I continue to regret not having scriptures when i write letters, but the logistics of bringing my scriptures to shopping (i.e. Bring my pros-bag) keep me from doing it. But, last week i was reading in the missionary Handbook and was reading about the ordinances of blessings for the sick, and it goes to a scripture in D&C that was great, that i'm going to slaughter in paraphase. Basically it starts out saying that to those that don't have the faith to be healed administer with herbs and such and make them confortable and do what you can. And to those that have the faith to be healed, give them a blessing, and unless they are supposed to die they will live. And it has a line that says something like “And if they die, they shall die unto the Lord, and if they live, they shall live unto the Lord.” And then it talked about the lame who by their faith will leap. Anyway, it was a really nice scripture, one of those quiet conquests of the sting of death.
Anyways, this week was good. I'm glad werewolf lives on. We played Mafia at Francisco's house for Family night. Maiery brought two of her cousins and one of the kids she knows from school, and it worked out really well. For some reason when playing Mafia i can't remember how to say 'to kill' (matar, i say mater instead, which doesn't mean anything) it's kind of funny. I though about trying to explain werewolf, but as difficult as it is to explain in english, i don't know if i could explain it in portuguese without dedicating a language study to Werewulf Vocabulary. Anyway, blah blah.
Time is passing absurdly fast. I still haven't got the package you sent, so hopefully it comes soon. I don't really mind not getting mail, but when i know there's mail coming it's frustrating checking for mail and then having it empty.
Cemeteries are interesting, I also have never seen the plot you guys have, it would be way weird, but it would be cool to see all our ancestors and stuff. Someday.
In case this seams like a stream of random thoughts, i'm going backwards through your letters and responding to things. When mom said 'Natural Humility' I read 'natural humidity' which made a lot of sense, since it became really warm and humid this week in Portugal. I had forgotten what hot summers were like, it seems like a really really like time since last summer. I think that's the weirdest thing about the mission, time passes really quickly, but I seems like it's been forever.
But yes, this transfer has definitely been a time of growing. It's funny. I tend to set really sort of prideful goals, and then get over them and just work, and then I accomplish them. My first week in the mission me and elder oram decided that we wanted to break the record for new investigators in one week, and then after about 4 weeks of not finding many investigators we gave up on that and decided to find investigators for the right reasons, and then we ran into 17. At some point I thought it would be really cool to say I was older than my greeny breaker (greeny breaker is the person after your trainer) but then sometime during my fourth transfer I realized there was still lots I would like to learn, but then it worked out this way anyway. When I got into the country I was pretty proud of my language skills and set a goal to speak with a real portuguese accent, or basically to speak better portuguese than any other missionary. But sometime last transfer I realized I would be pretty happy if I could just express my thoughts and feelings in a way people would understand. Well see if I end up achieving that goal anyway, but at this point i'm happy when people understand what i'm saying. It's really a testement of the message that 19 year olds americans who barely speak portuguese are able to make any headway in the missionary work.
Time is also speeding up. The first week of the transfer passed pretty slowly, but the second week went way fast, and now we're already halfway into the third week. Surprisingly, the work keeps going, even with me and Elder Carter at the helm. We found a really nice family on sunday. The fathers nice, but the kids are awesome. Elisa is 15, understands english pretty well and speaks french to boot. She had a big poster of the Twilight movie, and thought it was really cool when I told her that those were written by a member of our church. Lucas is 9, we watched The Restoration movie with him and his father yesterday (elisa was studying for a test), and he said he felt this strong presence as we watched the movie. He also prayed (for the first time in his life!) and did really well. I love little kid prayers, little kids pray better than pretty much anyone else.
Yesterday we had district meeting with the Zone leaders, who asked me and Elder Carter to give a training. We taught about the importance of asking questions if you want to understand the needs of the people we teach, and the importance of bringing members who, being not 20ish american boys, are much more likely to be able to understand how investigators feel.
Elder Carter is doing well. I need to do a better job involving him in lessons and planning and such. It's easy to try to do everything myself, but it's really really hard to do everything myself. He's still pretty new in learning the language and such, and he didn't get too many opportunities to teach in his last area, but I think he's getting there pretty fast. I hope so, since I have to turn Mafra over to him in 3.5 weeks, so it would be nice if he knew a lot about it.
Yesterday we went out to Malveira. Do you guys look at maps to get an idea of where i'm talking about when I say these random cities? Anyway, we went to Malveira, it was fun. I've never worked out there, so it was cool to be in a completely new area. We ran into these guys, Carlos and Mauro. Carlos is basically agnostic, but he said he felt really good talking to us and that he'd call us sometime to set something up. I think he actually might call us. People always say they'll call us and never do, but I have hope for this kid. But, just in case, I wrote down his phone number. We ended up wandering around malveira with him for most of the time there trying to find this house of a member, and when we finally go thtere they weren't home, but it was good.
Anyway, i'm out of time, so have a great week, thanks for the prayers, support, and hopefully the package.
Abraço!
Ammon
