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)
