Happy Ides of March everybody, watch out for assassinations and the IRS (or any combinations of the two)
Things are good here in Portugal, but now i have to type quicker because my letter just dissapeared and i only have half an hour or so. The weather has been has been beautiful again, right now i'm in Mossamá, the area of the zone leaders. We're doing a divisão (or for those who don't speak portuguese missionary jargon, we traded companions for a day) which has been fun. today we're going to lisbon to do some adventure or something. It'll be cool. I hate typing these things over, it's never as good the second time.
Anyway, in sad news, Ezequiel left this morning to the north because there's no work down here. Rogério will also be heading out tomorrow. It feels like the early 1900's with the economy crashing and everybody moving west, except they're going north.
Yesterday was zone conference, which was really good. I like zone conferences, all members of the church should have zone conferences every six weeks, but that probably wouldn't work very well. Sunday was stake conference, which was cool and in português. The choir sang Chamado ao Servir, which was epic. Members here are awesome. We taught Isabel and her daughter Isabelinha and pretty much all the youth of the branch were there too hanging out. We had them practice talking to their friends about religion. It was lots of fun and was clear that it's really difficult for them. The next day elder Oram and i practiced it in comp study and it turns out we're still pretty bad at it, even being missionaries. But these members really are incredible, it's impressive that the church has only been in portugal 35 years.
This week i got chased by a dog for the first time. I figure that's got to be somesort of important milestone. Saturday we did a divisão with Elder Dean and Peterson (the torres vedras elderes) and elder dean and i were down doing some searching, and went up to knock on this house. So i was standing in front of the door waiting, and looked to the left and saw this little dog house. About 5 seconds late a dog poked it's head out, stared at me for a second, and then got very upset and launched out of the dog house. Elder dean ran out and shut the gate, so i had to jump over this little fence-wall thing. It was pretty intense. I laughed and laughed. Missions are so absurd sometimes.
Tomorrow i do have to go to lisbon to get my visa renewed. You might be getting the impression that i've had very little time to do real missionary work the past few days, which would be true. It feels like it's been almost a week since i worked a normal day in mafra.
As far as work goes, it feels like we're in a sort of rut, several of our investigators are slowing down for whatever reason, and one of our new converts has missed a couple weeks of church. Missionary work, like all things, comes in waves, so these next few days we'll be working hard and trying to teach better. Teaching is funny. It's so hard to teach well when teaching well should be so easy, because it requires so much less work than bad teaching, bad teaching being talking for 40 minutes, good teaching being having a conversation and reading from the scriptures and answering questions. Someday i'll get the hang of this whole mission thing.
Lets see, to answer a couple other questions, i did get the addresses, i'm not sure what's going to happen as far as moving, the other elders are searching for a house in torres vedras, they'll hopeful they'll get out there withing a week or so. I really hope so, since we're set to move out of our house at the end of march, and we can't all live in that one house. The sun goes down at about 6:30 (arrebol is the color of the sky at sunset), dsl still hasn't kicked in, but elder oram says they do have it here, so we'll see if that happens.
Lets see, i dunno what else has been happening here. My zone leader, elder marriot, reminds me a lot of logan in his mannerisms and the way he talks. He lacks a sweet beard, but so do all the missionaries.
Scripture study is good stuff. 2 Corintios 15 is incredible (i think it's 2nd, it could be 1st), as is the story of ammon in the book of mormon. He was such a great missionary, and a really good teacher. Plus he had a sweet arm-slash move that he used on at least two seperate occasions. (in case your confused, break out alma ch 17 and keep reading) Alma 26 is cool too, his little homecoming talk (from where the title to my blog comes) Yeah, scriptures are cool, especially to think about that these people actually lived and were hardcore a long time ago.
So that's the news from portugal. Ficem bem, todos, cuidado com os ides do março, e não se esquecem de pagar o SIR
Com Tanto Amor,
Élder Ammon
