Christmas Season in Lisboa

The most wonderful of all seasons began with our local church Festa de Natal on December 7th at Gago Coutinho Chapel. We enjoyed all the food and dessert a person could handle starting with homemade soup. Santa even showed up in Portuguese style.



Eileen and Maria Rosaria

 The best thing about Christmas parties is you get to be with best friends, like Maria Rosaria, who wanted to make sure Eileen tasted her traditional Portuguese dessert. Each time Eileen sees Irmã Rosaria she is greeted with minha amiga (my friend).

The Mission Christmas Festa was the next major event. On December 21st over 100 missioinaries convened in the Oeiras chapel for both a spiritual and physical feast. President Torgan and his beautiful wife Rosa taught all of us about the love of the Saviour and how it helps us, especially during this time of year. The more we emulate the Saviour the more joy we will enjoy in this life and beyond. We had an incredible group of missionaries with great big smiles and lots of hugs.

Rosa Torgan and Eileen at Irmãs Table



Eileen ended up at the Irmãs table with Rosa Torgan and lots of big smiles. Irmã Howard behind Eileen was to be on an airplane on the way to Minnesota to be with her family (after 18 months away) but the flight was cancelled due to snow in Paris so she was on her way the next day.

Elder McLean (from Pleasant Grove and a Gale relative somewhere back there) and Elder Rodrigues (Cabo Verde) sat across from us during dinner, making the time extra special for us. The closeness of the group personified the gospel of Jesus Christ and the love we can and should have for each other.

No matter what country, skin color or language, everyone was a brother or sister at this event and made it a great success. We ended the day with a white elephant exchange that had everyone involved. The last hour we enjoyed some inspirational remarks from Elder Rocha and President Torgan. Some abraços and fond farewells and many were on buses back to their areas, some with 4-5 hour trips ahead of them.

President Moroni and Irmã Rosa Torgan

Irmã Torgan put it all together with Kent and Eileen packaging the 100+ gift bags for the missionaries. Eileen spent almost 5 hours making 200 plus peanut butter cookies (small oven meant lots of batches) to be combined with the Rosa Torgan cookies. Nothing like homemade cookies to warm the spirits on a cold winter´s night (come on, it was below 50 degrees!).

Christmas morning found 17 missionaries at our home to share Christmas with us. We had a wonderful feast as the Irmãs made a huge fruit salad while Elder Keller and Wohlman cooked the bacon. We added scones and eggs with lots of chocolate milk and peanut butter for a celestial style meal. It was an amazing day with incredilbly unselfish young men and young women.

Christmas wouldn´t be right without some great Christmas Carols. Elder Bezerra (Forteleza Brasil-front left) was enjoying his last Christmas in Portugal with a plane trip home coming in just two short months. The terrific thing was that these young men knew how to sing and sang in harmony. And....they loved singing. We just basked in it all and enjoyed the entire day with different missionaries, with Elder Stanley leaving at around 5pm after he had written about the whole event in his journal. This was a time worthy for our journals toooooo!