September 28, 2009

This morning i went for the coup de grace [I think that’s how you say that] with our mouse problem. [woah, every once in a while I remember things that I had forgotten about completely. Just now, I got a Winged Migration flashback. That’s actually the second time today I’ve had weird deja vou] Today I cleaned the house and moved stuff around so that everything that is edible is out of reach, and scattered rat killing pellets around. So far the mice haven’t shown much interest in the poison, but I’ve hoping the lack of food and death in every corner will convince them that it’s time to move into a new house. It’s sort of sad, because everytime I do something in this house, it makes me a little bit more attached to it. Luckily last night there was a worm in our bathroom, so I haven’t yet lost my motivation. Motivation or not, 4 weeks from now we’re committed to leave, so it won’t make a huge difference, but I’d like to turn the house over to Dona mouse free. She worried about mice about as much as mom does.

P-day on Mondays is nice in some ways, but I hear a lot of cool Portuguese things are closed on Monday. We’ll see how that goes as time progresses.

This week is sort of intense. Today is P-day, tomorrow is Zone Conference, and the weekend is General Conference. I’m pretty excited about general conference. I’m not sure how we watch it, because it depends on if we go there with people we teach or just show up, but basically it’s like this. There’s a 7 hour difference from here to utah, so Saturday night at 6 o’clock, the Saturday morning session starts. If we want to watch the afternoon session live, we have to stay up till midnight, so we probably won’t. Sunday morning, is priesthood session, and then the Saturday evening rebroadcasts in the afternoon, than the Sunday sessions. The moral of all this is almost all of Sunday is watching conference, and we’ll probably catch the last bit on Monday. I’m hoping to watch it in English, because I get a lot more out of it, I have a hard time paying attention in Portuguese, because you can still sort of hear them speaking English. Anyway, I’m excited.

On the work front, things are going well. We were sort of bummed yesterday because no one came to church, (well, lots of people came to church, but no one we’re teaching) We did, however, have a great lesson with Jessica and her grandma, Mariazinha. They’re really nice and both are genuinely interested. Jessica has this wiliness to her (I’m not sure if wily is the right word, she’s just very sharp, and has a certain brightness in her eyes) and Maria is one of those nicest old ladies. She always invited us in, and, unlike a lot of the nice old ladies, she understands what we teach and is searching for something more in her life. We’re really excited because next lesson we’re going to talk about what happens when we die, since both jessica and her grandma have lots of questions about that.

Paula, Mario’s sister, is working her way slowly towards church. She has a certain hesitance to go to church, because she says she doesn’t like it, even though she’s never been. I’m not sure what people imagine our church is like, I imagine they base it on their experiences in other churches, but I don’t think Paula has really gone to church other than catholic church when she was little. Anyway, Mario’s being a great example for his family and friends, which is important. Aylton’s having a hard time because of his friends and family, so he needs some good support. Wildjoy seems to have lost a bit of hope with convincing his mom, but we’re still trying to work with him.

Most of last week was spent finding new people to teach, which can be slow goings, but we found some good people, including a Brazilian family that is a referral from a member here. They are the first Brazilians I’ve taught here in pontinha, since it seems there aren’t too many Brazilians here. I think Brazilians must be the nicest people in the world, it’s always just a little surprising. There’s no way to mess up a door approach with Brazilians, you just say “Hi, can we come in?” and they’ll invite you in, and ask you if you want food or Gauraná (a Brazilian soda that is pretty good). So that was fun. Other than that, we found lots of people with good potential, so we’ll be trying to get in touch with them this week.

I had and interesting conversation with an Elder in our ward, Elder Velasquez. He’s coming up to the end of his mission (he has another 3 or 4 months) and is working in the office. I was talking about how I was getting sort of stressed out with everything I had to do, and he told me that stress is connected to doubt, both in ourselves and in God. I realized that for the last couple of weeks I’ve been relying a lot on myself. I realized that I don’t have to worry so much, that I should do what I can, but then trust that God will do the rest, and rely on that. So this week, I’m going to be working on doing that, it will be less stressful, and it will probably be a lot more successful. Lets see, that’s more or less the news from over here. Our kitchen is way clean. I was thinking about putting flour around and then taking pictures of the mouse footprints, but then there’d be flour everywhere, and that sort of defeats the purpose.

This weekend was elections in Portugal, the socialists lost their majority, elections in Portugal are cool (because they seem to only take a few hours to determine the winner), and not nearly as newscrazy. You’ll all be happy to know that the news reporter in front of a giant screen is a world standard.

Have a great week, and enjoy conference. Watch out for Swine flu, bird flu, and other varieties. Thanks for the letters, support, and prayers.

Amo-vos,

Ammon

September 23, 2009

One year ago i hopped on a plane and said até logo to everybody. Technically my one year mark is tomorrow, because that's the day i went into the MTC, but the gist is i've been here for a surprisingly long time and it's been going surprisingly fast. So that's weird.

So the good news is that Ayton got baptized on saturday, and I got to perform the baptism. Sadly Wildjoy's mom didn't give the ok, but we're hopeful still. Also, sadly, we tried out this new internet place in the mall, because the one by our house is crowded, but it's twice (and a half) more expensive, and there's no way to send pictures, so I don't think we'll be doing it here anymore.

I miss giant rainstorms, they're actually one of my favorite things about mississippi, neither Portugal nor Utah has anything to compare with that (which is probably just as well, if it did we'd drown in our house) I'm not sure if I mentioned last week that we found a potential house. It's got a nice location and is reasonably cheap, the only problem is that President Torgan told us not to move in, which basically means he's planning to close pontinha eventually (or at least combine it with some other area) So one way or another five weeks from now we'll move out of our house, but where we'll move into we're really not sure. But we won't worry too much, sufficient is the day unto the evil thereof (or something to that effect)

On the missionary work front, we got a talking to from President Torgan yesterday, basically he said we're doing good work, but that we're capable of much more, and he wants us to figure out why. It's interesting living this close to president, but it's good, i've been feeling the same way, so we're going to see what we can do. We had a good start yesterday, we found eight new potential investigators, which was great. We're also going to start teaching Aylton's brother, and Mario's sister has been talking about baptism, so we're excited. Aylton is having a sort of hard time because his family isn't too supportive, i've seen less supportive families (thinking back to maiery) but it's rough, but he's a trooper, and he's lucky to have been baptized with a friend, Mario's a really good example for him. Our ward is doing awesome too, they set up the family home teaching duplas (i'm pretty sure dupla isn't a word in english, it means pair, but you probably already figured that out), and so Mario and Aylton will get visited by members and do visits to other members, so it's pretty good. All in all the leadership of our ward is pretty excited and likes us a lot, which is great.

Oh, BIG NEWS: Starting this monday, p-day is on monday instead of wednesday. So now you can write letters on Sunday, which will probably be nice. So make sure to send any letters off on sunday, because if you send them on teusday I won't get them until next monday.

The other problem with doing internet at the mall is you end up getting trunky when The Verve's “Bittersweet Symphony” comes on the radio.

I'm actually pretty excited that I still have a whole year left. The last year has gone really fast, but from here it seems like I still have lots of time left (i'm sure that feeling will go away soon)

Lets see here, what else is going on. I have a whole half hour left and I don't feel like I have much else to write. I remember serving with Elder Oram he got to a point in his mission where he didn't feel like he had much else to say in emails. Speaking of Elder Oram, it's crazy to think that right now he's in Utah. On thursday while he was waiting for interviews we went up to pontinha and did some last contacts together. It was really cool. He was a really good example of hard work and enduring till the end, I want to do something like that on my last day in Portugal. But I should just work hard on not thinking too much about my last day in portugal right now.

Today i'm also going to buy a new journal, because mine is pretty much all used up and I like the idea of having the two years of my mission in separate journals. Today I think we're going to go eat at Chili's. I had said a couple times that I didn't want to eat at Chili's while in portugal, but I got convinced. It reminds me of 9th grade when, while living in boston, with access to some of the best restaurants in the world, I went to chili's, to eat food based of food from the south. The year after I got lobster in mississippi. Anyway, this letter is sort of uninspired, I blame the mall.

Well, we're getting ready for another activity a week from friday, this time I think we might do a relay of sorts. Some sort of team race with different points set up by members. Last time I ended up doing a lot of the activity, and we're hoping to pass it on to the members a bit more. One day, i'd like to see a weekly family night going on. Portugal doesn't do activities nearly as much as some other places in the world (although from what I hear, nowhere in the world does activities like brasil).

I also got to talk to an elder that was serving in Mafra a couple weeks ago, and it sounds like things are still going ok over there. Francisco and Isabel got married, Isabelinha is working on her mission papers (which is way exciting) and they had a baptism and have a couple other marked. Manuel, who I taught a lot, is marked, hopefully he'll be able to quit smoking. This saturday the other elders of our ward have a baptism, a 40ish year old named Carlos. He's very cool, he speaks english very well and is very intelligent. He drank and smoked a lot, but he's managed to not smoke for almost 2 weeks now, so he'll be baptized on saturday. So all in all, stuff is going, and we're excited.

I hope isaac's recovering from Bronchitis, that's no fun, but falling asleep to Lord of the Rings is one of the necessities of childhood. Have you ever read Where the Red Fern Grows to him? I still remember crying because of that book when it was about his age.

Anyway, everyone have a great week, i'm sorry i'm so bad at getting things sent off, but one day it will happen, even if I end up bringing it with me on the airplane. Abraços all around, boa semana!

-Ammon

September 16, 2009

Hey everybody, I'm writing once again from pontinha. My decision to find a new house last week was a little hasty, first because it's almost impossible to find housing, and second because our contract requires that we give our dona a months notice. But we did talk to her and one way or another we'll be moving out around the end of october. I spent several hours this week trying to find a house and didn't come up with anything, but i'm still hopeful. We need to find out from president torgan if it's worth looking, since it's possibly for the area to be combined or closed or moved or something, and it's no good to find a house and then have to move out.

Anyway, the week was good. Mario did get baptized, as planned, and as it turns out two of his friends are marked for this saturday. Unfortunately, the mom of one of them is catholic doesn't want her son to get baptized, which is frustrating. She's a nice person though, it's our fault for always teaching him at his friends house, so his mom had never even met us. But we're still hopeful, we talked to the mom and asked her to pray about it and hopefully we'll going to go back there tonight. One happier parental news, Mario's mom seems to be accepting the whole baptism thing a lot better. She's planning on going to the baptism Aylton and Wildjoy (mario's friends that we've been teaching) on saturday, and hopefully she'll go to church to. She's really nice, and doesn't really like the church she's going to, because they do some stuff that she doesn't agree with, so we're excited for the day when Mario can baptize his mom.

Our dona is sort of sad to see us go, and sort of frustrated because it means she has to deal with some things. She's pinning the flood on us, saying we're using too much toilet paper and it clogged the drain (i don't quite understand why that would cause a flood, but it sounds like the flood stopping system is really convoluted. She said the reason the pump wasn't going was because there wasn't enough water. I knew what she meant, but i almost laughed, it didn't flood enough, that was the problem!), and because she has to talk to the mission office to try to get them to pay for a bunch of things that were ruined in a previous flood. I'm sort of upset by our dona, especially because every time she talks to us she acts like i don't speak portuguese, and will repeat things in english sometime (which is also funny. She has a great portuguese accent). Elder Fernandes is a much better example of loving everyone and patience. Good mission experience though, it will make a great story.

The scripture treasure hunt went like this, i don't exactly remember the scriptures now, but it was basically like this:

They start in this room and we talk a little bit about the Liahona (they happen to have a model Liahona/Compass in the office) and explained how the scriptures are our compasses in life. We then explained the whole thing, established some rules (which they promptly forgot) and gave each team a set of scriptures. First they had to look up in John 5 where it says search the scriptures. And then they had to go find some scriptures. In them, they found a sticky note with a new scripture reference and so on. For example: they read Alma 7 which leads them to the Baptismal font, where they find john 4 which takes them to the sink, when the read luke 22 (i think) which confused a lot of people because the cup was not in the kitchen, then they read alma 32 and had to find a plant, and then read luke 24 and had to find a open tomb (that one was tricky because it was a painting) and then they read alma 38 which led them back to the liahona, where they found chocolate. Each team had a different course, but they all had the same items. It would be even better if they all had different items and a different course and different scriptures, but then it gets sort of tricky to keep finding good scripture clues, but if you worked you could pull it off.

So anyway, we heard transfer news yesterday. Elder Fernandes and I are staying together, which is fun. It's the first time in 3 transfers that i haven't switched companions. My district changed a bit though. Instead of having the Executive secretaries, i have the Zone leaders and the Irmãs, both of which are in lapa. So now i have to trek across lisbon every monday for district meeting, and my district isn't part of my ward. It's sort of confusing, i trust president torgan has a good reason for doing it, but i'm not quite sure what it is. But that's ok, because it makes my district a lot more fun, because the secretaries hardly ever get to work (although they also have a baptism this saturday) so doing divisions with them was always sort of weird.

In other news, Elder Oram is going home this friday, which is weirding me out. When i got here he was just hitting a year in the country. He's going down in a blaze of glory though, and hopefuly is going to work with me and Elder Fernandes on thursday while everyone else is dinking around in Lisbon buying stuff and such. I was lucky to have such a good trainer.

Lets see here. Happy birthday to Caitlin, if you guys are still reading this. I'm really hoping to get some stuff sent out today. I wrote some letters about a month ago and i haven't gotten around to getting them sent.

I'm about out of time, but i'll just close out by saying one more time how awesome Mario is. He got up and bore his testimony at the baptism, and is helping us teach all the time. He's going to the Nation (!) young single adult conference this weekend, so hopefully he'll get to know some of the other young single adults from Mafra and Monte da Caparica. He would like to serve a mission someday, and is just all around one of the most solid people i've ever seen baptized. It's good stuff.

Anyway, i'm out of time, so have a great week. We're hoping for sunny weather for the next six weeks, but we're pretty sure we know how to stop the flooding now (they're a big valve that we can shut. In theory we shouldn't have to mess with it, but in practice, it will keep water from coming in if it rains a whole lot again.) School has started up again, so suddenly a lot of the people we have been teaching are now busy during the day, so this week we're hoping to find lots of new investigators. People in portugal have really absurdly busy schedules.

So, boa semana, hopefully all is well with everybody, and hopefully english isn't too broken. There were several times during this letter when i didn't quite know how to say things. I'm worried that after another year here i'm going to make no sense at all, but we'll see how that goes.

Com Amor,

Ammon, The Unsinkable

September 9, 2009

So, how was my week, you ask?

This week was crazy. First of all, or rather, Last of all, this morning our house flooded. It was raining pretty hard, and we knew that the house had flooded a few times before, so i was a ilttle worried. It was about 8:28 and i was just about to call the other Elders to see what their plans for Pday were when i heard a strange noise. “What could that be?” I wonder, and then i see it. Water flooding in from the sewer below the stove. We ran to get everything of the floor, and i threw a bag together, planning to get out of the house before we drowned. We called our dona (landlady) but she didn't answer, and the water just kept coming. The worst part is that this isn't your ordinary, clean, rain water. This is fetid, sewer backwash. So eventually, it stopped raining, and the water started running the other direction. So we spent the next few hours cleaning up and trying to get the water to run out. And then we bleached the floor and now it's not too terrible. But today i got a new resolve to get out of this house. It's my new project for today, so hopefully, by the time next week comes around, i'll be in a new house. I think this is the 3rd or 4th time that this has happen in the past few years, i don't know what the missionaries were thinking not leaving before, but i refuse to live here anymore.

Otherwise, the week was a pretty normal week in the mission. We've been finding some really great people, and the other elders are doing great too. Oh, here's a good story.

On sunday, we were waiting for a meeting with the bishop, and this kid walked in, I say kid, he was about 20. So i talked to him, he said that he was from Porto and just came to visit. I asked him a couple times how he got there, he didn't really say, he said he already knew about the church. So we talked to him a bit, and he stayed for the first two hours, but then left right before Sacrament Meeting. I asked if we could go visit him sometime, but he said no, he'd call if he was interesting. So i left that sort of sad, although otherwise sunday was great, we had 4 people at church, two of them for the first time, and all in all it was a great meeting. Our lunch appointment was canceled so i ate lunch at home on sunday for the first time in my mission (sad, right?), and then we went and taught some people.

So on tuesday, we were filling out the baptismal form with Mario and i got a call, i answered, and it was the guy from sunday! Just to have an idea of how suprising this was, it was probably the first time i've ever been called by someone to whom i gave our number (if that makes sense...basically people always say they'll call and never call) And he asked if we could go visit that day. So we set it up.

On the way over, another guy called me out of the blue, and wanted to meet with us again. Crazyness!

So it turns out he's a member, but has been inactive for the past 10ish years because of some crappy people in the church. He ended up getting into some bad stuff, but managed to pull himself out of it and wants to have faith again. It was really great, and the other elders are going back tonight. He lives outside of our area, so we're probably going to have to pass him over to the other elders, but it's really cool to have people show up from out of the blue, asking for help.

I'm going to try to get a package off today with some stuff, including the photos. There's also a higher quality (but shorter) video of the poop flood.

So, have a great week, don't worry about crazy flooding in our house, because i won't be living here anymore. You'll also be happy to know that wherever the mouse was, it's not in our house, because it definitely would have showed up this morning.

So, grandes abraços para todos.

Ammon

September 2, 2009

So far no swine flu, Elder Fernandes is really worried about catching swine flu, so i gave him that antibacterial stuff you gave me. I think i inherited dad's lack of concern about things like swine flu. But you will be happy to know i'm making a concious effort to wash my hands and not put my hands in my mouth, ears, or eyes. We shake hands with lots of people. I've been very blessed to never have myself nor my companion sick on the mission. If all goes according to plan, i could go 2 years without a sick day.

I don't know if Presidente Torgan is going to leave people a long time or not. He's only done one transfer so far, and basically everything went crazy, but we're expecting things to be a little more normal this next time. But, you never know what will go down in transfers. Man, my life will be so uninteresting when i get back and i don't have the possibility of moving every six weeks.

Pontinha is big, but it has a really good public transportation. We ride buses and the Metro a lot, and generally don't have to walk too much. The church is close, it's about 10 minutes by bus, or 30 minutes on foot. President Torgan isn't in our ward, but he visits lots of wards, so he's bound to visit one of these weeks.

It's great to hear Isaac's catching Bike Flu, it's funny how theres a Tipping point in things like this (by the way, the little shopping center in pontinha totally hijacked the apple-orange thing on the front of Freakonomics for their sign. it made me smile). Mario, our investigator, all at once got it, and now he's doing great (which i'll talk about in a bit)

Oh, by the way, do we know the Burketts? There was an elder burkett from the boston area that served in mafra a bit before me, that saw a picture of me and said he knew me. I'm thinking they're those two teenagers that were in the area in cambridge. I think they were in the other ward. I want to say his name was Mario, but i really don't know. Anyway.

We do have syrup, or we have Maple Extract and know how to make syrup. Last week, because of improvident living, going to Sintra, and buying razors, we didn't have enough money to do groceries (we could have just bought stuff and gotten reimbursed, but what we did was much more fun) so we had basically no food, but we had a sack of potatoes, some pasta, some rice, and everything you need to make pancakes. So about on sunday the pasta and rice ran out, so we've been eating basically nothing but pancakes and potatoes for the past week. There are lots of things you can to with potatoes. I can see why the Irish liked them so much. Anyway, yes, i've had a lot of pancakes practice. I never appreciated how useful a pancake grittle is when i was younger. Definitely going to buy one someday.

My talk on sunday was great, i'm going to put it down as the best talk i've ever given in church, english or portuguese. It was great, hopefully people will get way excited and such. With the people that live in our area and go to church we work pretty well. The problem is that the majority of people in our area don't go to church, and the majority of people that go to church don't live in our area (lots are borrowed from other areas)

So, this week was pretty great. Mario decided to be baptized, which is awesome. We're really excited for him. He's already been coming with us to teach his friends. In two weeks of being taught, he's a better missionary than i was at 18. He's going to be baptized on the 12.

Sadly, Quinta, is not going to be baptized on the 12, she missed church again, so we're going to slow down a bit with her, give her a week to think about stuff, and then come back. She's still has a lot of potential, but missing church 3 weeks in a row is not a sign of progress. Elder Fernandes is very good about not teaching people who aren't getting anywhere, i have a hard time letting people go, and it should be hard, but you can't just spend all your time with people who are nice but not really interested.

We're getting ready for an activity on friday for the single people. The idea is a family night for everyone without a family. So we've set up an elaborate treasure hunt. Well, we've planned an eleborate treasure hunt, setting it up still has to happen, but we're doing that tomorrow morning. What we want to see is a weekly family night that is run by the single members of the church that we can bring new people to if we have them. It's a good idea that hopefully doesn't die off.

That's about all the news i can think of on this week. I learned this week that measuring cups don't really exist in portugal. So next time it's convenient, go ahead and send those off. The mail box in our house is really sketchy, and we don't have a key for it, so just send everything to the office address. I go by there no less than four times a week, so i'll get it.

Well, everybody have a great week. the weather here is getting really nice, hopefully you don't get hit by hurricanes. Say hey to everybody, and help the missionaries. Fiquem bem.

Abraços,

Ammon the Elder