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
