Elder Lindquist 11/21

Hello everyone,
This last week was amazing! It’s crazy to think that we only have three more days here. I am definitely going to miss this place and all the people I've grown to love. But I am ready to head out into the real world. Yesterday was the last day with our teachers, (one is getting married tomorrow and the other is going out of town for turkey day.) So they brought in pictures from their missions and told us stories and stuff. It was really cool and it got us super exited to leave, we also threw a bachelor party for Irmão Harmon. All of us brought all of the goodies we have received in the last week up to the classroom, (which consisted of like a hundred pounds of every kind of candy you can imagine...) and we decorated the room. We surprised him big time. We scarfed dinner down then ran up to the room so we could be there before him then turned off the lights and waited, I've never seen anyone smile bigger than he did. It was awesome. This whole last week has been the perfect way to end our stay here everything has gone very smoothly. We had an awesome experience this last Tuesday; Elder Jeffrey R. Holland came to speak to us for our devotional. It was by far my favorite meeting we've had here so far; he is such a good speaker especially with the missionaries. After each of the devotionals we have devotional review where we go back to our classroom and discuss our thoughts on the talk. The spirit was super strong that night as we discussed our feelings about the devotional and then bore our testimonies in Portuguese. Yesterday was our last time to teach the second lesson. We also had to incorporate the law of tithing into it. (o lei de Dízimo) it went really really well. There was also a ton of volunteers at the TRC that day so we got to have a "member" there during our lesson. It was super helpful to have them there and let them bear their testimony about the law of tithing and the plan of salvation. Everything is going really well, I'm feeling really comfortable with the language but I know that's about to turn around real quick here in four days or so. We're getting really busy in our last few weeks with departure meetings and things like that.
I'm not looking forward to packing but oh well it's got to happen. This Sunday Elder Craig and I are released as zone leaders, which is a relief but sad at the same time because we've gotten to know our zone so well and now we're taking off but we enjoyed serving. Oh I forgot to mention we had a new district come in on Wed. there were only supposed to be eight missionaries but a ton of elders, and one sister were sent here due to their visas being delayed. So we had a group of 17 new missionaries show up this week, orientation went really well except for the tour of the MTC campus was a little hard to keep everyone together but other than that things went well. I'm just so excited to head out into the field, I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing right now than serving the Lord in Portugal. I love my district, I love the MTC, I love Portuguese, (even though it doesn't love me) and I hope that when I get to Portugal I can love the people there. Thanks for your support and prayers!!
ama Jordão