It's almost Fall in Coimbra!

Hey Everyone!

Here's another update on Sarah and her wonderful mission in Portugal - Quick question for you... Have you told her lately, that you love her? Haha... Seriously. Take out a piece of paper, write two paragraphs to her, and send it - NOW. It will mean the world to her, as I have said before... So, here is her update: Enjoy!

"From Sister Sarah Ray
August 17, 2009

So we did have a great week this week, despite the fact that it is August. We have managed to find a couple more people here in Coimbra. Of course they are all really old as well, but that seems to be our population here right now. However, we did develop a new talent. Due to the fact that the temperatures have skyrocketed to over 100, we have become very adept at picking out which are the very few buses in Coimbra that have air conditioning. It doesn´t work very well, but it is better than nothing and we have definitely been trying to take advantage of the opportunities.

We have also managed to have some rocking awesome lessons. We have been teaching a woman named Alda for a while now, but she really hasn´t been doing a whole lot. Well, she has two kids so this week we played the game of life, missionary style, which basically covers the 2nd and 3rd lessons. You have to have all the cards of faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Hold Ghost and Endure to the End to win. So we talked about how that was how we could follow the path that God gave us, and we finally hit home. She has a completely different aspect of the gospel now, was asking questions, wants to know, wants to pray, wants to read, and we are SO EXCITED! Months of prayers that have finally happened.

We also had a pretty interesting experience visiting Elisabete this week. So, she has vacation from the crazy bin this week, and all she has missed for the past 10 years is Chocolate Chip cookies. SO, we tried our best with the crazy little easy bake oven that we have and turned out something that resembled Chocolate chip cookies and took them to her. We had to wait a couple of minutes for the nurse to go get her and in that time we became quite the celebrities with the other patients that were there. It ended with us sitting on a bench teaching 8 people who then wanted us to come back tomorrow. While nomally we would be thrilled at that aspect, due to the situations, we will go back next week. It was pretty funny though...we are thinking about just starting to teach up in the front of a bus and see if we get kicked off next. Who knows.
All in all it has been a pretty fun week, despite the frustrations. Irmã Call is awesome and is great at keeping up the good attitude even when everything goes wrong, we are in the heat and want to die. I really am thankful for the opportunity that I have to be here. It is amazing to see peoples lives change. Thank you for all of the support! Love you all!


Irmã Ray


From Sister Sarah Ray
August 24, 2009

Well transfers came through this week and I am staying in Coimbra. I have also adopted a small green monster as a pet named jealousy as I am sending Irmã Call off to Madeira. Bum, she is also going to serve with my #1 choice of companion if I could pick. However, the good news is my #2 choice (besides Irmã Call of course) is going to be my new companion. Her name is Irmã Draper and I have yet another American. Looks like I am going to be in the states probably from here on out. Our natives are pretty much all leaving soon, so we will see how it works out. However, people here sure seem to like Americans. We were talking to a guy in the square the other day and when he found out Irmã Call was from Utah he got all excited and said something I never expected to hear in Portugal "I love the Utah Jazz"....What the ?!?! Needless to say as soon as he left we both died laughing.

Other than that, this week has been pretty dry....but luckily we are coming up on the end of the feirias!!!WOO HOO! I am one happy missionary with that in mind. We also get to have a spend the night in the mission home, since the plane to Madeira leaves way early...we have to be in the mission home Wednesday night, so that will be interesting.

Alda is still doing well. Despite the fact that we have already taught her everything se seems to be taking it all in like she had never heard of it before. Maybe that is why we started over again. So we were talking about Profetas this week and she was worried that not everyone knew that we had a profeta today. She said we should do something to let everyone know to which we answered..."Alda, why do you think we are here." She was pretty shocked to learn that we have over 53,000 missionaries. She is doing really well though!!!

Well, stay tuned and hopefully I will have some more interesting stories over the next few weeks with the people coming back to Coimbra! Till next week! LOve you all.

Irmã Ray
PS Anyone who wants letters back has to let me know their new school address....."

The Best way to write Sarah is:

1) On the internet go to dearelder.com website.
2) There is a drop down box on the right hand side down just a couple inches. Enter her mission which is Portugal Porto and then click "write a letter" just below where you select the mission.
3) On the next screen enter your return address and Sister Sarah Ray in the address line, add your email in the email box below the envelope.
4) Write your letter in the text box and then hit the "send letter" box under the text box to send it on.

This site does require US $.94 Postage. You can set up an account and it will deduct the postage each time you write.

2) The alternate way for sending anything (i.e. letters, packages, etc) through regular US mail is below. This method requires US $.94 postage for letters.

Sister Sarah Ray

Portugal Porto Mission

Rua de Amalia Luazes

No.23 Sala 1

4200-052 Porto

PORTUGAL

August Hits the Portugal Sisters!

Here's some love from August - Enjoy and (you know what I'm gonna say...) , Pleas write!

"From Sister Sarah Ray
August 10, 2009

Ói.

yet one more week here is Coimbra has flown by. Crazy how time flies when you are having fun...
So...as most of our investigators have gone out of town for ferias we have found a couple more...in the unusual places.
1. Pedro...Pedro is the son of a recent convert and is totally ready to get baptized. The only problem is he has to get out of prison first. Yes, the lessons have been taught in Prison, but they also get weekends off from prison in Portugal, so we teach him at his mom´s house when he has a weekend out.
2. Elisabete: Also a weekend outer...but this time from the psych hospital. SHe was commited for being schitzophrenic (spelling??), turns out she isn´t, but now they won´t let her out because she has no where to live. The problem is she can´t have a place to live unless she can get out. SO, we get to go and teach in the psych hospital which is way out in the middle of the mountains. Quite the experience.
3. Francisca: Her son is also schitzophrenic ( I think they really like that diagnosis in Coimbra...every other person we talk to has it.) She is still being bossed around by her 52 year old son who takes all of her pension, spends it on prostitutes and kicks her out of her own house to live in an apartment she has in Coimbra every couple of weeks. She also wants to be baptized but won´t set a date because she never knows when her son is going to call her back home to do his laundry and cook for him. Personally I think a job would do wonders for him, but we are working on that.

Well, for all my poking fun at our actually pretty entertaining line up, we really have had some great experiences. Since we do not have so many people we have really gotten to concentrate on some, and it has made a difference. My favorite part of a mission is being able to answer someone´s prayer. We stoped by Francisca´s house and when she opened the door and saw us, she asked us how we knew that she needed us at that exact moment. It really makes everything else worth it to see the gospel change peoples lives. I love the miracles that I can see on a daily basis. Thank you all for everything! Have a great week.

Irmã Ray

From Sister Sarah Ray
August 3, 2009

Well, this week was definitely challenging. I never thought that I would hate school breaks so much. Unfortunately the entire city of Coimbra has moved and it pretty much looks like a ghost town. Just means that we get to work even harder, so I guess it is a good thing. We did manage to have some good times anyway though! We actually have a new investigator Laura who is from Canada and only speaks English. I never thought that it would be so hard to teach in English, but our first lesson with her would rough! I kept switching into Português, which I guess is a good thing, but it was a bit confusing for her. The cool thing is that the institute group is being great with her, they are planning an all English night activity, translate everything for her and really have done a great job of making her feel welcome. She is awesome. So we gave her one of the MTC Portuguese books that we had lying around our apartment to help her with Portuguese. We explained that it had a lot about church things in the beginning but also had grammar and vocab in the end. So, she opens it up and the first thing she reads is “will you be baptized” ….it was pretty funny. I still do love COimbra and the church is still true. Love you all and have a great day. I am going to try and attach some ~pictures from the castle!

Irmã Ray"

Here's another picture in this entry of Sarah! It's a bit dark, but an amazing shot!

The Best way to write Sarah is:

1) On the internet go to dearelder.com website.
2) There is a drop down box on the right hand side down just a couple inches. Enter her mission which is Portugal Porto and then click "write a letter" just below where you select the mission.
3) On the next screen enter your return address and Sister Sarah Ray in the address line, add your email in the email box below the envelope.
4) Write your letter in the text box and then hit the "send letter" box under the text box to send it on.

This site does require US $.94 Postage. You can set up an account and it will deduct the postage each time you write.

2) The alternate way for sending anything (i.e. letters, packages, etc) through regular US mail is below. This method requires US $.94 postage for letters.
Sister Sarah Ray
Portugal Porto Mission

Rua de Amalia Luazes

No.23 Sala 1

4200-052 Porto

PORTUGAL

Back Steppin' to July!

Here are her two grouped letters from back in July lettin' you see where she's at! Enjoy and WRITE!

"From Sister Sarah Ray
July 28, 2009

Well, one more week in Coimbra and I really do love it. Irmã Call and I have made some crazy hard goals, and we are actually doing pretty good at keeping them up. It has been really cool to see the miracles that have been happening. One of our new goals is that we write a list of the miracles that happen every day and it really has helped us see how much the Lord is guiding our work here, and that he really does have a plan for us!
Unfortunately we had to go to Porto to renew Irmã Calls visa this week, so we had a fun little trip on the train. Luckily everything went well this time and my companion is not going to be deported from the country.
The sad thing is that all of our investigators seem to be leaving Coimbra. The month of August is Feiras in the entire country, so everyone leaves. Yeah, I got sent to the college town during summer break....I guess President figured I could do the least damage here...:)
So funny story for the day. We changed our P-day this week because we had the opportunity to attend a funeral. As a result we decided to go to a Castle and Palace that is not open on Mondays. Well, it is in a different area, so we were about an hour away from Coimbra. We thought it would be really funny if we ran into the Elders that are serving in Leiria so that we could surprise them , but we arrived at the castle without an elder spotting. So, right about the time that Irmã Call makes it to the top of a wall we decided to climb...in a skirt no less...we here, "what the heck are you doing here" in English. Quite surprised we looked up just to see four elders looking over the parapet of the tower. Apparently they had gotten permission to change p-day as well so they could visit the castle. It was pretty funny....Elder Zabriski was making a movie on his camera from the top and it went something like this " so we are here on top of the castle and down there you can see the old ....what the heck are the Coimbra irmãs doing here!?!?" We all had a good laugh.
Well sorry for the short and kinda lame email, but as always time is short. Love you all!!!

Irmã Ray"

From Sister Sarah Ray
July 20, 2009

Well, the wonderful LDS mail site just deleted my very entertaining, slighly lengthy welcome to Coimbra letter. Blast! I guess that means that you will not be punished by having to read a long letter. Lucky you.
ANyway, to sum up....I made it to Coimbra in one piece...after a lot of traveling. We are way south right now, so I am having to adjust to a different style of speaking and a whole lot of new words. FUnny how just a couple hours can make such a difference. I am absolutely loving Coimbra though. We have a lot of really good things going on, I think my companion is absolutely fantastic and we even had a baptism on saturday...which is quite the story. As always everything had to go crazy wrong, but we just laughed it all off. I will give you a mental picture...and then I will attach some real ones.
1. The chapel doesn´t have clothes for a 10 year old boy. Which was a problem because Hugo happens to be a 10 year old boy. So, the poor kid ended up entering the wedgie of the world compition and using the 8 year old clothes because it was that or my size. He opted for two small, but i felt really bad for him. Unfortunately the Bishop of the other chapel doesn´t think that the missionaries should have access to the baptismal clothing, so we were not able to get him anything else.
2. They didn´t actually show up at the baptism until about 20 minutes after it was supposed to start. Of course that seems to be normal and no one else showed up till about then either. I htink that the Portuguese have an even higher standard of lateness than the church.
3. We had a member who set the temperature on the circulation system for the font. I am not sure exactly what went wrong yet, but somehow the water managed to heat up in the waiting time to just below boiling. SO; we had the pleasure of orginizing a bucket brigade to dump cold water in the font from the kitchen while we sent everyone else back in to sing hymns. Of course one of the investigators used this as a good time to step outside, leave the door open and have a cigarette break. FInally everything worked out and they were able to actually enter the font without becoming the color of a lobster.
4. SO we finally arrived at the little party afterward, and Hugo´s mom(less active) had wanted to take care of all the refreshments. She pulls everything out of the fridge, sets it up, and everyone starts to eat. Well, the missionaries go in and notice that there are two bottles of ice tea that are being served as the drinks. We managed to get it hidden in the other room and later disposed of the bottles, but it sure was an interesting moment. I guess we have a lot of work to do with the family.
Believe it or not we even mangaged to have a very spiritual experience with everything that went wrong. Just one more moment to prove that even though the world is crazy, the Lord is in charge and everything is going to work out in the end...I am really thankful for that knowledge! Have a fantabulous week and thanks for everything!

love you all!
Irmã Ray"

Below is a pic of Sarah, hard at work with one to baptize!

The Best way to write Sarah is:

1) On the internet go to dearelder.com website.
2) There is a drop down box on the right hand side down just a couple inches. Enter her mission which is Portugal Porto and then click "write a letter" just below where you select the mission.
3) On the next screen enter your return address and Sister Sarah Ray in the address line, add your email in the email box below the envelope.
4) Write your letter in the text box and then hit the "send letter" box under the text box to send it on.

This site does require US $.94 Postage. You can set up an account and it will deduct the postage each time you write.

2) The alternate way for sending anything (i.e. letters, packages, etc) through regular US mail is below. This method requires US $.94 postage for letters.

Sister Sarah Ray
Portugal Porto Mission

Rua de Amalia Luazes

No.23 Sala 1

4200-052 Porto

PORTUGAL