Mission Story:
A story:
In June 1982, I was transferred to Guimaraes. I was excited. It was the newest and farthest north area. The APs sent my transfer instructions to take a train with other missionaries who were going to Porto.
After Porto, I was to take a different train to Guimaraes alone, and meet my companion in the train station. When I got to Porto, I was told that the train tracks had been destroyed and there hadn't been a train in over a month.
I was told (and it was hard to understand, because Portuguese in Porto was so much harder to understand than that of Lisbon) to take a bus to Guimaraes.
So when I was arriving at the bus station in Guimaraes, I wondered how I would find my companion if he wasn't at the bus station. I had no address of where he lived. I had no phone number. The thought of calling the mission office never occurred to me. I'm not sure that I even knew how to do that. I decided that if he wasn't at the bus station, I would go to the train station and look for him there - since that is where the instructions had stated I would meet my companion.
I reached the bus station - and there was no one there but the station master and a man in his 40s talking to him. I asked where the train station was, and they wondered why I would want to go there since it had been abandoned for over a month.
But the man offered to give me a ride and took me there. He asked questions about me as a missionary... When we got to the train station, it was desolate.
He indicated that he knew a member of our church and that he could take me to his house. I thought that would be great. I could call my companion to pick me up from there. I also that that was pretty exciting. I had spent 6 months in Lisbon and never had I run into anyone who knew anything about the church that wasn't a member or current investigator. This city had been opened for only 6 months, and already people knew about the church.
He took me to the Barros family in Guimaraes. I met the family and waved him away out the window. He drove off. Irmao Barros questioned how I had come to his house without my companion - while Irma Barros called my companion to come over.
The Barros had been baptised only one month before. They were the first and only family baptised in Guimaraes at the time. Irmao Barros was a bit intimidated about being the only member. He was a bit unsure that he wanted his friends to know about this decision he had made. He struggled to think WHO could possibly know. He had not published the information. He finally came up with who it must have been.
I never saw that man again. But I came to realize that the Lord had shown me a tender mercy in putting the only person in the whole city that knew the only member in the city. The Lord had provided for me - before I had even done muc more than just to "consider what I would do."
