“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
