I think i'm trying to do too many things at once to this computer, between uploading pictures, loading emails, and typing, i'm sort of killing it, mas tudo bem, vai viver.
This week was pretty much outstanding. If the pictures work, they show what we did last pday. We visited the Convent, which is center of mafra and perhaps the biggest palace in our part of portugal (i say perhaps, i have no idea, but it's the biggest elder Oram has seen. Inside is the largest visitable library in Europe (the largest being underground in rome and off limits) and has somewher aroune 40,000 books. It was one of the coolest rooms i've ever been in. Just to imagine how much human thought is in there is epic.
It's cool hearing about Cassie, it's still hard to believe you have a dog (i think when i get back from my mission i might start using y'all, because here we use vocês which means the same thing, and it is weird to say you. Also, while i'm on the subject, portuguese has gender neutral possessive pronouns, objects, and verbs, so you never have to say his/her or he/she it's everything i've ever hoped for! It does not, unfortunately, have any good way to say “I wonder if...” and there's no verb for 'to smite'). It's too bad Kudzu didn't stick, but i'm glad Isaac considered it, and now i can kep it until someday i get a dog. The pictures are great too, Cassie really does look like a tiger.
In relation to goals, i learned while at the mtc and continue to learn that the trick to goals is that you need specific and measurable plans towards the goal, so that at the end of the day you can definitely say if you did what you need to to be moving towards the goal and how well you did. Otherwise i've found my goals just don't happen.
So, i think that's all the business that i can think of, my week: This was the first week of my second transfer, and so far it's been really good. I realized this week that hapiness doesn't actually have that much to do with success. At least for me, it has a lot more to do with how close to all of my heart might mind and strenth i am giving. If i don't try hard, nothing happens and at the end of the day i feel crappy. If i work really hard, at the end of the day i'm exhausted, but it is a good day, and usually cool stuff happens.
On monday we had a divisão (literally a division, but i think they´re generally called splits in english missions) with the zone leaders, which was way cool. Technically, this was my second division, but last time we ended up doing service and eating all day, and i didn't really learn much, this time it was way cool. Something i had already been thinking about is how to be better at contacting, and i realized that if you just talk to people it works a lot better and is a lot more interesting. Because people are pretty interesting, i dunno if that's just portugal or if there are tons of crazy unique people in america to that i've never met on account of not walking around talking to people all day, but yeah, here's it's cool. But something the Elder C. (my zone leader from Sandy) did, which i think he learned from his companion, is just be absurdly friendly and excited about life. This isn't something you can just fake, you have to actually like life and care about people, but when you show that and work on that people respond really well. At first they're terrified at this crazy american who's talking to them, but then they are impressed that this person is so nice and is actually interested in what they have to say, and then sometimes they listen, and if not, at least they'll remember the nice american that was a member of the church of Jesus Christ.
So that's something i'm going to be working on, i'm bad at contacts, on account of being bad at talking to random people and starting conversations in general, so i've been trying to work on that. The goal is to be talking to 10 random people a day, which is both a mission goal and a personal goal. And i'm starting to get closer to that, which is fun.
Lets see, what else. Saturday we have a baptism, of R., which is exciting. Also exciting is the progress of M., who came to church last sunday pretty much without being invited. We invited him but he was thinking he would be in lisbon that day, so we weren't expecting him, but then he showed up anyway and stayed all three hours. Apparently he even did the closing prayer in priesthood meeting. We were teaching another investigator, D., whose wife has been giving him a bunch of anti mormon stuff and telling him we're the church of the devil and such (it's some poorly done stuff too, it's starts off by saying we reject the bible. That's just silly). So we'll see, it's tough, cus he doesn't feel like he can pray, because he's a really humble guy, a farmer, and doesn't feel like he has words good enough to pray, and until he prays and has that testimony he is very prone to every wind of doctrine.
Ok, 7 more minutes. The other cool thing that happened this week is during the division elder oram and elder marriot ran into this guy J. who is an inactive member on account of not really knowing where the church is and having work, but he came up and we taught him a little lesson with F. and then ate dinner at the chinese restaurant (where he somehow managed to pay, which is frustrating, but saved us 12€) and then came with us to teach an investigator, and then went to english class. He's a great kid, (i say kid, he's 20) and wants to serve a mission, and is going to start coming to church, and talk to his boss about changing his schedule a bit to make that easier. So that's awesome.
So that's about all the news from Mafra. I hope everything is going well out there. I'm going to try very hard to write a real letter this week, but that may or may not happen. We'll see. Either way, one more time (and because i think it got deleted last week) thanks so much for the money, the presents, the prayers, and the ongoing support. It's hard to imagine i will spend all of 2009 in portugal, but é verdade. Até proxima semana!
Tanto Amor,
Elder Ammon
This week was pretty much outstanding. If the pictures work, they show what we did last pday. We visited the Convent, which is center of mafra and perhaps the biggest palace in our part of portugal (i say perhaps, i have no idea, but it's the biggest elder Oram has seen. Inside is the largest visitable library in Europe (the largest being underground in rome and off limits) and has somewher aroune 40,000 books. It was one of the coolest rooms i've ever been in. Just to imagine how much human thought is in there is epic.
It's cool hearing about Cassie, it's still hard to believe you have a dog (i think when i get back from my mission i might start using y'all, because here we use vocês which means the same thing, and it is weird to say you. Also, while i'm on the subject, portuguese has gender neutral possessive pronouns, objects, and verbs, so you never have to say his/her or he/she it's everything i've ever hoped for! It does not, unfortunately, have any good way to say “I wonder if...” and there's no verb for 'to smite'). It's too bad Kudzu didn't stick, but i'm glad Isaac considered it, and now i can kep it until someday i get a dog. The pictures are great too, Cassie really does look like a tiger.
In relation to goals, i learned while at the mtc and continue to learn that the trick to goals is that you need specific and measurable plans towards the goal, so that at the end of the day you can definitely say if you did what you need to to be moving towards the goal and how well you did. Otherwise i've found my goals just don't happen.
So, i think that's all the business that i can think of, my week: This was the first week of my second transfer, and so far it's been really good. I realized this week that hapiness doesn't actually have that much to do with success. At least for me, it has a lot more to do with how close to all of my heart might mind and strenth i am giving. If i don't try hard, nothing happens and at the end of the day i feel crappy. If i work really hard, at the end of the day i'm exhausted, but it is a good day, and usually cool stuff happens.
On monday we had a divisão (literally a division, but i think they´re generally called splits in english missions) with the zone leaders, which was way cool. Technically, this was my second division, but last time we ended up doing service and eating all day, and i didn't really learn much, this time it was way cool. Something i had already been thinking about is how to be better at contacting, and i realized that if you just talk to people it works a lot better and is a lot more interesting. Because people are pretty interesting, i dunno if that's just portugal or if there are tons of crazy unique people in america to that i've never met on account of not walking around talking to people all day, but yeah, here's it's cool. But something the Elder C. (my zone leader from Sandy) did, which i think he learned from his companion, is just be absurdly friendly and excited about life. This isn't something you can just fake, you have to actually like life and care about people, but when you show that and work on that people respond really well. At first they're terrified at this crazy american who's talking to them, but then they are impressed that this person is so nice and is actually interested in what they have to say, and then sometimes they listen, and if not, at least they'll remember the nice american that was a member of the church of Jesus Christ.
So that's something i'm going to be working on, i'm bad at contacts, on account of being bad at talking to random people and starting conversations in general, so i've been trying to work on that. The goal is to be talking to 10 random people a day, which is both a mission goal and a personal goal. And i'm starting to get closer to that, which is fun.
Lets see, what else. Saturday we have a baptism, of R., which is exciting. Also exciting is the progress of M., who came to church last sunday pretty much without being invited. We invited him but he was thinking he would be in lisbon that day, so we weren't expecting him, but then he showed up anyway and stayed all three hours. Apparently he even did the closing prayer in priesthood meeting. We were teaching another investigator, D., whose wife has been giving him a bunch of anti mormon stuff and telling him we're the church of the devil and such (it's some poorly done stuff too, it's starts off by saying we reject the bible. That's just silly). So we'll see, it's tough, cus he doesn't feel like he can pray, because he's a really humble guy, a farmer, and doesn't feel like he has words good enough to pray, and until he prays and has that testimony he is very prone to every wind of doctrine.
Ok, 7 more minutes. The other cool thing that happened this week is during the division elder oram and elder marriot ran into this guy J. who is an inactive member on account of not really knowing where the church is and having work, but he came up and we taught him a little lesson with F. and then ate dinner at the chinese restaurant (where he somehow managed to pay, which is frustrating, but saved us 12€) and then came with us to teach an investigator, and then went to english class. He's a great kid, (i say kid, he's 20) and wants to serve a mission, and is going to start coming to church, and talk to his boss about changing his schedule a bit to make that easier. So that's awesome.
So that's about all the news from Mafra. I hope everything is going well out there. I'm going to try very hard to write a real letter this week, but that may or may not happen. We'll see. Either way, one more time (and because i think it got deleted last week) thanks so much for the money, the presents, the prayers, and the ongoing support. It's hard to imagine i will spend all of 2009 in portugal, but é verdade. Até proxima semana!
Tanto Amor,
Elder Ammon
