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