March 29, 2010

Hey everybody, this morning i finally cut my hair, it was really getting out of control. Anyway, on to more interesting things.

The week was pretty great, we taught more lessons than ever before in my mission (i think, i'm not positive, but it was a lot). Flávia's doing great. We pushed back her baptism to the 10th so that we would have time to teach everything so that she understands it and have it be well prepared and invite people. I've learned a lot about teaching here on the mission, and it really impresses me how much some people are visual learners, and some people are auditory learners. In high school when people complained about that i just thought they were lazy, but after spending like 20 minutes trying to explain the story of Joseph Smith to Flávia in a way she'd remember, and failing, in 5 minutes i drew it out on a flash card and she got it really well. It was the first time that i've drawn out the joseph smith story, it works well. Some people i've run into are just not learners, and no matter how hard i try it just doesn't get in, but i'm of the opinion that that's more of a choice than a weakness, something to do with opening their ears that they can hear and their hearts that they may understand.

Elder Nixon's leg is doing great, but the rest of him has been better. He's got some sort of flu type thing and is really congested and tired and just generally miserable. He's a trooper though and hasn't really let that stop him from working. We've also been practicing magic and impressing kids and adults a like. It's shame i'll be missing the family reunion, these things are way better than the famed colorado upside-down-leg-crossed-handstand.

Eugerindo is also doing well, i dunno if i talked much about him last week. He was first found about two years ago and we ran into him because i contacted his cousin who gave us his address. He came to church and took his little brother and woke up walter (ruben's brother) so he came too, he has been coming to seminary, and is marked for baptism on the same day as Flávia. He´s realizing that he has to make some pretty drastic changes in his life, but he's determined, anyway, i'm excited for him, definitely one of my favorite investigators.

As far as palm sunday, it didn't seem like they did anything too crazy, although i was busy teaching people so i probably wouldn't have noticed if they had. I didn't see any donkeys walking around or anything like that. As of today we're on spring break, so for the next two weeks all our jovens are out of school, which is exciting. I do love jovens.

lets see, what else is going on...not too much, work is going well. On saturday we had a movie night and watched the other side of heaven, i made a metric ton of popcorn (in pan, it's way fast).

Nothing else major has happened, so i'll just tell cool stories from the week, about some of the new investigators we've found. On friday we were on our way home when we ran into a member on her way to Holland to visit her mom during spring break, she was with her friend Nelson. She wasted no time in giving us nelson's address and phone number and setting up an appointment for us. Sadly she couldn't be there (since she's in another country) but he is way cool. He's a composer, which is great because he has a flexible work schedule lots of free time and he's off sundays. He's really curious, and wants to know which church is true. So it was a really nice lesson.

On saturday we were on our way up to the church and i felt like going past mini-preço (a little grocery store they have here) to buy popcorn. Right as we were getting there there was this guy who was giving us the "interested eye" so we talked to him, it turns out that he had found a book of mormon and a pamphlet in the trash and started reading it and liked it a lot, and started talking about it in his anglican church, and then they kicked him out, so since then he's been trying to get in contact with the elders but hasn't really managed it. He has an interesting story to, one of those stories that your not entirely sure if you believe or not, full of war and swords and famous people and such. Sort of like Second Hand Lions. He has a really good handshake though, so i believe him.

On wednesday we taught this lady patrícia, who had been taught a few times by missionaries before. She is one of those people you wonder how they're not members already. She's from brasil, and so we were talking about brazil, and then she's like, "They have a temple in Fortaleza" and we're like, "yeah" but we're thinking, "woah, how does she know that?" As it turns out her sister is a member and is getting married in the temple in june, she (patrícia, not her sister) wants to join the church and everything, but her husband isn't very supportive, and it's hard for her to leave her kids at home to go to church, and she has a son with a mental disability that she doesn't feel comfortable taking to church. She's our stake president's neighbor, and he (president martinz) walked forty minutes at a moments notice to help us teach her. The stake leaders in portugal are basically incredible. Anyway, patrícia goes on vacation this week for spring break, but when she gets back we're going to start teaching her with president martinz, she's excited, and, as it happens her husband has been getting more and more supportive and her son has been getting more and more well behaved, so it seems like now is the right time.

Anyhow, that's about the gist of my week. Today i'm going to try to find white eggs (the eggs here are almost universally brown) so that we can die eggs for easter, something i meant to do last easter but never got around to it. we're also going to play settlers of catan with some of the jovens and learn magic tricks. It's going to be a good day. You guys have a great week and a great easter, oh, and a good april fools day.

abraços,

Elder Ammon

March 22, 2010

This week was really good in our area, although as zone leaders it was a rough week in the zone. We going to have a meeting on wednesday with our zone to see what we can do. It's weird to be responsible not only for your area for for the areas of a bunch of other missionaries, but i really enjoy being zone leader, it's generally a lot of fun. Today, by the way i'm in yet another internet café, this one has loud brasilian music that's sort of distracting and obnoxious, and i still can't send pictures, one day i'll send some pictures, probably the week after i get transferred from here, but whatever.

So, this week was good for us. We marked this girl we found a little while ago, Flávia. As it turns out, she's close friends with one of the moças here in the ward, Raquel, so that was really cool. We brought her to seminary for the first time and when we opened the door, wondering who we were going to pick to be friends with Flávia, Raquel shouted, "Flávia!" So that was cool. This ward has a really legit youth group. Flávia's way cool, she's been reading and praying every day, already seems like she's known all the moças forever, is going to seminary (which is at night here, not at 6 in the morning), and is going to the youth activity on saturday that's going to be raising money for EFY in august, hopefully she'll get to go to.

We had a bunch of people in church on sunday, which is always nice. Isabel and Daniel (the kid we baptized around the time i got there, and his mom). We've been having a hard time getting them to church because Daniel's uncle (who is from another church and is not the biggest fan of us) has been inviting daniel to come to his house every weekend. Anyway, they came, pretty much on their own, and we went by their last night and taught them and some of their friends. I say we taught, really i talked about nothing too much, while Elder Nixon bonded with isabel's husband. Elder Nixon is a pretty die hard benfica fan, and even though we shouldn't really watch football games, but it was on in the background and elder nixon jumped up and cheered when benfica scored (Carlos, the husband, is a big benfica fan). Anyway, Carlos was really impressed, i really like carlos, he doesn't generally want to talk about Religion, but he's a really great person, and took isabel and Daniel and luis (the youngest son, who is the man) to church on sunday.

Ruben and his brother and his friend all came to church too. We picked them up at 9, and left at about 9:25, but luckily church started about 10 minutes late, so it was all cool. João and Debora were there too, we found out that Eugerindo, who i realized this week reminds me a lot of Terrence James, showed up, but got there late and we were in the middle of the class so he left, which was sad. Also Camila, this girl in the world, invited her friend Ghena to come and he came, we're trying to figure out how to teach him. I love jovens (youth) they are so perfect, but their hard to teach if their parents aren't down with it. We're trying to figure out what to do there.

I think my favorite part of the week is saturday, on saturday we do football (soccer). And by do football, i mean watch football and teach 5 lessons in the period of 3 hours. This time we had 5 new people show up to football, well, we had about 10 new people, but we only got around to teaching 5 of them. Some of them are punk kids that don't really want to hear anything, but a lot of them are really good guys that think about things like their purpose in life ad stuff like that. This saturday, after football, we're going have a movie night for the whole ward and all the jovens. The only hard part about all this is i have to watch a bunch of really cool portuguese kids play soccer and not play with them, it's funny because here football is like basketball in the states. All the young street kids get together on the concrete court and play street ball, with few rules, lots of curse words, and some crazy fouls that go uncalled because that's the way you play. I wonder if i had grown up in portugal if i would still like football...

It's been pretty nice here, we had a freak rainstorm after church on sunday, but we in a car on the way to a meal appointment. Lets see, any other news on this end? I did get my shoes, they're intense, they look like they could take two years of walked, but i'm going to try not to wear them too often, so that i can keep wearing them for the rest of my life, since it looks like they'd take it. The correios people didn't even accept my drivers license, which is dumb, but it's probably better to just send packages to the office from now on, since i need my passport to get packages and i need to go to the office to get my passport. I don't need too many more packages, but next time you send anything put some face soap in there, mine will probably run out in the next month or two (of the three you send, the taller ones were better, the little square one dries my skin out a bit).

In case you were wondering, Iliana, the girl that got baptized a month or so ago, is doing great. We helped her out studying for a math test friday morning, i miss math, it's good stuff, interesting, math is not nearly as universal as i though, aside from the obvious vocabulary differences, the signs are different, so the first time i looked at portuguese math homework i had no idea what it was talking about.

So, all in all, it was a good week, does it show in my letters that my english is sort of broken? I usually catch myself and correct it, but i definitely talk weird from time to time, even more than before the mission. we had zone conference this week too, that was cool, it was mostly just repeating the things we talked about in zone leader council, but it's always good. The amount of meetings missionaries have is really quite impressive, it works out to about 1 per week on top of church and such. Anyway, i'm rambling, that's basically my week, it was good. I really saw the Lord's hand in our work, which is always reassuring. Small and simple things, like Max, isabel's puppy, waking her up so that she would go to church. By small and simple things, great things come to pass. I hope you guys have a great week,

abraços

Elder Ammon

March 15, 2010

This half of my mission is weird, every time i hit any sort of holiday i get this vague deja vu. Did you know they don't have the phrase "deja vu" in portuguese? I guess when you can just say, já vi, you don't need to say it in french. Anyway, the week was pretty good. Elder Nixon's leg is almost better, we're walking around a lot more these days, which is nice, i was getting a bit of church fever stuck up in the chapel all day. We did, however, have a great experience on saturday with soccer. Some time ago church soccer got shot down by president terry because the missionaries were just using it as an excuse to play soccer on a saturday instead of working, but soccer is a really good way to find people. At least in portugal, on saturday we taught thirteen new people in one day. 12 teenage boys at soccer, and one girl we found that lives next to Ruben. At soccer we had a rotation time thing with 3 teams of four (next week i'm hoping for four teams) and while two played, we, or rather I, taught the other kids. Elder Nixon was in charge of keeping things under control out on deck, so we did a little division with the members that also showed up. The lessons went well, with varying effectiveness, we just talked a bit about prayer, but it was fun. It's definitely the most lessons i've taught in the shortest amount of time. It's sort of fun to do new things to find new people, i pretty much stopped knocking doors when i left mafra, but i haven't changed much about the way i find people since then. I've been trying to figure out how to work with members of the church, but so far it's slow goings, but i'm hopeful, we have a lot of potentials with members, it's just tricky because instead of just going to their house and teaching them we have to follow up with the members and see how it's going.

In other news, the weather got really really nice this week. It stopped raining and now it's more of a sunny and warm during the day and chilly at night. For the first time in almost 6 months i'm wearing a short sleeve shirt. It's a lot better.

There are two challenges you run into when you teach teenagers, and we ran into both this week. The first is that they can't get baptized or even really taught without the permission of their parents. Parents are often shockingly stubborn about things like religion, so sometimes that can be tough. Other than that, you have to deal with the inherent laziness and irresponsibility of your average 16 year old. They're great, and i love them, but getting up at 9o'clock to come to church turned out to be too big a challenge for about five of the people we're teaching, but they're great, today i'll talk a bit about the Força Jovem:

Ruben: He's our star. Ruben wants to get baptized, but his mom isn't too happy about the idea of him not being catholic, but she is really really nice and respects his choice, i think she's concerned it's wrong to get baptized when you were already baptized as a baby and she's worried that he's not responsibly enough to go to church on his own and things like that. But, Ruben is a champ. He understands exactly why he should be baptized and he wants to. He needs to man up and make it to church, but we had a really good lesson yesterday about faith and works and the sacrifices people made in bringing us the Book of Mormon, so i'm hopeful for this week. I think if it's important to him his mom will let him, his mom is pretty awesome. He also has two brothers who are way cool and came to soccer on saturday, they'll cool, although we're focusing mostly on ruben at the moment.

Eugerindo: This kid is interesting. He's great. He knows the church is true, he knows he should get baptized, he wants to be a missionary when he's a bit older, but he has a hard time committing to come to church and obey the commandments and things like that. He lives in the same building as Ruben, and he's a bit of a Milandro (which basically means trouble maker) but he has a really good heart and when he's alone he's awesome. In front of his friends he tried to act big and ends up being sort of a dufus, but like i said, really good heart.

Danielson: He's Marcos's nephew (marcos, by the way, is in barreiro for two weeks and when he gets back we'll see about getting him to church and baptized) and is a great kid. He loves learning about the gospel, but he's said he doesn't feel ready to be baptized. He's close friends with Iliana, and if he could just get up on time he would come to church. His whole family are close friends with Lopes, a member of the church here in Cacém, so he's got no lack of friends in the church, he just has a hard time waking up, and during the week he has to study.

Flávia: This is a new one we found on saturday, she's Ruben's neighbor, and is way cool. We taught her the first lesson and she was set for going to church but then got stuck taking care of her 1 year old niece (that's another difficulty about jovens, is they generally have to do whatever their parents make them do) We'll see what happens there.

We have some others here and there (including paulo, hugo, luis, jaime, herman, eder, Carlos, Fabio, Migues, Lauro, Bruno, and, my personal favorite, Jilson. Those are the kids that came to futebol). I'm hoping to be here for the summer when all of a suddun all of these awesome kids will be at home almost all day long. Our ward here has a really strong youth program, especially the moças (young women, but moças sounds way better), so whenever we bring jovens to church their very well taken care of.

Other then those, we're teaching Noémia, who is nice portuguese lady who lives across the hall from Iliana. She always comes to church, but we've had a really hard time teaching her. We'd always go and she's never be home. Saturday we ran into her on the street and found out that the doorbell doesn't work, so now things will go a bit better. Tonight we have a lesson with her and we're planning to invite her to be baptized, so that's exciting.

We also have João, who's a members boyfriend. He's great, at first i though he was just coming because his girlfriend was making him, but he actually is progressing a lot. He's trying to quit smoking and has come to church almost every week for the past month or so. He's going to be a powerhouse once he's finally baptized. This is a youngish (30's) portuguese man with a car, he can definitely help a lot her in cacém.

So, that's cool. We have some great people here. They're all in cacém though, i've been wanting to start working in Massamá again, so we dedicated thursday as massamá day, because that's a cool area to and there are tons of people there we'd like to teach.

what else: On thursday we ate lunch at the Andrade family's house, and helped her with some things around the house. It was a weird night, it felt like being at home. It's a nice little family with 2 girls and 3 boys, the oldest of which is on a mission. They have a ton of food storage and read and pray together every night as a family. I can't really communicate why it was so surreal, it just really made me think of home, especially the mom praying for her son who's somewhere on his mission, and wondering where he was at that moment. Anyway, weird.

Oh, on thursday i got a package slip from correios saying i have a package, but it was at the correios far away. Fyi, from now on, either send things to the mission office or write on the package "Pedimos que entreguem ao Correios de Massamá" or something to that effect. Basically the post office that i belong to is really far away and it's inconvenient to go there. But, never fear, we got a ride. We talked to Francisco and he agreed to take us out there to pick it up, but we went and it was closed for lunch. Then we went back later, and, for the first time in my year and change in portugal, the mail lady asked me for my real I.D. I carry around a copy of my passport, and that's generally been enough, but she wanted the real deal. So now i have to wait until tomorrow to get my passport from the office, and then i have to work out a ride to get over to Barcarena again. In the future, it'll probably just be easier, if it's bigger than a bread box, to send it to the office. I go there about every other week, between conferences, transfers, and interviews, so it ends up being pretty easy. But i have a package that i'll get sometime in the near future, so that's exciting.

Anyway, that's about all that's up. You guys have a great week. Beware of traitors, pinches, and leprechauns. Thanks for your letters and support (and packages) and prayers. Até Logo.

~Elder Ammon

March 8, 2010

It's a beautifully rainy dayhere in cacém, but i have plenty of time to write internet finally, so that's a plus. Today we had zone leader councel, which aas pretty great, even if it takes a bit away from p-day. Elder Nixon still is not big on walking, so we would have probably just stayed inside and played settlers of catan.

In general, the week was pretty rough, although some very cool things happened. We'll start with the rough parts:

The rough part is just that we're a little bit stuck, because Elder Nixon can't really walk too well, and so we can't work the way we used to. He can go where we need to, but it takes a while and is pretty painful. The crutches you see in the states that go in your armpit with padding and everything don't exist in portugal, here the crutches are more like canes, and have hard plastic handles. They're better for assisted walking but a lot worse for getting around on one foot. This whole thing is obviously frustrating for him, but also frustrating for me, because i can only walk as fast as he can. It means a few things that are often very important in missionary work (passing people in the morning to make sure they make it to church on time, running to catch transportation, going up and down stairs) aren't possible. It does, however, serve to make us more creative. This week our plan was to go to the church and call old investigators and pray that people showed up on their own. The tricky thing is that only one person can call at once, and it's easy to just end up dinking around on the piano, however, we did have a bit of success with that. We've been calling people and having them come to the church, which is nice. While we were waiting for one lesson with a guy named Graciano a lady we had never met walked into the church and wanted to talk to us. As it turns out she has a friend in oeiras who is a member of the Igreja Universal (i don't know if this church exists in the united states, it would be called something like the universal church of the kingdom of God, they offer miraculous cures for people, although you have to pay money. Mariazinha was a member of that church, as was Manuel (who got baptized after i left). Members of that church are generally some of my favorite people, they're very humble and very sincere and are looking for something in their life.)

Anywho, this woman, Rosalina (which is with a rolled R, not a gutteral R. She corrects me every time i say her name) walks in and we teach her about faith and miracles and the fact that sometimes God has a purpose in our little aflictions (she has a problem in her foot that makes it hard for her to work). Anyway, it was a really nice lesson, and in the we talked about a bunch of stuff. She was all set to come to church, we set up a ride for her and everything, but then her ride slepped in and didn't end up picking her up. That was sort of frustrating, but whatever.

btw, my mouse just went balistic, it was crazy, i honestly think somebody hacked into my mouse or something. But then i typed 'step off' and that took care of it. Anyway, Rosalina. We taught her on sunday the first lesson, and she is awesome and is coming to chuch next week, when hopefully her ride won't sleep in.

Marcos, who was supposed to be baptized on saturday, did not get baptized, and we're not really sure why. When we talk to him he says everythings great and he's excited, but then he's never around when we try to teach him and he missed church yesterday. It's pretty confusing actually. There might be some sort of iceburg principle at work here.

Our other people are doing good. João is great, he came to church on sunday and is making friends and everything. We invited him to get baptized (not with a date, but more as a general invite, and he said he'd like to. Ruben, who's 17, also wants to get baptized, both of them have a few challenges to overcome, but we're excited, and they're both really awesome and we'll be able to get over them.

We were sitting outside the church in the sun (there have been a few beautiful days this week, it switches hourly between beautiful sunny and warm and cold and rainy) and some kids showed up and asked us if they could play soccer (the church has a soccer court) and we said yes. Then the next day they showed up again with 8 people, and by saturday there were about 15 people outside playing soccer. So we decided to make it official, with the stipulation that everyone has to hear a 5-10 minute message by the missionaries. I'm sort of frustrated that i'm going to go to portugal and back without ever playing futebol, but i am atleast going to find a bunch of people to teach, and i guess that's the real reason i came here anyway. We also been teaching English classes on wednesday night, and working more with the members. On thursday we want to comandeer seminary and have a missionary work day and get the jovens excited. Happily we've been getting a lot of help from the members of the church, especially those with cars, which has been critical.

Oh, Graçiano, that guy i mentioned, turns out to be the friend of a member of the church, and as it turns out, he has a oil container on his keychain. That was sort of crazy, since you generally only see missionaries and such with oil, but he said he found it on the ground in cape verde and has been carrying it around ever since, at some point someone told him what it was for. It's rusted shut, so he can't open it. I think it would be cool if he gets baptized and when he's able to use oil for blessing and stuff, the oil container suddenly becomes openable. Probably won't happen, since it's not excalabar, but it would be a cool story.

well...other news. elder Nixon's foot is getting better, in theory a week or so from now he'll be walking without crutches, which will be a good day for everybody. In the meantime, it's an interesting challenge, and it could end up with us working more effectively than ever, because i've wasted a lot of time in my mission walking, now that i can't walk, i have to think of someting else to do, which ends up being more effective sometimes. Well, that's about the news, I hope you guys have an excellent week, and we're excited. This week is going to be a lot better than last week, Elder Nixon just has to figure out how to fly, and we'll be set.

Abraços para todos, amo-vos

Elder Perkes

March 1, 2010

So, i'm still in Massamá, and not too much has changed here. Iliana's baptism was great, her family came and everything ran very well. The water was a little cold, but she was a trooper and didn't complain.

Elder Nixon is still my comp, but now he's having some struggles because he spraned his ankle in a epic battle with the stairs on the way down from a lesson with Reuben. We were late for the train and were trying to make it home on time to plan and stuff, and we were booking it down the stairs. He was, in fact, booking it quite a bit faster than i was. He was a good flight ahead of me when i heard him shout, and i got down there and thought he was joking, but he was seriously in a lot of pain. So we made it down to the train station, he couldn't walk to well so i was supporting him, and caught the next train (it turned out to come about a minute after we got there, which made the whole thing seem rather foolish.) and headed home. We called Irmã Torgan and told her about it and she said to just keep going to benfica and the secretaries picked us up there and took us to the Red Cross in Lisbon. So we went to the emergency room (called Urgência, i.e. urgency) which turned out to be rather less than urgent. We couldn't get in until we showed that we were going to be able pay. It was more of a clinic than a hospital, but it was pretty relaxing. Elder Nixon got a cast, and we got home at around 1:30 in the morning. It was an adventure, since then missionary work has been a little bit tougher since he can't really walk. We're working it out though, between the members and such, we managed to teach more lessons last week than any other week, but because we were sort of out of commission on friday and saturday, we didn't arrange things very well for everybody going to church, so it was sort of weak, but we'll do better this week. In theory, he has to wear his cast for about 3 more weeks. So i'm working hard to not go crazy when we have to stay in because we have nobody to drive us, but we're working it out.

Let see, in other news, Marcos is marked for baptism. I don't know if that had happened last week or not, but he'll be getting baptized this saturday, he's really cool, and for some reason or another, he reminds me a lot of Ian Lovell (he really is the african version of ian)

Hm, not too much happened this week other than that, and i don't have much time because we're all sharing the same computer, so you guys have a great week, and i'll try to right something more interesting next week.

Oh, and i got my package today, we passed by the office for some transfer business going on in our zone, and the Life was a good choice, that stuff is delicious. Thanks for getting my shoes worked out, these things are really falling apart, but these new ones should last the rest of the mission, i'll try to be careful with them to be able to use them when i get home.

Anyhow, thanks for your letters, até próxima,

Elder Ammon