February 22, 2010

Big news! Recently, the church, probably after much study, pondering, and prayer, converted to google, which means two things:

1. I have a new email address (as you noticed)

2. I get to use email based on gmail complete with highlighting, color text, emoticons , font change!, and a whole 7 gigabytes of space (instead of the 60 megabytes that filled up every other week)

All this is very exciting, and it's probably the best thing to happen to my email time in the past year. This also means that you guys have no excuse not to send me a billion pictures, because now i have room for them all. Those of you (all of you) who have never used the old school email browser won't apreciate how poorly designed it was, and therefore probably don't care about the majority of what i'm saying. So, on to interesting things:

this week was great, we did infact have interviews, which were nice. Interviews as Zone Leader are different, because we have to do a training, and president talks to us about as much about other people as he does about us. The package hadn't gotten there, so it'll have to wait a bit, sorry it took so long to get my address to you, but whatever, i'll be ok. Today we ate my birthday lunch at a sushi restaurant. We tried last week but it was closed for carnival (i don't think it makes sense to close restaurants on holidays, but that's their call). It was good, although they didn't have the awesome conveyer belt. We tried to get email done earlier, but there were no open spots. This morning we played settlers of catan again, i got owned, it was probably the worst i've lost at settlers of catan. Ever. It was really dissapointing actually. It felt a lot like losing in monopoly. I also got myself a sweet birthday present. I found a fossil watch that some elder had left behind that wasn't working. We took it to the watch store today and for £2.50 they took care of it, making the least expensive watch i've ever gotten (other than that watch i got for free from Hunter once.) I'm going to work hard not to lose it, which will probably include not wearing it most days.

This week went by really fast, we had a division in Cascais and a baptismal interview for them on friday. Iliana got interviewed on saturday and she's doing great. We had a little scare when out of no where her mom decided that iliana couldn't get baptized (from the beginning her mom has been very nice and was totally cool with her going to church and getting baptized, so it caught us off gaurd) but iliana talked to her mom and now she's going to let her be baptized. Iliana's great and way excited. She's really solid, has lots of friends in the ward, and the bishop's going to perform the baptism. So it's exciting. We'll take pictures, but once again i'm at a new email place. This place is way nicer than the others, with quick computers, nice keyboards, and cozy chairs, but still no usb spot, so still no photos. I'm pretty sure priscila is coming though, so she can send pictures.

We had 8 people come to church this week (i.e. people we're teaching, counting members of the church there were a lot more), and all of them are really solid. We actually got to church about half an hour late because we were waiting with Reuben and Danielson. They're new this week, we found him a week or so ago, and he's awesome. He was another we were worried about the mom not being cool with him going to church, but we met the mom on saturday and she loves it. She actually woke them up sunday morning got them out of bed and pushed them into the shower to get ready. When we told her that we help with english she got even more excited. She told us that if we teach her sons english they'll all join our church. That's not really a good motivation for baptism, but it's a start.

We had another new person in church, Nelson Pancas. He's a reference from Fatima Esteves in Mafra. He too is awesome and loved church and we're going to teach him tomorrow morning before district meeting. We also had João, who is a brasilian member's boyfriend. He came last week too. It seems like he just came because his girlfriend forced him too, but this week he liked it a lot more, and he's hearing the lessons and everything. Marcos also came, who we found on saturday. He, as it turns out, is best friends with Elder Fernandes (who i trained about 6 months ago), he liked church a lot, and we're going to teach him again tonight. That was all really exciting, and this week we're hoping to teach these people and get them moving towards baptism. The coolest thing is that all of those people were found through others. Two were references from members, and three from other people we're teaching. All in all the week was really good, and we're excited for the future here in cacém.

Speaking off member references (or referrels as they're called in english) we visited the Nogueiro family last night to talk about people they new that we could teach. Some time ago, their son (who's about 6 years old) invited a bunch of his friends to come to church (pretty much all off them). A bunch came, and so we're trying to work with some of their parents. We're going to have a family night on friday and a "family afternoon" on saturday. This is all, by far, the most success i've ever had on my mission with working with the members of the church to find people. Members here are pretty spectacular, and it's making everything go a lot more smoothely.

This week is going to be really busy, our zone has 8 people marked for baptism this week, 4 of which are taught by district leaders, which means we're going to have to be jumping around interviewing people all week, but it's exciting, our zone, in general, is doing great. It's weird to be proud of how my zones doing, that's a new sort of joy in missionary work.

Oh! before i forget, don't forget to get new shoes from mr. mac. Even if you don't send them here, my ecco's are not fulfilling their end of the two year warrantee-bargain, and if i'm going to be walking around with holes in my shoes for the rest of my mission, i atleast want a sweet new pair of eccos waiting for me. Maybe that's selfish, but it seems just.

Anyway, that's about all the news and the time i have for this week, have an excellent week, The transfer ends next monday, so it's possible something will happen their, but i would be shocked if anything changed. Time is going absurdly fast. But i guess that's to be expected. Enjoy the last bit of february, and hopefully things warm up a bit.

Tchau tchau

Elder ammon

p.s. make sure you send new mail to this email address, because i won't get it at my old one.

beixinhos

February 15, 2010

In my ongoing search for an internet cafe that has a way to send and organize my pictures (because my camera is almost full) today i find myself in this grungy bar/café that smells like smoke and has pool and darts and 80's music. Sadly, it does not have a usb jack, and so no pictures this week. However, Priscila (the aforementioned daughter of someone eldernixon's dad baptized) copied a bunch (all) pictures from my camera and is going to send them to you, so find some good ones and stick them on my blog. I think i'm going to buy a new SD card today, my camera is way too full.

So the week was good. It taught me a lot about humility. It was thursday afternoon and i hadn't taught a single lesson this week. I really like teaching, and when i don't have anyone to teach it's frustrating. President Torgan, some time ago, made a new rule that after dinner and lunch we have to take 10 minutes for prayer. At first i thought it was rediculous, and didn't really know how i was going to pray for 10 minutes straight, but as times gone on i've really began to appreciate and rely on these minutes of prayer and revelation, and theres a marked difference in the days when i don't get around to doing it because we don't have time or whatever. Anyway, returning to quinta feira (thursday) with Elder Perkes not having taught any lessons. Earlier that day we went up to Mira-Sintra for the second time. We went there the first time looking for a member and ended up contacting this kid. We marked a appointment with him for thursday. We got there thursday and no one answered. To add to the frustration, it took us about an hour to get there. So we went back to the church, stopping by lidl to buy some cake (lidl is a great store that has almost no comparison in the united stated. It sells a lot of very cheap junk food, including a 1£ lemon cake which is honetly incredble. But you can also by rice or yogurt or meat or backpacks. If they built them in college towns they'd make lots and lots of money. They're also the only place that sells good Duo) So, we ate some cake and prayed. As i was praying, humbling myself and asking that i could teach someone, I remembered this lady we had contacted at the station in Mira Sintra. We were walking out of the station and she smiled at us (which isn't your average reaction when people see the missionaries, staring is normal, smiling is rather rare) and so we talked a little bit, then i asked her for directions and ended up finding out that her nephew used to go to church all the time but didn't anymore. I figured he was a member of the church from the way she described it, and we got their address and it was cool. So, remembering her in the church, i felt like we should go by them then and teach them, so we did, and there were 5 people there, and we had a good, rather distracted lesson. We marked a return appointment with the kid and his friends for the next day. The next day we were talking to him and we found out he wasn't a member, that he had never been baptized because he was baptized when he was a baby and didn't feel like he coud be baptized again. We exaplained a little bit about the importance of the concious decision to be baptized and talked about how babies aren't condemned if their not baptized, and he liked that a lot, and asked us if we could baptized him right then in his house (which reminded me of God's Army 2, if anyone has seen that), but we told him it had to be by immersion and that he needs to prepare first. So. The moral of the story, is that we marked him and his friend for baptism in a few weeks. He's heard all the lessons before and has been to church a bunch of times, hopefully now he's ready to committ.

Iliana didn't end up getting baptized this week, we pushed it back to the 23rd, for a bunch of reasons, partly so that her mom could see it because that's her first day off, but we're excited for that here in a week.

My birthday came and went without a whole lot of ado, i did buy an air popper thing that shot confetti everywhere and some gingerale, and that was fun. It was a good birthday. I'm 21! What's up with that? I still have a hard time believing i'm 20. My age used to feel like a part of me, now it just feels like a somewhat arbitrary number that has very little effect on my life.

Oh, continuing the story, so after that, we ended up finding a bunch of new people and teaching a bunch of lessons and it worked out that this week we taught more lessons than we had in any other week in Massamá and we found more new people to teach than i have in any other week of my mission. So it's cool, humility is really important in missionary work. We found this other kid, Reuben, who was a reference from Eugerindo (the kid who's marked, along with his friend Alex), who is way cool. We taught him a little bit about prayer and he liked it a lot. he 'reza' (i'm not quite sure how you translate that into english, i think it's recite, but it's saying memorized prayers repetitively), but he really liked the idea that he can ask for specific things from God. He was actually one of the smartest kids i've ever talked to about that. Lots of kids when we explain about prayer ask if they can pray to do good on a test, and we have to explain that it doesn't work exactly like that, that we have to do our part too. Reuben asked if he could pray, "God, i have a test on thursday, and i don't really want to study, so please give me the desire to study so that i can do well on the test." That is a wise 17 year old.

Lets see, some other highlights: I met member of the church that looks almost exactly like George Clooney (almost because he also looks a little bit like Robert De Niro)

And lots of other exciting and incredible other things happened, but i don't have any more time left. So have a great week, and have a good mardi gras (here they call it carnival, and it's pretty crazy, they like to throw water baloons at missionaries, but that hasn't happened yet.)

abraços

Elder Ammon

We had some trouble finding a place to do internet this morning here in massamá, the old elders did it somewhere else, and we’ve been doing it at this super ghetto place in caçém. We asked around and ended up at this little café that for some reason wasn’t open yet (they didn’t have hours, it seems like they just come in when they feel like it). We were thinking about going out to caçém, but my vague memory of being here almost a year ago led me to this quiet little internet café. If you go back to the email I sent from here last time,ithink I talked how the space bar was messed up. You’ll all be happy to know that it’s still terrible, and so if my words are blended together, paciência.

Yesterday, as I said, we had a zone meeting on p-day. This was our idea, and it was going to be epic. But it taught me the truthfulness of Murphy’s law and the importance of good preparation.

The Plan: The missionaries go to the chapel, expecting a boring zone meeting, on p.day. Meanwhile, the financial secretaries come in the mission car and van and take us all up to the Dedication Site on this mountain in sintra (where Thomas S. Monson dedicated the mission of Portugal some 30 years ago). People are all surprised and happy, Then we have a great meeting, we pray and everybody ends up inspired and ready to tear it up in their respective areas and we all get home by 3 o’clock to do internet and shopping and all that.

How it really happened: So, president said we couldn’t use the mission vehicles for stuff like this, so we had to scramble to figure out how to get there. We talked to some members and they told us to take a bus from sintra to this little town and then taxis from the town to the spot. People ended up getting to the chapel about an hour and a half late. Half of them already knew because the assistants let it slip to mafra, and mafra told mem martinz, cascais had been involved in the planning, and we had told the secretaries because we thought we’d need them. Our bus didn’t show up, so we decided to go up to sintra and take taxis. When we got there were three taxis, but while waiting for the financials one of them pulled away, leaving us without enough taxis. Eventually we pull it off, we get up there and as we arrive, it starts raining. By the time everyone gets to the dedication sight it’s freezing cold and pouring rain, which none of us were prepared for. We had a little meeting, and took some pictures, and went back. But when we called the taxis they wouldn’t come because we didn’t have a specific address. Happily, the sisters had made friends with their taxi driver and had kept his cell phone number so he came and got us, although it took three trips and most people got back to their areas around 7o’clock, wet, cold, and probably frustrated with the zone leaders who took up their p-day.

So it didn’t quite go as planned, but I learned a lot. That’s been my experience in doing things for the first time, they turn out to be epic failures, but the second time around they turn out better. I actually enjoyed it a lot, as did a few other people who define fun as hiking around in the mountains in the cold rain. We sang “High on a mountain top”, which was cool. This computer doesn’t have picture sending capabilities, so that will have to wait until next time, but it was pretty fun.

In other news, Sunday was stake conference, so I got to see a bunch of the mafra gang. The Esteves, Francisco, Isabel, Edgar, Rogério, Maura, Síria, and some others were all there. It was cool. We ended up riding the bus back with them, I was glad that they hadn’t all forgotten about me. This whole week a lot of stuff hasn’t been going according to plan, we’ve had a bunch of lessons fall through, the bus to stake conference didn’t show up and we had to call bishop to pick us up. I think I must have broken a mirror or something without realizing it, or maybe that one that fell in the toilet when I was 10 is finally kicking in.

To answer some questions, I think for my birthday we’re going to eat lunch at a sushi restaurant, hopefully I can finally find out how they really get caviar. Looking for internet we discovered a little mall that has a bunch of stuff, so I’ll probably buy some more junk to remember things next p-day.

I almost got my address, I know the street and the number, but I don’t know my postal code, I keep forgetting to do this until I’m doing internet, and by then it’s too late. Last year we had a surprise party by mafra, I doubt that will happen here though, since I’m pretty new and I haven’t been telling people it’s my birthday. Pontufa lives upstairs, and had a little gate to keep her from wandering in, because she likes to explore and try to eat any food or crumbs we may have left on the ground. Technically missionaries aren’t allowed to have pets (not ever Rhinoceroses!) so yeah, she stays upstairs most time. I’m pretty used to low doorways now, and I think by the end I will start ducking on normal doors, or I’ll develop a strange, hunchback-posture that will be impossible to get rid of. I think I went almost all week without hitting my head this week, so that’s an improvement. It’s crazy we’re already on our fourth week here, this transfer is flying by.

We had a cool experience I’ll talk about real quick before I’m out of time. Our first week here I was praying to know which members we should go to find people to teach and such,and, among some other names, the name Camila came to mind. So that was weird, because I didn’t even know anyone (here) named Camila yet, and was a little confused. I asked elder Nixon, and it turns out Camila is this 16 year old girl who got baptized about a year ago. We finally talked to her this week, and got about 5 references from her. She invited one of them to mutual and he loved it and wants to come back. It’s exciting, I’ve never really taught anyone from members before. Another name that I got, Rui, we were with this week, and it turns out he knows every single person in caçém, it was pretty amazing actually. I also ran into Ofélia this week, who is the daughter in law of Mariazinha. We taught her in pontinha around Christmas time, but it was hard to get anywhere because she was living in caçem. I asked for her number when I got here but they never got it for me, and then we ran into the other night.

So not everything is going badly, actually the work is incredible. Iliana is getting baptized this weekend and is way excited. We’ve found a bunch of new people with a lot of potential, and it’s started raining again!

So, my times pretty much up, but thanks for the birthday wishes, have a great week, hope for the best, and plan for the worst.

Amo-vos

~Elder Ammon XXI

Dear Family,

I still don’t know my address, but i’m working on it. If I don’t get it by the end just send it to the mission office. I’ll get it when we have interviews which is on the 17th if I remember correctly.

So, to talk a bit about my area and the week. We had a baptism yesterday, these computers are no good for putting up pictures. Today we came down to Linda-a-velha (which, means Linda the old) to hang out with Elder Ellis and Elder McFarren. We played settlers of Catan (in Portuguese) which was fun. Elder McFarren won his first time, with me in close second. It was fun.

So first we’ll talk about the baptism. It’s this kid named Daniel. His mom is also on track for getting baptized, but needs to get married first. His dad hasn’t shown too much interest, but is really nice to us and came to church for the baptism and liked it. It was a really nice baptism, much less stressful for me than the others. The members handled everything, and the baptism was done by Thiago, who is Daniel’s primary teacher. Daniel actually cried at the end (happy crying), which was cool. He’s a really good kid, and I’m excited for his family.

Iliana is also doing great, she really wants to be baptized, but she doesn’t quite feel ready yet for some reason, so she’s marked for the 14th. We’re going to try to figure out why she doesn’t quite feel ready, because we feel that she’s really ready, she knows her stuff and is excited and understands baptism and everything. But it is a big choice, so it’ll be good to have a little bit of time.

Other than those two we’ve been sorting through all the people left over from the other two pairs of missionaries. It’s really hard to handle both massamá and cacém but we’re trying to work it out to have member splits. Tonight it’s looking good. I decided yesterday I should just set them up one day in advance. It’s sad to hear that Dad’s available and the missionaries aren’t calling him. My entire mission I’ve been hurting for people to teach with, but I’ve been really blessed to always get the members teaching with us. We’ve also had some really good members, and here we have a great ward. For the first time I have a ward mission leader who takes an active part in the work, so that’s exciting. We had a missionary work Sunday, and we both talked and Interlany, who’s going on a mission here in a month, gave a talk and Edmilson (the ward mission leader) also talked. So it seems like the members are excited and wanting to help, so we’ll see what we can accomplish here.

It’s good to hear isaac’s starting off strong on science fair. Just remember that in the end really all that counts with those judges is how well they sell it. That was always my problem, I could play with rockets and hurricanes but I couldn’t sell it (and puppies just didn’t woo the judges at regionals like they did in elementary school), so make sure to practice that with him.

A little about my house: it’s in the basement, but we have screens on the windows so we can keep the windows open all the time without fear of cats, or rats, or mosquitos, and for that reason is doesn’t get all humid like it did in pontinha. It does get a lot colder, but it also comes with a fireplace. We haven’t gotten around to trying that yet. Today it’s really nice and sunny and warm. We’re in shorts and t-shirts for playing frisbie. It’s always weird to wear normal clothes.

We do have a dog, her names pontufa, which means slipper, and she’s very fat. She weighs around 20 kilos which works out to about 45 pounds, and she’s not much bigger (in terms of bone struction) than Cassie. She’s on a diet and Tia (we call our landlady tia, which means aunt) said she’s lost 2 kilos so far.

On Mondays (today) tia and this other lady come down and clean our house, really really well. They make our beds, change our towels, wash our clothes, clean the kitchen. They even washed the dishes last week. I was sort of weirded out by that last week, so this morning I washed the dishes before they came down. It’s nice though. I guess that’s sort of how it was living at home, but after a year of doing everything myself I really appreciate it more. They even put little chocolates around sometimes. It’s great.

The only problem with our house, as I mentioned last week, is that it’s really short. The doors and ceilings were made for people about a foot shorter than I am. Elder Nixon does ok, but I’ve hit my head almost daily for the last week. Elder Cobb (who’s place we took in massamá, said you get used to it after a couple weeks, but it’s sort of frustrating sometimes. Other than that, the only problem is that in the morning, those beds are way to soft and comfy and it makes it a lot harder to get up than in pontinha, but we’ve been getting used to it and we’re doing good now.

The area is cool, there are tons and tons of people that live here. The reason I wanted to come here is because this is where the zone leaders of mafra live and lived when I was in mafra. So almost exactly a year ago I was on a division in mafra withElder Christensen (who also started his mission in mafra) and he was talking about his time in mafra and we ate ice cream at the first place that he had eaten icecream on his mission and it was really cool. On that day I decided that in about a year I wanted to be zone leader and do a division in mafra. Sadly, the district leader no longer lives in Mafra so I can’t visit there for a division, but I’m hoping something will come up. A couple days ago we ran into Francisco Almeida, who we worked with a lot in Mafra. We also have a reference from Fatima Esteves, you may remember I ate lunch there all the time and called from their house on Christmas and mother’s day. She (and Francisco) work here in Cacém. This week is stake conference, so I’m excited to say hey to all the mafra folks.

So that’s why I’ve wanted to come here for so long; and here I am. Other than that it’s just a really fun area. Great members, tons of people and very few issues with transportation and things like that.

Lets see…other news. Being a zone leader is different. I imagined it would be sort of like being district leader just with some more missionaries and focusing on the district leaders, but it’s a lot different. First of all is one very big step closer to president Torgan, so when he’s worried about poor results or has an idea or something, he’ll often talk with us directly, where as before we would just hear about it through the zone leaders. It’s also different because as a district you do tons of stuff together so you get to know your district really well and it’s fun to work so closely with people, here we generally just call people and do divisions from time to time (here we call them divisions, in the states they call them exchanges or something like that), so it’s a much less direct thing. But it’s fun. Me and Elder Nixon are getting along very well, and I think we’re going to work very well together. Ultimately our goal is to never see eachother because we’ll always be on splits with the members, but that’s not to say we don’t like eachother. It’s cool that you guys knew his parents. Yesterday as we were walking up to church this girl whose mom his dad had baptized when he was here 30ish years ago called to us. She’s a member out in odivelas, close to pontinha. It’s cool to think of future generations from the people you get to know here in the mission.

So basically, the week was good, we’re hoping this week we can plan better and work more effectively with the members. I honestly can’t believe I’m going to turn 21 in a couple weeks. It’s pretty much impossible. Sadly, turning 21 in Portugal as a missionary doesn’t really do anything for me (for instance, even if I were going to buy beer, here you can start at 18, maybe younger), but it’ll be weird to start telling people.

Well, that’s the week, next week I’ll have to come up with some more interesting stories or something. I remember at about this point in Elder Oram’s mission he started running out of things to talk about, so hopefully that won’t happen. Anyway, have a nice febuary, and watch out for those groundhogs. They’re vicious.

~Elder Ammon