During August of 1994 I traveled alone to South America to bring Michael home from his mission in the Brazil Manaus Mission. It was the first time I had returned to Brazil since I came home from my own mission there nearly 24 years earlier. Michael observed that during the days we were traveling about Brazil he could see a steady improvement in my proficiency in speaking Portuguese.
Thursday, August 4, 1994
In airports and on airplanes all day from 11:00 this morning. I flew on three American flights from Salt Lake City to Dallas-Ft. Worth, from Dallas-Ft. Worth to Miami, and from Miami to Rio de Janeiro. I had dinner on all three flights. On the long flight to Rio I sat next to a girl from São Paulo who spoke no English, so I was able to begin immediately to practice my Portuguese. She had been visiting in Florida for the past 20 days with a friend of her mother's and the friend's daughter. She was impressed that I could still speak Portuguese after 24 years away from Brazil.
Friday, August 5
In Rio this morning I had less than an hour and a half to clear customs, get my Brazil air pass changed into actual tickets for Michael and me to use in traveling all over Brazil the next two weeks (allowing us for only $420 to visit five different destinations), pay the airport tax (which has to be done in a separate line from anything else), change my previously scheduled flight to Manaus to a more reasonable hour (so I could arrive there early this afternoon instead of after midnight), and haul my two very heavy carry-on bags to the correct gate to board a 10:00 VARIG flight to São Paulo. I did not have time to change my money from dollars to reais.
I actually made the connection to São Paulo, where I caught a second flight to Manaus. About 2:30 in the afternoon we landed in Manaus. As we flew over the Rio Solimões and the Rio Negro, the two rivers that a few miles downstream from Manaus meet to form the Amazon, I knew they were large rivers but was simply unprepared for how large they actually looked from a few thousand feet in the air. Our plane was a little early, and no one was there to meet me, but Elder Cleverly and Elder Fails were at the far end of the airport making a telephone call.
What a thrill to see Michael again! Perhaps a small foretaste of what it will be like to pass through the veil and there greet all our loved ones who have gone on before.
The Fails family—consisting of President Willis Fails (who on July 1 completed presiding over the Brazil São Paulo East Mission), his wife Diane, Karl (being released from the Manaus mission with Michael), Joann (age 19), Jerry (17), Jennifer (13), and Amy (10)—had arrived in Manaus late Thursday night and, like us, are staying in the mission home with the Francesconis. After arriving at the mission home I was put to bed and slept for a couple hours.
This evening all of us (the Francesconis, the Failses, and the two Cleverlys) went to a ballet at the Teatro Amazonas, the world-famed Manaus Opera House, built in 1896 (the same year Utah became a state) in the heyday of the Amazon rubber plantations. We saw different numbers, each one to me increasingly interesting to watch: Players ("A magical mixture of videogame and soccer"), O Boi no Telhado [The Bull on the Roof] ("The tradition of Brazilian music from the first decade of the century"), and Cânticos Místicos ("How beautiful are the feet of the messengers of peace"). The final number seemed particularly appropriate to the occasion of our being here to bring home two successful missionaries, who for the past two years have been out preaching the good news of the gospel of peace.
Saturday, August 6
Last night Michael and I slept on mats on the floor of the living room and, after going to bed quite late, talked long into the night. A neat experience. Everyone slept in late this morning. Sister Francesconi fed us what she called breakfast. Feast would be a more accurate description.
This afternoon we went to downtown Manaus, where among other things we arranged our river cruise for Monday, went up to the top of the tallest building in Manaus (20 stories), and otherwise looked around. Later we went to the Hotel Tropical, a world-class resort hotel on the Rio Negro, where we wandered through their zoo, walked along the river, and swam (except President Francesconi and the two unreleased missionaries) in their wave pool. In the late afternoon, after another of Sister Francesconi's feasts, we went to the Manaus Shopping Center, the place where Michael and the other missionaries sang at Christmastime.
Once again Michael and I talked long after we went to bed.
Sunday, August 7
This morning the Failses went to church in the Alvorada Ward, which began at 8:30 with priesthood, Relief Society, and Primary. Michael and I attended the Flores Ward, which began at 9:00 in the same building with sacrament meeting. No one present was able to play the piano, so I offered my services, apparently a rare treat. (Elder Fails did the same thing in the ward he attended.) It was fast Sunday and therefore testimony meeting. I was very impressed with the spirit and content of the numerous testimonies borne. Afterward an excellent lesson on fasting was taught in the Gospel Essentials class in Sunday School. In priesthood meeting the bishop spent nearly the entire time getting after the brethren for not home teaching and various other things I was not entirely following because of its being so hot and my being so tired.
After the two wards were over, we stayed for a baptismal service of a young man who became a member of the Church. Michael and I then went with an Elder Bertine to eat dinner in the home of a nearby member. We returned to the mission office, which is right behind the church, to await the Failses' return from their luncheon appointment. We took naps back at the mission home before leaving at 5:30 to attend sacrament meeting in the Petrópolis Ward, where I again played the piano and met Augusto, Francisco, and Marilena—people Michael had baptized. (Francisco and Marilena used to live with each other before they knew anything about the Church, had separated, joined the Church independently of each other, and are now happily married to each other.) Several of the people who bore testimonies in this ward mentioned Michael by name. It was obvious the love and appreciation they had for him.
Back at the mission home we were treated to another of Sister Francesconi’s feasts. Elders Cleverly and Fails thought they had died and gone to heaven. This evening Michael and I called home to wish Rachael a happy birthday. She turned 19 today.
Monday, August 8
A day of great adventure. The nine of us (seven from the Fails family and two Cleverlys) went to the floating dock near downtown and met our guide for the day. He took us out on the Rio Negro, about an hour downstream to the encontra das aguas (the Encounter of the Waters, where the black waters of the Rio Negro meet the muddy brown waters of the Rio Solimões and they become the Amazon River), and back up various tributaries of the Solimões, through the jungle, to an old abandoned rubber plantation mansion, and such exotic places. At some remote spot out in the dense jungle we stopped to fish for piranhas. I caught a small one, about the size of my hand spread out, and a little later Elder Fails caught a smaller one, about the length of my index finger. We saw alligators and numerous kinds of birds. Finally, we wended our way back through the forested waterways until we reached the Rio Negro again and crossed its broad expanse back to Manaus on the far side.
We spent some time wandering through downtown, which seemed hot and humid indeed after being out on the water much of the day. I finally exchanged $60 into 52 Brazilian reais. And bought a poster of the Brazilian World Cup team for Talmage. We were hot and tired. Very tired. We couldn't reach anyone by phone to come pick us up, so we caught a bus we hoped was going our way. As soon as we realized it wasn't, we got off and started walking toward the mission home. Part way there, President Francesconi happened to drive by and stopped to give us a ride. It took him two trips to fit everyone in.
Back at the mission home, President and Sister Fails, Jerry, and I went swimming, which was very refreshing. The final feast was the official departure dinner for the two elders, followed by a talent show (consisting mostly of singing or piano playing and various unwilling children) and a testimony meeting. A marvelous and wonderful evening, an exciting day, and for two young men an adventurous two years.
Tuesday, August 9
The Failses left this morning for Belem. We will see them again Saturday morning in São Paulo. After they left Michael and I packed, ate a final one of Sister Francesconi's meals, and went to the mission office with President Francesconi. He talked about the growth of the mission, which a little over a month ago was divided to form the Belem mission, and showed me some of the computer programs Elders Cleverly and Fails had set up for him to keep track of the mission. A little before 1:00 two of the office elders took us to the airport, where we caught our VARIG flight to Brasília. We were surprised at how small and low-tech the airport was in the nation's capital.
After about a two-hour layover, we caught a second VARIG flight to Maceió, the spot of Brazil where I left my heart many years ago. We were met at the airport by Irmã Virginia and several of her children: Inez (who was 15 when I was last here and is now 39), Betânia and her husband, and Adriano and his wife, and several of their children. What an incredible reunion after nearly 24 years!
Wednesday, August 10
We are staying with Inez Tenório and her adopted children, five-year-old Sarah and ten-month-old Carolina, who are living in the home of Virginia's parents, where Inez helps take care of her aged grandparents. (I had met the grandparents once in 1970 when we went with the Tenório family on an outing into the interior of the state of Alagoas to visit Paulo Afonso Falls.)
While we were eating breakfast around 9:00, her grandfather up and died on us. That rather changed plans for the day. The grandfather, who was 95 years old, had lung cancer, and everyone was pretty much grateful he went so quickly and painlessly. Michael and I accompanied Adriano (age 31) and Tiago (21), two of Virginia's sons, as they drove around town to make various arrangements and pick out a coffin.
Maceió has changed substantially in the past 24 years. The Atlantic Ocean is still here and the soccer stadium (o Trapichão) and the cathedral and some government buildings downtown. I recognized little else. We went by the house where the Tenórios lived in 1970, and it is now a business in a business district. The sleepy little town is now a bustling little metropolis.
This afternoon I met Alexandre, who has never married and owns a school that teaches English. Even though he served a full-time mission, he is not currently active in the Church. He was the member of the family I had last seen because he lived in the United States (in Yarrington, Nevada) for about six months in the mid-1970s and came to visit us when we still lived in Provo and Michael was just a wee babe.
Late this afternoon, around 5:30 or so, just before dark, we attended the grandpa's funeral at the cemetery where he was buried. An interesting experience. He and his wife are Catholics. His daughter (Virginia) and the grandchildren are all Latter-day Saints. It was something like a combination Catholic–Mormon graveside service. A Catholic priest did his thing. Michael and I sang "Abide with Me" with a group of family members. Adriano, whom I had baptized in the ocean when he turned eight in 1970 and who is now a bishop, dedicated the grave.
Adriano looks and sounds very much like his father Aldo, who had been the branch president in Maceió just before I was appointed to that position in 1970. Aldo, whom we met briefly at the funeral, has left both the family and the Church and is living in the interior with some other woman. He looked like an old and worn-out man.
By early evening, just as it was starting to rain again, we had Grandpa all done and buried. Nice and quick.
Later in the evening we went to Adriano's house and with a few other members from my era in Maceió had a testimony meeting. What a marvelous experience! One of the things Inez recounted was her impression a couple months ago, when she learned that we were coming to visit, that when I arrived her grandfather would die. She dismissed the thought and didn't even think about it again until today.
Thursday, August 11
We were originally scheduled to leave Maceió today, but last night as Michael and I lay in bed talking we decided to skip our final two days in Rio de Janeiro, stay an extra day in Maceió, go to São Paulo first, and then return to Salvador for our final three days in Brazil. The Tenórios were delighted when we told them of our plans and took us this morning to the VARIG office to get our tickets changed.
Then Inez took us all to lunch at a nice restaurant in a part of town that didn't even exist when I was last here. Afterward we spent the rest of the day touring the city. The beaches and the bay are so beautiful here. Michael got to stick his finger in the sea. Yesterday was the first time he had seen the Atlantic Ocean. It occurred to me that I have performed baptisms in both oceans: Adriano in the Atlantic Ocean on October 3, 1970, and Talmage in the Pacific Ocean on July 4, 1985.
Tonight Adriano took us out for pizza to a place just across the street from the house on Rua Uruguai that in 1970 was the branch meetinghouse. A flood of pleasant memories from those distant, delightful days crowded in upon us as we visited. A most pleasant day. While we were waiting for our pizza order, little Aldozinho, Adriano and Amélia's two-year-old son, kept trying to steal a piece of pizza from a neighboring table. He couldn't understand why we had come to eat pizza but no one would let him have a piece. Finally he broke into tears, and the man at the next table gave a piece to him.
Friday, August 12
At 6:00 this morning our plane left Maceió for Salvador, where we caught a second flight to São Paulo with a stop in Rio. We arrived in São Paulo about 11:30, and Irmão Muniz picked us up at the airport and took us to the CTM [MTC], where we will stay two nights. After we got checked into our room (510 on the top floor with a nice view of the back of the temple), we walked next door to the area office building, where we met Gisa (Adalgisa M. Dias), who had been so kind in helping me set up our flights all over Brazil.
We spoke briefly with Elder Helvécio Martins of the Area Presidency and then spent some time with Elder Harold G. Hillam, the Area President, who spoke at considerable length about the growth of the Church in Brazil.
At the CTM we met President Val H. Carter, the MTC president, and spent a while with him in his office. I first knew President Carter as the president of the Jardim Botânico Branch in Rio de Janeiro in 1969 when he was there working for the U.S. government. At the CTM we also met José Rosa Pereira, whose wife Edomita and mother-in-law Odcira I had known 24 years ago in Rio de Janeiro. We also met his son Nefi, who had served his mission in the Idaho Pocatello Mission and had called me from President Hal Johnson's house in Idaho Falls. Such a small world.
Michael and I then went to the temple and did our first endowment session ever in Portuguese. A nice experience. Afterward we ate in the temple cafeteria and then did another session.
Saturday, August 13
We ate breakfast in the temple cafeteria and then met President and Sister Fails and Elder Fails for the 8:15 session. After the endowment session, Michael and I had an opportunity to help with a sealing session, and I was able to act as proxy for a child being sealed to his parents.
This afternoon we were supposed to go with the Failses on an outing to Elder Archibald's farm, but we never could get an answer at the telephone number Elder Fails had given us. After coming out of the temple, Michael and I met Odcira and Edomita and their family and visited for a while.
During the two days we've been here at the temple complex, Michael has met ten missionaries he knew in the Manaus mission.
Since we were unable to make contact with the Failses, we ate a late lunch at the McDonalds in the shopping center up (down?) the street from the temple. We attended another endowment session this afternoon, our fourth, after which we waited for the sealing of a sister missionary, Sister Doudement, from Michael's mission who married yesterday in São Luis, Marinhão, and flew to São Paulo to be sealed today. Michael and I served as witnesses and afterward as photographers out in front of the temple.
By now it was quite dark, and we discovered we were locked out of the CTM building. All the caravans there from distant parts of Brazil had left and gone home, and the building, we found out, gets locked up on weekends—even though there are still missionaries there in residence. After circling the building once to see if there were any open doors, Michael and I returned to the main entrance just as President Carter was unlocking the door to go back in himself. He let us in and told us the security guard at the front desk of the area office building next door could let us in anytime we needed. President Carter also loaned us his alarm clock so we could wake up early enough tomorrow morning to go catch our early plane.
Afterward Michael and I walked up the street to get some more cash out of a bank machine and had hot dogs for supper at the same shopping center food court where the McDonalds was located.
Sunday, August 14
Our second Sunday in Brazil. The meetings last week in Manaus seem so long ago. We were up very early to be ready for Irmão Muniz to pick us up at 6:00 and take us in his taxi to the airport by 7:00 to catch our 8:00 flight to Salvador.
Daniel and Miriam Amato picked us up at the airport and whisked us off to church, where sacrament meeting was just getting ready to start in a rented school next to the meetinghouse that was being remodeled into a stake center. Salvador has two stakes.
After sacrament meeting we went to the mission home, called home, had lunch, and visited with everyone. President Amato's mother is visiting from São Paulo. Sister Amato's parents, the Puertas, are presiding in the Brazil Florianópolis Mission in southern Brazil.
Tomorrow is the Amato family's last day all together. Daniel leaves Tuesday morning for São Paulo to receive his endowment and Tuesday night leaves for the United States from Rio on the same flight as Michael. He enters the MTC in Provo on Wednesday afternoon on his way to the Texas Dallas Mission. Cláudia leaves Tuesday night for São Paulo to finalize arrangements for her visa to the United States and returns, hopefully, to Provo next Monday to attend BYU.
I had previously met President and Sister Amato when they were in Utah last summer to attend the seminar for new mission presidents and wives. Daniel had gone with us earlier this summer to watch Brazil play Russia in the opening game of the World Cup in San Francisco. And Cláudia, of course, had lived with us nearly a year and a half ago, and Rebecca in return had lived with the Amatos here in Salvador for the last four months of last year. Today was the first time I had met Eduardo (age 17), Miriam (11), and Homerinho (5).
After lunch we had a family home evening on missionary work. President Amato and Daniel then took Michael and me on a tour of part of the city down by the beaches before it got dark. Then we went to one of the stake centers, where Daniel had a final interview with the stake president and where Michael and I were introduced to a lot of members and missionaries as Rebecca's brother and father. Most everyone seemed to know her from when she was here nearly a year ago.
Monday, August 15
We talked to Mom again this morning just as it was time for breakfast and later in the day just before it was time to eat lunch. I sure do miss her and wish she could have come on this trip with me. One of the things we had to do is have Church Travel change Daniel's flights from Miami to Salt Lake City to be on the same planes as Michael. Coincidentally, they were already on the same flight from Rio to Miami.
In the morning Cláudia, Daniel, their grandmother, Michael, and I went to visit the Pelourinho, the old part of the city up on a bluff overlooking the port and bay (Baia de Todos os Santos). We mostly wandered through old shops and churches and saw the house of Jorge Amado, a famous Brazilian author.
In the afternoon we went with Sister Amato to the Shopping Center and to a supermercado to buy stuff for Rebecca—including three cans of goiaba, three packages of soap (?), and 99 packages of maracujá (passion fruit) powder. We could not find the Bahian clothes she wanted.
In the evening we went to a place something like a sidewalk café to eat acarajé, a famous Bahian food made of white bean bread and spicy stuff inside. Michael liked it without shrimp added. Afterward we came back to the mission home and had a farewell home evening for Cláudia and Daniel, both of whom leave for Utah this week, Daniel to begin his mission, Cláudia to return to BYU.
Sunday when we arrived here in Salvador, the Amatos told us of a Brazilian missionary, Elder Evangelista, who had died in their mission the previous Sunday. It was unexpected, and the nonmember family in southern Brazil took it very hard and was very angry with the Amatos and the perceived lack of care they gave their son. Sister Amato talked on the phone with the mother, who thoroughly chastised her and spoke many harsh words. All week Sister Amato had been praying that the Lord would somehow soften their hearts. Tonight during the home evening President Amato received a phone call from the stake president where the nonmember family lives. They had been reading Elder Evangelista's missionary journal and had had a complete change of heart. The mother now wanted to go to São Paulo with the next caravan from the stake to see the temple, even though she knew she couldn't go inside. Another brother, a Pentecostal minister, hoped his own son could join the Church and serve a mission. What a marvelous miracle!
Rebecca had sent a Triple Combination in English with me to deliver to Elder Evangelista from Cade Hoff. When Cade learned he had died, he asked that it go instead to one of his brothers, who was the only other member of the Church in the family and who had earlier also served in the Salvador mission.
Tuesday, August 16
Our last day in Brazil. President Amato woke everyone up early, at 5:00, so they could get Daniel to the airport by 6:00 to catch his flight to São Paulo, where he will take out his endowment today. Before we left the house, President Amato set Daniel apart as a full-time missionary. On the way to the airport the president dropped Michael and me off at the rodoviária, where we bought passage on a bus to Feira de Santana, about an hour and a half away, Bahia's second largest city, where we met Jailson da Rocha, Michael's first companion in Brazil (in Porto Velho from November 15, 1992, to February 1, 1993).
Just before I left the United States nearly two weeks ago, I had written Jailson telling him that Michael and I were coming to visit him and mentioning when we would be arriving. As we were leaving Manaus a week ago today, thinking he may not have received my letter from the States, Michael sent him a telegram from the Manaus airport to be sure he knew we would be arriving in Salvador on Thursday afternoon and leaving Friday afternoon. That was before we changed our itinerary in Maceió and went to São Paulo first. So last Thursday, the day we would have gone to Salvador, Michael sent a second telegram canceling our earlier plans and saying we would be in Salvador Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Unfortunately, Jailson received my letter on Thursday, hopped on a bus that very afternoon to Salvador, and waited for us at the airport. When we didn't arrive, he called the mission office and found out that our plans had changed. So he took another bus back to Feira de Santana, and when he arrived home the second telegram had come telling of the changed plans. The first telegram never did arrive. Finally, we had managed to get together.
We went to Jailson's house and also a sister's house nearby and later in the morning met his mother, who joined the Church a year ago, about a month after Elder da Rocha's return from his mission. We also met a sister and two of her children. This sister's oldest son, about 14, has also joined the Church.
We walked and took a bus ride that equaled anything at Disneyland for excitement back to the center of the city, where we ate lunch in a self-serve restaurant in the back of a supermercado. Then we walked back to the rodoviária to catch our 1:45 bus back to Salvador.
We met a number of people who had known Rebecca when she served her three-week mission here nearly a year ago. Apparently she made quite an impression on both Feira de Santana and Salvador.
Michael and Jailson had a wonderful visit during the nearly five and a half hours we were in Feira, but it was heart-wrenching for them to say good-by to each other, possibly never to see each other again (although I never expected to see the people in Maceió again). Jailson said that he considered Michael to be his favorite companion from his entire mission.
Soon after our arrival back at the mission home, we showered, changed clothes, finished packing, and rushed off to the airport—Cláudia and her grandmother to fly to São Paulo at 6:15, Michael and I to return to Rio at 6:00 to catch our flight to the United States. In all the confusion and shortness of time at the Salvador airport, I lost the large poster of the Brazilian World Cup soccer team I had purchased in Manaus for Talmage that I had been carefully hand carrying all over Brazil.
Michael and I landed in Rio around 8:00 this evening, leaving us sufficient time for me to catch my 10:00 American flight to Miami and Michael and Daniel, joining him from São Paulo, to catch their 10:30 VARIG flight to Miami.
Wednesday, August 17
I arrived in Miami a few minutes after 5:00 this morning and waited in customs for Michael and Daniel to arrive about an hour later. On the flight from Rio de Janeiro I talked with a man a few rows in front of me who was from Durham, North Carolina. He knew of Peace College, where Rachael attends in Raleigh, and thinks the Raleigh-Durham area is one of the nicest places to live he's ever encountered. There was also a group of 10 to 15 Brazilian exchange students headed for various locations in the United States. They were all from Salvador, except for one girl from Maceió. I spoke with several of them: a boy going to Michigan; another boy to Hoquiam, Washington; a girl going to Ogden, Utah; and a boy going to Mississippi.
Daniel, Michael, and I visited for an hour or so before they went to catch their Delta flight to Atlanta and on to Salt Lake, and I went to catch my American flight to Dallas-Ft. Worth and then Salt Lake. I arrived in Salt Lake about 20 minutes later than Michael and Daniel. It was so nice to be home.
On my last flight, from Dallas-Ft. Worth to Salt Lake City, I calculated that I had been on 16 different flights during the past 13 days. I will be glad to be done with airports and airplanes for a while.
A few days later Michael listed five neat things from our trip: the river trip in Manaus, attending church, the temple in São Paulo, Brazilian pizza, and our visit with President Hillam. He also made a list of unexpected things: the ballet in the Manaus Opera House, the death in Maceió, the Catholic–Mormon funeral, and our serving as witnesses at the wedding in the temple.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Trip to Portugal
A detailed account of my journey to Portugal in the summer of 1991 to visit with my good friend, R. Douglas Holt, serving his last days as president of the Portugal Lisbon South Mission. I was accompanying fifteen-year-old Rachael, who had come to spend the summer with sixteen-year-old Marianne Holt and fourteen-year-old Martha Holt. Within the two weeks before we traveled, we learned that Sister Diana Holt had to return home to the United States for health reasons, resulting in the pending release of the Holts after one year of service in Portugal.
Sunday, June 23, 1991
It is early in the morning here in Lisbon, Portugal. A cool, clear day, the third day of summer. From my room in the mission home I can look out over the beautiful Rio Tejo (Tagus River) as it empties finally into the Atlantic Ocean. I hear early morning sounds of the day: a rooster crowing, birds chirping in the trees, an occasional dog barking, an owl hooting, the distant noise of traffic.
A jet just passed overhead on its approach to Lisbon's international airport, perhaps one similar to the one that brought us here yesterday afternoon some twenty hours after we left Salt Lake City. Appropriately, I guess, Rachael and I left home on the first day of summer, the longest day of the year. And it was a long day. A very long day. Had there been one more flight to catch, or one more airport to endure, I'm not sure I could have convinced Rachael to continue on.
From Salt Lake the two of us had flown to Chicago, where we boarded a second flight that took us way north over some of the Great Lakes, parts of Quebec, the Hudson Bay, out over the northern Atlantic, the southern tip of Greenland, past Iceland, and back down to the British Isles, where we landed at London’s Gatwick airport. On this eight-hour flight the sun, which was always to our left, never did set, even though we left Chicago at 4:30 in the afternoon and arrived in London at 7:30 in the morning.
From Gatwick we took an hour's bus ride through beautiful English countryside to Heathrow airport, where we caught our final flight to Lisbon. It was the first time either of us had set foot on British soil, the place of our early roots, and I could sense why my ancestors on both my father's and mother's sides had loved this fair land, this jeweled scepter, but had left it all behind in the century before this one to gather to Zion, a desert wilderness half a world away.
I reminded Rachael, who was beginning to find air travel a little tedious, that Charles and Eliza Batt (my great-grandparents) had taken something like nine days to cross the Atlantic and another week beyond that to reach Utah.
And here we are now in Portugal. I pinch myself to make sure it is not merely a dream. For twenty years, ever since I returned from my mission in Brazil, I have longed to visit Portugal. And now I am here, a dream come true.
Let me quote from the letter to Claudia I started Friday evening on the plane from Chicago to London (and may not get around to sending):
Today has been a delightful Sabbath day. We attended a small ward in Amora, where President Holt and I were the speakers in sacrament meeting. We had been asked by the bishop, a member of the Church only two years, to speak about temples. I spoke first about baptism, quoting the Savior (from John 3:1–5) and the Prophet Nephi (from 2 Nephi 31:4–12 and 16–18), emphasizing the need for baptism and other ordinances for all who would enter the kingdom of God and thus the glorious work in the temples for those who had not had an opportunity to hear the gospel while living. President Holt emphasized worthiness to go to the temple and reviewed the questions asked in the temple recommend interview. Between my talk and his, the Primary children sang "I Hope They Call Me on a Mission" and then presented us with bouquets of cut flowers.
After our return to the mission home, while lunch was being prepared, I called home to speak to Claudia. (Here in Lisbon it was around 2:00 in the afternoon; there in Bountiful it was around 7:00 in the morning.) Talmage was off to stake priesthood meeting alone—with Michael in Las Vegas working and me here in Lisbon visiting. All the other children who hadn't yet had the flu (as Claudia did last Thursday and I did Wednesday and Rachael and Mary sometime during the week before that) were all sick Friday and Saturday. Poor Camilla. Not only did she have the flu, she also had pneumonia all week and on Saturday a terribly itchy rash (the doctor said probably a reaction to the medicine she was taking for the pneumonia). Aside from all that cheery news, it was good to talk to her about our trip over and how wonderful it was to be here and how much I miss and love her.
This afternoon, after eating lunch, I went with President Holt to the mission office, which is not far away in Alges. He met with his office staff to tell them he'd be leaving the mission in mid-July when Fernando José Duarte de Araújo and his family arrive from Brazil to replace him. (Yesterday, after our arrival, I handed President Holt the letter signed by the First Presidency last week that officially released him from his mission, effective on or near July 1, as mutually determined by him and his successor, and announced who that successor would be.) He then met with his assistants to plan sisters' transfers to accommodate the six new lady missionaries arriving Tuesday morning.
After we returned to the mission home, Rachael and I walked up the hill above the mission home to visit an ancient little chapel, now mostly closed except for weddings and other special occasions, where centuries ago priests prayed for the great Portuguese explorers who sailed off into unknown parts of the world to make their discoveries. The chapel is in a park that overlooks the mouth of the Tejo as it empties into the sea.
An elder had come to visit President Holt, and while he did so I sat in the living room and had a nice chat with his companion. The two of us then joined President Holt in giving a health blessing to the first missionary.
In the evening the President and I drove down near the river, just below the mission home, to visit a monastery. We looked around some and attended a few moments of mass.
Monday, June 24
Today we were tourists. Doug and Martha took Rachael and me to various interesting places not too far away from the Lisbon area in what I would guess to be west and north from the metropolitan area.
First, we went to the spot, a rocky outcropping on the south side of the mountains near Sintra, where Elder Thomas S. Monson, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, on April 22, 1975, dedicated Portugal for the preaching of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. President Holt shared with me a copy of the text of the dedicatory prayer:
From the place of dedication we drove to Cabo da Roca, the western most point of continental Europe, aqui onde a terra acaba e o mar começa ("here where the earth ends and the sea begins," a line from the Portuguese poet, Camões).
Then we visited the Convento de Santa Cruz dos Capuchos, a Capuchin monastery in the Sintra Mountains built in 1560 and in use until 1834, when the monks suddenly left. Cork was used so extensively throughout its construction that it is also called the cork monastery. Most of the rooms were built of rock, some carved right out of the giant boulders we saw elsewhere in this mountain forest, and I suspect the cork had excellent insulation properties as well as acoustical value. The monastery was in a beautiful, quiet setting, and there were very few other visitors while we were there.
Our next stop was at the Castelo dos Mouros (Moorish Castle), high on the mountaintop overlooking the town of Sintra. The castle was started in 711 and was primarily built in the 8th and 9th centuries. At 1350 feet above sea level, the fortress offers a commanding view of Sintra, the Atlantic coast, and the area off toward Lisbon, which is some 15 to 20 miles distant. (From atop the castle, you can see the towers of the 25th of April Bridge in Lisbon.)
While at the castle, Martha and Rachael had gone on ahead of us to climb the 500 or so steps to the highest tower, and President Holt and I decided to wait for them. We got talking to a visitor from Colorado, and we remarked to him that Doug from Arizona and I from Utah were almost like neighbors. The follow from Colorado then mentioned he had just seen two young men—one from Utah and one from Idaho—and said they were missionaries here for their Church.
President Holt replied that he was their boss. So we waited for the two elders to get to where we were waiting for the girls, and the president was glad to see them dressed in proper missionary attire and from the zone that had permission to visit this particular spot without prior special approval from him. He has mentioned on several occasions since I've been here that the missionaries are faithful and obedient, a tribute to Doug's loving leadership, and that the mission is in good shape, much better than it was a year ago, to turn over to a new mission president.
Finally we drove down into Sintra itself, where we ate lunch and toured the Palácio Nacional de Sintra (the National Palace of Sintra), which was a royal palace until 1910 when Portugal rid itself of kings. Perhaps the most distinctive thing about the palace are two large cone-shaped chimneys that tower over the Sintra skyline. Also, according to one of our guidebooks, "the glazed earthenware tiles, or azulejos, lining many of the chambers are among the best you'll find in Portugal." I decided a nice azulejo would be an appropriate souvenir to find and take home to Claudia.
Visitors are taken through the national palace in groups with a guide explaining features of the various rooms. Our guide, interestingly, spoke in the first room in Portuguese, then again in somewhat-difficult-to-understand English. (I remarked to Rachael that I hoped my Portuguese was not so difficult to understand as was his English. It may well be.) It was apparent there were visitors from many different lands, as I overheard English and Portuguese and German and French and perhaps Spanish all being spoken among members of our group, so for the rest of the tour he spoke only in his halting English. The husband of one young couple was translating back into Portuguese for the benefit of his wife.
We had planned some further visits—such as to the national palaces at Pena and Mafra—but the weary pilgrims decided we'd seen enough for one day and headed back to the mission home. After we had eaten dinner, President Holt and I this evening went to the mission home for a while.
Tuesday, June 25
This morning President Holt and I drove out to the international airport to welcome six lady missionaries arriving from the United States. In addition to the six for the South mission, there were also six sisters and an elder for the North mission being met by two of the office elders from that mission.
After returning to the mission home, I spent the rest of the day with Elder and Sister Holladay, a missionary couple from the Holts’ ward in Tucson, visiting downtown Lisbon.
We went first to the Alfama, the old quarter of the city, where the ancient houses and shops are tucked tightly along narrow, winding, steep cobblestone streets, interrupted periodically by small praças or largos with Catholic churches in front of them. This section of the city dates from the Visigoth era, and some of the buildings were spared from Lisbon’s great earthquake of 1755, which leveled much of the city and killed perhaps 60,000 people.
We visited the Sé or Cathedral, a huge old church that from outside looks as severe as a medieval fortress, and except for its antiquity and size and some beautiful stained-glass windows was not particularly interesting architecturally. It was rebuilt in the 1100s, shortly after Alfonso Henriques, Portugal’s first king, captured the Lisbon area from the Moors, and is thus the oldest church in Lisbon.
We then hiked our way up the maze of streets to the hilltop Castelo São Jorge (the Castle of St. George). I especially enjoyed our visit here. First of all, the place was filled with olive, pine, and cork trees that offered refreshing shade from the midday summer sun. Second, from atop its walls and towers the castle afforded an excellent panoramic view of the entire Lisbon area in all directions. The original fortress on this spot predated the Romans. From the 5th century it was in the hands of the Visigoths, and then in Moorish hands from the early 8th century until Alfonso Henrique’s conquest in 1147. Most of the walls that still remain were built during the centuries of Moorish domination. The name, borrowed from the English, dates from a pact between England and Portugal dating from as early as 1371. (Portugal and England have been traditional allies for many centuries.)
We found a little corner restaurant in the Alfama, where we ate a lunch of cod and potatoes smothered in garlic and hard bread, with plenty of water to drink for the three thirsty hikers.
Next we walked some streets in the central district of Lisbon, heading off from the Praça do Comercio. We looked in many shops and even bought a few things (including an azulejo, a glazed blue tile that I got for Claudia, and a CD of traditional Fado music sung by Amalia Rodrigues, and some postcards of sites we had visited). We rode up a several-story-high free-standing elevator, visited a roofless cathedral destroyed in the earthquake of 1755 and never rebuilt, and just generally looked around. I was plenty tired by the time we returned to the mission home.
This evening—after the welcome dinner of barbecued chicken that we ate with the Holts, the Holladays, and the six new sisters—Rachael and I joined Elder and Sister Holladay for a wild ride through the crazy Portuguese traffic out to Guincho, a windy point on the Atlantic within sight and just south of Cabo da Roca, where we watched the red sun sink into the sea and fizzle out.
The Holladays are a delightful couple to be with, and we enjoyed being with them—through the white-knuckled traffic and all. Elder Holladay served as President Holt’s counselor in the bishopric back in Tucson, but as far as we could piece together they were out of town the weekend two years ago in May when Claudia and I flew to Arizona to stay with the Holts and speak to the youth in their stake. The Holladays’ youngest of four children, their only son, now 20 years old, is serving a mission in Michigan as they serve here in Portugal.
Before returning to the mission home we stopped by the Torre de Belem (the Tower of Belem), bathed in white light in the now dark night, sitting in the water at the edge of the Tejo. Built between 1515 and 1520, the quadrangular tower is a monument to Portugal’s golden era, the age of discovery, and is the country’s classic landmark, often used on documents and in brochures as the visible symbol of the country, much like the Eiffel Tower for France or the Statue of Liberty for the United States.
The moon, which is nearly full tonight, reflected across the shimmering surface of the Tejo and was really quite pretty. This would be a romantic setting to be honeymooning again with Claudia.
Wednesday, June 26
President Holt had planned to announce his early release to his missionaries next Tuesday, the day I leave for home, but the new group of sisters that arrived yesterday had already met the new president at the Provo MTC, so he decided he had to do it sooner. This morning he called a meeting in Oeiras for all the missionaries on this side of the river, with a similar meeting this afternoon in Setúbal for all the missionaries on the south side of the river (except those down on the southern coast in the Algarve and those way out in the interior of the Alentejo).
Rachael and I did not accompany the Holts to either of the meetings. Instead, we went on our own to visit sites here in the Belem area and then back over to the Alfama, where I had gone yesterday with the Holladays.
Our first stop was the Torre de Belem, which we saw from the outside last night. This time it was open, so we paid the admission and wandered through its several levels. Except for a large and unruly group of visiting students, we enjoyed being inside Portugal’s most famous landmark. We stood on the balcony where the kings and queens in the 15th and 16th centuries stood and waved good-bye to the departing explorers as they sailed out the mouth of the Tejo into the Atlantic.
Next we walked over to the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (the Memorial to the Discoveries), which also stands on the north shore of the Tejo a few blocks to the east of the Torre de Belem. Many of Portugal’s memorable explorers from the Age of Discovery, chiefly Vasco da Gama, are immortalized in the giant stone figures—along with navigators, monks, cartographers, and others—on each side of the monument. One of the figures is a woman kneeling, Philippa of Lancaster, the English mother of Henry the Navigator, who is also portrayed as the central figure at the outer point of the monument. We went to the top for a breathtaking view of the area.
We then crossed the street to see the monastery of Jeronimos, the same one that President Holt and I visited Sunday evening when a mass was in progress. We arrived just as it was closing for a two-hour lunch break, so we could not go in.
Instead, we grabbed a taxi and went back to the Castelo São Jorge, where I went yesterday with the Holladays. Rachael loved the place, and together we found new parts of it that I had not seen the previous day. We walked down the hill through the winding, narrow streets of the Alfama until we reached the downtown commercial area.
We did stop on our way down the hill to visit the cathedral, where a gorgeous organ concert was in process the whole time we were there. Rachael tried some tricky things with Grandpa Lange’s camera trying to get pictures of the gorgeous stained-glass windows and backlighted statues and such. We hope they turn out.
After some window shopping down in the central district, we walked through Praça do Comercio, where King Carlos I was assassinated in 1908, to catch another taxi near where passengers came off the ferries.
We returned to Jeronimos cathedral, which was now open, and walked through it. We decided not to visit the monastery or the nearby naval, coach, or folk art museums. We were just too tired from all the walking we had done, and we still had to climb the hill back up to the mission home. We returned about 5:00, sunburned and tired, and both took naps.
The Holts returned sometime later, I guess while we were asleep, from their two meetings with most of the missionaries in the mission. The experience was emotionally draining and therefore very tiring for them, too.
This afternoon, following my short nap, I started rereading Elder Bruce R. McConkie's Millennial Messiah.
Thursday, June 27
Today is the anniversary of the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith. President Holt, who has given a lot of thought to types and shadows in the scriptures and in life, particularly as they point to or testify in some way of Christ, mentioned an interesting pattern concerning the Prophet Joseph as we were talking several evenings ago. Joseph Smith's birth on December 23, 1805, came just at the winter solstice, when the days begin to grow longer, when there begins to be increasingly more light in the world, and surely no one short of the Savior himself has brought more light into the world than His chief latter-day servant, Joseph Smith. Likewise, he was martyred on June 27, 1844, just after the summer solstice, when the days begin to grow shorter, when there begins to be a daily decrease of light, and the end of the Prophet's mortal life surely took a great light from the world.
As with many of the ancient prophets—such as Isaac, the well-beloved son who was willing to be sacrificed; Joseph who was sold into Egypt, who was a savior to his people; Jonah, whose three days in the belly of the whale foreshadowed the Savior’s death and resurrection; and David, who in many respects was a type of a latter King of Israel—the Prophet Joseph was a faithful servant, and his very life was a type and a shadow of the Master he knew and loved and served.
Today we made a grand tour of much of the Alentejo (literally, beyond the Tejo), the largest province of Portugal, the heartland and breadbasket of the country. Although the least populated of the provinces, it is so large geographically that it has been divided into two political provinces, Alto Alentejo in the north and Baixo Alentejo in the south.
This is a varied region of the country that includes forested mountain ranges, gently rolling hills, flat stretches of plains, vast wheat fields, endless stands of olive and cork trees, and in the south numerous rice paddies. I read today that more than half of the cork produced in the entire world comes from this part of Portugal. The cork comes from the bark of the tree, which can be stripped off only every nine years. It was fascinating to see many of the trees that had been harvested recently, although we never did observe any in the actual process of being stripped.
This part of Portugal also suffers the most severe weather—sometimes bitter cold in the winter, scorching heat in the summer. What we experienced today was apparently mild for summertime, but it was the warmest day we've had during our week here in Portugal.
After dropping a sister off at the airport who was returning home early to Illinois because of health problems, President Holt and Rachael and I headed a little north and mostly east out of Lisbon toward the Alentejo. Our first stop was in Estremoz, a fortified city in the center of the marble-quarry region. We visited the 13th-century castle that dominates the town and climbed up to the top, where we had a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside, which was filled largely with the golden fields of wheat ready for harvest, punctuated heavily with the cork and olive trees. We also visited a little museum that housed items of local folk art: azulejos (the glazed blue tiles), dolls, household items, furniture, swords, guns, etc.
We drove north from there to Portalegre, one of the few towns we've visited that is not built on a hilltop. It is nestled in the foothills of the Serra de São Mamede, much like our original settlements in Utah were at the bottom of the mountains. This town, rebuilt in the mid-13th century on the site of an ancient ruined settlement, was built as the customs gate through which medieval trade with Spain was processed, hence the original name Portus Alacer—Portus for the customs gate, Alacer for joy because of the beautiful setting. The town, which maintains its medieval feeling even now, is on the winding mountain road that is still the shortest route between Madrid and Lisbon.
About 15 kilometers further north is Marvão, an ancient walled hill town that also dates from the 13th century. We drove up into the town through the exceedingly narrow streets to where the castle was situated on the highest part of the rocky promontory. We were within 4 kilometers of the Spanish border, so we had an excellent view of a large area of both Portugal and Spain. I was impressed that every house in town was brightly whitewashed, the streets were meticulously clean, and flowers grew everywhere, mostly in pots and window boxes and hanging baskets.
We came back down from the mountains, through Portalegre again, and headed to Borba, where we stopped to take pictures of an ancient Roman aqueduct just outside the town and where President Holt stopped to visit an isolated member family (the closest branch is more than an hour away) to tell them he was leaving the country and to pick up several boxes of little marble blocks that he had ordered from them. He has spoken much over the past year to his missionaries about being founded on the rock of Christ, and he planned to give a marble block to each departing missionary as a reminder. Borba is surrounded by marble quarries, several of which we saw as we drove into and from the town. (President Holt had been tired, so I drove for a while before we reached Borba.)
We also drove through Elvas, another ancient walled city, although to be honest I don't particularly remember anything about the place. It is only 7 miles from Badajoz, Spain.
By late afternoon we reached Évora, the provincial capital of Alto Alentejo. While here we visited the little branch of the Church, which meets in a rented building on a narrow street, and two of the four elders serving in the town happened to be there, so President Holt met with them briefly and told them of his departure in a few weeks. We went into a church (the Royal Church of St. Francis) that had a chapel of bones lined completely with human skulls and other parts of skeletons. It was weird, and I did not enjoy being there. We took pictures of another church where medieval stone carvings of the twelve Apostles graced the entryway.
We also visited the ruins of a Roman temple, believed to have been dedicated to Diana, that stood on the highest hill of the walled city. It dates, depending on which guide book or brochure we were reading, from the 1st or 2nd or 3rd century. The twelve remaining Corinthian columns are granite with bases and capitals hewn from local marble.
We also stopped at a restaurant that President Holt knew of and had a delicious supper of local foods. I had green bean soup (which tasted far better than the name would suggest), hard bread, and pork served with rice and French fries.
Évora predates even the Romans and has had varying degrees of importance through the centuries as it passed from the hands of the Celts to the Romans to the Visigoths to the Moors to the Portuguese to the Spanish and finally back to the Portuguese. The largest of the cities in the Alentejo, Évora has a population of more than 50,000 people, virtually all of whom live within the town’s Roman walls, apparently one of the best preserved and most complete of city walls in the country.
Évora is known as the museum city. According to one of the guidebooks, "Évora is the largest and most important of all the Alentejo towns. It is a superb city, full of fascinating sights, all of which are in a good state of preservation. They are likely to remain so as the entire city has been proclaimed a historical monument by the international preservation organization World Patrimony, therefore qualifying for its financial aid."
Our final stop was near Beja, the provincial capital of Baixo Alentejo. The town existed in its present location at least as early as 48 b.c. In the summer it is said to be the hottest town in Portugal (and apparently in all Europe), although it was nearing sunset by the time we arrived and the temperatures seemed moderate enough. Our primary interest here was not the town itself but some Roman ruins near the town that one of the missionary couples had visited and told President Holt about.
Incredibly, we found the spot we were looking for along a dusty path out through the wheat and sunflower fields. Fortunately, few tourists have ever visited or would even know the ruins were there, or they would probably no longer exist. Virtually all that remains are some exquisite floor tiles, the low walls that give a sense of where different rooms might have been, and some toppled granite columns. It appears to have been a large place, perhaps some Roman villa a few miles out of Beja, which was called Pax Julia at the time because that is where Julius Caesar made peace with the Lusitanians.
There was also an ancient Roman olive press, which was our real reason for seeking this place out. Unlike the presses used later in medieval times, where the olive oil was ground from the olives between two massive stones that moved against each other, the Romans pressed the oil from the olives by placing a massive weight on top. This undoubtedly would have been the type of press known in New Testament times. The word Gethsemane, where the combined weight of the sins of all mankind pressed down upon the Savior of the world, means "olive press."
After our visit to these Roman ruins, we drove for about three hours back to Lisbon. It was in this part of the Alentejo where we noticed rice paddies near the Sado River.
It seems incredible that the major north-south highway route from the Algarve and lower Alentejo back to Lisbon is simply a two-lane road that bogs down at any time from slow-moving tractors and trucks and on weekends from too much traffic. From Setúbal to Lisbon, a distance of perhaps 25 miles, there is a four-lane freeway that crosses the Tejo over the 25th of April Bridge (which was Europe's longest suspension bridge when it was completed in 1966).
We drove by but did not stop in Setúbal, located on the north bank of the Sado near where the river empties into the Atlantic Ocean, on what is known as the Arrabida Peninsula. It is one of the larger and oldest cities in Portugal. Quoting from one of our guidebooks, Setúbal is "said to have been founded by the grandson of Noah."
A different guidebook says: "According to local legend, it was founded by Tubal, the son of Cain. It is said that Phoenicians and Greeks, finding the climate and soil of Arrabida similar to their Mediterranean homelands, brought their grapes and started vineyards. Setúbal is known to have been an important fishing port since Roman times."
There are two wards in Setúbal, and it is the headquarters of one of the two stakes currently located in the Portugal Lisbon South Mission. (The other stake is headquartered in Oeiras on this side of the river.)
We arrived back at the mission home after 11:00 at night. A long, tiring, but richly rewarding day.
Friday, June 28
Being a tourist is tiring work, so today Rachael and I thought it would be prudent to take it easy and just relax around the mission home. And catch up on some reading and writing and such. A couple days ago President Holt showed me a book, Keys to Successful Scripture Study by George A. Horton Jr., which I finished reading today. It contained some valuable insights and was overall an excellent summary of some important ideas about scripture study.
An overall impression from all I have seen thus far of Portugal is that there is an overwhelming sense of antiquity about the place. We think of the 500th anniversary we will be celebrating next year of Columbus’s first voyage to the New World in 1492, or the earliest beginnings of the United States a couple centuries back, or the 200th anniversary of our republican form of government, or the settling of Utah a mere century and a half ago, or the centennial Bountiful will celebrate next year of its incorporation as a city in 1892, or the fact that my children think I'm getting pretty ancient when I turn 42 next month—and yet much that we have seen here in Portugal was already very old before Columbus ever sailed or before North America was ever colonized.
Virtually all that has survived through these many centuries that people have lived here on the Iberian Peninsula is made of rock—the castles, the ancient walls, the churches. Rock has staying power. It endures.
On November 1, 1755, a great earthquake hit Lisbon, destroying much of the city and killing perhaps as many as 60,000 people in the earthquake and the accompanying tidal wave, fires, and diseases that followed in its wake. Most of the old stuff that can be seen here in Lisbon dates since that time, except for one section of town that was built on rock and was mostly not damaged by the earthquake. The Savior spoke of the importance of building our houses on rock rather than sand.
As I thought about the supply of little marble rocks that President Holt picked up yesterday in Borba to leave with his missionaries as a reminder that they are to be founded on the rock of Christ, I thought of this passage from the Book of Mormon: "And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall" (Helaman 5:12).
A further impression concerning this place: In comparison with what I remember of Brazil from twenty years ago, I have found Portugal to be amazingly clean and tidy. The water everywhere has been safe to drink, the food safe to eat.
Tonight Doug, Martha, Rachael, and I crossed over the 25th of April Bridge and drove south and east to Montijo, where we attended a Corrida à Portuguesa, a traditional Portuguese bull run or bullfight. Unlike the Spanish counterpart, the Portuguese do not kill the bull, so there is no matador (killer). Instead, there is a cavalheiro (a horseman), who sports with the bull from atop his horse and jabs colorful little spears into the top of the bull's back. These spears or darts draw blood, and I thought Rachael was going to be sick when she saw the dark color running down the bull's side.
Three cavalheiros, apparently among the best in the whole country, each performed twice. After each cavalheiro was through, a group of perhaps eight to ten young men lined up in a line across the campo (the bull ring) facing the bull and waited for it to charge the first one in the line. In an incredible act of bravery (or stupidity) they tried to tackle the bull, with one of their number holding on the bull's tail. Only once during the six times we watched this happen was anyone hauled off the field on a stretcher.
The bullfight did not begin until 10:00 p.m. and ended after midnight. There was considerable pageantry involved, and the atmosphere provided an authentic cultural experience for us.
Saturday, June 29
This morning President Holt and I split for several hours with the zone leaders in Oeiras. I went with Elder Olivio Gomes Manuel, a native of Angola who joined the Church here in Portugal a little over two years ago and who has been on his mission about eleven months. He said that about a fourth of the Church members in Portugal are Angolans, some of whom have returned home to Angola. Elder Manuel is the only member of his large family who is here in Portugal. He came originally to play basketball and met the missionaries a month after his arrival.
During the couple hours we worked together, Elder Manuel and I called on several people, mostly inactive members, he had planned to visit, most of whom were not home. We visited quite briefly with one active member, a Brazilian from São Paulo, whose wife and two children had returned to Brazil for their summer holidays. He planned to join them soon. We stopped a few men on the street, and one was willing to have the elders visit him and his family Tuesday afternoon. We also tracted out one block of a street near a praça with no result. Finally, we visited a man and his eleven-year-old niece (I believe that was the relationship), both inactive members, and read and discussed with them Alma's teachings on the resurrection from Alma 40. The man's wife had died sometime recently after having surgery for cancer.
After we met back at the stake center, President Holt took me to lunch at a sidewalk café down near the Jeronimos monastery. We ordered traditional Portuguese food: a soup with green stuff in it that looked something like grass, olives, hard bread, and charcoal-grilled sardines.
Rachael had gone with Marianne and Martha to a Fourth of July picnic celebration sponsored by the U.S. embassy and spent much of the day. Martha came back earlier than the other two girls, who after leaving the picnic had gone to the stake center in Oeiras to help decorate for a seminary graduation dance being held this evening. President Holt took me grocery shopping (the sort of Saturday afternoon thing I might be doing at home with Claudia) at a local supermarket that looked something like an American supermarket but not quite, and there we happened to run into Marianne and Rachael and some others. Rachael was pretty tired from her activities of the day and decided to return to the mission home with us.
Sunday, June 30
This morning we attended sacrament meeting in Moita, a small branch in the Setúbal stake somewhere down near Montijo, where we attended the bullfight Friday night. President Holt and I were the two speakers.
With the inadequacy I feel with the language, I find that in speaking in church in Portuguese I rely more heavily on the scriptures (not a bad practice anyway), since reading is an easier skill than simply speaking. It is not my normal style to preach from a prepared text or even from extensive notes, but this morning I decided to outline my thoughts first in Portuguese. This is a translation back into English of some of what I said:
This afternoon, back at the mission home, we fixed and ate lunch, napped, read, and visited. I have had some marvelous talks with President Holt during the week I've been here. During the week I've also been reading Elder Bruce R. McConkie's The Millennial Messiah: The Second Coming of the Son of Man and am nearly half way through the 711-page volume. (I started the book some years ago, shortly after it was first published in 1982, but I never did finish it.) We had planned to attend a baptismal service late in the afternoon, but too much napping was going on.
At 8:00 this evening there was a fireside at the mission home with 75 people—missionaries, investigators, and members—present, the largest attendance they've ever had for their monthly fireside in the year the Holts have been here. (Doug said they have sometimes had as many as 50 people attend but never as many as came tonight.) President Holt taught masterfully from the scriptures on obtaining a testimony of Jesus. He asked me to bear my testimony at the end, which I did briefly.
Monday, July 1
Time passes so swiftly. Today begins the second half of the year. And it is my last full day in Portugal.
During much of the day, from 10:00 until about 4:00, I joined President Holt here at the mission home in his monthly meeting with zone leaders. There were nine companionships of zone leaders and the two assistants to the president—Elders William Shane Bangerter and Scott Wade Bisson—a total of twenty of his most seasoned, best trained missionaries.
After some preliminary business, the two assistants led workshops on how to introduce the Book of Mormon to investigators and how to help members in using it with nonmembers. During a lunch break, President Holt showed them the video Called to Serve, which most of them had not yet seen. The assistants then gave talks on different aspects of service, I conducted a question-answer session and spoke about love and unity in the work and bore testimony of the Savior and his latter-day work, and President Holt concluded with another masterful discourse on types of the Savior in our own lives and ministry.
As I was speaking about the marvelous growth of the work worldwide, I shared with the elders the account written by President Kiril Kiriakov, who begins serving today as the first president of the new Bulgaria Sofia Mission, concerning the Lord's hand in his escaping from Bulgaria many years ago and his eventually joining the Church in France:
The three girls had gone shopping and came home and baked a large cake for the elders to eat at the conclusion of their meeting.
Rachael will stay on to continue her European adventure after I leave tomorrow morning. Wednesday morning Shelley and Tom Harper (and two of Tom’s friends) will arrive by train from Munich to spend some time here in Portugal, including a two- or three-day visit next week down in the Algarve, the southern coast of Portugal. On July 13 the group will leave by train for Vienna, where they will attend a youth conference for all the mission kids in Europe. On July 19 they will travel to Munich to stay with the Harpers, on July 25 to Frankfurt to stay with the Condies, on July 31 to Dusseldorf to stay with the Wolferts family, on August 4 to Paris to stay with the Joneses (and where on August 7 Rachael will celebrate her sixteenth birthday). And then on August 11 Rachael, Marianne, and Martha will return to Lisbon to fly home on the 13th (hopefully). Rachael is currently ticketed to fly on August 21, and we’ll need to see if Kathy Bertasso can get that changed.
In the evening we visited, ate dinner, and watched a video of an old movie classic, Magnificent Obsession, while President Holt attended to some mission business. I then packed before going to bed.
Tuesday, July 2
I am now sitting in the Lisbon airport awaiting my flight to London. This will be a very long day. We left the mission home at 6:15 a.m. Lisbon time (11:15 p.m. Monday night in Utah) and, assuming I make the necessary connections in London and Chicago, will arrive in Salt Lake at 8:51 tonight, nearly 22 hours later.
I am grateful for this marvelous week I have just spent, which I feel is in further fulfillment of the Lord's command early in this dispensation that we come to an understanding "of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms—
"That ye may be prepared in all things when I shall send you again to magnify the calling whereunto I have called you, and the mission with which I have commissioned you" (D&C 88:79-80).
The early dawn over the Tejo was a beautiful sight from my room this morning. I hope to treasure the memory of it as a symbol of my wonderful week in Portugal.
As I mentioned to the elders yesterday, the Church is still in its infancy here in Portugal, and someday the five struggling stakes will become numerous strong stakes. Someday a temple will grace this lovely land. And a generation of faithful Portuguese saints will arise to bear off the work triumphantly in this place and among this people. It truly is the dawning of a new day.
President Holt is truly one of the noble and great ones, a Christlike servant of the Lord who has a marvelous vision of the work. I cherish my association with him. I love him as a dear brother and friend. And I thank God Almighty for this marvelous week we've had together.
Sunday, June 23, 1991
It is early in the morning here in Lisbon, Portugal. A cool, clear day, the third day of summer. From my room in the mission home I can look out over the beautiful Rio Tejo (Tagus River) as it empties finally into the Atlantic Ocean. I hear early morning sounds of the day: a rooster crowing, birds chirping in the trees, an occasional dog barking, an owl hooting, the distant noise of traffic.
A jet just passed overhead on its approach to Lisbon's international airport, perhaps one similar to the one that brought us here yesterday afternoon some twenty hours after we left Salt Lake City. Appropriately, I guess, Rachael and I left home on the first day of summer, the longest day of the year. And it was a long day. A very long day. Had there been one more flight to catch, or one more airport to endure, I'm not sure I could have convinced Rachael to continue on.
From Salt Lake the two of us had flown to Chicago, where we boarded a second flight that took us way north over some of the Great Lakes, parts of Quebec, the Hudson Bay, out over the northern Atlantic, the southern tip of Greenland, past Iceland, and back down to the British Isles, where we landed at London’s Gatwick airport. On this eight-hour flight the sun, which was always to our left, never did set, even though we left Chicago at 4:30 in the afternoon and arrived in London at 7:30 in the morning.
From Gatwick we took an hour's bus ride through beautiful English countryside to Heathrow airport, where we caught our final flight to Lisbon. It was the first time either of us had set foot on British soil, the place of our early roots, and I could sense why my ancestors on both my father's and mother's sides had loved this fair land, this jeweled scepter, but had left it all behind in the century before this one to gather to Zion, a desert wilderness half a world away.
I reminded Rachael, who was beginning to find air travel a little tedious, that Charles and Eliza Batt (my great-grandparents) had taken something like nine days to cross the Atlantic and another week beyond that to reach Utah.
And here we are now in Portugal. I pinch myself to make sure it is not merely a dream. For twenty years, ever since I returned from my mission in Brazil, I have longed to visit Portugal. And now I am here, a dream come true.
Let me quote from the letter to Claudia I started Friday evening on the plane from Chicago to London (and may not get around to sending):
My dearest, far-away Sir:
The pilot just announced we were over Hudson Bay in Canada (5:40 p.m. Utah time). As we were leaving Chicago about an hour and a half ago, he said we would be flying over some of the Great Lakes, fairly far north into Quebec, then across the southern tip of Greenland, past Iceland, over Scotland, and finally to England. (Sounds like quite a bit out of the way to get to Lisbon from Utah.)
The flight from Chicago to London takes about 8 hours, although the pilot also announced that the winds would not be favoring us, so that we'd land at Gatwick around 7:20 a.m. London time instead of the 6:45 originally scheduled. That should still leave us plenty of time to transfer to Heathrow for our 10:25 a.m. flight to Lisbon.
This is the largest plane I've ever flown on. There are seven seats across: two next to the windows, an aisle, three in the center, another aisle, and two more by the other windows. We're on row 33, and it looks like there's about 10 more rows behind us.
Rachael has been next to the window on both planes we've been on thus far. She's a nice traveling companion (although you'd be better), but it's been fun being with her. She's already written two letters and a postcard. (I think she's doing an epistle to Mrs. Bean right now.)
As we overhear other passengers speak, it's obvious there are a few British citizens returning home.
It’s now 6:00 p.m. Utah time, and we assume Anna is home from Camp Piuta in one piece. We waved to her as we flew by that part of Utah. As we lifted off from the Salt Lake airport, we could see our minivan still parked a couple spaces away from Shuttle Stop 13. As mentioned in my former communication to you (a postcard mailed from Chicago's O'Hare airport), we had a bumpy but otherwise uneventful flight to Chicago: reading, eating, napping, watching the ground (or clouds, as the case may be) go by below us. That's mostly what you do on long flights.
It occurred to us that if we fly far enough north tonight it may never get dark on this longest day of the year. I'm not sure how far east we've come since leaving Chicago, but we must be in a time zone where it's at least after 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening, and it doesn't look too dark outside yet (in fact, not at all dark).
Dinner is slowly making its way down the aisle. so we'll be bringing this to a close here soon. The menu, which they brought by earlier, lists salmon roll and shrimp salad, filet mignon with mushroom sauce or Oriental chicken, served with selected vegetables, and cream caramel.
There's also a breakfast menu of what they'll serve before we land in merry old England.
Wish you were here. Really.
Today has been a delightful Sabbath day. We attended a small ward in Amora, where President Holt and I were the speakers in sacrament meeting. We had been asked by the bishop, a member of the Church only two years, to speak about temples. I spoke first about baptism, quoting the Savior (from John 3:1–5) and the Prophet Nephi (from 2 Nephi 31:4–12 and 16–18), emphasizing the need for baptism and other ordinances for all who would enter the kingdom of God and thus the glorious work in the temples for those who had not had an opportunity to hear the gospel while living. President Holt emphasized worthiness to go to the temple and reviewed the questions asked in the temple recommend interview. Between my talk and his, the Primary children sang "I Hope They Call Me on a Mission" and then presented us with bouquets of cut flowers.
After our return to the mission home, while lunch was being prepared, I called home to speak to Claudia. (Here in Lisbon it was around 2:00 in the afternoon; there in Bountiful it was around 7:00 in the morning.) Talmage was off to stake priesthood meeting alone—with Michael in Las Vegas working and me here in Lisbon visiting. All the other children who hadn't yet had the flu (as Claudia did last Thursday and I did Wednesday and Rachael and Mary sometime during the week before that) were all sick Friday and Saturday. Poor Camilla. Not only did she have the flu, she also had pneumonia all week and on Saturday a terribly itchy rash (the doctor said probably a reaction to the medicine she was taking for the pneumonia). Aside from all that cheery news, it was good to talk to her about our trip over and how wonderful it was to be here and how much I miss and love her.
This afternoon, after eating lunch, I went with President Holt to the mission office, which is not far away in Alges. He met with his office staff to tell them he'd be leaving the mission in mid-July when Fernando José Duarte de Araújo and his family arrive from Brazil to replace him. (Yesterday, after our arrival, I handed President Holt the letter signed by the First Presidency last week that officially released him from his mission, effective on or near July 1, as mutually determined by him and his successor, and announced who that successor would be.) He then met with his assistants to plan sisters' transfers to accommodate the six new lady missionaries arriving Tuesday morning.
After we returned to the mission home, Rachael and I walked up the hill above the mission home to visit an ancient little chapel, now mostly closed except for weddings and other special occasions, where centuries ago priests prayed for the great Portuguese explorers who sailed off into unknown parts of the world to make their discoveries. The chapel is in a park that overlooks the mouth of the Tejo as it empties into the sea.
An elder had come to visit President Holt, and while he did so I sat in the living room and had a nice chat with his companion. The two of us then joined President Holt in giving a health blessing to the first missionary.
In the evening the President and I drove down near the river, just below the mission home, to visit a monastery. We looked around some and attended a few moments of mass.
Monday, June 24
Today we were tourists. Doug and Martha took Rachael and me to various interesting places not too far away from the Lisbon area in what I would guess to be west and north from the metropolitan area.
First, we went to the spot, a rocky outcropping on the south side of the mountains near Sintra, where Elder Thomas S. Monson, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, on April 22, 1975, dedicated Portugal for the preaching of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. President Holt shared with me a copy of the text of the dedicatory prayer:
O God, our Eternal and Heavenly Father, we meet before Thee on this lovely day with the freshness of spring in the air and a feeling of peace within our hearts, and we express our gratitude unto Thee for the privilege to come before Thee in holy prayer. We are grateful for the blessings which we have received from Thy hand. We are appreciative of the manner in which Thou hast blessed Thy work upon the earth, and acknowledge before Thee Thy hand in our lives. We are grateful for a prophet of God, even Spencer W. Kimball, who has been able to influence all of us with a new desire to promulgate Thy word throughout the earth. He has called to the attention of the world the message which Thy Son Jesus Christ gave unto His disciples when He said, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." In response to this call and in accordance with this divine declaration, we have assembled here today, in the land of Portugal, that we might dedicate this land for the preaching of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Assembled here, Heavenly Father, are splendid missionaries who have come here from America and Brazil, and we remember when we look upon them the words of the Apostle Paul, "How beautiful upon the mountaintops are the feet of those who bear good tidings and publish peace." Bless these missionaries, Heavenly Father. Grant them power beyond their own, and as Thou dost bless them we ask Thee to bless every missionary who comes to this land, that each may recognize that he is standing in a land which has been dedicated for the preaching of the gospel, that he might labor with his might, and that each missionary may recognize that the worth of souls is precious in Thy sight.
We ask Thee to bless these members who have assembled here this morning. In a very real sense, each one is a pioneer in that he or she is one that has gone before, showing others the way to follow. Grant, Heavenly Father, that our membership may increase, that the blessings of the gospel may come into the lives of the Portuguese people. We recognize, Father, that from this land went navigators and seafaring men in days of yore and that the Portuguese people have an adventuresome spirit, as they trusted in Thee, as they looked for lands unknown. Grant that they may trust in Thee as they now search for those truths which will lead them to life eternal.
O Heavenly Father, bless the government of this land. Thou knowest the turmoil and the difficulty which have transpired. Wilt Thou touch the hearts of men in influential places and grant that they may make those decisions which would be favorable to the advancement of the cause of the gospel. And bless the people that they may take an active role in their government and that they may be lead of Thee in the decisions which they make, that all might be done for the furtherance of Thy work.
And bless those individuals who may be lead of Thee. We acknowledge that they have come as a result of Thy inspiration. We acknowledge Thy hand in their lives and in ours.
Now, Heavenly Father, there is burning within our hearts the words of Thy prophet, Joseph Smith, when he declared in a letter to Mr. John Wentworth the truth that the gospel will go forth, when he declared, "No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing. Armies may assemble, mobs may combine, and calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, until it has visited every country, swept every nation and sounded in every ear. That the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done."
O Heavenly Father, we seek Thy blessings now upon the advancement of Thy work. We ask Thee that Thy gospel may be taught with testimony and with power. That the missionaries might be like the sons of Mosiah, who had searched the scriptures diligently that they might know the words of eternal life. That they may give themselves to much prayer and fasting. That they may have the spirit of prophesy and of revelation and that when they teach they may teach with the power and authority of God. We acknowledge, Heavenly Father, that this is a beginning, and we invoke Thy divine blessings to advance the cause which we have undertaken in Portugal. Wilt Thou open the way. Wilt Thou prepare the people, that those persons who are here who have prepared themselves for the message of truth may receive it. O Heavenly Father, be patient with the people. Extend Thy loving hand unto them. Thou knowest how long they have been without the truth of the gospel. And wilt Thou now bestow upon them Thy divine blessings in great abundance that they may rejoice in spirit, that they may praise Thy holy name, that they may know that Thou hast intervened in their lives.
We are aware, Heavenly Father, that the Portuguese people in Brazil have accepted Thy gospel. The stakes of Zion are now established in great number in Brazil. And a temple dedicated to Thy holy name will be erected. O Father, these are the same people here. Wilt Thou look upon them with as kindly a spirit as Thou hast favored their descendants and relatives in Brazil. Heavenly Father, grant that all Thy wishes may be manifest in the lives of these people, and wilt Thou now hear our plea, for in the authority of the holy Apostleship which I bear, even the authority of the holy Melchizedek Priesthood, I hereby dedicate the land of Portugal for the preaching of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and invoke all Thy divine blessings upon all that pertain thereto and, likewise, invoke Thy blessings upon mission leaders, branch and local leadership, upon the missionaries themselves, and upon all who could help bring to pass Thy purpose. And this I do in the name of the Redeemer, the Savior of all mankind, Thine Only Begotten Son in the flesh, even Jesus Christ, the Lord. Amen.
From the place of dedication we drove to Cabo da Roca, the western most point of continental Europe, aqui onde a terra acaba e o mar começa ("here where the earth ends and the sea begins," a line from the Portuguese poet, Camões).
Then we visited the Convento de Santa Cruz dos Capuchos, a Capuchin monastery in the Sintra Mountains built in 1560 and in use until 1834, when the monks suddenly left. Cork was used so extensively throughout its construction that it is also called the cork monastery. Most of the rooms were built of rock, some carved right out of the giant boulders we saw elsewhere in this mountain forest, and I suspect the cork had excellent insulation properties as well as acoustical value. The monastery was in a beautiful, quiet setting, and there were very few other visitors while we were there.
Our next stop was at the Castelo dos Mouros (Moorish Castle), high on the mountaintop overlooking the town of Sintra. The castle was started in 711 and was primarily built in the 8th and 9th centuries. At 1350 feet above sea level, the fortress offers a commanding view of Sintra, the Atlantic coast, and the area off toward Lisbon, which is some 15 to 20 miles distant. (From atop the castle, you can see the towers of the 25th of April Bridge in Lisbon.)
While at the castle, Martha and Rachael had gone on ahead of us to climb the 500 or so steps to the highest tower, and President Holt and I decided to wait for them. We got talking to a visitor from Colorado, and we remarked to him that Doug from Arizona and I from Utah were almost like neighbors. The follow from Colorado then mentioned he had just seen two young men—one from Utah and one from Idaho—and said they were missionaries here for their Church.
President Holt replied that he was their boss. So we waited for the two elders to get to where we were waiting for the girls, and the president was glad to see them dressed in proper missionary attire and from the zone that had permission to visit this particular spot without prior special approval from him. He has mentioned on several occasions since I've been here that the missionaries are faithful and obedient, a tribute to Doug's loving leadership, and that the mission is in good shape, much better than it was a year ago, to turn over to a new mission president.
Finally we drove down into Sintra itself, where we ate lunch and toured the Palácio Nacional de Sintra (the National Palace of Sintra), which was a royal palace until 1910 when Portugal rid itself of kings. Perhaps the most distinctive thing about the palace are two large cone-shaped chimneys that tower over the Sintra skyline. Also, according to one of our guidebooks, "the glazed earthenware tiles, or azulejos, lining many of the chambers are among the best you'll find in Portugal." I decided a nice azulejo would be an appropriate souvenir to find and take home to Claudia.
Visitors are taken through the national palace in groups with a guide explaining features of the various rooms. Our guide, interestingly, spoke in the first room in Portuguese, then again in somewhat-difficult-to-understand English. (I remarked to Rachael that I hoped my Portuguese was not so difficult to understand as was his English. It may well be.) It was apparent there were visitors from many different lands, as I overheard English and Portuguese and German and French and perhaps Spanish all being spoken among members of our group, so for the rest of the tour he spoke only in his halting English. The husband of one young couple was translating back into Portuguese for the benefit of his wife.
We had planned some further visits—such as to the national palaces at Pena and Mafra—but the weary pilgrims decided we'd seen enough for one day and headed back to the mission home. After we had eaten dinner, President Holt and I this evening went to the mission home for a while.
Tuesday, June 25
This morning President Holt and I drove out to the international airport to welcome six lady missionaries arriving from the United States. In addition to the six for the South mission, there were also six sisters and an elder for the North mission being met by two of the office elders from that mission.
After returning to the mission home, I spent the rest of the day with Elder and Sister Holladay, a missionary couple from the Holts’ ward in Tucson, visiting downtown Lisbon.
We went first to the Alfama, the old quarter of the city, where the ancient houses and shops are tucked tightly along narrow, winding, steep cobblestone streets, interrupted periodically by small praças or largos with Catholic churches in front of them. This section of the city dates from the Visigoth era, and some of the buildings were spared from Lisbon’s great earthquake of 1755, which leveled much of the city and killed perhaps 60,000 people.
We visited the Sé or Cathedral, a huge old church that from outside looks as severe as a medieval fortress, and except for its antiquity and size and some beautiful stained-glass windows was not particularly interesting architecturally. It was rebuilt in the 1100s, shortly after Alfonso Henriques, Portugal’s first king, captured the Lisbon area from the Moors, and is thus the oldest church in Lisbon.
We then hiked our way up the maze of streets to the hilltop Castelo São Jorge (the Castle of St. George). I especially enjoyed our visit here. First of all, the place was filled with olive, pine, and cork trees that offered refreshing shade from the midday summer sun. Second, from atop its walls and towers the castle afforded an excellent panoramic view of the entire Lisbon area in all directions. The original fortress on this spot predated the Romans. From the 5th century it was in the hands of the Visigoths, and then in Moorish hands from the early 8th century until Alfonso Henrique’s conquest in 1147. Most of the walls that still remain were built during the centuries of Moorish domination. The name, borrowed from the English, dates from a pact between England and Portugal dating from as early as 1371. (Portugal and England have been traditional allies for many centuries.)
We found a little corner restaurant in the Alfama, where we ate a lunch of cod and potatoes smothered in garlic and hard bread, with plenty of water to drink for the three thirsty hikers.
Next we walked some streets in the central district of Lisbon, heading off from the Praça do Comercio. We looked in many shops and even bought a few things (including an azulejo, a glazed blue tile that I got for Claudia, and a CD of traditional Fado music sung by Amalia Rodrigues, and some postcards of sites we had visited). We rode up a several-story-high free-standing elevator, visited a roofless cathedral destroyed in the earthquake of 1755 and never rebuilt, and just generally looked around. I was plenty tired by the time we returned to the mission home.
This evening—after the welcome dinner of barbecued chicken that we ate with the Holts, the Holladays, and the six new sisters—Rachael and I joined Elder and Sister Holladay for a wild ride through the crazy Portuguese traffic out to Guincho, a windy point on the Atlantic within sight and just south of Cabo da Roca, where we watched the red sun sink into the sea and fizzle out.
The Holladays are a delightful couple to be with, and we enjoyed being with them—through the white-knuckled traffic and all. Elder Holladay served as President Holt’s counselor in the bishopric back in Tucson, but as far as we could piece together they were out of town the weekend two years ago in May when Claudia and I flew to Arizona to stay with the Holts and speak to the youth in their stake. The Holladays’ youngest of four children, their only son, now 20 years old, is serving a mission in Michigan as they serve here in Portugal.
Before returning to the mission home we stopped by the Torre de Belem (the Tower of Belem), bathed in white light in the now dark night, sitting in the water at the edge of the Tejo. Built between 1515 and 1520, the quadrangular tower is a monument to Portugal’s golden era, the age of discovery, and is the country’s classic landmark, often used on documents and in brochures as the visible symbol of the country, much like the Eiffel Tower for France or the Statue of Liberty for the United States.
The moon, which is nearly full tonight, reflected across the shimmering surface of the Tejo and was really quite pretty. This would be a romantic setting to be honeymooning again with Claudia.
Wednesday, June 26
President Holt had planned to announce his early release to his missionaries next Tuesday, the day I leave for home, but the new group of sisters that arrived yesterday had already met the new president at the Provo MTC, so he decided he had to do it sooner. This morning he called a meeting in Oeiras for all the missionaries on this side of the river, with a similar meeting this afternoon in Setúbal for all the missionaries on the south side of the river (except those down on the southern coast in the Algarve and those way out in the interior of the Alentejo).
Rachael and I did not accompany the Holts to either of the meetings. Instead, we went on our own to visit sites here in the Belem area and then back over to the Alfama, where I had gone yesterday with the Holladays.
Our first stop was the Torre de Belem, which we saw from the outside last night. This time it was open, so we paid the admission and wandered through its several levels. Except for a large and unruly group of visiting students, we enjoyed being inside Portugal’s most famous landmark. We stood on the balcony where the kings and queens in the 15th and 16th centuries stood and waved good-bye to the departing explorers as they sailed out the mouth of the Tejo into the Atlantic.
Next we walked over to the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (the Memorial to the Discoveries), which also stands on the north shore of the Tejo a few blocks to the east of the Torre de Belem. Many of Portugal’s memorable explorers from the Age of Discovery, chiefly Vasco da Gama, are immortalized in the giant stone figures—along with navigators, monks, cartographers, and others—on each side of the monument. One of the figures is a woman kneeling, Philippa of Lancaster, the English mother of Henry the Navigator, who is also portrayed as the central figure at the outer point of the monument. We went to the top for a breathtaking view of the area.
We then crossed the street to see the monastery of Jeronimos, the same one that President Holt and I visited Sunday evening when a mass was in progress. We arrived just as it was closing for a two-hour lunch break, so we could not go in.
Instead, we grabbed a taxi and went back to the Castelo São Jorge, where I went yesterday with the Holladays. Rachael loved the place, and together we found new parts of it that I had not seen the previous day. We walked down the hill through the winding, narrow streets of the Alfama until we reached the downtown commercial area.
We did stop on our way down the hill to visit the cathedral, where a gorgeous organ concert was in process the whole time we were there. Rachael tried some tricky things with Grandpa Lange’s camera trying to get pictures of the gorgeous stained-glass windows and backlighted statues and such. We hope they turn out.
After some window shopping down in the central district, we walked through Praça do Comercio, where King Carlos I was assassinated in 1908, to catch another taxi near where passengers came off the ferries.
We returned to Jeronimos cathedral, which was now open, and walked through it. We decided not to visit the monastery or the nearby naval, coach, or folk art museums. We were just too tired from all the walking we had done, and we still had to climb the hill back up to the mission home. We returned about 5:00, sunburned and tired, and both took naps.
The Holts returned sometime later, I guess while we were asleep, from their two meetings with most of the missionaries in the mission. The experience was emotionally draining and therefore very tiring for them, too.
This afternoon, following my short nap, I started rereading Elder Bruce R. McConkie's Millennial Messiah.
Thursday, June 27
Today is the anniversary of the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith. President Holt, who has given a lot of thought to types and shadows in the scriptures and in life, particularly as they point to or testify in some way of Christ, mentioned an interesting pattern concerning the Prophet Joseph as we were talking several evenings ago. Joseph Smith's birth on December 23, 1805, came just at the winter solstice, when the days begin to grow longer, when there begins to be increasingly more light in the world, and surely no one short of the Savior himself has brought more light into the world than His chief latter-day servant, Joseph Smith. Likewise, he was martyred on June 27, 1844, just after the summer solstice, when the days begin to grow shorter, when there begins to be a daily decrease of light, and the end of the Prophet's mortal life surely took a great light from the world.
As with many of the ancient prophets—such as Isaac, the well-beloved son who was willing to be sacrificed; Joseph who was sold into Egypt, who was a savior to his people; Jonah, whose three days in the belly of the whale foreshadowed the Savior’s death and resurrection; and David, who in many respects was a type of a latter King of Israel—the Prophet Joseph was a faithful servant, and his very life was a type and a shadow of the Master he knew and loved and served.
Today we made a grand tour of much of the Alentejo (literally, beyond the Tejo), the largest province of Portugal, the heartland and breadbasket of the country. Although the least populated of the provinces, it is so large geographically that it has been divided into two political provinces, Alto Alentejo in the north and Baixo Alentejo in the south.
This is a varied region of the country that includes forested mountain ranges, gently rolling hills, flat stretches of plains, vast wheat fields, endless stands of olive and cork trees, and in the south numerous rice paddies. I read today that more than half of the cork produced in the entire world comes from this part of Portugal. The cork comes from the bark of the tree, which can be stripped off only every nine years. It was fascinating to see many of the trees that had been harvested recently, although we never did observe any in the actual process of being stripped.
This part of Portugal also suffers the most severe weather—sometimes bitter cold in the winter, scorching heat in the summer. What we experienced today was apparently mild for summertime, but it was the warmest day we've had during our week here in Portugal.
After dropping a sister off at the airport who was returning home early to Illinois because of health problems, President Holt and Rachael and I headed a little north and mostly east out of Lisbon toward the Alentejo. Our first stop was in Estremoz, a fortified city in the center of the marble-quarry region. We visited the 13th-century castle that dominates the town and climbed up to the top, where we had a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside, which was filled largely with the golden fields of wheat ready for harvest, punctuated heavily with the cork and olive trees. We also visited a little museum that housed items of local folk art: azulejos (the glazed blue tiles), dolls, household items, furniture, swords, guns, etc.
We drove north from there to Portalegre, one of the few towns we've visited that is not built on a hilltop. It is nestled in the foothills of the Serra de São Mamede, much like our original settlements in Utah were at the bottom of the mountains. This town, rebuilt in the mid-13th century on the site of an ancient ruined settlement, was built as the customs gate through which medieval trade with Spain was processed, hence the original name Portus Alacer—Portus for the customs gate, Alacer for joy because of the beautiful setting. The town, which maintains its medieval feeling even now, is on the winding mountain road that is still the shortest route between Madrid and Lisbon.
About 15 kilometers further north is Marvão, an ancient walled hill town that also dates from the 13th century. We drove up into the town through the exceedingly narrow streets to where the castle was situated on the highest part of the rocky promontory. We were within 4 kilometers of the Spanish border, so we had an excellent view of a large area of both Portugal and Spain. I was impressed that every house in town was brightly whitewashed, the streets were meticulously clean, and flowers grew everywhere, mostly in pots and window boxes and hanging baskets.
We came back down from the mountains, through Portalegre again, and headed to Borba, where we stopped to take pictures of an ancient Roman aqueduct just outside the town and where President Holt stopped to visit an isolated member family (the closest branch is more than an hour away) to tell them he was leaving the country and to pick up several boxes of little marble blocks that he had ordered from them. He has spoken much over the past year to his missionaries about being founded on the rock of Christ, and he planned to give a marble block to each departing missionary as a reminder. Borba is surrounded by marble quarries, several of which we saw as we drove into and from the town. (President Holt had been tired, so I drove for a while before we reached Borba.)
We also drove through Elvas, another ancient walled city, although to be honest I don't particularly remember anything about the place. It is only 7 miles from Badajoz, Spain.
By late afternoon we reached Évora, the provincial capital of Alto Alentejo. While here we visited the little branch of the Church, which meets in a rented building on a narrow street, and two of the four elders serving in the town happened to be there, so President Holt met with them briefly and told them of his departure in a few weeks. We went into a church (the Royal Church of St. Francis) that had a chapel of bones lined completely with human skulls and other parts of skeletons. It was weird, and I did not enjoy being there. We took pictures of another church where medieval stone carvings of the twelve Apostles graced the entryway.
We also visited the ruins of a Roman temple, believed to have been dedicated to Diana, that stood on the highest hill of the walled city. It dates, depending on which guide book or brochure we were reading, from the 1st or 2nd or 3rd century. The twelve remaining Corinthian columns are granite with bases and capitals hewn from local marble.
We also stopped at a restaurant that President Holt knew of and had a delicious supper of local foods. I had green bean soup (which tasted far better than the name would suggest), hard bread, and pork served with rice and French fries.
Évora predates even the Romans and has had varying degrees of importance through the centuries as it passed from the hands of the Celts to the Romans to the Visigoths to the Moors to the Portuguese to the Spanish and finally back to the Portuguese. The largest of the cities in the Alentejo, Évora has a population of more than 50,000 people, virtually all of whom live within the town’s Roman walls, apparently one of the best preserved and most complete of city walls in the country.
Évora is known as the museum city. According to one of the guidebooks, "Évora is the largest and most important of all the Alentejo towns. It is a superb city, full of fascinating sights, all of which are in a good state of preservation. They are likely to remain so as the entire city has been proclaimed a historical monument by the international preservation organization World Patrimony, therefore qualifying for its financial aid."
Our final stop was near Beja, the provincial capital of Baixo Alentejo. The town existed in its present location at least as early as 48 b.c. In the summer it is said to be the hottest town in Portugal (and apparently in all Europe), although it was nearing sunset by the time we arrived and the temperatures seemed moderate enough. Our primary interest here was not the town itself but some Roman ruins near the town that one of the missionary couples had visited and told President Holt about.
Incredibly, we found the spot we were looking for along a dusty path out through the wheat and sunflower fields. Fortunately, few tourists have ever visited or would even know the ruins were there, or they would probably no longer exist. Virtually all that remains are some exquisite floor tiles, the low walls that give a sense of where different rooms might have been, and some toppled granite columns. It appears to have been a large place, perhaps some Roman villa a few miles out of Beja, which was called Pax Julia at the time because that is where Julius Caesar made peace with the Lusitanians.
There was also an ancient Roman olive press, which was our real reason for seeking this place out. Unlike the presses used later in medieval times, where the olive oil was ground from the olives between two massive stones that moved against each other, the Romans pressed the oil from the olives by placing a massive weight on top. This undoubtedly would have been the type of press known in New Testament times. The word Gethsemane, where the combined weight of the sins of all mankind pressed down upon the Savior of the world, means "olive press."
After our visit to these Roman ruins, we drove for about three hours back to Lisbon. It was in this part of the Alentejo where we noticed rice paddies near the Sado River.
It seems incredible that the major north-south highway route from the Algarve and lower Alentejo back to Lisbon is simply a two-lane road that bogs down at any time from slow-moving tractors and trucks and on weekends from too much traffic. From Setúbal to Lisbon, a distance of perhaps 25 miles, there is a four-lane freeway that crosses the Tejo over the 25th of April Bridge (which was Europe's longest suspension bridge when it was completed in 1966).
We drove by but did not stop in Setúbal, located on the north bank of the Sado near where the river empties into the Atlantic Ocean, on what is known as the Arrabida Peninsula. It is one of the larger and oldest cities in Portugal. Quoting from one of our guidebooks, Setúbal is "said to have been founded by the grandson of Noah."
A different guidebook says: "According to local legend, it was founded by Tubal, the son of Cain. It is said that Phoenicians and Greeks, finding the climate and soil of Arrabida similar to their Mediterranean homelands, brought their grapes and started vineyards. Setúbal is known to have been an important fishing port since Roman times."
There are two wards in Setúbal, and it is the headquarters of one of the two stakes currently located in the Portugal Lisbon South Mission. (The other stake is headquartered in Oeiras on this side of the river.)
We arrived back at the mission home after 11:00 at night. A long, tiring, but richly rewarding day.
Friday, June 28
Being a tourist is tiring work, so today Rachael and I thought it would be prudent to take it easy and just relax around the mission home. And catch up on some reading and writing and such. A couple days ago President Holt showed me a book, Keys to Successful Scripture Study by George A. Horton Jr., which I finished reading today. It contained some valuable insights and was overall an excellent summary of some important ideas about scripture study.
An overall impression from all I have seen thus far of Portugal is that there is an overwhelming sense of antiquity about the place. We think of the 500th anniversary we will be celebrating next year of Columbus’s first voyage to the New World in 1492, or the earliest beginnings of the United States a couple centuries back, or the 200th anniversary of our republican form of government, or the settling of Utah a mere century and a half ago, or the centennial Bountiful will celebrate next year of its incorporation as a city in 1892, or the fact that my children think I'm getting pretty ancient when I turn 42 next month—and yet much that we have seen here in Portugal was already very old before Columbus ever sailed or before North America was ever colonized.
Virtually all that has survived through these many centuries that people have lived here on the Iberian Peninsula is made of rock—the castles, the ancient walls, the churches. Rock has staying power. It endures.
On November 1, 1755, a great earthquake hit Lisbon, destroying much of the city and killing perhaps as many as 60,000 people in the earthquake and the accompanying tidal wave, fires, and diseases that followed in its wake. Most of the old stuff that can be seen here in Lisbon dates since that time, except for one section of town that was built on rock and was mostly not damaged by the earthquake. The Savior spoke of the importance of building our houses on rock rather than sand.
As I thought about the supply of little marble rocks that President Holt picked up yesterday in Borba to leave with his missionaries as a reminder that they are to be founded on the rock of Christ, I thought of this passage from the Book of Mormon: "And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall" (Helaman 5:12).
A further impression concerning this place: In comparison with what I remember of Brazil from twenty years ago, I have found Portugal to be amazingly clean and tidy. The water everywhere has been safe to drink, the food safe to eat.
Tonight Doug, Martha, Rachael, and I crossed over the 25th of April Bridge and drove south and east to Montijo, where we attended a Corrida à Portuguesa, a traditional Portuguese bull run or bullfight. Unlike the Spanish counterpart, the Portuguese do not kill the bull, so there is no matador (killer). Instead, there is a cavalheiro (a horseman), who sports with the bull from atop his horse and jabs colorful little spears into the top of the bull's back. These spears or darts draw blood, and I thought Rachael was going to be sick when she saw the dark color running down the bull's side.
Three cavalheiros, apparently among the best in the whole country, each performed twice. After each cavalheiro was through, a group of perhaps eight to ten young men lined up in a line across the campo (the bull ring) facing the bull and waited for it to charge the first one in the line. In an incredible act of bravery (or stupidity) they tried to tackle the bull, with one of their number holding on the bull's tail. Only once during the six times we watched this happen was anyone hauled off the field on a stretcher.
The bullfight did not begin until 10:00 p.m. and ended after midnight. There was considerable pageantry involved, and the atmosphere provided an authentic cultural experience for us.
Saturday, June 29
This morning President Holt and I split for several hours with the zone leaders in Oeiras. I went with Elder Olivio Gomes Manuel, a native of Angola who joined the Church here in Portugal a little over two years ago and who has been on his mission about eleven months. He said that about a fourth of the Church members in Portugal are Angolans, some of whom have returned home to Angola. Elder Manuel is the only member of his large family who is here in Portugal. He came originally to play basketball and met the missionaries a month after his arrival.
During the couple hours we worked together, Elder Manuel and I called on several people, mostly inactive members, he had planned to visit, most of whom were not home. We visited quite briefly with one active member, a Brazilian from São Paulo, whose wife and two children had returned to Brazil for their summer holidays. He planned to join them soon. We stopped a few men on the street, and one was willing to have the elders visit him and his family Tuesday afternoon. We also tracted out one block of a street near a praça with no result. Finally, we visited a man and his eleven-year-old niece (I believe that was the relationship), both inactive members, and read and discussed with them Alma's teachings on the resurrection from Alma 40. The man's wife had died sometime recently after having surgery for cancer.
After we met back at the stake center, President Holt took me to lunch at a sidewalk café down near the Jeronimos monastery. We ordered traditional Portuguese food: a soup with green stuff in it that looked something like grass, olives, hard bread, and charcoal-grilled sardines.
Rachael had gone with Marianne and Martha to a Fourth of July picnic celebration sponsored by the U.S. embassy and spent much of the day. Martha came back earlier than the other two girls, who after leaving the picnic had gone to the stake center in Oeiras to help decorate for a seminary graduation dance being held this evening. President Holt took me grocery shopping (the sort of Saturday afternoon thing I might be doing at home with Claudia) at a local supermarket that looked something like an American supermarket but not quite, and there we happened to run into Marianne and Rachael and some others. Rachael was pretty tired from her activities of the day and decided to return to the mission home with us.
Sunday, June 30
This morning we attended sacrament meeting in Moita, a small branch in the Setúbal stake somewhere down near Montijo, where we attended the bullfight Friday night. President Holt and I were the two speakers.
With the inadequacy I feel with the language, I find that in speaking in church in Portuguese I rely more heavily on the scriptures (not a bad practice anyway), since reading is an easier skill than simply speaking. It is not my normal style to preach from a prepared text or even from extensive notes, but this morning I decided to outline my thoughts first in Portuguese. This is a translation back into English of some of what I said:
We are met here this morning in a sacrament meeting, where we've had the privilege of worshiping the Lord and renewing our covenants with him as we've partaken of the sacrament.
This is a small branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There are not many of us here today. But the Savior, when he was here upon the earth, foresaw occasions such as this: "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20).
The Church will continue to grow here in Moita and throughout all this lovely land of Portugal. But whether small or large, the Savior's Spirit and influence will be in the midst of us.
Today I would like to speak about some of the fundamental doctrines of our faith. The Prophet Joseph Smith wrote in the Articles of Faith:
"We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost" (A of F 1:1).
And also, "We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost" (A of F 1:4).
Most if not all of us here today are members of the Church. We already believe in God and in His Son and in Their gospel. How can we, as members of the Church, increase or strengthen our faith? How can we obtain more faith?
The Apostle Paul taught that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).
The Prophet Alma, in the Book of Mormon, said that "if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true" (Alma 32:21).
What are some of the things that are true that we have not seen? The creation of the world? The atonement and redemption of the Savior? The restoration of the priesthood and the ordinances of the gospel through the Prophet Joseph Smith?
And where is the evidence of these things we have not seen? The Apostle Paul wrote that "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17). If we desire to obtain more faith in our lives, we need to obtain more of the word of God in our lives. And how do we do that? One way is to get more of these [the standard works] into our lives, to read and study them every day of our lives.
President Ezra Taft Benson, our prophet today, has counseled us often to read daily from the Book of Mormon. Why? There are probably a lot of reasons, but at least one reason is that the Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ. Its purpose is to convince all people that Jesus is the Christ, the promised Messiah, who came to redeem his people.
In the New Testament, the Apostle John wrote near the end of his gospel that "these [things] are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name" (John 20:31).
The Prophet Nephi, again in the Book of Mormon, gives us an excellent summary of these things we've been talking about:
"And now, my beloved brethren, I know . . . that unless a man shall endure to the end, in following the example of the Son of the living God, he cannot be saved.
"Wherefore, do the things which I have told you I have seen that your Lord and your Redeemer should do; for, for this cause have they been shown unto me, that ye might know the gate by which ye should enter. For the gate by which ye should enter is repentance and baptism by water; and then cometh a remission of your sins by fire and by the Holy Ghost.
"And then are ye in this strait and narrow path which leads to eternal life; yea, ye have entered in by the gate; ye have done according to the commandments of the Father and the Son; and ye have received the Holy Ghost, which witnesses of the Father and the Son, unto the fulfilling of the promise which he hath made, that if ye entered in by the way ye should receive.
"And now, my beloved brethren, after ye have gotten into this strait and narrow path, I would ask if all is done? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for ye have not come thus far save it were by the word of Christ with unshaken faith in him, relying wholly upon the merits of him who is mighty to save.
"Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.
"And now, behold, my beloved brethren, this is the way; and there is none other way nor name given under heaven whereby man can be saved in the kingdom of God. And now, behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end. Amen" (2 Nephi 31:16-21).
This afternoon, back at the mission home, we fixed and ate lunch, napped, read, and visited. I have had some marvelous talks with President Holt during the week I've been here. During the week I've also been reading Elder Bruce R. McConkie's The Millennial Messiah: The Second Coming of the Son of Man and am nearly half way through the 711-page volume. (I started the book some years ago, shortly after it was first published in 1982, but I never did finish it.) We had planned to attend a baptismal service late in the afternoon, but too much napping was going on.
At 8:00 this evening there was a fireside at the mission home with 75 people—missionaries, investigators, and members—present, the largest attendance they've ever had for their monthly fireside in the year the Holts have been here. (Doug said they have sometimes had as many as 50 people attend but never as many as came tonight.) President Holt taught masterfully from the scriptures on obtaining a testimony of Jesus. He asked me to bear my testimony at the end, which I did briefly.
Monday, July 1
Time passes so swiftly. Today begins the second half of the year. And it is my last full day in Portugal.
During much of the day, from 10:00 until about 4:00, I joined President Holt here at the mission home in his monthly meeting with zone leaders. There were nine companionships of zone leaders and the two assistants to the president—Elders William Shane Bangerter and Scott Wade Bisson—a total of twenty of his most seasoned, best trained missionaries.
After some preliminary business, the two assistants led workshops on how to introduce the Book of Mormon to investigators and how to help members in using it with nonmembers. During a lunch break, President Holt showed them the video Called to Serve, which most of them had not yet seen. The assistants then gave talks on different aspects of service, I conducted a question-answer session and spoke about love and unity in the work and bore testimony of the Savior and his latter-day work, and President Holt concluded with another masterful discourse on types of the Savior in our own lives and ministry.
As I was speaking about the marvelous growth of the work worldwide, I shared with the elders the account written by President Kiril Kiriakov, who begins serving today as the first president of the new Bulgaria Sofia Mission, concerning the Lord's hand in his escaping from Bulgaria many years ago and his eventually joining the Church in France:
Our native land of Bulgaria is a beautiful country, graced with the majestic Balkan Mountains that traverse the center of the country and many fine resort towns along the Black Sea. But living in Bulgaria was not a beautiful experience. The Communists had been in power in Bulgaria since 1945, and they controlled everything. We suffered a lot under a Communist regime and lived in fear every day. We prayed to God constantly to help us to solve our problem and to give us and our children an opportunity to taste freedom. This opportunity came suddenly. Twenty-eight years ago, in 1963 when Algeria became an independent country, they needed specialists in many occupations in order to increase their economy. Algeria asked Bulgaria for assistance, and the Bulgarian government responded by contracting to supply one thousand specialists. Of these, ten were to be dental technicians.
At that time I was working as a dental technician in a state laboratory. When I learned that our lab was to furnish one technician for Algeria, I hoped that I would be the one to go. There were seven candidates for the opening, and so the possibility of my being chosen was very remote. Most of my colleagues had a contact or a relative who held a high position in the Communist government, someone they could rely on for help. I knew of no one who could help me, so I put my entire faith and hope in our Heavenly Father. My wife and I decided that only our fervent prayers to the Lord could open the door to the free world.
The next day, after many hours of sincere and fervent prayer, I went to work as usual. The climate in the laboratory that was not one of the usual restraint, but one of nervous excitement over the selection of the technician that would be going to Algeria. A lively conversation was underway as several methods of selecting the fortunate technician were being considered. One of my colleagues proposed that we decide the matter by drawing lots, placing seven folded pieces of paper in a hat, six of which would have the word no written on them and one would contain the word yes. This seemed to be a fair approach, and all agreed that this would be the method used. The decisive slips of paper with their six no's and one yes were prepared and placed in a hat, with each of us getting progressively more tense and anxious to draw. As my colleagues began withdrawing their slips of paper, my heart was beating so hard that I could barely manage the motor responses necessary to withdraw my slip of paper. When I opened it, I could not believe my eyes. The piece of paper I had drawn had yes written on it. I was overcome with excitement and happiness, but my colleagues were not. They protested the outcome as unfair, since I had been in this laboratory for only eight months while some of the others had been working there for nearly a lifetime. They felt that each of them deserved this choice opportunity much more than I did and insisted that we repeat the drawing. Their objections had some merit, so with a downcast heart I reluctantly agreed to submit to another drawing.
We drew our slip of paper from the hat, and again I drew the yes piece of paper. Again they objected, and this time I had no choice but to comply with their demand for another drawing. When this same experience was repeated the third time, I was stunned and unable to utter a word. Those about me were also highly surprised and highly agitated. Some of them simply refused to believe that this was really happening and demanded a fourth drawing. Not knowing what to say and still being in a state of shock, I just nodded my head that I would agree to another drawing. We drew again. Everyone was trembling as they opened their slips of paper. I opened mine, and it said yes again. The others grabbed it from my hands and just shook their heads in unbelief. We repeated the drawing two more times with the same results. By now my colleagues were not only shocked but also extremely disturbed and becoming openly hostile and angry. Their envy was quite evident, for I suspect I was not the only one in this laboratory hoping to use the position in Algeria as a passport to freedom. Their anger subsided somewhat, and they decided that they would try drawing lots one last time. This time I was not permitted to take my slip of paper until each of them had drawn their chosen piece of paper. They did simply inform me that this was how it would be done. After the others had drawn their lots and there was only one left in the hat, I was permitted to draw my slip, which again read yes.
This time, instead of objecting in rather strong terms, they marveled that the only way I could draw the yes slip seven times in a row would have to be with the help of God. They readily acknowledged that it was a miracle, even though one was not supposed to have religious convictions in Bulgaria.
Several weeks later I received my assignment to Algeria, and after a month and a half my family were permitted to join me. To us, the limited freedom of Algeria was like living in a paradise, which only whetted our appetite for the complete freedom to be had only in the free world. As my two-year assignment began to draw to a close, I completed arrangements to receive permission from the Bulgarian government to return by way of France. My family, however, were required to return directly to Bulgaria, which was the Communist method of discouraging their people from defecting. Then the idea presented itself to add the words "and family" on my exit permit, which we did, and we were then successful in obtaining tourist visas to France for the entire family. Fortunately, we lost no time in leaving for Marseille, for fifteen days after our departure a bloody coup d'etat led by Defense Minister Colonel Boumidienne toppled the Communist-leaning Algerian president Ahmed Ben Bella. All Bulgarians residing in Algeria were immediately flown home to their country, but we were already in France and had safely defected from our Communist homeland.
About a year later two missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came to our home in France and brought us the truths of the restored gospel, something that never would have happened in Bulgaria. I have been deeply impressed that the reason the Lord answered our prayers and helped me win the drawing to go to Algeria and eventually to the free world was so that my family could have this precious opportunity to find the true church.
According to my patriarchal blessing the prophecy is beginning to come true, as it says that I'll preach the gospel to my people, to my kinfolks in my native country Bulgaria. I'm grateful to the Lord for the opportunity He gives me to serve Him. And I'll put all my strength and efforts to serve Him diligently and successfully. I would like to bear my testimony that God lives, that Jesus Christ is His beloved Son, our Savior and Redeemer. I know that Joseph Smith was a real prophet of God, through whom the Book of Mormon was translated. And this is my testimony in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
The three girls had gone shopping and came home and baked a large cake for the elders to eat at the conclusion of their meeting.
Rachael will stay on to continue her European adventure after I leave tomorrow morning. Wednesday morning Shelley and Tom Harper (and two of Tom’s friends) will arrive by train from Munich to spend some time here in Portugal, including a two- or three-day visit next week down in the Algarve, the southern coast of Portugal. On July 13 the group will leave by train for Vienna, where they will attend a youth conference for all the mission kids in Europe. On July 19 they will travel to Munich to stay with the Harpers, on July 25 to Frankfurt to stay with the Condies, on July 31 to Dusseldorf to stay with the Wolferts family, on August 4 to Paris to stay with the Joneses (and where on August 7 Rachael will celebrate her sixteenth birthday). And then on August 11 Rachael, Marianne, and Martha will return to Lisbon to fly home on the 13th (hopefully). Rachael is currently ticketed to fly on August 21, and we’ll need to see if Kathy Bertasso can get that changed.
In the evening we visited, ate dinner, and watched a video of an old movie classic, Magnificent Obsession, while President Holt attended to some mission business. I then packed before going to bed.
Tuesday, July 2
I am now sitting in the Lisbon airport awaiting my flight to London. This will be a very long day. We left the mission home at 6:15 a.m. Lisbon time (11:15 p.m. Monday night in Utah) and, assuming I make the necessary connections in London and Chicago, will arrive in Salt Lake at 8:51 tonight, nearly 22 hours later.
I am grateful for this marvelous week I have just spent, which I feel is in further fulfillment of the Lord's command early in this dispensation that we come to an understanding "of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms—
"That ye may be prepared in all things when I shall send you again to magnify the calling whereunto I have called you, and the mission with which I have commissioned you" (D&C 88:79-80).
The early dawn over the Tejo was a beautiful sight from my room this morning. I hope to treasure the memory of it as a symbol of my wonderful week in Portugal.
As I mentioned to the elders yesterday, the Church is still in its infancy here in Portugal, and someday the five struggling stakes will become numerous strong stakes. Someday a temple will grace this lovely land. And a generation of faithful Portuguese saints will arise to bear off the work triumphantly in this place and among this people. It truly is the dawning of a new day.
President Holt is truly one of the noble and great ones, a Christlike servant of the Lord who has a marvelous vision of the work. I cherish my association with him. I love him as a dear brother and friend. And I thank God Almighty for this marvelous week we've had together.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Joy and rejoicing
"Children," says the Good Book, "are an heritage of the Lord. . . . Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them" (Psalms 127:3, 5).
Over the space of twelve years Claudia and I had eight children, two sons and six daughters. Then they grew up and eventually all married wonderful spouses. And now we are working on grandchildren. At this writing, our eighteenth grandchild is on the way, twelve grandsons and six granddaughters. That amounts to a whole lot of joy and rejoicing in our posterity.
Our first three children came within 24 months: Michael Adam was born on September 2, 1973; Rebecca on August 26, 1974; and Rachael on August 7, 1975. That makes Michael and Becca Irish twins; they are the same age for one week each year. Becca and Rachael are a second set of Irish twins; they are the same age for nearly three weeks each year.
The remaining five were more evenly spread out, approximately every other year: Talmage was born on June 2, 1977; Anna on February 9, 1979; Camilla on June 15, 1981; Eliza on April 5, 1983; and finally Mary on October 1, 1984.
The grandchildren started coming one each calendar year, until five of them were born in a seven-month period in 2006 and 2007:
1995: Tanner Hoff was born and died on December 12.
1996: Meghan Auria Cleverly was born on October 28.
1997: Miriam Hoff was born on June 8.
1998: Caleb Dean Cleverly was born on May 26.
1999: James Talmage Cleverly was born on October 27. He died on December 14.
2000: Jacob Clark Cleverly was born on April 9.
2001: Benjamin Seth Cleverly was born on February 10.
2002: Andrew Karl Cleverly was born on November 4.
2003: Claudia Susan Hodson was born on January 13.
2004: Esther Marie Hodson was born on July 26.
2005: Nobody came this year.
2006: Hyrum Hoff was born July 1, Samuel Christopher Taylor was born July 11, and Peter Arthur Challis was born October 4.
2007: Ethan Graham Cleverly and Marta Joan Cleverly were born on January 10, and Margaret Christina Hodson was born on October 4.
2008: Aaron Marvin Challis was born on December 8.
2009: A baby boy Halverson is expected sometime in September.
Over the space of twelve years Claudia and I had eight children, two sons and six daughters. Then they grew up and eventually all married wonderful spouses. And now we are working on grandchildren. At this writing, our eighteenth grandchild is on the way, twelve grandsons and six granddaughters. That amounts to a whole lot of joy and rejoicing in our posterity.
Our first three children came within 24 months: Michael Adam was born on September 2, 1973; Rebecca on August 26, 1974; and Rachael on August 7, 1975. That makes Michael and Becca Irish twins; they are the same age for one week each year. Becca and Rachael are a second set of Irish twins; they are the same age for nearly three weeks each year.
The remaining five were more evenly spread out, approximately every other year: Talmage was born on June 2, 1977; Anna on February 9, 1979; Camilla on June 15, 1981; Eliza on April 5, 1983; and finally Mary on October 1, 1984.
The grandchildren started coming one each calendar year, until five of them were born in a seven-month period in 2006 and 2007:
1995: Tanner Hoff was born and died on December 12.
1996: Meghan Auria Cleverly was born on October 28.
1997: Miriam Hoff was born on June 8.
1998: Caleb Dean Cleverly was born on May 26.
1999: James Talmage Cleverly was born on October 27. He died on December 14.
2000: Jacob Clark Cleverly was born on April 9.
2001: Benjamin Seth Cleverly was born on February 10.
2002: Andrew Karl Cleverly was born on November 4.
2003: Claudia Susan Hodson was born on January 13.
2004: Esther Marie Hodson was born on July 26.
2005: Nobody came this year.
2006: Hyrum Hoff was born July 1, Samuel Christopher Taylor was born July 11, and Peter Arthur Challis was born October 4.
2007: Ethan Graham Cleverly and Marta Joan Cleverly were born on January 10, and Margaret Christina Hodson was born on October 4.
2008: Aaron Marvin Challis was born on December 8.
2009: A baby boy Halverson is expected sometime in September.
Friday, July 17, 2009
One small step for a man
On December 17, 1903, less than 12 years before my parents were born, Orville Wright flew the first powered airplane at a wind-swept beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The first flight lasted only 12 seconds and covered a mere 120 feet. Three more flights were made that day with Orville's brother Wilbur piloting a flight that lasted 59 seconds and covered 852 feet. Americans consider the Wright brothers the fathers of aviation.
Brazilians, those dear people among whom I served my mission, consider one of their own countrymen as the father of aviation. Santos Dumont [Alberto Santos Dumont, 1873–1932, born in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais] designed, built, and flew the first controllable airship, a small blimp, around the Eiffel Tower in Paris on October 19, 2001. Five years later, on October 23, 1906, he flew a fixed-wing airplane, the first such aircraft to be publicly witnessed to take off, fly, and land in Europe. He was one of the most famous people in the world in the early years of the twentieth century.
Even though he died in 1932, he was still very famous and very revered in Brazil when I was there serving my mission in 1969 and 1970. The smaller of two airports in Rio de Janeiro was named after him, and while I was serving in the mission office I went there at least once to meet someone flying in from São Paulo. Arriving and departing missionaries flew into and out of the larger, newer Galeão International Airport. The smaller, older Santos Dumont Airport primarily handled domestic flights to and from other Brazilian cities.
And so I guess it was appropriate that I was in Brazil for one of the most significant events in the history of mankind: man's first steps on the moon. And although the Apollo 11 spacecraft actually reached the moon on my 20th birthday, Saturday, July 19, 1969, the space module Eagle did not actually land on the surface of the moon until what in the western hemisphere of our planet was Sunday, July 20. But that seemed appropriate: July 20 was the 96th anniversary of Santos Dumont's birth.
"A dream of ages was fulfilled tonight," I wrote in my missionary journal for Sunday, July 20, 1969, "as man stepped onto the moon. Ever since the project was given the final go-ahead a few days ago, I have prayed for the mission's success and for the safety of the astronauts. But the moon is no longer virgin soil. The two Americans stepped onto the moon just a few moments before midnight Brazilian time, about 40 minutes after we gave up the vigil and went to bed. Probably every television set in the world was tuned to the coverage of the moon shot. Part of the goal set back in 1961 by John F. Kennedy has been realized: having a man on the moon before 1970. The other part? To bring them safely back to earth."
The next day, Monday, July 21, I wrote in a letter to my family back home in Idaho: "Yesterday, July 20, man first stepped onto the moon. A dream of centuries has been realized within 66 years after man’s first heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk on that December morning in 1903. In just a lifetime fantasy has become reality. What will that many more years bring? We are living in an exciting age, in adventurous times."
Three astronauts were a part of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Armstrong was the first human to set foot on the moon. Aldrin was second. As Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, he uttered the words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." After a couple hours on the lunar surface, the two rejoined their third companion, who had been orbiting above in the spacecraft. And then they returned home to earth.
It was a heady time. For days afterward we missionaries, being Americans, were hailed on the streets as heroes, as though we had played some personal part in the historic drama that played out before the eyes of all the world.
On Thursday, July 24, which was being celebrated back home as Pioneer Day, I made one final journal entry: "Appropriately America's modern pioneers, the three astronauts, safely returned from their journey to the moon. Although they went into incubation confinement immediately after leaving the space capsule, President Richard M. Nixon was aboard the naval carrier that picked them up to give them an appropriate heroes welcome."
Brazilians, those dear people among whom I served my mission, consider one of their own countrymen as the father of aviation. Santos Dumont [Alberto Santos Dumont, 1873–1932, born in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais] designed, built, and flew the first controllable airship, a small blimp, around the Eiffel Tower in Paris on October 19, 2001. Five years later, on October 23, 1906, he flew a fixed-wing airplane, the first such aircraft to be publicly witnessed to take off, fly, and land in Europe. He was one of the most famous people in the world in the early years of the twentieth century.
Even though he died in 1932, he was still very famous and very revered in Brazil when I was there serving my mission in 1969 and 1970. The smaller of two airports in Rio de Janeiro was named after him, and while I was serving in the mission office I went there at least once to meet someone flying in from São Paulo. Arriving and departing missionaries flew into and out of the larger, newer Galeão International Airport. The smaller, older Santos Dumont Airport primarily handled domestic flights to and from other Brazilian cities.
And so I guess it was appropriate that I was in Brazil for one of the most significant events in the history of mankind: man's first steps on the moon. And although the Apollo 11 spacecraft actually reached the moon on my 20th birthday, Saturday, July 19, 1969, the space module Eagle did not actually land on the surface of the moon until what in the western hemisphere of our planet was Sunday, July 20. But that seemed appropriate: July 20 was the 96th anniversary of Santos Dumont's birth.
"A dream of ages was fulfilled tonight," I wrote in my missionary journal for Sunday, July 20, 1969, "as man stepped onto the moon. Ever since the project was given the final go-ahead a few days ago, I have prayed for the mission's success and for the safety of the astronauts. But the moon is no longer virgin soil. The two Americans stepped onto the moon just a few moments before midnight Brazilian time, about 40 minutes after we gave up the vigil and went to bed. Probably every television set in the world was tuned to the coverage of the moon shot. Part of the goal set back in 1961 by John F. Kennedy has been realized: having a man on the moon before 1970. The other part? To bring them safely back to earth."
The next day, Monday, July 21, I wrote in a letter to my family back home in Idaho: "Yesterday, July 20, man first stepped onto the moon. A dream of centuries has been realized within 66 years after man’s first heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk on that December morning in 1903. In just a lifetime fantasy has become reality. What will that many more years bring? We are living in an exciting age, in adventurous times."
Three astronauts were a part of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Armstrong was the first human to set foot on the moon. Aldrin was second. As Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, he uttered the words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." After a couple hours on the lunar surface, the two rejoined their third companion, who had been orbiting above in the spacecraft. And then they returned home to earth.
It was a heady time. For days afterward we missionaries, being Americans, were hailed on the streets as heroes, as though we had played some personal part in the historic drama that played out before the eyes of all the world.
On Thursday, July 24, which was being celebrated back home as Pioneer Day, I made one final journal entry: "Appropriately America's modern pioneers, the three astronauts, safely returned from their journey to the moon. Although they went into incubation confinement immediately after leaving the space capsule, President Richard M. Nixon was aboard the naval carrier that picked them up to give them an appropriate heroes welcome."
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