April 29, 2009

Olá Amados, como estão?

Things are pretty great here in Portugal, despite its persistance in being chilly and rainy. I'm sure when it gets hot i'll miss the weather though, so i won't complain much. Time keeps flying by, we have transfers coming up in two weeks already, at this point i won't even try to guess what's going to happen, but it'll be exciting.

I hear the swine flu is pretty epic, we happened to talk to an otorrinolaringologista (probably misspelled, ear, nose, and thoat doctor) which is an interesting story that i'll talk about in a bit, and he didn't seem to worried about it, but i'll look out for pigs with flu-like symptoms.

It good to hear that everything's going well with the family. It reminds me of the scripture in D&C 100 that says something to the effect of 'your family is well, and they are in my hands.' But yeah, good to know.

The week went well, a few really amazing things happened, a few somewhat sad things happened. The coolest thing is that Síria, this girl from Brasil that wants to serve a mission but hasn't been able to go to church because of her work, finally found new work in Lisbon, and is going to have Sundays off, which is great. Ana Paula is going to get baptized with her two kids, which is also cool. We got a call from Wanderley on sunday and he went to church and is doing good out there. We sent him letters last p-day, so hopefully we'll hear from him sometime soon.

Did the pictures I emailed get to you last week? It's possible they got lost in the series of tubes between here and america, but there shouldn't have been problems. Oh. Also, I finished the Dad's journal as far as I have it so far, and one more thing to stick in a package would be some nutrigina facesoap (just some basic stuff) All they have here is Clean and Clear, and I think I already decided that that doesn't work.

In less happy news, Maiery's mom slipped at work and had a concussion or something, so Maeiry was up really late and didn't make it to church, meaning she won't be able to be baptized on the 9th. (Here, we have a rule that you have to go to church 5 times before you can be baptized, at first I thought it was a little harsh, but i've yet to find someone who was prepared enough to be baptized who hadn't been to church 5 times, so I think it's a pretty good rule). She still wants to be baptized though, so it will just be a matter of when. We also got a chance to meet the Anti-Mormon Aunt. She turned out to be pretty nice, which was unexpected. The day before Francisco and Fatima Esteves (two members here) saw the aunt and maiery and her cousins in the supermarket and gave them a ride back, and then the next day we gave them our umbrella so that they wouldn't get soaking wet in the rain (we got a little bit soaking wet in the rain) after hanging out with them at the hospital waiting to hear about Adriana (maeiry's mom).

That story could have been a little better organized, but all this to say she's had some good contact with members recently, so hopefully she'll at least recognize that we're not of the devil.

Um, other news...The weeks sort of run together. Today i'm doing a division with Elder Linquist, who was in my group in the MTC (divisões are when you switch companions for a day, I think you call them exchanges in english) which is fun. I always learn things when I work with other people, that's the general idea between transfers, but I guess I have a lot to learn from Elder Oram or something.

In more happy news, Manuel went to church again. He's been an investigator for a really long time now, and we're still pretty perplexed as to why he doesn't progress, but he's working on quitting smoking and is doing well with that, so that's great.

Oh! My story about the eye nose and throat doctor. Monday, we didn't have any appointments, and our district meeting had been moved to tuesday, so we were contacting people in the morning, when this lady came up to us and said, “Do you speak english??” She was rather distraught. We said 'yes' and as we talked to her we found out she was from canada and was just a little bit lost in Mafra, not in the geographical sense (mafra is pretty small) but more in an emotional way. She needed to find a travel agent and a doctor and such. We ended up spending almost an entire day with this woman, helping her get what she needed. It turned out to be a pretty cool day of service, met some cool people, saw people be charitable (portuguese people really are very nice, especially when you don't talk to them about religion) and helped a lady get everything worked out to get back home. By the way, fun fact: If you have a Cold when you fly, you have a chance of collapsing the tubes that run from your nose to your ears and there by causing extreme amounts of pain. Não bom.

So that was basically my week. It was a good week. Mother's Day is coming up fast, did it cost you any money last time for me to call? I'll probably be calling from the esteves again, but I still don't know what time i'll be calling. I'll try to make sure I know that before next week. Anyway, until then, stay well, avoid pandemics, epidemics, and any other variety of -demics. Thankyou for your prayers, your letters, and your support, all of which help keep me going. Time is passing absurdly fast, I don't know if it's like that over there too, but here it's crazy. It might just because we're farther east. Anyway

Abracões e Beixinhos

~Elder

April 22, 2009

“It must needs be there be opposition in all things”... “he that the Lord loves he chasteneth" One week i'll remember to either bring scriptures or write down scripture quotes before hand, but i think i quoted that more or less correctly. Well, this week we learned that the pride cycle continues to be a true principle, even when you try to avoid it, but compared to swarming babilonians or plagues, this week was pretty calm. It rained all week and the work struggled, and i lost my wallet (which is a real bummer, there wasn't a whole lot of money in it, but i had a little USB stick that i had bought to keep track of stuff and some US coins were in there. Also, caitlin will be happy to know that it wasn't her sweet green awesome wallet, but a 1€ coin purse), but it still ended up being a really great week. Sunday was awesome. Our new chapel is beautiful (as you can see in the pictures) and probably one of the more interesting buildings i've had church in. It was our ward council and so we had around 50 or 60 people there, it was pretty cool. Ana Paula and her two kids came, as did some of the investigators of the Torres Vedras Elders, including Maria de Graça, who hopefully is going to get baptized soon. She's been wanting to get baptized for a year or more, but the guy she's been with for around 15 years is married to another woman. But this week the elderes fasted and prayed and she went to Mario (the man) and asked him to work it out, and she said she'd have the papers on monday. We still haven't heard from the other elderes whether or not it happened, but hopefully it all goes well, she's a pretty great person.

After church on sunday we went to a member's house for lunch. It ended up being one of those member lunches that we're at for several hours and feel just a little guilty for spending so much time, but at the same time having lots of fun and building good relationships with the members here. In true pioneer fasion we had a stick pull, which, as it turns out, is really rough on the back. So yeah, that was a really good day.

By the way, Wanderley went to Betin. There are, if i remember right, somewhere between 20 and 30 missions in brasil, so it could be understandably difficult to find out which mission it's in. I believe the package was sent to the mission home, which is where i got it.

It'd cool to hear about the my cousins who are out in the world. It's cool to thing that 50,000 families parents are getting ready for a phone call on mother's day, and it's nice that it'll be dad's birthday too. Fun stuff.

Anyway, so back to the week, we started teaching Johni this week, who's a brasilian kid who wanderley introduced to us. We found out a couple days ago that he's also friends with Daniel, a youth in the ward. Daniel's sort of freaked out that we're teaching one of his friends, i wonder how i would have reacted back in the day when i was 14 if the missionaries told me they were teaching one of my friends. It would be a bit strange i guess. But yeah, so Johni's a good kid, and his mom is great, but she works about all the time, and so she's really happy that her son's learning about God and such. We'd really like to teach them together, but it's tough. People work a lot hear in Portugal, it's got to be hard to be a single parent, i always wonder if the U.S. Is like this too and i've just never known, or if portugal is a lot different. I'm assuming that live in the US is just about as hard, but i could be wrong.

Wanderley flew back on saturday, or at least he tried to but he ended up not getting through the line intime so he had to sleep in the airport over night, but now he's safe and sound in Brasil. Maura is really happy and super excited to share the gospel with everyone in a ten mile radius, especially with her son and husband. It really is impressive that change that happens in people's lives.

Mairy has been struggling a bit this week. At first we thought it was because her family was against the church (some of them are rabidly anti-mormon. There are a few evangelical churches here that have 'theology' classes where they teach lies about other churches, ours included. It's a little frustrating.) but as it turns out she's just a bit depressed all around. We talked to her mom yesterday who's is worried about her and, as it turned out, very supportive of us teaching her and her being baptized, because her mom, Adriana, recognizes that it would be a good thing in her life. We like Adriana. So we'll see what happens with that, hopefully it'll turn out ok.

Other news...This 9 of May it looks like we'll have a baptismal saturday of South American proportions. We have 3 people marked for that day, the Elderes of Torres Vedras also have 3, Erika, a member in the ward, might have her son baptized on that day, and Ezequiel is getting back from the north and wants to be baptized. On top of that some of the other Wards in the zone might have baptizism on the same day, so it could be just a little bit crazy awesome. It's still a ways away and a lot has to happen for all that to work out, but it would be something really special.

We also have amother general authority coming on the 8th of May, which makes the 3rd to come in my 4 transfers in portugal. There should be a glossary and pronunciation guide that comes with my letters. Anyway, so that's going to be exciting.

Well that's about all the news i can think of at the moment. Stay well out in the U. S. of A. and don't forget to feed your missionaries and write the ones that live far away.

~Elder Ammon

April 15, 2009

Olá família, hope all your taxes are done. I'm here enjoying one of the last times in my life i won't have to do taxes, good stuff. Hopefully all your easter festivites went well.

I would like to make a general announcement. Portugal has pretty much all the bathroom supplies i need, and they fall under my necessities that are provided by the church. Not to say i don't love all forms of bathroom stuff as presents, i learned to love them through years of stocking stuffers with my family, but considering how heavy shampoo and such is and how much it costs to mail stuff, nobody needs to worry that i'm going without when it comes to hygiene. The one thing that may be worth sending is contact solution which is, for some reason, absurdly expensive here, but it's possible i just don't know where to find it on the cheap. I'll probably regret saying that when i get several boxes of contact solution, but all this to say pictures and letters and mission stuff (socks are great, especially brown socks) are generally cheaper and longer lasting than shampoo and such. But send whatever you want, i'll appreciate it immenely.

So, this week: This week was pretty fantastic. We had the baptism on saturday which went really well. It's the third time we've planned a baptismal service and this time we got it right. The programs were done a few days in advance, the musical number was great, people even got there ontime! (members of the church, even more in portugal than in the states, seem to have trouble getting meetings going on time) Both the baptisms went well, i was a bit nervice but did ok. That night we went and taught wanderley and got him prepped for confirmation and recieving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, which was really nice, and is something we want to do with all of our investigators.

Sunday was nice, it was our last sunday in the Casa do Povo, next week we're headed out to the new chapel. Because it was easter the café was closed and the people had forgotten to unlock the door, so we sat outside the door for about half an hour until we discovered an unlocked stage door and went in there. About ten minutes later they found someone with the keys and we got started. The confirmations were nice, elder oram did a good job with Wanderley, and i confirmed Maura, which was definitley harder than baptizing. Giving blessings in portuguese is harder than in english, at least for me, i imagine the portuguese would disagree.

So my week is nearly as interesting to me as the people i teach, so hopefully that's true of you also, and i'll spend the rest of my time telling you about the cool things that have happened this week.

Wanderley is incredible (you may notice i'm spelling it wanderley now instead of wanderlay, which has a lot to do with the fact that i've been spelling his name wrong for the past several months, but paciência) Anyway, on sunday night we were talking to him about missionary work and how, as a member of the church, he has the opportunity and responsibility to share it with others, and as we were reading about faith, hope, charity, and love, he asked if we were in a hurry. We were thinking he wanted to feed us or something, but then he said we should go with him down the street to talk to a friend of his, Marta, who has two kids and is, as it turns out, really cool. So that was great. Yesterday we asked Wanderley if he had noticed a difference in his life since recieving the gift of the Holy Ghost, he said yes, he had been a lot happier and had noticed a lot more peace in his house. So that's pretty cool. It's really a shame that he's leaving this week, but it's probably for the best, work is hard to find here in portugal these days. If we happen to know anyone in Minigerais (i'm not quite sure how you spell that) they should keep an eye open for an awesome new member from portugal coming in this weekend.

Maura is also doing great, we haven't been able to teach her since sunday because we can't go in without a man there and it's been raining this week, but we have an appointment for tomorrow. Maura is a great example of what happens when the members become personally involved in the progress of investigators. Even though we couldn't go by, Isabel passed by after work to visit and see how maura was doing, so that's great.

Maiery is a little complicated. Some of her family continues to be rabidly against the church and won't let her leave the house to go to church or family night and such if her mom's not home. Which makes it hard for her. On the other hand we've started teaching her other aunt and uncle, who are cool and are opening up their house for us to teach them there, so she's doing ok. Things are more complicated with her mom, who i think listens a little more to the others than maiery, so every once in a while she has doubts of one type or another, the last one of which dealt with us teaching with a portuguese member. I think someone had given her the impression there was some sort of conspiracy against brasilians, but we told her what it is and she's less worried now. She also prayed about the book of mormon, and she felt good about it, so that's something.

We now have a regular appointment with Roberto and Susanna every monday. They're pretty cool, Susanna is a sort of reletivistic deeply christian person and Roberto is skeptical and vaguely agnostic/atheist. For some reason he also reminds me alot of Andrew (my manager and Sal and Mookies) which is interesting.

All in all work here in Mafra continues to be incredible. Elder Oram decided that last week was the most successful week of his mission so far, that also, obviously, applies to my time in portugal, so i hope i'm not peaking early or something, but hopefully i'll keep finding incredible people for the next couple years.

Anyways, that's about all from out here. I'm going to do shopping and buy some eggs and food coloring for easter festivities. Have a great week everybody, enjoy the spring, do your taxes, and thanks for everything.

Até Proxima Semana

~Hélder Ammon

April 8, 2009

Alright, so first of all, thanks for the really great emails this week.  Pictures, instructions, cool stories, family news, Cosumel, good stuff all around.

I'm planning on replicating as many of the easter traditions as possible.  Elder Oram's pretty patient with me wanting to do things like that, so i figure i'll at least be able to dye eggs and do king egg.  I'd like to do the egg roll, but i don't know if it's worth walking out to a hill to roll eggs, it would be sweet though.  As of now i don't know any easter traditions in portugal, but i'll report on them.  I'm thinking my easter p'day will be next week, because i easter caught me unprepared, so yeah.

Elder Oram has gone a little crazy because he only has 6 months left on his misson.  This was his last general conference.  He's a great example of not getting trunky, but i think he's a little scared his mission is going so fast.  As am I, i've already been here for 6 months.  Que loucura.

Conference was incredible.  We watched the Priesthood Session in Portuguese at the Oeris chapel with the members (and Wanderlay) and all the other sessions at the Esteves house in English on their computer.  I also loved Elder Holland's talk, along with all the other talks.  There definitely a theme of temple attendence and worthiness, and Jesus Christ as the source of happiness, even as the world is slipping so much.  I also really like the ewe on the cliff metaphor for missionary work.  A lot of times i feel like the rock climbers that are just going to scare the ewe.

Happily, here in mafra our members are on fire (not literally, i was reading the story of alma and amuleque this morning, which is so much more tragic than i had remembered).  They're always willing to teach with us, and several of them are working on inviting their friends.  Yesterday morning, we got a call from Erika, who is brasillian and lives out in one of the surrounding towns.  She woke up that day and felt inspired to do a family night of sorts and had three families that she wants to invite to hear the missionaries.  We're pretty excited, as this is basically the ideal situation.  We're going to try to do some work in the area and see if we can't find a few other people to invite.

So, news and such.  This week was pretty great, several things happened.  First off all, I lost my camera.  But wait!  This is a great story, with a happy ending: Last P-day i brought my camera to do internet in the morning and then did groceries and then caught a shuttle back to our house.  Then we ate lunch with the Torres Vedras elders and went out to play tennis again  (this time i got a lot better, but we still lost disapointingly.  Elder Peterson and I played against Elder Oram and Elder Dean).  Then we went back to the house, got changed, and went to the Esteves house for our missionary coordination meeting thing and so that they could say adeus to Elder Dean.  As we were about to get to the house, this car pulled over and honked at us, so we went and talked to him and he said he had found a camera with pictures of missionaries on it on a bus from lisbon to mafra.  We said we hadn't lost our cameras, but we would ask around and see if we could find who it belonged to, and we kept his phone number.

So that friday i got Elder Oram to call him, more to see if we could set up an appointment with him than for the camera, but as he described the camera he said it only had 3 pictures, which had later been deleted by his son.  But those three pictures were of a black baby, an airplane wing, and some missionaries.

Well, as it happens, my camera had those three pictures on it, along with about 600 others.  So when i got that home that night i looked for my camera and couldn't find it.  So the next morning i called the guy and told him the brand of the camera (this guy was rather suspicious, but just as well) and he said he'd bring it to me that morning.  So that morning he drove up, handed me the camera, and accepted a book of mormon before he drove off.

All this to say, somehow, between doing internet in the morning, and this guy running into us in the afternoon, my camera got on a bus and went to lisbon and back, during which all my pictures got deleted.  It's all quite a mystery, but i'm feeling pretty blessed that i got my camera back just a few hours after i realized it was lost.

Anyway, other news, this saturday is the baptism of Maura, which is exciting.  She asked me to do the confirmation, which is a little scary, i've never done a blessing in portuguese before, but Elder Oram quoted a general authority saying someing to the effect of the blessing after the gift of the Holy Ghost shouldn't really be that long, because what could be a greater blessing than the companionship of the Holy Ghost.

Also, Wanderlay is staying in Portugal for a little bit longer, so he's going to be baptized here, and said that ElderOram and I can do the Baptism and Confirmation.  In my lingering greeny greed\excitement, i suggested to ElderOram that he could do the confirmation, and he agreed to let me do the baptism.  So that's pretty exciting also.  I'm pretty happy i didn't end up getting transfered.  So yeah, this saturday is going to be great, and then we have Easter.  I don't think there's a better time to be baptized than on Easter, the symbolism is pretty much perfect.

Lets see, other things.  Oh, i finally have a request for stuff to send me.  My friends sent me a little pack of Pilot pens, which have been so great.  So if i could just get several black pilot pens (you know, those ones Dad always used and that i liked to adopt when they got left on the table) i would be extremely happy.

This week i heard chuck norris jokes from a portuguese teenager.   It was a bit surreal.

So that's the news from Mafra.  It's been a little while since i've sent pictures, i'll try to get some this week.  I'm still happy, healthy, and enjoying serving it up out here.  I'm developing a much greater love for the scriptures too.  This week i started reading the Book of Mormon cover to cover, i haven't done that since i've become a misisonary (i've been studying by topic and such) so that's exciting.  I'm also about half way done with the book of mormon in portuguese, so yeah, great times all around.  Well, my hour is up, and i have to add Wanderlay to the baptismal program for this saturday, so adeus, Ficai bem, até próxima semana

Abração,

Élder Ammon

April 1, 2009

And the new colega is....

Still Elder Oram!  That's right, april fools aside, i'm going one more transfer with Elder Oram.  No one's ever heard of anybody going 4 transfers (6 months) with their trainer, so that's pretty epic.  It also means i probably have another 3 months in Mafra, so that's cool.  Elder Dean is headed out to the Açores, for which he's pretty excited, and we're getting Elder Linquist in our district, who was in my group in the MTC, so that's fun.

Sounds like crazy times in the U.S. The weather here has been pretty calm, is got a little cold and windy this week, but we survived, barely.

Maiery is doing great-ish.  Her family is very evangelical, and many of them are pastores, and are thoroughly convinced of several things that are simply not true (we're of the devil, we worship joseph smith, don't believe in the bible, don't believe in Jesus Christ, etc.).  It's a little bit frustrating when people lie about things they know nothing about, especially to members of their church, but yeah, if anything Maiery is even more dedicated to being baptized. She chose a date for baptism (i think that happened this week) and her and her mom went to church and family night again.  She's planning on going to General Conference this weekend, and even invited a friend.  It is handy that anyone who spends more than 5 minutes at church sees very quickly what we believe.  It's rough sometimes to see us creating family strife, when we're all about helping families, but sometimes, we are not come to bring peace but a sword (i really need to start bringing my scriptures with me so i can actually quote stuff, but that's in matthew ch 7ish i think).  Basically Maiery doesn't have doubts, she already read and prayed and knows this is the right thing to do, having 'opened her heart that she may understand', it's just hard for her to get so much flack from her family.  Her mom and brother, atleast, are fairly supportive, but her mom keeps passing along doubts from Maiery's aunts and uncles, a couple of 20 year olds who barely speak portuguese vs. several evangelical pastores wouldn't seem like a very fair match-up, but we survive.

Anyway, all this to say she's great, and it's such a blessing to have found her.  Maura is also doing great, she's choosing the songs and all that for her baptismal program which will be on the 11th,  i was worried i was going to get transfered and miss that, but as it happens here i am.

With the knowledge that we're going 6 more weeks together, elder oram and i are trying to figure how to work a little bit better.   After 3 transfers in one area (or four if you're elder oram) you get the feeling that you've talked to everyone and knocked pretty much every door, so we have to figure out how to combat that.  I love mafra, but 3 more months will be rough if we do it wrong.

I'm pretty excited about general conference.  We watch almost all the sessions, aside from saturday morning, on sunday, becaue of the time change.  So that will be an epic day of conference watching.  I still don't know quite how it's going to be, where, when, in what language, etc, but either way, it'll be great.

We've been having a lot of appointments fall through lately, we had 11 this weekend.  It sort of weakens my trust in the honesty of people, so we need to work on avoiding that, it's ends up taking lots of time and doesn't get a whole lot done.

As far as other investigators, Wanderlay is doing well, he made us dinner on monday that was really really good, but we had both just eaten and so we weren't extremely hungry, and there was an extreme amount of food.  He wants to get baptized before going back to brasil, so we're thinking about that, and how advisable it is is baptize someone and then send them to a different country, but it could still happen.

Manuel is struggling, and we're not sure why.  He's missing appointments, he's stopped coming to church, his wife said he's been sort of weird lately, so we're hoping to get over there sometime soon to sit down and talk about what up.

So that's more or less my week.  I'm sure there's other crazy awesome things that i'm neglecting to mention, but when my autobiography comes out in 20 years, you can catch it then.

6 Months with Elder Oram, we decided that means we're probably going to have to stay in touch after the mission. Anyway, thanks for your prayers, support, and everything.  I know that this gospel is so true.  The scriptures are pretty epic also.  I definitely never had as great an appreciation for how incredible the book of mormon is before the mission.  Anyway, i've got groceries to do, so i'm going to head out here.

Ficem bem, todos, e até proximo.

~Ammon