17 December 2008

December 17, 2008

So, this week. This week was good. Since that first week with nothing but rain, the weather has been a lot nicer, it´s only rained once or twice, which is great, because my clothes are dry, and it´s much easier to be in a happy mood when your clothes are dry and there´s sun.

Christmas is coming up fast, next week it will be christmas eve. We still have p-day christmas eve, so we´ll probably have some sort of christmas festivities (i´m lobbying for a giant pancake breakfest) and then i´ll email what the phone plan is, but from talking to the other missionaries, it sounds like i´ll by a phone card and maybe call you, and that will be the cheapest way. We´re planning to call at around 6 our time, which will be noon over there. so plan on that.

This week was good, we had our christmas party, which was lots of fun, and i got andes mints, which made it feel like christmas, and made me just a little sad to not be at home. Heh, there´s a christmas card with a santa saying Oh, Oh, Oh! (in portuguese they don´t say h´s at the beginning of words).

Rogerio, the investigator with a baptismal date, is doing great. Well won´t say great, but he´s going to be baptized. We did end up moving the baptism back, because he´d missed 4 weeks in a row. But this week he came, even though he was feeling sick and threw up several times in church. We´re hoping and praying that he gets less sick, but even if not, his dedication to being baptized is remarkable. So if, by great, you understand that he threw up several times in the Church bathroom, then yeah. Otherwise, the work is coming along well. There´s an investigator named Domingos that had been given a book of mormon 20 years before and then 8 weeks ago Irmã Maxfield (one of the sisters in my district) ran into him on the street and invited to come to church and he came, and he´s been coming ever since. Anyway, this week we, or rather Irmão Martinz who is a former mission president, stake president, all sorts of president, and likes teaching domingos lessons, committed him to pray about the book of mormon and whether to be baptized. He (domingos) is so incredibly humble. He´s a farmer, and said something to the effect of he didn´t think he was worth being baptized, but he´s a great guy.

Oh, I went to a funeral this week, that was interesting. Afterwards we got roped into eating lunch. I havefeeling sort of like a fubeca (basically, the portuguese don´t have a word for ´slacker´ so the missionaries made one, and it´s stuck and most of the members use it and so nows it´s starting to spread to other people as well) because we´ve had a bunch of conferences and we had a 3 hours lunch and then we had the funeral and then another really long lunch, but this family is awesome. One of the daughters (who´s in her 30´s or so) is getting baptized on saturday, and she got married recently and her husband is marked to be baptized on the 3rd of january. Rogerio, by the way, is marked for the 10th, and we´re hoping that we can help his roommate ezekiel, who has started coming to church and church activities, ready to be baptized too. So yeah, the mom really likes the church, and will probably be baptized, but the father is very traditional and a bit of a drinker and originally was very opposed to the church and wouldn´t let missionaries pray or read scriptures or anything in his house. But we did service for him, and attended the funeral, and went to lunch, and President Esteves (the branch president and father of fillipe) stayed at his house till 1 am comforting him because it was his mother that died. It´s interesting because the Irmãs has been praying and fasting that his heart would be softened, and then his mother died, and he opened up to the branch president. He also came to the Ward party and liked that alot, so he´s slowly but surely opening his heart to the church. There´s another guy, Lois, who is way awesome, who is the boyfriend of their other daughter, and he has a lot of respect for the church and loves the mormon tabernacle choir, so he´s on the list of people we´re patiently waiting for an opportunity to teach, because he´s way nice and a great person.

Hm, 18 minutes, First, it´d be cool to know what areas Logan served in incase i end up in some of those. It´s pretty unlikely that i get transfered this transfer, but it´s possible, and definitely that i´ll be in new places eventually.

So yeah, I need to tell what happened yesterday. Yesterday, we´d planned to go to pinhal to talk to this guy and bater algumas portas, but elder oram was feeling like we needed to do something else, so at the last minute we decided not to go to pinhal, and to head over to the mafra area to look for whatever we needed to be their for. So we were heading in, and i think i said a couple weeks ago we went by this trailer where people were living where an old man smoking under a table yelled at us. For some reason, I´d been feeling like going back, and so as we went by i said lets visit. We went in and ended up talking to them for about 2 hours. We didn´t really teach a lesson, we just heard their story. They were living in Angola and everything was beautiful, but in the 70´s there was a war and so they came to portugal. I´m still not entirely sure how it happened, but at some point they ended up living in this trailer, the sort that goes on a freight train. They have no running water, they have electricity, but they´re living in such terrible conditions. They straight asked us for 200€, but we´re not supposed to give money, but i really want to help them. That very morning, and this week in general, I´ve been studying and praying for Charity, and this definitely helped. It´s hard to feel bad about anything in your life when you have a house and all the food you need and warm clothes and blankets and all. So we´re going to talk to the mission president and see what we can do about that. They need blankets, so we´ll start with that. So, yeah, I´ve just been feeling really greatful for everything i have. I about started crying looking at their pictures of their life before, they were all so happy and normal.

So, with that in mind, two christmas presentts that people can give me without worrying about postage:
1. Invite the missionaries into your home and listen to them, they´re good guys, and they get worn down knocking doors all day, and you can think that your good friend Ammon is in some reletively warm home happy to be able to teach in a language he just barely speaks.
2. Do something nice for someone in need. People here still have such a clear vision of the American dream, that in america there are no poor, no homeless, but the truth is there are lots of people that don´t have a trailer with electricity and beds to live in. So do something for them.

Something i learned this morning in 1 Corinthians (i want to say chapter 8 or so) is about charity. Paul says something to the effect of, though i give all i have to the poor, and give my body to be burned, and have not charity, i am nothing. So yeah, fun fact: Charity is not giving money anymore than faith is saying that you believe. Although Charity and Faith both produce action, these actions should not be confused for the attribute itself. Charity is love, and without it, though you have everything else in the world, you are good for nothing, so yeah, i just thought that was interesting. Vamos ver, i think that´s about all that happened this week. As always, thanks for your prayers, and your support.

Então, hope everything goes great getting ready for christmas, I´m looking forward to talking to everyone and getting presents, and it´s completely ok if they´re a bit late.

Com Muito Amor,
Élder Ammon