3.1.11 Dad's Letter

Hey!

I had interviews with the President on Monday which is why I am writing today. I told mom the cool story about what he said. I had to take a bus to Faro which is like an hour and a half. That was a whole different story I will share in a second. But transfers are going to be on the 14th and 15th. I think I will stay one more transfer here...but anything could happen. This week was only like 4 new people. But we have a goal of 14 this week! The new ones we have are slow starting out but this week we have a goal to teach each one at least one lesson.

Those things she sent me were super cool! I am using the book mark its way cool! I have only not felt safe a couple of times...here in the Algarve it is really safe cause its all touristy but like 10 days ago we had some elders that got mugged...the people didn't touch them just took their money. That was the first story I had heard of anything since I have been here...and they were breaking rules and were out after hours and out of their area. We have one area here that is kinda scary...but not really...its just dark and everyone tells us its a sketchy area. There is one place in Lisbon that the elders aren't allowed to be in after dark at all. Its called Anjos which is kinda ironic cause that means Angels.

Thanks for doing those things for me!! I am excited to do fun stuff like that when i come home. Yes all is doing swell in our area...one thing President Torgan said was that he was impressed with how well Roundy and I get along.

So the bus ride story...man it was weird. We were on the bus coming back from Faro..we were with the 3 Elders from Lagos. We stopped to pick up more people and a group of students came on the bus...they had been on the same but when we went to faro but we didn't talk to them. Anyways as they come on there is one girl that automatically we could tell was going to be interesting and we had to watch out just cause she seemed super flirty. Well she ended up sitting behind me and across the isle from another elder. we had been going for like 20 minutes and she turns to the elder across the isle and asks "is it true that hello kitty is from the devil?" Elder "D" (De Hoyos) was confused...he is mexican and speaks portuguese super well...but anyways she explained that some JW´s had told her that. he proceeded to explain we aren´t JW´s...then all her friends there were like 4 others all started talking and asking questions...so i turned around to help him out...which was a good things cause they started asking all sorts of questions about us and about where we are from and we talked about EVERYTHING. It was super cool though cause it was him and i in the midst of like the whole back area of the bus and they were all listening to us. We ended up explaining a little about our church and it was a good thing we had just asked for more Restoration pamphlets cause i ended up opening the new pack and handing them out to like everyone with our phone numbers on them. The first girl seemed most interested so she gave us her contact info and stuff but man it was awkward...tons of here questions where like if we could have girlfriends and stuff like that...the whole time we were thinking she was like 16ish...well Elder D asked her and she was like i am 13...we were all so shocked...she was super confident in herself and was talking about religion and everything...she talked about some science stuff that i know NOTHING about. It was super weird but she said she would try to come to church next week and if not she will call us to mark an appointment or we could call her and she will meet us at the church or whatever. It was a cool experience to teach a whole bus full of people with another elder that i didn´t know anything about!

That was my exciting bus story...Well have a great week!! Love you!

Elder Bushnell