky and empty, beautiful beaches

Sunset from our balcony in Caldas da Rainha

Beautiful storms with a front row seat

Decorating the Mission Home

Sr. Fluckiger, our Mission President's wife asked me to help her decorate the upstairs bedrooms at the mission home in Lisbon.  So for a few days here and there we worked together to bring a fresh look to the bedrooms that haven't been changed in 20 years.  What Fun!!

Guest Room, before.

After

Guest Room before

After.  There was really no budget for this room, so I bought an area rug and pillows from IKEA. The red blankets are also new.

Master Bedroom after

  The master bedroom is not finished.  We have to paint the walls, get new side tables for the bed and 2 new lamps.  There is a small area rug that I found downstairs is shown in this picture, but a larger one with brighter colors is needed and a couple of toss pillows or small bolster for the bed.  Sr. Fluckiger loves brown.  We were going for restful. 

The rooms need more accessorizing, but that takes more money and time and we have neither right now.  There are no stores here like Home Goods, Tai Pan Traders, Pottery Barn, or even Target etc. to just go and pick up stuff.  We also need LDS art but that is a big expense and costs too much to ship.  There is a hefty tariff on everything that is sent by mail. We will figure it out! 

Master bedroom before.