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
