Time is short today. To start of my term as zone leader right, we spent p-day in a zone leaders council where we got trained on how to do things. Email is struggling today, so i dunno how well this is going to work, but it seems like it's doing ok now.

Anyway, this week was intense. It feels like a long time since i was in pontinha. Elder Nixon is cool, he's young. He came to portugal at the same time as Elder Fernandes, so he's about 7 months in and already zone leader. It's good though. He's humbled by the responsibility and is excited to work in this area. I'm really excited to work in this area, i feel like i've arrived in the promised land. I feel like this area has so much potential, i'm excited. There were four elders here last week, but the pulled all four out and sent us two. We're taking care of Caçem and Massamá, both of which are huge. We marked someone for baptism yesterday, and 10 year old kid. He's awesome, his mom is also an investigator, but is waiting on getting married to get baptized, but she loves the church and she cried when we marked daniel because she was so happy. We're trying to work with the dad, who is a little less excited about church, he's way nice, and he has no problem with it, but he doesn't seem to have much desire to come to church and stuff like that. But we're still hopeful, when ever we teach he listens even though he sits on the couch watching tv, and whenever we say prayers he turns the tv off. So we're hoepful for him.

Tonight we're going to teach this girl, Iliana, she's 16, and way solid. She's been to church a few times all ready, and has made great friends with the young women in this ward. We're going to talk with her and her mom about baptism also. Her mom, when she was in cape verde, went to church all the time and loved it, but she stopped when she came to portugal. She's from São Vincente actually. It'd be cool if she knew logan, i'll have to find out how long ago she was there. Other than that this week has been sort of all over the place, finding our way around the area,getting passes, and trying to pick up where the other elders left off. We need to plan better, we honestly don't have enough time to do everything we would like to. There are so many people to teach. We're trying to work it out with the members to do splits and work in both cities, so hopefully we'll get that going. Anyway, i'm excited for this area, i think it's going to be great.

The ward here is cool. It's the biggest and most funtional ward i've had so far. There are young men and young women and primary and a bishop and two councelors and a relief society and two councelors and a ward misison leader and everything. It's great. At the same time, i miss the feeling of little branches, but it'll be a cool change. We're having a missionary work sunday this week, and both Elder Nixon and I are going to give talks.

Elder Nixon, by the way, is from Kaysville, and his parents are from hyde park, so i'm sure some one knows them. Shiree Parker and Scott Nixon, you probably went to the same highschool with them. So that's cool. He lived in brasil for four years, so he speaks portuguese pretty well.

Oh, being zone leader is absurd. I have no idea what i'm doing, but that's ok, i'm getting a hang of it. District leader is mostly just a question of getting numbers on sundays and doing district meeting from time to time, zone leader actually requires some sort of leadership, so i'm hoping i can learn how to do this and help my zone do better. We (the zone) have been a bit stagnent for the last few weeks, which is strange because we have some of the most well organized wards in the country, so hopefully we'll work something out.

Well, i'm pretty much out of time, I don't have my address yet, but i'll be sure to get that for you next week. Anyway, have a great week, next week it will be febuary, how crazy is that. Serving with Elder Nixon is making me realize how old i am in the mission. It's a little frightening, but i still have a ton of time. Oh, our house is way nice, i'll talk more about it next week, but we have a dog named pontufa and the doors are small so i keep hitting my head. It's a great house though, i'm really happy to be here. Anyway, until next week!

Abraços,

Elder Ammon