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
