Last p-day i went to Castle! It was so amazing. It was like being right in the middle of Lord of the Rings. That castle was started sometime in the 9th century. Portugal is so amazing! I get to be here for two years, i need to make sure i see all the amazing stuff while i'm here. At the same time, adventures on p-day generally mean that our house goes uncleaned and we end up really tired, so todays been a nice chill day of shopping, cleaning, and writing letters. We have an hour of 'relax' scheduled in. It's going to be awesome.
I can definitely see how getting back from the mission would be weird. I already feel really uncomfortable just sitting around because i know how much there is to do in our house, in portugal in general. The idea of watching tv doesn't quite seem realistic.
I'm glad to hear Obama is inspiring the nation, we found an obama comic book in the stoor where we do internet last week. Elder Oram bought four (1€ each) and gave me one for my christmas present. We can't read it until we get back from our missions, but we're way excited about reading that. Portugal is so funny.
Elder Oram suggested last week that you generally type letters the night before, because it's unusual that we do it in the afternoon. Most missionaries aparently do it in the morning, but Elder Oram admits that he is bad at p-days because he's served most of his mission in the more rural areas where adventures are hard to do. Apparently things get pretty crazy in Lisbon, someday i hope to serve out there, but i like mafra a lot. I would love to be here in the summer, it's so beautiful, although i hear in the summer we have to stay pretty far from the beaches. So it's probably for the best that it's winter, since we can go to ericeira, which is way cool.
As far as keeping our apartment clean, i ofcourse put my clothes in my clothes hamper, but i guess that is something i started doing while in the MTC, so it wouldn't necessarily be expected. Our apartment stays about as clean and tidy as possible. We try to do all the suggested cleaning stuff, we're slightly hampered by the shocking wetness of our house and the weather, but it stays cleaner than anywhere i've lived in my life, but then we basically only eat, sleep, and study in our apartment, so it doesn't have a lot of time to get dirty. Oh, and yeah, we make our beds everymorning.
It's great to hear the letter got the safe and sound, everything in there made it it sounds like, a couple days after sending it i started worrying about it and prayed that it would all get their safely. This makes the second post related miracle. Hopefully from here on our letters can get back and forth without divine intervention. Also, great to hear the everythings good with Dad on the cancer front. Rogério has some pretty serious health problems, but he is also fairly patient and faithful in that. I found out this week that D&C 122 is probably one of the coolest sections ever. It's intense. 121 has some really good stuff, but 122 is one of the most well spoken things i've ever seen. I need to start bringing scriptures to the store so that i can quote things.
Lets see, what else is going on Portugal. Our missionary day with Edgar and Carla went really well. It was sort of crazy, we spent most of the day teaching, running to pick up another investigator and then teaching some more. Elder Oram set a personal record for lessons with a member in a week. I guess i did to, but i've only been here for 3 months, so it's not quite as impressive. But yeah, it was really good. We found some really great contacts, i think probably the best part of the whole thing was knocking doors that had already shown a bit of interest with a member. I think two americans in black coats (our call packets say no black suits, but of course all the missionaries end up with black rain coats, and the people of portugal just don't wear black much unless they're going to funerals, so we show up on their doorstep looking like the CIA and they wonder who died)
It continues to be rainy and misty here, but that also means it's a little warmer, but the impressive wetness in our house more than makes up for that. i am starting to look forward to the spring though, i only have one more month to get through, and it happens to be the shortest one, que sorte! We starting teaching this guy, Miguel, who is way cool. He's the first person i've contacted that we've successfully started teaching, which is as much a testimony of my short comings in contacting as the difficulty of finding people to teach. As it happens, we are really blessed with people to teach. We have several people progressing towards baptism, and have managed to teach about 20 lessons each week this transfer. That said, we're hurting for new investigators. It's tough, you can really get that kicking against the pricks feeling sometimes, especially because we accidentally wasted our entire night last night. Well, i shouldn't say that, we set up a suprise 20th anniversary dinner for the branch president who does so much for us and has been under a lot of stress lately, it made him really happy, almost to the point of tears, we just didn't have a lot to do while getting it ready and ended up spending our whole night not doing much, but we've got desire and are working hard on the dilligence, so hopefully we're start seeing, or rather, continue seeing more, miracles happen here in mafra.
That's about all the news from portugal this week. I continue to be reletively happy and healthy and warm enough to not complain. Thermals continue to be a huge blessing, as do all the prayers and support. Keep america in one piece until i get back.
Até proxima semana
~Elder Ammon
I can definitely see how getting back from the mission would be weird. I already feel really uncomfortable just sitting around because i know how much there is to do in our house, in portugal in general. The idea of watching tv doesn't quite seem realistic.
I'm glad to hear Obama is inspiring the nation, we found an obama comic book in the stoor where we do internet last week. Elder Oram bought four (1€ each) and gave me one for my christmas present. We can't read it until we get back from our missions, but we're way excited about reading that. Portugal is so funny.
Elder Oram suggested last week that you generally type letters the night before, because it's unusual that we do it in the afternoon. Most missionaries aparently do it in the morning, but Elder Oram admits that he is bad at p-days because he's served most of his mission in the more rural areas where adventures are hard to do. Apparently things get pretty crazy in Lisbon, someday i hope to serve out there, but i like mafra a lot. I would love to be here in the summer, it's so beautiful, although i hear in the summer we have to stay pretty far from the beaches. So it's probably for the best that it's winter, since we can go to ericeira, which is way cool.
As far as keeping our apartment clean, i ofcourse put my clothes in my clothes hamper, but i guess that is something i started doing while in the MTC, so it wouldn't necessarily be expected. Our apartment stays about as clean and tidy as possible. We try to do all the suggested cleaning stuff, we're slightly hampered by the shocking wetness of our house and the weather, but it stays cleaner than anywhere i've lived in my life, but then we basically only eat, sleep, and study in our apartment, so it doesn't have a lot of time to get dirty. Oh, and yeah, we make our beds everymorning.
It's great to hear the letter got the safe and sound, everything in there made it it sounds like, a couple days after sending it i started worrying about it and prayed that it would all get their safely. This makes the second post related miracle. Hopefully from here on our letters can get back and forth without divine intervention. Also, great to hear the everythings good with Dad on the cancer front. Rogério has some pretty serious health problems, but he is also fairly patient and faithful in that. I found out this week that D&C 122 is probably one of the coolest sections ever. It's intense. 121 has some really good stuff, but 122 is one of the most well spoken things i've ever seen. I need to start bringing scriptures to the store so that i can quote things.
Lets see, what else is going on Portugal. Our missionary day with Edgar and Carla went really well. It was sort of crazy, we spent most of the day teaching, running to pick up another investigator and then teaching some more. Elder Oram set a personal record for lessons with a member in a week. I guess i did to, but i've only been here for 3 months, so it's not quite as impressive. But yeah, it was really good. We found some really great contacts, i think probably the best part of the whole thing was knocking doors that had already shown a bit of interest with a member. I think two americans in black coats (our call packets say no black suits, but of course all the missionaries end up with black rain coats, and the people of portugal just don't wear black much unless they're going to funerals, so we show up on their doorstep looking like the CIA and they wonder who died)
It continues to be rainy and misty here, but that also means it's a little warmer, but the impressive wetness in our house more than makes up for that. i am starting to look forward to the spring though, i only have one more month to get through, and it happens to be the shortest one, que sorte! We starting teaching this guy, Miguel, who is way cool. He's the first person i've contacted that we've successfully started teaching, which is as much a testimony of my short comings in contacting as the difficulty of finding people to teach. As it happens, we are really blessed with people to teach. We have several people progressing towards baptism, and have managed to teach about 20 lessons each week this transfer. That said, we're hurting for new investigators. It's tough, you can really get that kicking against the pricks feeling sometimes, especially because we accidentally wasted our entire night last night. Well, i shouldn't say that, we set up a suprise 20th anniversary dinner for the branch president who does so much for us and has been under a lot of stress lately, it made him really happy, almost to the point of tears, we just didn't have a lot to do while getting it ready and ended up spending our whole night not doing much, but we've got desire and are working hard on the dilligence, so hopefully we're start seeing, or rather, continue seeing more, miracles happen here in mafra.
That's about all the news from portugal this week. I continue to be reletively happy and healthy and warm enough to not complain. Thermals continue to be a huge blessing, as do all the prayers and support. Keep america in one piece until i get back.
Até proxima semana
~Elder Ammon
