July 22, 2009

The son of the guy who owns the computer place is watching the Disney channel really loud, it’s sort of distracting and obnoxious, but i will try to focus. This week was really good, and for those who are keeping track, we had twenty lessons. We actually found a bunch of new investigators, most of which are really great, I’m excited. Yesterday we were sitting at a bus stop and this guy walked up to us and just started talking to us about things. He said he was different and that he’s searching for something in life, but he’s not sure what. Anyway, he was way cool, and he’s around in the mornings, which is awesome (missionary work in the mornings can be a little slow.) He said something really profound and cool also. He said other people sometimes laugh at him because he’s different, and then he said

"Eles riem-se de mim porque sou diferente. Eu rio-me deles porque são iguais"

It was way cool. Basically, it means, “They laugh at me because I am different, I laugh at them because they are the same.” It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard anyone say in Portuguese. I also had a cool moment in church yesterday when I saw the bishops wife Beta tell her daughter to put that gum in her mouth, in Portuguese. It was one of those fun surreal experiences that is hard to explain why it was cool. (Editors Note: Our mom always told us to "Keep that gum in your mouth" when we were playing with it- which is why this is funny.)

I have toured Lisbon a couple times, but it’s hard to do much in 6 hours, so I’m hoping to just serve there eventually to actually get a feel for it. Last week we played basketball (as it turns out, I’m still bad at basketball, and it continues to be the only sport I don’t like) and this week we’re going to Sintra, which is where that sweet castle was a while ago. At least I think we’re going, it’s sort of windy and rainy outside, but we’ll probably head out there anyway.

So anyway, That’s so Raven is honestly one of the worst programs ever created (Disney channel. . .), but back to my week: Our investigators are good. It’s like this:

Sónia and Carla: They’re always really nice and we’ve had some good lessons with them. We taught the plan of salvation this week, all about who we are, where we’re going, and why we’re here, and they liked it a lot. Carla´s Son, Eduardo, who used to always hide in his room, has started listening and actually is doing best as far as understanding and reading and all that. Yesterday we taught the word of Wisdom. They didn’t think they’d be able to quit smoking and drinking, but they would like to, so I think they will. When Carla read the part where it says not to use tobacco she started laughing, because she smokes a lot. Interestingly, they can’t drink tea or Coffee, which is handy, It has something to do with high blood pressure, and they’re not using drugs, so they’re already half way there.

We’ve been having a hard time getting people into church, we haven’t really had an investigator there since I came to monte, which is sort of frustrating, but this week is looking good, Sónia and Carla and there family and this one other girl who’s their friend are all going, and there are some other people who should be there, so we’re hopeful.

Anyway, so that’s my week, we had a cool experience working with this kid Claudio, who was baptized a couple months ago, he’s 16. He’s really shy, but he agreed to come out to teach some people with us, at first he was really nervous, but after a couple of lessons he was having lots of fun and kept asking who was next. I was planning on going back to eat dinner but he suggested we try one more time to pass this lady who hadn’t been there the first time we passed by, so we went over, and she was there, and we taught a good lesson, and it was great. So anyway, that was cool.

You guys have a great week, and make sure not to watch the Disney channel. Parabens to everyone who’s in the MTC, getting their Mission call, or otherwise involved in being on a Mission. It’s good times.

Happy Pioneer Day!

Love,

Ammon

July 15, 2009

this is our ward, not really all of them, but everyone who came for Telma's farewell

This is me infront of my area. You can see my building (it's the fourth in the line of five rectangular pinkish buildings)

This one is me infront of Cristo Rei, which is a Giant statue of Christ that was copied from an even gianter on in brasil.

i made a smiley face pancake for Elder Nair, it worked out ok, but it made me wonder how Mom would do them so perfectly

i don't know if you can quite see, but there's a little gold plaque that says Caution, eloctrostatic system to keep away pidgeons active. I thought the idea of an electostatic system was pretty funny, more so when you look at the masses of pidgeons on the statue.

July 15, 2009

This week was good. Sounds like it was exciting week back in the states as well. I found out yesterday that the Dreaded Swine Flu has arrived in Portugal, so we’re hoping to avoid that. I also heard recently that the was a swine flu outbreak in the MTC a while back and so a bunch of missionaries got quarantined, but happily I’m pig flu free.

It is a shame that the Portuguese joke didn’t quite work, but I guess logan got it, so that’s something.

I had heard that Michael Jackson died, we found out pretty quick, it’s pretty much all every has talked about here. I also heard yesterday he appeared as a ghost in a CNN interview. I was skeptical.

Morgan Maxfield is a sister missionary I served with here, I had actually already seen that because she sent it to a bunch of the members too. It’s sort of weird to see Irmãs in wedding announcements. I got Ben’s wedding announcement, so tell him thanks and congradulations.

That picture of Isaac was intense. The other elders in our district live basically on the beach, so yesterday on a comp exchange I went running on the beach. It was nice, and there were some surfers in the water.

The work is going well. We’ve been finding some new people to teach, which is always exciting, and some others are progressing fairly well. We’re trying to change, it’s always difficult, but I think we can do it. I was reading in Dad’s journal this morning and he was talking about a companion he had and said “You can only go as fast as your companion” which is very true. It’s hard to motivate people to do stuff. That said, Elder Cornwell and I get along really well, and he’s a good guy. I’ve seen him grow a lot over the past few weeks. Yesterday he taught like a pro in a lesson we had with Lucas. He struggled a little bit with the language, but we all understood what he was trying to say. It was actually some of the most powerful teaching I’ve seen. The spirit was so strong, it was awesome. Yesterday we realized that we’re halfway into the transfer and three weeks from now will be transfer call days again. It’s pretty much ridiculous.

Here in Portugal we also have a goal of 20 lessons a week. In mafra we would generally get that, but we haven’t quite managed it here yet, the highest so far was 17, but I think Monte is about to explode as start teaching some of these new people and work with the members. On Monday I was in Costa and did something that was taught in Zone Conference. We went to Nuno Ribeiro’s house, and we made a list of pretty much everyone he knew (we had already talked about doing this before). Then they chose a few that they thought would be likely to receive the missionaries. The we prayed about them and picked a few. We ended up with 4, one that lives in our area, two in other elder’s areas, and one that lives in Costa. They’re not quite sure about that one yet, and are going to keep thinking about it, but I’m hopeful. We’re going to do the same thing up here in Monte, where we have lots of members, down in costa they only have a couple

The ward building is actually really cool. It’s an old house that got remodeled to be a chapel. It’s pretty nice, complete with a clubhouse that would be used for the scouts if they had them. We use it as our “Missionary Armory” with a bunch of stuff like books and pamphlets and such. The ward is great, a mix of Portuguese and Africans. On Sunday, for those who follow BYU basketball, Jonathan Tavanare (or something to that effect ) was in sacrament meeting. He said he was going to take us out to lunch on P-day, but he fell through. Elder Cornwell, who is a pretty solid BYU fan said he’s sort of a punk, but it was cool anyway.

I’ve been doing most of the cooking, but we don’t end up eating meals too often, generally we’ll have lunch, but a lot of times we just do sandwiches or something. We did make pancakes last week though, and I’ve made a couple of big lunches for our district, but I’m wanting to expand my cooking horizons out of pasta and rice. The other day a member made us curry, which was really really good and reminded me of dad’s.

Last week I had to pay for an extra 15 minutes because it cuts off at one hour, so I’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen again. This week, in all, went extremely fast, and it’s sort of frightening how old I’m getting in the mission. I was on a division with a greeny yesterday, and it seems like nothing that I was a greeny. He also kept calling me out on my broken English, I wonder if that shows much in emails.

So I believe that’s the news from here. I’m healthy and happy and a little concerned by how quick time is passing. If it doesn’t slow down, the rest of my mission will be over far too soon.

Fiquem bem, todos, desfutem o dia dos pioneiros, e esrevam muito.

(Translation: "Everyone be well, enjoy Pioneer day and write a lot.")

Abraços,

Elder Ammon

July 8, 2009

Olá família. Com o novo presidente, já não podemos falar nenhuma inglês. Portanto, partido de agora, os emails vão ser em português! Peço desculpas, mas com Google e tal, não deve ser tão difícil traduzir.

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Estou a brincar. É uma pena que provavelmente não vão traduzir esta parte até depois de ver a parte em baixo em inglês, assim destruindo a brincadeira, mas paciência.

These computers have the new Microsoft Office, it’s weird and awkward and it keeps telling me i’m spelling these words wrong, because they’re in english. But that’s ok. This week was good. Yesterday was zone conference, it was epic. I throw the Word epic around from time to time, but it really was amazing. Presidente Torgan is pretty awesome, and i’m not worried about the changes or anything, since they’re be good.

Reading max’s letters last week inspired me to write better and tell stories not just general stuff, because general stuff isn’t all that interesting. It was also cool, because italy sounds a lot like Portugal, all apartment buildings and what we call ‘quem é’ boxes. It’s also cool because we have the goal of getting 20 lessons each week. Cool things.

In response to questions and such, Isaac, i don’t remember very well how you get the bow, although i have played that game a lot. Talk to everybody and read what they say and do everything you can, and if that does work use Google. I suggest not depending too much on the internet, because it sort of ruins the fun of the game. It’s much more fun to figure things out on your own than to just follow instructions and have everything be easy.

Ironically, this leads into what i’m going to talk about later, but i’ll get to that later. Monte is pretty urban, if i weren’t a missionary i’d be worried about getting mugged or something. Actually i’ve never really worried about that sort of thing, but as a missionary i really don’t. But don’t worry, i won’t do anything stupid.

Speaking of stupid, fireworks here are not all that impressive, actually i can’t remember every seeing any fireworks. I get the feeling that they go sort of the opposite direction here and have pretty much all fireworks be illegal. Independence day is April 25 (Portugal has a Great story of how they became independent just 35 years ago, wikipedia it, it’s cool) but they don’t get as crazy about it as americans. Out on the islands, Madeira has what i’ve heard is the biggest fireworks show in the world on new years. The açores might do something to, but i dunno.

It was interesting to read about my doppleganger calling. It is definitely best that you don’t get suprise calls from me, because it’d mean i have some serious problem, or had given up on following rules. Also, if i were to call, i probably wouldn’t call you Sister. The popular festival is something i don’t quite understand, but it has something to do with the catholic saints, and people celbrate it by having parades and eating lots of sardines (no joke).

So, i’ll go ahead and use up the rest of the time to talk about the epicness of zone conference. First of all, from now on all meetings are in portuguese. Zone conferences, district meetings, interviews, everything, except the very first interview the president does with greenies. So it appears i will never here my president speaking english, but that’s ok.

President Torgan and Irmã Torgan are both extremely brasilian, although their family has roots in Portugal. They are both much more firey than President Terry and Irmã terry. Irmã torgan especially will be much more active in the mission i expect, her speaking portuguese and all. She also served a mission in Brasil, I like them both quite a bit, so that’s cool.

As far as changes in rules, President Torgan said that we already have a rulebook, and that he’s not going to be adding or taking away any rules to that, although we’ll see what happens as missionaries make judgement calls on what’s allowed and what’s not.

Probably the biggest change is a much bigger focus on baptism. Now investigators only have to go to church 3 times, instead of 5, to be baptized, although he did remind us that we’re not baptizing people just for the sake of it, but that people are supposed to stay active for the rest of their lives. He talked a lot about working by the spirit, and basically said there’s no reason for us to be knocking doors (unless we feel prompted to) that our time would be much better spent visiting members and such in order to find people to teach. He talked a lot about having the spirit with us always, and that if we could do that, be wouldn’t have to do all the things missionaries do that waste time, but that we could actually find the elect.

This brings me back to my Zelda paragraph, i don’t expect, that even being way in tune with the holy ghost, being able to just being told all day what to do. Last night we read 1 Nephia chapter 18 with a recent convert family that doesn’t read well, and i was really impressed with versus 1 to 4. This morning i read 17 and 18. I like the account of how Nephi builds the boat, something that seems impossible. He does it after the manner the Lord instructs him and not after the manner of men, and he gets into the mount oft and prays oft and the Lord showed him from time to time what to do. I think that is how we need to be working to. We need to do all things in the spirit of prayer, but should not expect to just be told everything to do, but should do many things of our own will and use what we have to do everything we can. Unlike vídeo games, the mission, and life, has no walkthrough. You just talk to everyone, do everything you can, and ask for help when you’re completely stuck.

President Torgan in zone conference had all of us get on our knees and pray to know how many people are going to get baptized in our áreas in july and in august. I was pretty suprised, it was epic. But we did it. As i was praying the numbers 6 and 5 came to mind (for july and august, respectfully) but elder cornwell had 4. Looking back, i wish we had kept ‘ wrestling with the spirit’ and settled on one number, but we took the less mature and quicker way and split the difference (not how the spirit generally Works). But anyway, From 8 to 11 people are going to be baptized in Monte these two months. I have no doubt this is possible, but i’m us being capable of doing it is a question. It requires us both to be a lot better than we are and working much more efficiently and powerfully. We do, happily, have names to back up all those numbers, so i’m hopeful.

Anyway, that’s my hour, so that’s all for now. Have a Great week and invite friends to be taught by the missionaries so they don’t have to waste time knocking doors.

Come muito amor

Ammon (oft imitated, but never duplicated)

July 1, 2009

Hey. My first email from Monte da Caparica, it's pretty sweet here. It's a lot more urban than Mafra, less European and more west jackson. Also these computers don't have microsoft word, so i'm rockin it up on Notepad.

It seems like last p-day was a really long time ago, but it passed pretty quick. The area is cool, it's a ward here with us and Costa da Caparica down on the coast. Down there it's really pretty and reminds me of california, up here it's less beautiful, but the work is better, so i'm not complaining. Transportation here is buses and walking. Today i bought my fifty euro pas that gets me pretty much anywhere in this area, on the metro, buses tudo. It's pretty sweet. It is absurd that it's july. When i was making my planner for this transfer i was a little freaked out that next transfer i hit a year. That will be a strange day.

My new comp is pretty cool, he's from American Fork, and is pretty green and springy. His portuguese is pretty good for only being here for 6 weeks, so it'll be good. We also work a lot with Telma, who is a 22 year old portuguese girl that's going on a mission to Cape Verde in 2 weeks, so she helps us a lot, it sort of feels like we're in a triple instead of a pair, which is sort of interesting, but yeah, she'll probably be a spectacular missionary out there. She reminds me of Filipe.

The work in monte is good, i think it's got a ton of potential. The members are awesome and are pretty willing to help. There's a bit of a tradition with the monte elderes now of not looking for new investigators, and just passing the time with things easier and more fun, so it feels like we're wasting lots and lots of time. But hopefully I can change that it can be hard to change traditions, especially amoung missionaries. I think it's be easier to help an investigator quit smoking than to convince an Elder to be obedient, but we'll see how it goes. Elder Cornwell is a good kid, he just has some bad traditions from his trainer So, i'm hoping everything goes well with this. I'm also hopeing that this interenet isn't as expensive as it says it's going to be. The meter says i'm up to 3£ already, which just isn't going to work.

Tonight the new mission president comes in and starts. I've heard good things about him, we met this brasilian member that knows him more or less, and says that he's a really nice guy and will be a good president, but that things will change.

I'm still thinking a lot abuot change, now that i'm in a new area and trying to make it better, and we've got a new president who will probably have lots of things he wants to make better, and then theres a different Elder back in mafra, hopefully changing things for the better. Change is good stuff.

Speaking of, Isaac is getting absurdly old. He needs to slow down or he'll be way too old by the time i get back.

Lets see, other news. Leaving mafra went smoothly. Some wheels fell of my luggage, i dunno if i said that yet. That happened in mafra on my first day. But so the rolling luggage turned into more of a dragging operation. It was sort of tiring. Happily, President esteves gave us a ride to the office, so that wasn't a problem, but the walk to the station and then up to our house was rough. For any future missions, two wheeled luggage is better, with wheels made out of something really really strong.

So cool things from the new area: There's some pretty great graffiti all over the place. The was a Wutang sign painted on the wall (a throw out to Emmett and Caitlin's brother and anyone else that loves them and probably isn't reading my blog), and all sorts of great stuff. I need to go through with my camera and take a picture of all the great art/vandalism. There's this gypsy kid that reminds me so much of Mouth from Goonies. He's really funny. We had a baptism on saturday of this guy named Ely. He's way cool.

Anyway, i like monte, it's a cool area that i'm hoping will become a lot better. Today i'm headed in to lisbon since we're close now, so i'll try to take pictures of awesome things. Have a great fourth of July, play with fire only in moderation, feed the missionaries and invite your friends to church and such.

So that's the news from Monte da Caparica, stay well, hugs, little kisses, tchau

~Ammon