Mafra

We made many trips to Mafra. The first, within the first week of our arrival in Alverca was proof you need GPS in Portugal!! We couldn't find the church address on the GPS and so blithely printed out directions from Google maps. We were set to go.

Unfortunately, we discovered at the first roundabout that the signs only point to places and do NOT give street names. Our directions were based on street names and were useless. We finally called the Sisters who gave us directions, but even then we got lost. Finally, we went back to a street facing the huge national palace that we had passed several times, parked and waited for the Elders to come and find us.

The national palace is huge and on the main street into town and you can't miss it!!

But for this first trip, we were guided to the church by Elders in our car! (which was then marked on our GPS and we never had the same problem!)

The chapel is the bottom floor of a larger building that was remodeled into a very nice, little church. You know it is the church by the sign in the window.

And the open door!! All are welcome.

Here is the chapel where Sacrament Meeting is held. It holds 30-35 people, plenty big enough for the small Mafra group which has about 10-15 people at church on Sunday.


It has an office for the group leader, 3 classrooms and another classroom with a small kitchen area.


Below is a lunch after the church meetings before going on visits. I had brought carrot salad -- a new salad for the Portuguese. The little girl said she liked carrots, raisins and pineapple, but did not like them together. However, the salad was gone by the end of the lunch, for which I was glad. And I had some good Portuguese food!

We came to love the special people in Mafra.

Claudia was baptized in April, as related in a previous posting. She is a faithful member of the group. Davi, her son, is fun to be around and speaks very adult Portuguese!!

This is an older woman, befriended by the sister missionaries. They checked on her often to make sure she was ok.

Another one of our favorite families to visit. João was baptized the first of April, joining his wife in the church. We participated in several new member lessons with the Sisters.

We drove 10 minutes out of Mafra to a little town on the coast, Ericeira, to visit Joaquim. He is blind and confined to a wheelchair. When we stopped by, he was peeling garlic for his dinner. He is very capable of caring for himself, cooking all his own food. He also has a garden in the back growing some herbs and other things. He hasn't been baptized yet, but has been taught some wonderful truths.

Here we are with Sister Oliveira on a street in Mafra. Often, when we go to Mafra, the Sisters took advantage of having a car and we visited investigators or members who lived a good distance away. But we did have times when we walked around the streets of Mafra for our visits.

When we learned that we were moving to the Azores, I was determined to go through the palace that we had driven past so many times. We had scheduled to go visit with the Sisters the last week in July and we went early to have our tour. We were there at the opening at 10 -- with 3 hours until we needed to be at the Sister's apartment.

The history lesson first: (thank you again, Wikipedia)  The palace, which also served as a Franciscan monastery, was built during the reign of King John V (1707–1750), as consequence of a vow the king made in 1711, to build a convent if his wife, Queen Mary Anne of Austria, gave him offspring. The birth of his first daughter, princess Barbara of Braganza, prompted construction of the palace to begin. The palace was conveniently located near royal hunting preserves, and was usually a secondary residence for the royal family.

Initially it was a relatively small project for a friary of 13 Capuchin friars, who were to observe strict poverty. However, when the flow of gold from the Portuguese colony of Brazil started to arrive in Lisbon in abundance, the king changed his plans and announced the construction of a sumptuous palace along with a much enlarged friary. This immense wealth allowed the king to be a generous patron of arts.

The basilica and the convent were inaugurated on the day of the King's 41st birthday on October 22, 1730. Work continued until 1755 when reconstruction workers were needed after the earthquake in Lisbon.

The center portion of the palace was the church. And it was free to visitors!!  The palace is built with the church in the center. On the left as you face the building are the apartments for the king. On the right, the apartments for the queen. In the back, is the monastery and a library. So, let's go visit them!

 

This is the entrance to the church.

The first impression you get as you enter the church is how beautiful it is!! All the marble was quarried in nearby Sintra and surrounding areas. The tones were muted, but every different marble was beautiful and complemented the others.  Marble is everywhere -- the walls, the floors, the columns,

And the craftsmanship was amazing! Remember this is ALL marble! 

All the floors were the inlaid marble patterns.

One of the 6 organs!!

In all the side apses, there were statues of the apostles and saints, both men and women.

To the left is St. Matthew.

This is the entrance to the church from the inside. Look at the top -- see the light. Well remember that!! We will see it from another angle soon!!

Well it was time to leave so we could see the adjoining castle.

We left the church and went to see the castle. You entered on the left, near to the king's apartments. 

The first thing we saw was the garden courtyard in the middle of the palace. And in the courtyard, there is a falconry. There were probably 10 different types of falcons and owls, all quietly sitting on their perch

And if you wanted, you could pay to hold one and have your picture taken!!

The next part of the self guided tour was the monastery.

Here is the kitchen for the monastery's infirmary. 

This is the chapel in the infirmary. 

Each of the booths had a bed for a sick monk. The bed was oriented so that, during church services, they could open the curtain and view the proceedings and participate as they could. 

This is the inside of the booth. I believe the bed and furniture are original to the monastery. 

Most of the rooms for the monks were similar, very simple and sparse. It was a Franciscan order of monks, dedicated to being poor. A regular room would have a small stove for a fire to keep warm.

To make it seem 'real' the museum has people dress up in the costume of the 1700's.

We met some devout monks wandering around. We were glad they were well and not in the infirmary.

Then it was time to go to  the palace!

The Throne Room.

We noticed that most of the rooms were decorated by painting. 

The floors were mostly pretty plain. 

And there was no marble!

But still very beautiful

One of the ceilings

The King's bedroom

The bathtub!!!

The music room

Can you tell that this is the hunting room??? After all, the palace was used mostly for the royal family to have a vacation and to go hunting!! Everything in the room is made using antlers!!!

This is the hallway that links the King's side to the Queen's with the church in the middle. Remember when we were in the church and you saw the light above the entrance doors.

That light was coming from this hallway. You can tell we are in the Church section as everything changed to marble.  

The royal family would come from their apartments on either side and sit in the hallway, looking over the banister to the church services below. It was a short trip to church!!

More costumed people. 

The young.

And the older.

This is the queen's bedroom. And it is historically important. On the night of 4 October 1910, Manuel II, the last king of Portugal, came to the Mafra Palace, slept in this bed and left the next day for Ericeira, a nearby coastal village where he left Portugal for England and spent the rest of his life in exile.

And the next day, 5 October, the republic was instituted. That is a national holiday and like many other important happenings, there are streets are named "5 de Outubro" 

We had one last wing to explore -- The Library. There are over 40,000 books here, all from the 14th to 19th century. We could only just go inside the door, though they do have hours for researchers to come and .... research!

The shelves above the entrance to the library. 

An interesting way to help preserve the books. Bats come in every night and eat the insects and bugs that could attack the books. 

It works!

And, you never know when a missionary will call with a medical concern!! 

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the Mafra National Palace. It was beautiful! 

But it is time to meet with the missionaries and go visit some families. They do not live in such luxurious houses - instead of thousands of rooms, they may only have 3 or 4. But I think a family learning about the gospel is the most beautiful thing in the world!!!

Claudia Baptista with her family and the Sisters who taught her

Serving as the Office Couple

Here we are with the Office Staff, the President and his wife, and the Crossmans

On our very first day in Portugal we were warned that we would likely spend some time working in the mission office. The office fills a very important need in the mission:

The two Executive Secretaries
with Elder Crossman

• Provides office space for the president and the office secretaries
• Serves as a nerve center for the mission with decision making, communication and record keeping
• Where the business of running a mission is conducted: bills are paid, travel scheduled, transfers laid out, cars and apartments managed, missionary mail received and dispersed
• The President conducts many interviews, for missionaries coming and going, and in between
• Medical needs addressed through counseling missionaries and scheduling medical appointments
• Etc.

The Ransoms have been our mentors and friends, even after they left for Porto

As the division of the Portugal Lisbon mission approached, President Fluckiger determined that the best way to support the new Portugal Porto mission was to send his experienced office couple, the Ransoms, there and have them train a new couple here, the Brodericks.

In June we began to train with the Ransoms at the office. They taught and showed us most of the tasks they were very adept at. Our charge was to focus mostly on:

Part of the Transfer Board

• Apartments (inspections mostly)
• Cars
• Health
• Transfer board photos

The rest of the Ransom’s work was to be turned over to other members of the office staff:

• The two Executive Secretaries who handle all executive details of missionaries and the mission
• The two Financial Secretaries who handle everything financial, paying and buying
• Housing specialist, a local member service missionary who specializes in contracts for apartments and utilities and house maintenance

Elder Crossman with our Housing Specialist

When we returned from Elizabeth and Jeremy’s wedding, we went to work to begin doing what the Ransom’s had tried to train us to do and they were off to Porto to open up a new office.

Because we were only doing part of the work of the Ransoms, we typically spent only two days in the office, Monday and Friday. The rest of the week we were in our assigned units to offer support to the missionary work and members.

The Tavareses arrived as the Fluckigers prepared to leave

On our first week in the office we said goodbye to the Fluckigers and welcomed President and Sister Tavares, our new bosses. Being new, they didn’t really know a lot about what was needed to run the office and relied on their staff to do what they had been trained to do. With Janet and I that was a pretty shaky position to take as we were pretty shaky in our grasp of all our office duties (speaking especially of Elder Broderick)

The Mission Office is located in the Benfica area of Lisbon, a housing and semi-commercial area named after a church in the area, a cemetery and the Benfica Sports Club that sponsors one of the top professional soccer clubs in Portugal. Here is a view from Google Maps of the greater Lisbon area and the location of the mission office.

For an idea of our working space and companions, take a look at these photos:

Our space was in the basement with the prophets looking over our shoulders

Being responsible for cars involved routine things like maintenance and tracking usage and drivers. It also involved dealing with accidents and repairs. This part was the most time consuming and troublesome. 

We had one minor accident and one major accident as shown by these photos.

Fortunately the major accident did not result in any significant injuries, but a very close call and loss of driving privileges.





 



The Mission Office is also a meeting place, where missionaries cross paths and where we as the office couple get to meet missionaries from other areas. 

It was a special event when good friends from Cape Verde met us here. Elder Andrade never served close to us as he was assigned as an assistant in the Porto mission area, but we met at the Mission Office when he came to greet the new mission president and say goodbye to the president he had served so faithfully.

Elder Andrade from Cape Verde with the Fluckigers just before they left

While our service in the mission office was rather short lived (not quite two months), it was a very important time for us to expand our knowledge of mission operations, meet many new missionaries, make various types of connections, and seek to help keep the mission running smoothly, safely, and in good health. 

Janet has carried two very important functions that she picked up while in the office: scheduling medical appointments for missionaries in the greater Lisbon area, general medical counseling, and handling missionary referrals. Dennis was able to turn over his responsibilities to those who stayed in the office in Lisbon, principally the Financial Secretary shown above.

Torres Vedras

When we arrived in Portugal, we were given the assignment to support 4 units of the Church -- the Alverca Ward, the Vila Franca da Xira branch, the Torres Vedras Branch and the Mafra Group. We have already described Alverca. Today's area is Torres Vedras.

Torres Vedras is about 40 kilometers away from Alverca, where we lived. We would try to work with the missionaries monthly and attend their church meetings once every 2 months. It seems like a little  -- and it is -- but we enjoyed the time serving with the missionary sisters and meeting new people. This branch was quite small -- about 20 people attended each week. So, we could get to know them faster!

Sorry, we don't have a picture of the church front. It is the bottom floor of a building along the street. You wouldn't know it is a church except for the Church's placard in the front window.

But the most important part of the branch are the people!!


We are eating lunch in the kitchen/classroom. The 2 sister missionaries are on the left. Next is a young woman getting her mission papers in and finally, the branch president who finally was able to come in and have something to eat.

He is actually from a neighboring ward. Torres Vedras is too small to provide all their own priesthood leaders.

Members, leaders, visitors and missionaries make up this group after church.

The visiting team!! Standing next to me is the branch president's wife (she is included in the call to serve in the branch!). The six of us are going to squish into her car to do some visits. The branch is quite spread out. We drove for about 15 minutes or more to get to the first house.

It was beautiful rural countryside and it was fun to talk to the branch president's wife and to see how it feels to drive with a Portuguese driver. She was a good driver!!


Every town in Portugal has it castle or some interesting place to visit and Torres Vedras is no exception. We could look out the sister missionaries kitchen window and see the old fort high on the hill. So, it was always beckoning us to come and visit. So, one day we went to Torres Vedras early to explore the fort before going with the sisters.

We didn't get a distant shot of the towers -- so thanks to 

http://allworldtowns.com/data_images/countries/torres-vedras/torres-vedras-06.jpg

First, our history lesson:

The fort at Torres Vedras had been in existence for many hundreds of years with parts dating back to the Roman times. It's current claim to fame is being a major fort on the Lines of Torres Vedras.

The Lines of Torres Vedras were lines of forts built in secrecy to defend Lisbon during the Peninsular War. Named after the nearby town of Torres Vedras, they were ordered by Arthur Wellesley, Viscount Wellington, constructed by Sir Richard Fletcher, 1st Baronet, and his Portuguese workers between November 1809 and September 1810, and used to stop Masséna's 1810 offensive. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lines_of_Torres_Vedras)

Despite their name, the Lines of Torres Vedras were actually made up of a series of separate fortifications, carefully placed to provide each other with covering fire. These forts varied in size from the massive fort at Torres Vedras, designed to hold 5,000 men, down to small gun emplacements designed to mount three guns and 200 men. (http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/lines_of_torres_vedras.html)

It was interesting to learn that they even altered the landscape, removing dirt to expose rock cliffs, cleared out brush, took out houses, everything that the French could hide behind. When the French arrived, they didn't even try to fight. It was obvious they would lose too many men trying to get through the lines.

Every fort has it's entrance. And evidence that it is old is the worn down designs.

The first building you come to is the church. It is a functioning church for the Greek Orthodox church. We were surprised to find that church in this very Roman Catholic country.

Here is a map of what used to be there. Included is the shadow of the photographer!!

 Here is a view of the city from the parapets of the castle. You can see a loooong way!!

 

Missionary work never ends!! (Thank goodness)

Sister Broderick got a call from a sick missionary. I try to always have my phone with me. You never know when you will get a call. Fortunately, thus far, the only "out of hours" call was 5:30 one morning when the smoke alarm in the sister's apartment in Angra went off. They were worried they might get asphyxiated! "Just open the windows and get some more sleep. All will be fine!!" 



The inside of the walls. The castle that was within the walls is pretty much crumbled to pieces.
You can see Sister Broderick gingerly attempting the stairs. They were very narrow with no handrail. Doesn't do well for a person who gets dizzy with heights (even 10 feet heights when there isn't much wiggle room!)

There was a museum in one of the towers with some interesting artifacts.

To the left are large, catapult stones. I sure wouldn't want one of those coming at me!!

Walking around the hill with fort on top.

Parts of the fort are from ancient  times! To the left are cisterns built by the Romans.

We enjoyed our exploration of the torres. And it was time to get back into town and meet the sister missionaries for our visits. We walked back down to the entrance....








and down the road passing several quaint old  houses like the one below.

We picked up the missionaries and we were off to visit some families!!

Young missionaries are the best. They shine with light and love the people so much!!

A wonderful and happy family. The wife and 2 children are ready to be baptized once they get the correct papers from Brazil so they can get married.