First of all, thanks to all the people that sent happy birthday wishes. It was enough to make the day sunday a beautiful. I'll try to look for cool things to buy for my birthday, i think today i'm going to buy a foam mattress for my bed because one of my goals for this week is to sleep all the way through the night,something i don't know if i've really done since entering the MTC. Don't freak out, i'm not sleep deprived, i'm just getting bored of waking up and having to go back to sleep. They don't have 3 ring binders here, or 3 hole punchers, so that would be an awesome thing to send in the next package (not a hole puncher, we manage with individual hole punchers when we have to make 3 holes)
Anyway, to be brief, my birthday was great, we took a bus up to Torres Vedras to do some procura up there, and it was good. We didn't have tons of 'success' mesmo but we talked to lots of people and it felt nice to get out of Mafra, which is fairly small and can start to feel a little groundhog's day at times. As far as Birthday Celebrations we ate at a McDonalds (which is unreasonably expensive in portugal, i don't know why anyone would eat there for anything other than sentimental reasons) and at night the Esteves (who are so amazing) set up a suprise birthday party for me. I was sort of expecting it, on account of how amazing they are, and so when Irmã Esteves called to say we needed to get over there quick for some vague but important reason, i had suspicions. But yeah, it was great, they made cake and gave me socks, which was funny because in talking about cake i said pretty much the only thing i ever want is socks.
Today is another beautiful day in portugal, i'm hopeful that somewhere in pennsylvania a small mammal saw it's shadow (or didn't see it, i can never remember how that's supposed to work) so winter will be over and we can enjoy beautiful sunny days and dry clothes, but if not, i really love contacting people in the rain. It's weirdly fun.
The Baptism went well. Our mission president went for it, so that was cool. I'm feeling pretty blessed, since in europe baptisms can be scarce at times, but there's a lot going on in Mafra right now, and we're hopeful that it can keep happening when the chapel moves. It's going to be tricky.
One more thing and i'll work on individual letters. This week Domingos didn't attend church. Domingos was contacted about four months ago by one of the irmãs and she invited him to church and he came and had been coming every week since then, but last week we passed by his house and ran into his wife who is evangelical and not very nice, at least not to missionaries. And then she told domingos that if he kept going to church she would leave him and so he came up sunday dropped off a bag of lemons (he has a little farm) and left. We caught him on his way out and talked to him and Francisco came right then and talked to him and told him he just needs to talk to his wife and keep coming to church, because he really wants to, and he even has a testimony that it's true, but his wife is pretty harsh. So we've been praying for something to happen there, because he's an really great person, and deserves to be able to come to church.
This saturday there's a party for Filipe Esteves, who's leaving for his mission in about a week. We also have Elder Bednar's firesides coming up, which are sure to be amazing, so we're pretty excited.
So that''s the news for portugal, where all the Irmãs are strong, the Élderes good looking, and all the members above average.
~Elder Ammon
