November 30, 2009

It’s December Eve!

Well, this week was a little rougher than last week, but it was still good. I think what is true of life is true of missions, we don’t learn a whole lot from being happy and having everything come easy, learning is tough. Maria dos Anjos did not get baptized, despite us trying really really hard. I honestly have never worked so hard for someone in my mission. It was really frustrating actually, because I did everything I possible could and things just didn’t work out. The whole thing reminded me of mom talking to gretchin back in the day. Maria dos Anjos has a tendency to focus on the problems in her life, which makes it difficult. But today I had a really good study about all the times the Lord tells people to go back and try again. It happens a lot actually. So anyway, I’m learning to be patient and not define my success by outward results.

As far as outward results though, we’re teaching Quinta for serious again. She was the first person we met in Pontinha, and I’ve been having the feeling she’ll be the last person I baptize here. It just has a nice symmetry to it.

This week was rainy and cold, but today was a really nice day and we went and played volleyball, which was fun. Sounds like thanksgiving in California was nice. For thanksgiving we bought a barbeque chicked and made rice and potatoes, and it turned out really good, it was a lot better than last thanksgiving meal.

Anyhow, I’m rambling let me tell you some of the awesome things that happened this week:

Oh, so we hit a little obstacle with Jorge. When we went back for the second lesson he told us he was sorry but he couldn’t meet with us because the next day his house was getting destroyed. He lives on this street that they’re tearing down houses to make room for a highway or something like that, and we showed up that day and a little café near his house was destroyed, up the street they were in the process of destroying a house (which was really cool to watch.) So that was sort of disappointing. We’re hoping things settle down with him a little bit and we can teach him some more.

Woah, I just realized that this keyboard is exactly the same as the keyboard I had on my computer, except it’s written in Portuguese.

We’ve had some really nice lessons with Dona. She really likes the doctrine of the church and loves to learn about this, but it’s going to be hard for her to change in her life. But it’s really fun to teach her, our landlords are really cool people. I really need to take a picture with them one of these days (hopefully today)

Speaking of one of these days, next week is transfers, so next p-day we’ll probably find out where I’m spending Christmas. It’s pretty up in the air, I could easily stay or go. I would like to spend Christmas here, but i’ll accept what comes. I hit a year in Portugal this week, It has gone by really fast, and time keeps speeding up, but I’m working hard not to keep track of home much time is left.

It’s good that my last two letters were really enlightening; this one is feeling sort of uninspired. It’s interesting the way our life goes in cycles. I’m still enough of a math major to think about our personal progress over time as a function:

f(x) = x + sin x (throw that in a graphing calculator or ask somebody that remembers math)

We have highs and lows but in theory we gradually get better (you might throw a constant in front of sine if your ups and downs are a little dramatic). It seems like we should be able to just keep going up, grace for grace if you will, but it seems like more often it’s more wavey. So you might say I’m over there at 5.5π. I probably shouldn’t make metaphors with math, it really limits the number of people who will know what I’m talking about. Basically the point is, this week was rough, but that just means I’m progressing, and the next few weeks will be better. This week I’m working with the attitude that it’s my last, ironically I woke up with “party like it’s 1999” stuck in my head. Blast, well it would seem that the internet on this computer has collapsed on itself, so I’m going to save this on the handy dandy pen drive I’ve been meaning to send you guys forever and go send it later.

Have a great week everyone. Thanks for your support and love and presents. I exhort you to not procrastinate the day of your Christmas shopping until the end.

Abraços,

Elder Ammon

November 23, 2009

Bom dia!

First of all: happy birthday to Katie, and one more happy birthday to Amy (for reals this time). Sorry I forgot when your birthday is. And Happy Thanksgiving to everybody. Thanksgiving is a great holiday, last thanksgiving I ate rice left-overs with this weird tomato paste sauce. That was my very first day in Portugal, I didn’t even remember that it was thanksgiving.

This thanksgiving, I think we’re going to buy a chicken. I’ve been meaning to do it forever, but we’re going to do it for thanksgiving (that’s a grilled chicken, not a live one) Today’s a little too far away to make it make sense, and I think afterwards will be to far. Thanksgiving is a nice holiday, it doesn’t have much of the fluff that stores put on Christmas and Halloween. There’s only so much money that can be made off of turkey. I’m working hard to not get trunky this holiday season, so I’ll leave family holidays there and talk about mission stuff.

So this week was great. We taught our dona on Monday night, and it was really nice. It’s good practice for when I’m a normal person again and want to talk to people about the church. It’s hard. It’s fine talking to random people on the street, but when you talk to people your closer to, it gets scary, especially when those people are your landlords. What if she gets offended and turns our electricity off? But, as always, it went really well, they were curious and interested to know what all these crazy Americans have been teaching people all this time. We taught about our lives and what happens after death. A friend of hers died a little while ago, and she had a bunch of questions, and one of the things she said was, “If I knew this I wouldn’t be afraid of death at all!” So it was fun. We’re going to teach them again on Thursday. At some point I started liking our dona a lot. It still bugs me a bit when she blames us for flooding or says I didn’t speak Portuguese when I got here, but really genuinely like them. There such cool people. And, they’re going to make a mug with our picture on it. Is that not the coolest thing ever? I decided I need to buy her a Christmas present, I don’t know if I’m going to be here or not for Christmas, but I’m hoping so.

Other cool things, yesterday we had a lesson with Jorge. Jorge is this guy that lives close to some other investigators, and we’ve tried to set lessons up with him so many times. He’s not been there lots of times, and we’ve missed it lots of times, so yesterday I decided I wasn’t going to miss it again. I didn’t really know what to teach, so after the prayer I just asked him, “Do you have any questions or any doubts?” He said, yeah, “How can I know which church is true?” As we started to answer he interrupted and said, “or is other words, how can I know which church I should follow” It turned out to be a really really good lesson. It was even cooler because he asked with almost the exact wording in the Joseph Smith pamphlet thing. Anyway, fun times. Something I’ve learned, is that missionaries are really really bad at recognizing “the elect” which is ironic because we think we’re pretty good at it. Generally it’s the people you don’t expect, the underdogs, if you will, that turn out to be the best, and the people that start out Golden turn out to be all talk. I can’t say that’s always true, but it’s been very consistently true for me.

This weekend we’re having another baptism, Maria dos Anjos. We’re pretty excited. We need to do a better job of working with the members so that she has friends in the church and such. That’s one of the things we’re going to work on this week.

I rode my bike a lot when I was isaac’s age. I remember distintly riding around at our broad street house. I would generally follow the same basic path, and there was this one dog that would always chase me. I also remember one time a big grasshopper landed on the wheel. I would try to ride with out hands, and I managed more or less, this one time I tried to stand up and ride without hands, and I fell and hurt myself. I actually have vivid memories of several times I fell and hurt myself, in lots of places. After we moved to Jackson st I didn’t ride nearly as much, because it was busy, and such, plus we had a trampoline, but in Jackson I rode my bike quite a lot (I think I got a new bike when we went to Jackson, so I could ride my bike to school, like ryder taft, and later Wells and Chaz…good times). And yeah, my first bike didn’t have brakes, and so I would just stop with my feet, and one time it had rained and we were going to the wards house and I just flew through the intersection. I remember there being lots of cars coming and it being really dangerous, but that’s likely to be my memory exaggerating a bit. Not like that time dad drove through the crossing right before a train passed, dodging the train my mere inches. That definitely happened.

I said it last week, but I’m really enjoying my mission right now. I don’t really even know why, we’re not really having that much more success than we used to, I think I’m just managing to do my best, and so at the end of the day I can go to sleep happy, and then wake up again excited to do better. Also I started doing exercises again, they had sort of become pointless, and I managed to do all of them without leaving my bed, that might also have something to do with it. It’s a sad irony of life that the more you enjoy something the faster it goes by, while the things that are no fun take forever. It’d be nice if it went the other way around, but I’m thankful that I’m in Portugal, in pontinha this thanksgiving. It probably won’t be one of my most memorable thanksgiving, but in general my life right now is the best it has ever been. The mission is good times. So happy thanksgiving to everybody, watch out for crazy shoppers (I’ll keep my eyes open to see if they celebrate black Friday in Portugal) and don’t fill up on oyster crackers before thanksgiving dinner.

Abraços, e boas festas

Elder Ammon

November 16, 2009

Me, Mariazinha, Elder Rodrigues, and Vitória (one of mariazinha's granddaughters)

First, answers. Yes please. I don’t know exactly how it works to get new shoes, but I believe you send them a picture and they’ll get new shoes, although I don’t know if they send them all the way to Portugal, you guys might have to take care of that half. Try calling them and see. Yesterday it started raining, and having a big hole in my soul just isn’t going to fly this winter. I keep remembering specific items during the week and forgetting them when p-day comes. Peanut butter is always a must, I try to add stuff as I go along. The office is best for packages, and since we go there at least 3 or four times a week it’ll be fine great. Oh, contact solution. I need more contact solution.

So, this week was good. On Saturday Mariazinha got baptized, and I got to baptize her, which was great. We were going to have the bishop do it, but then she asked that I do it, which worked out well because the bishop broke his arm in a intense bicycling accident. (there are two words in Portuguese, partir, and perder. One means to break, the other to lose. When I talked to bishop I wasn´t sure, but I thought he said he had lost his arm. It was a relief to see his arm in a sling) The Baptism was really good, honestly the best baptismal program I’ve ever seen. Her sister, daughter, granddaughter and friend, all of whom aren’t members of the church, came and loved it. Also her neice, who is a member of the church (which we found out about a week ago) came and gave a really really good talk about how she has been praying for two years that her family would join the church and had been trying to work it out to have mariazinha come to their house to meet the missionaries. Jessica and her friend (or cousin, I’m not quite sure if they’re related or not) loved it and now want to start coming to church. We’ve been teaching Jessica for a while (she’s mariazinha’s granddaughter) but she didn’t ever want to church, but now she does, so we’re excited.

Another cool experience: I was running around before the baptism trying to get people there on time and I didn’t actually get to the church until 2o’clock, when it was supposed to start, and when I got there the water was cold. Mariazinha’s doing chemotherapy, and she’s old, and getting baptized in November in cold water was not something I wanted to do to her. So, I messed around with the valves on our water heaters, and managed to get the hot water running. I prayed, basically begging for a miracle, that somehow or another the water wouldn’t be painful for her. Then I drained out some of the water from the baptismal font I threw some water on the stove to boil, drained the font a bit and tried to not look too worried. So all this was no w while the baptismal program was going, Mario was giving a talk about baptism. Happily, he talked quite a bit and so the water had time to boil, and nobody even realized. So, finally we go to the baptismal font. I got in first, and was worried, because that water was not even remotely warm. It was better, but still way cool. When she got in I thought she was in pain. She said a prayer (which is a very good thing to do when you are half way into the waters of baptism, and I’m surprised no one else has ever done that before) and then came down. We had to do the baptism twice, because she didn’t get all the way under the first time (the water was still sort of low from draining) and by the end I was afraid she was going to get pneumonia or something, as she got out Amélia (who is an older lady we brought with us to teach and became a good friend of Mariazinha) ask her if she was cold, and she said, “No, the water felt warm.” So that was a great blessing, and I don’t think anyone else at that baptism really understood how big a blessing it was, since no one else was standing in cold water. It was one of the best experiences of my mission (so far) and taught me a little bit about the relationship between faith, works, and miracles (faith is working really, really hard, trusting that God will take care of the rest)

Other investigators are also doing well. We’re teaching a family, Bimba, Graciete, and their three sons. They’re from Cape Verde, and we’re very excited for them. Elder Capische when he came encouraged us to wake up three minutes early and think about finding and baptizing a family, and so every morning I wake up and think about them. It turns out they’re from the same town as Elder Rodrigues, and know a lot of the same people. We taught a great lesson with José, who is also from over there, and the father really liked it. The mom has lots of doubts because she’s talked to a lot of other churches, but that’s alright, people should have questions. Let’s see, that’s about the gist of what’s going on. I’m really enjoying my mission right now, more than at any other point. Here in Portugal they’re getting Christmassy already, here in the mall they’re got a giant Christmas tree, but I’m more excited about seeing the biggest Christmas tree in Europe which they put up in downtown Lisbon. I’m also having a hard time believing a year has gone by, but the weather is the same, rainy and windy and a little depressing. I’m excited about Christmas though, I’m hoping to be here in pontinha (although it’s unlikely) but I’m sure wherever I am it will be great. I’m hoping I can keep improving for the next year and enjoying it more and more, because the difference in me from one year ago to now is huge (even from 6 weeks ago to now is big) and I’m really enjoying the mission right now, a lot more than I was one year ago. So hopefully that’ll keep improving.

So anyway, have a great week everyone, Happy birthday to Amy (which I’m pretty sure happens this week, but if not, happy birthday anyway!). Until next week

Love,

Ammon

November 9 2009

It smelled like fish. Fun fact about Ammon: He has now kissed more sealions than he has girls.

there's no way i'm going to be able to capture the epicness of last p-day and this week and read all your letters, but i'll do my best.

So last p'day i didn't get around to finishing up. because of the overwhelming epicness of it all. First to try to respond to some questions. In the christmas package, i keep remembering things i need but keep forgetting them when it's time to right emails. A few things that are always importate:

Maple Extract (for making syrup)

I can't think of anything else right now, i'll try to add stuff as we go on.

So yeah, last p-day i went to the zoo. Lisbon has a nice little zoo, i don't think it's as fancy as some zoos (i've been to 3 or so) but it's a whole lot less depressing than the jackson zoo. First we looked at the tigers, which were cool (and apropriately boring) then we went and saw some rhinocerous, and there was a backflipping squirrel, and some buffulo, and some bison, and other cool stuff. After that we went and saw the sea lion feeding, which was pretty cool. I got to pet a sea lion, and saw them do some coolish tricks. It was cool.

After that we went to the reptile house, and that was cool, mostly for sentimentality. We saw box turtles, and snapping turtles, and alligators and snakes, and all kinds of things i used to find in our backyard. Then we went over to the dolphin show. I had heard that the zoo would change my life, and it came through pretty well.

So the dolphin show was good, they start out with the sea lions doing more tricks, and then afterwards the dolphins come out and jump and stuff. It's a lot cooler than i'm desribing it. They have one thing they do where the dolphins swim behind the trainers, pushing on their feet to make them fly through the water (see picture), it's now on my list of things to do before i die.

So all in all, it was a pretty epic dolphin show. There's also part where the sea lions come through and kiss each person in the audience, and the zoo guys take a picture and you can pay 5 euros after to buy it.

So that was all very cool.

After the show, we were on our way out, and they let you if you want come up and pet the dolphins. So i got to pet a dolphin! And the dolphins kiss you and flip over and let you rub their stomach and it's all very cool and makes me think that i need to get out of mathematics and try to fulfill the childhood goal of being a marine biologist. So yeah, we also talked to the trainers a lot and found out interesting things about them. We gave the head dolhpin guy a pamflet and got his phone number (he lives in my area, i really need to teach the dolphin guy). So that was very very cool.

Then, as we're getting ready to leave, they ask if we want to come in the back and see the stuff behind the scenes. So obviously we did. Back there we saw all the sea lion tanks, and we got to put the sea lions to bed, and we got to pet them and kiss them and even got a hug from one. It was unbelievably cool. Without a doubt, the best p-day ever, and one of the best days of my life (probably on the top 5).

And, on our way back, we ran into someone from New Orleans and talked to them forever. She was cool. also. So yeah, really really good day.

As far as the week goes, it was good. Zone Conference was awesome, Elder Capishce talked a lot about faith and what we, as missionaries, need to do, and what we have to leave to the agency of others.

Our investigators are good, Mariazinha is all ready to go to get baptized on saturday. And we had a new investigators, Maria dos Anjos in church on sunday. We're working hard to try to find new investigators, especially families. I'm also trying hard to work well with the members and find people through them. One thing also that Elde Capishce said is that we should work with the members, but we should be self sufficient, and we can't wait for the members to find people. I realized that it's really more important to teach with the members of the church than to find with them, because the whole reason finding with the members is so good is because the people you find are friends of members. If the members make friends with the people you teach, it works out the same way.

Blast, i had more to say, but i forgot and i'm out of time. So, until next week, have a great november. Happy birthday, mom, i'm going to try really really hard to get stuff send off today, so we'll see how that goes.

Have a great week, thanks for all the letters, pictures, and everything.

Amo-vos

Elder Ammon

November 2, 2009

Today i'm going to the zoo! But at the moment i don't have any new pictures, so i'm hoping to get a half hour of internet at the end of the day with pictures and such.

As far as news goes, wildjoy didn't get baptized on saturday, but we marked mariazinha for baptism. She'll be baptized on the 14th, in two weeks. Elder Rodrigues and I made a goal of baptizing 10 people this transfer. President torgan basically told me that this will be pontinha's last transfer open (you never know what will happen, but he said it's likely it will close, which means it's extremely likely, since he generally doesn't talk about things like that before hand. So i'm looking at this as one last chance to do everything i should have already done in pontinha and then some more. I had a really good personal study the other day studying jacob 5 (when i was little i always looked towards that chapter with dread, because it took forever to read) And i wrote verse 71 and 72 on the front of my planner, because it applies really well to this transfer. I wrote it in portuguese, so it doesn't help much to put it here) but it's good. So i'm trying to work with 'afinco' this transfer (i guess you translate that as 'might' but i think it translates better as umph.)

Elder Rodrigues (which, by the way is roughly said "Hodreegs" not rodriguez. Not spanish.) is pretty cool. He's a lot different from elder Fernandes. As it turns out all cape verdians are not the same. He's a lot more quiet and reserved, very humble. He was baptized two years ago, and is 23ish now. I'm excited to work with him, and hopefully this time around i can learn creole. He doesn't really speak english either, but he wants to learn so i'm going to try to help him more than i helped Elder Fernandes (which is fernands, not fernandez), i was sort of lazy about last transfer.

Other news...Elder Kapische, the area president of europe, is coming to zone conference on friday, so that's exciting. I met him once before when Elder Bednar came. Christmas is also coming up quick, they're starting to put christmas stuff up, since they don't have thanksgiving here. I still could use some measuring cups and measuring spoons. There was something else i was wishing for the other day, but now i don't remember.

Anywya, i'm going to go to the zoo now, and hopefully i'll get a chance to send pictures and such from that. In anycase, have a fantastic week. I love you guys, and as christmas comes i'll probably start missing people again, but i love serving a mission, and, having cleaned our house today, living in portugal is pretty incredile.

Boa semana, abraços por todos.

Até já

Elder Ammon