Carnival came and went with out anything crazy. There was no egg throwing, although we saw a few around on the ground. We did almost caught some balloons, but they ended up missing us and the nice lady that was next to us. Carnival is funny though because it seems like people get dressed up in costumes but then don't do anything special, so you see a bunch of people in costumes shopping and going about their business. We celebrated the first day of lent by buying a shocking amount of groceries for suprisingly small amounts of money and later today we're going to clean our house. President Terry decreed that this p'day everyone in the mission is staying home and cleaning the house, because they've been getting out of hand. We don't do all that many adventures, so our house isn't that out of hand, but it's definitely due for some cleaning.
I forget when my new president starts, but they did say their names would come up soon on church news or the ensign or something like that. My address will probably stay the same until about the end of march, when we'll be moving into the other house. The Elders there are in the process of looking for a house in Torres Vedras, but they can't go up there until the chapel moves, which could still take a little bit of time, so we're hoping we don't all end up living in the same predio, but it could happen. But basically you're probably safe sending stuff to my house for a little while, or to the mission office.
Speaking of the mission office, thanks a whole bunch to everyone who send me stuff. I'm going to work to respond to everything today, but it made me extremely happy and successfully killed the idea of going a tranfer without sugar. Elder Oram had been pushing for it, but it died pretty quick. It was all over when we found an ice cream bar.
Today I we became regulars at the internet place. Now we have a tab. Oh, and it was cool to hear from Max, it's fun to imagine him MTCing it up, i think the italian elders are on the same floor as the portuguese elders, the 3rd floor of the devotional building, so he needs to keep an eye out for portuguese missionaries and teachers, especially Irmã Olsen, since she's probably still over there.
Anyway, i think that's all the news, this week was pretty cool. The weather here has been beautiful and incredible and we've been leaving the jackets at home. There are little lizards running all over the place and our clothes have never been so dry. Filipe and Irmã Maxfield left, and Elders Dean and Peterson came in. They're pretty cool, and it will be interesting to have a district of four elders. It's my, and almost elder Oram's, first time to be in a district without Sister Missionaries, there are lots of Irmãs in Portugal for some reason, but that's pretty cool.
As far as the Investigators, they're doing good. Wanderlay wants to be baptized, but isn't sure if he's going to be going back to Brasil or staying in portugal. He, like what seems like everyone else in portugal, is unemployed and having a hard time. Things are rough economically here, Manuel is currently not marked for baptism, i think maybe Elder Bednar made him feel unprepared for making a covenent, but he still wants to get baptized, we just need to help him feel more prepared, and he too is out of a job, which makes his life rough. It seems like pretty much all the people we teach are out of work, which i suppose isn't that suprising, since the people that have jobs are almost never at home.
This week we met a guy named Daniel. Or rather we met him a couple weeks ago, but we started talking to him a bit this week. So this is the story of Daniel: Daniel comes from the North, near Guarda, i'm not sure why he came down here, but he's been living with his wife and dog, Jessie (the dog). I'm not quite sure in what order this happened, but it basically went like this. When he was pretty young his mother died, i think it was about then that he lost faith in God, and then a few months ago his father died. His boss has refused to pay him, so now he pretty much broke. His wife is leaving him, and he's getting kicked out of his house on friday, and last week he feel out of a four story building. No joke, he was putting his clothes out on the line and he reached out to grab his cat and feel off the balcony, getting pretty torn up in the process by the clothes line, and the ground didn't help. But he is pretty much miraculously alive, for having falling 40 feet and landing about a foot away from a big cement block (the place he landed was grass). So we went to visit him on monday and found out about all this and talked to him for a while. We talked to the branch president and we got his medicine taken care of (he had gone a week without having money for the pain killers) and we're going to get him up to the north where he has friends to help him, since here he has pretty much no one. But yeah, falling out of a building is intense. There's some crazy stuff that happens in the world.
Reading Dad's journal this week has been really surreal. It's the weirdest thing to read my dad's writing when he sounds like a young, naive kid from Hyde Park. Also seeing my dad make typos is really interesting. The weirdest thing though is when he describes something the exact same way as i've experienced it, like his feeling when he got into the MTC, or as he was leaving the MTC, or in the church activity when he did almost the exact same thing my companion and I did (stand behind your companion and be their arms and do funny things). Also, there's about a 7 month gap from his first few months to when he's been there for a year. There's such a huge difference in the writing, i wonder if i'll mature that much in the next 7 months. So yeah, that's been a cool experience.
Lets see, what else happened this week? Not to much, it was a good week, we had our last sunday in the chapel, next week we're in the Casa do Povo, and then we have stake conference, and hopefully the new chapel will be ready soon after that, it's pretty much just waiting for some papers from the Camera Municipal, so we'll see how that goes. But that's all the news from me, i'll try to make sure i'm being safe and wise.
Então, ficem bem todos, agradeço pelos dons e orações, até proxima semana. Abraço
~Elder Ammon
I forget when my new president starts, but they did say their names would come up soon on church news or the ensign or something like that. My address will probably stay the same until about the end of march, when we'll be moving into the other house. The Elders there are in the process of looking for a house in Torres Vedras, but they can't go up there until the chapel moves, which could still take a little bit of time, so we're hoping we don't all end up living in the same predio, but it could happen. But basically you're probably safe sending stuff to my house for a little while, or to the mission office.
Speaking of the mission office, thanks a whole bunch to everyone who send me stuff. I'm going to work to respond to everything today, but it made me extremely happy and successfully killed the idea of going a tranfer without sugar. Elder Oram had been pushing for it, but it died pretty quick. It was all over when we found an ice cream bar.
Today I we became regulars at the internet place. Now we have a tab. Oh, and it was cool to hear from Max, it's fun to imagine him MTCing it up, i think the italian elders are on the same floor as the portuguese elders, the 3rd floor of the devotional building, so he needs to keep an eye out for portuguese missionaries and teachers, especially Irmã Olsen, since she's probably still over there.
Anyway, i think that's all the news, this week was pretty cool. The weather here has been beautiful and incredible and we've been leaving the jackets at home. There are little lizards running all over the place and our clothes have never been so dry. Filipe and Irmã Maxfield left, and Elders Dean and Peterson came in. They're pretty cool, and it will be interesting to have a district of four elders. It's my, and almost elder Oram's, first time to be in a district without Sister Missionaries, there are lots of Irmãs in Portugal for some reason, but that's pretty cool.
As far as the Investigators, they're doing good. Wanderlay wants to be baptized, but isn't sure if he's going to be going back to Brasil or staying in portugal. He, like what seems like everyone else in portugal, is unemployed and having a hard time. Things are rough economically here, Manuel is currently not marked for baptism, i think maybe Elder Bednar made him feel unprepared for making a covenent, but he still wants to get baptized, we just need to help him feel more prepared, and he too is out of a job, which makes his life rough. It seems like pretty much all the people we teach are out of work, which i suppose isn't that suprising, since the people that have jobs are almost never at home.
This week we met a guy named Daniel. Or rather we met him a couple weeks ago, but we started talking to him a bit this week. So this is the story of Daniel: Daniel comes from the North, near Guarda, i'm not sure why he came down here, but he's been living with his wife and dog, Jessie (the dog). I'm not quite sure in what order this happened, but it basically went like this. When he was pretty young his mother died, i think it was about then that he lost faith in God, and then a few months ago his father died. His boss has refused to pay him, so now he pretty much broke. His wife is leaving him, and he's getting kicked out of his house on friday, and last week he feel out of a four story building. No joke, he was putting his clothes out on the line and he reached out to grab his cat and feel off the balcony, getting pretty torn up in the process by the clothes line, and the ground didn't help. But he is pretty much miraculously alive, for having falling 40 feet and landing about a foot away from a big cement block (the place he landed was grass). So we went to visit him on monday and found out about all this and talked to him for a while. We talked to the branch president and we got his medicine taken care of (he had gone a week without having money for the pain killers) and we're going to get him up to the north where he has friends to help him, since here he has pretty much no one. But yeah, falling out of a building is intense. There's some crazy stuff that happens in the world.
Reading Dad's journal this week has been really surreal. It's the weirdest thing to read my dad's writing when he sounds like a young, naive kid from Hyde Park. Also seeing my dad make typos is really interesting. The weirdest thing though is when he describes something the exact same way as i've experienced it, like his feeling when he got into the MTC, or as he was leaving the MTC, or in the church activity when he did almost the exact same thing my companion and I did (stand behind your companion and be their arms and do funny things). Also, there's about a 7 month gap from his first few months to when he's been there for a year. There's such a huge difference in the writing, i wonder if i'll mature that much in the next 7 months. So yeah, that's been a cool experience.
Lets see, what else happened this week? Not to much, it was a good week, we had our last sunday in the chapel, next week we're in the Casa do Povo, and then we have stake conference, and hopefully the new chapel will be ready soon after that, it's pretty much just waiting for some papers from the Camera Municipal, so we'll see how that goes. But that's all the news from me, i'll try to make sure i'm being safe and wise.
Então, ficem bem todos, agradeço pelos dons e orações, até proxima semana. Abraço
~Elder Ammon
