I'm not sure how to make patrick a portuguese name, but paciência
Happy St Patricks day, Pi Day, Ides of march, and any other insignificant holiday that passed you guys by this week (unless you were in boston, teaching math, or in rome, respectively)
As far as answers to the questions, there are not fire ants, nor mosquitos, but i'm pretty sure i've gotten flees at least twice. It's really not as bad as i was expecting, it's just like chiggers, and they don't seem to hang out for very long, which is good.
I believe President Terry is going home in July also. I've heard the new mission president was cheif of police or something in Brasil, and that he was on the winning olypic voleyball team. So hopefully he doesn't go militarian on us, or make us all play volleyball on p'days.
This week continued to have all kinds of crazy stuff, church on sunday was in the afternoon which meant we got to study on a sunday (it was weird) and then ate lunch at the house of Isabel, who is an awesome member here, and a bunch of other members were there too. We had Gonçalo do a lesson on the atonement, he had to do 10 pushups for every person, so that they could get a candy egg, even if they refused. We had gotten him ready for it before hand, and it worked out really well. For his parents especially, they had a suprisingly hard time seeing their son go through that. It was a really special lesson, and then i read Isaiah 53 where it talks about really beautiful the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It was good.
Monday we had a Zone meeting in Caçem, and we didn't get back until about 6. That night we had family night with Francisco, and did a lesson about missionary work, there are a few members here that are a bit discouraged because after praying and fasting and working they haven't seen a ton of success. But that doesn't mean they're giving up, which is good. The Members here are so great.
Tuesday i went to Lisbon a second time to do the second half of my visa, which took up most of another day. Something i've learned over the last couple weeks is that not doing anything, just like working hard, is both addictive and extremely habit forming. It's hard to get going after sitting around for a while, and there isn't anything much more tiring than doing nothing.
As far as news, This saturday we're moving! So go ahead and sending all sorts of exciting things there. I'm going to be living above a pastry shope, and a pizza place. It's going to be dangerous. The elders found and signed a house up in torres vedras, so their moving up there. It's all very exciting.
Lets see...other news. Oh yeah, transfers are every six weeks, and my next tranfer starts the first week in april. The Smart money is on Elder Oram heading out and me staying here one more, but you never can tell with bees. We have a baptism the first saturday in April of Maura, who right now is our golden ray of sunshine in a pool of struggling people. She stopped drinking coffee this week (they have this stuff here called Brasa, that is pretty much fake coffee made from barley. I've heard they have it in the states too. Some of the members are really good at it and it ends up very coffee like. I've heard it tastes almost, but not quite, nothing like coffee, but it gets the job done. Lots of missionaries start drinking it because it's actually not that bad, as well as lemon and other types of herbal tea, which are incredibly good and i'll definitely keep drinking them after the mission. Wow, i digressed, Maura, who is incredible, is doing well and will be baptized in a couple weeks here. It's amazing and very rewarding to teach people who actually want the Gospel in their lives.
We taught this guy yesterday, Joaquim, who we've taught a quite a few times, but it looks like we'll stop since he is not progressing at all. It was intense though, this time he kept trying to disprove the church with the bible (which doesn't really work, especially if you know the bible much) but it was a struggle to keep it from turning into an argument. At the end he pulled out Jehova's Witnesses doctrine on us and told us that their book, "What the Bible really says" is a really good book. It was a little suprising. Sadly Maria was also there, i would have liked to have a more uplifting lesson with her, since it looks like maybe her husband just died (this was the first time we taught her, though we've met her a couple times) but it at least she recognized the gaping holes in joaquim's argument, but the spirit of contention is never the best.
Anyway, the other elders are waiting on me and elder oram wants to go play tennis. This is the first day of my mission that i've warn 'p-day' clothes. So yeah, stay well everybody, lots of love, thanks for the support, letters, prayers, candy, and everything else, until next week.
Abração
~Elder Ammon
Editors Note: I've posted Ammon's new address on his facebook account. For security reasons, he's asked I not have his actual address on here, just the address of the mission home which will work all through his mission.
