MISSÃO PORTUGAL PORTO

Bom Dia a todos!

I apologize, but last Monday I moved! I left Abrantes in order to come up north, don't envy me, it was 9 hours of travel. :P But now I'm here and settled and have a week in a new town under my belt. Also, as many of you know, I was called to serve in the Portugal, Lisbon Mission. But as of July 1st the mission (previously all of Portugal) will split into The Lisbon and Porto Missions, and I will stay in the Porto Mission! Cool huh?

I am currently living in Peso da Régua. For those of you who don't speak Portuguese, that means Weight of the Ruler, but not Ruler like king…Ruler as in, the measuring tool. haha It's named after a really old Catholic church that's here with two statues that have a ruler and scales. Now you can see how original it is.

This is Wine country up here, so it's very beautiful and green. This actually was the city where they would gather in all the wine from the vineyards and the surrounding areas and then ship it down the River Douro to Porto. The river Douro is the only river in Portugal that’s deep enough to hold a boat.

I'm here with Elder Gilbert who's from Utah and a pretty cool guy. American. So yep I get to speak English again, hope my Portuguese doesn't fade. I'll have to work harder now.

I am also now what's called a District leader, meaning I'm responsible for a group of missionaries. I help them and train them and send information up and down the line with them.

We have a group here in Régua, which means we're not very big. Yesterday we had 16 people in sacrament, with 2 being Elder Gilbert and I and 3 visitors from another branch. But we'll be getting bigger; I'm excited :)

So people have been wondering about food. There’s something really awesome up here in the north called a Franciscana. It's a piece of bread, several kinds of meat with cheese, another piece of bread, tons of cheese melted over the top, and a fried egg, with a special sauce that’s kind of spicy. I'm dying to try it and will in the next week or so. I'll let you know :)

But generally I eat rice and meat, spaghetti...we're planning to make pancakes this week. Yep...it's like college. Today we have like...spaghetti pizza. It was pretty good. We might go back and try another pizza I dunno.

Miss you all! Have a fantastic week!

Abraço,

Elder Buchanan