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