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
