May 31, 2010

First of all, once again, congradulation on the newest nephew Tanner. I'm sure he'll make a good addition to the nephews.

As it turns out Elder Mateer had to take care of something with his family today, so we're doing email today, which is just as well because tomorrow is sort of crazy, we have a lesson at 10a.m. with Vanessa, District meeting at 11:30, then lunch, then we're planning on helping Leolinda and Viola move. More on that later

This week was great, it seems like it's been a really long time since last p-day, the first transfer is like that. I don't think i'm going to be able to get everything covered, so i'll start with the biggest stuff.

Leolinda and Joaquim Viola got married on wednesday, and baptized on saturday. The baptism was great, another one that had almost nothing to do with us. They were ready to baptize when we got here, and what little preperation was required was done by Otacílio and Bete, who are, by the way, on the list for Top 5 members of the church in the world. These people are Saints. Otacílio performed Joaquim´s baptism, and Elder Seraim came up from Olivais to do the baptism of Leolinda. After that we had a little wedding ceramony, which was cool. On sunday they got confirmed, they already seem like they've been members forever. They're excited about doing family history and going to the temple to get married in the temple a year from now. Leolinda is excited and working hard to bring the rest of her family, who all came to the baptism, to come to church. Marisa, her daughter, is living with Carlos, who was baptized some time ago but has since stopped coming, and Vanda and her boyfriend, who is younger and apparently used to have some difficulties but has calmed down a lot and liked the baptism.

This week has made me really grateful for my family. You guys are awesome, i'm so glad we all get along and there's no drama and Mom and Dad always were so good to us. The more i learn about other people's families, the more grateful I am to have a family so united and happy. We had a family history center open up in our ward, and so last p-day after email we went by there and looked at some stuff, i was amazed. Family history is the coolest. I had no idea we had so much family history on there. You can go back 27 generations to 1046. Also, i always assumed the Vail line came to utah from britain about the same time that the perkes family came, if not after, but it turns out they were in New England for along time, back to the Revolution. We probably had people fighting in the Revolutionary war and stuff. There's some Vail family that lived in Salem, Massachussetts in the 1600's. It was so cool to find out my roots are more interesting than Utah and England. We've been trying to show the people we teach about family history, and i've started carrying around a chart with all my family until the great grandparents. Yesterday we taught Sirlene and Paulo, a less-active member and her husband who's not a member, about family history, and they got really excited about it. It was cool, we've been trying to get ahold of this family for 6 weeks, and then we went with Otacílio for a day to do hometeaching and on our way back we passed by and they were at home and we taught Them, two of Sirlene's three daughters, and Ugo, her daughter's boyfriend.

We had some other cool experiences this week, on the wedding day we were up in Vila Franca (which is a ways away) to talk to Vanessa. She has a rough schedule so we talked to her for a bit in a Café, we talked abit about courage to ask for an answer from God and the importance of families and the way the gospel has blessed our families. I showed her a picture of our family (which i carry around in my bible in Malachi) and she was really impressed, she said she felt really strange looking at our family and how happy we were. We marked for today, but today we had to go to zone leader council. ZL Council was cool today, the mission baptized more than we ever have before, so President took us all to Chili's for lunch (yes, they have chili's in portugal) It was fun to spend some time withElder Fernandes and Elder Nixon and all the other Zone leaders that were there. It's funny how you guys don't know who these people are, and how close we are together. It's weird how close you get to your comps and other missionaries you serve with.

Anyway, on the way from Vanessa's to the Wedding, we saw this young woman standing at the top of the hill. This story is probably getting boring by now, but i felt like i should talk to her, but Elder Mateer was already a little ways ahead, and so i started to walk past, but i really wanted to talk to her, so by the time i was about 10 feet passed her and Elder Mateer was 10 feet ahead of me on the other side of a fence, i shouted to elder mateer to hold on a sec and i went and talked to her. I didn't really know what to say, but she had a big bag she was carrying and i sort of blurted out awkwardly, "Podemos ajudar com isso?" and to our suprise, she said "Sim!" ElderMateer (who is really good at serving people) grabbed her bag and we started walking with her to her house. And on our way I talked to her. I would learn later that that bag she was carrying was really really heavy, and she is five months pregnant, and i don't know how she was expecting to get the rest of the way to her house. We learned her name is Teresa, she's from Cabo Verde, the Island of Fogo, where Elder Fernandes is from. She had already been to church once in cape verde with her cousin, who is a member, but had never heard the lessons or anything. When we got to her house, it was crazy, because we had knocked her door before, because she is the niece of a member who used to live in Vila Franca (who is now living nearby with her newish husband). We talked a little bit with her, said a prayer and set up a return appointment, but later we felt like we should go back that day, so we got António Gomes, who lives nearby, to come with us, and he helped us a lot. We taught her the first lesson, she loved it, she said she'd read and pray (which she has) and she'd come to the baptism (which she did). We're going to teach her again on teusday, we're pretty excited for her.

I'm checking out some random family history stuff. I just found a great^nth Grandfather named Captain John Jacobs born in Hingham, Norfolk, England, who (i can only assumed) sailed to Plymouth, Massachussetts and established the city of Hingham.

Lets see, anything else? We put together a crip for Tatiana, a lady we've been teaching, who had a baby this week, and didn't have a crib. Last monday Macsuel (who is one of the coolest members in portugal, he's the brasilian Logan living in Alverca) asked us if we knew anyone who needed a crib, which we did, so that was cool. We're teaching her on teusday also. So, things are going good here, I'll try to get some pictures out next week, of the wedding, and baptism, and other crazyness has been going down this week.

oh, in relation to you guys picking me up. From the beginning i said i'd rather come home on the plane and come back with you guys later, but i like the idea of you picking me up too. Do whatever is cheapest and/or most convenient. To me, it doesn't make a big difference. Thanks for your letters, i'm excited for photos of the Tanner. My times gone, have a great week.

Abraços

'Captain' Elder Ammon

May 24, 2010

Olá família,

We're waiting on transfer calls, we're pretty positive nothing is changing, but it's still frustrating to not know for sure. You can assume nothing will change, if we get the call later i'll send another little email.

It's hard to believe another transfer has gone by. It went super fast. It's been a good six weeks. We've been working hard to try to gain the trust and the love of the members, by loving and serving them, and it's been a lot of fun. Yesterday we went with Otacílio´s family and Marcelo´s family to Marcelo´s son, Thiago´s birthday lunch. It was at Cabeço da Montachique (which i translate, roughly, The Head of Cool Mountain). It was nice, but we felt really out of place. It was in this big public park with lots of tables (very vaguely like La fleurs' Bluff) and we, as missionaries in white shirt and ties, stuck out a little. It's impressive that after 6 weeks here i'm closer to the members here than in any other area, even though i spent several months in other areas.

Number wise, it hasn't been the most productive transfer, we taught fewer lessons and found fewer investigators, but we're hoping with eyes of faith that after our patience and diligence it's work out and we can start teaching member's friends. This week we organized a bit better the names we got from president torgan's thing 6 weeks ago. We counted them all up and we ended up with 451. So far we've identified 35 of them that live in our area and 5 of them we've already talked to. It's getting there. If i had had a bit more experience with working with the members and such i maybe could have done this better, but i was realizing yesterday this is the first time in my mission i have focused on working with the members, and i'm learning by trial and error. This week we have a member meal every day, and several days where we have two. I still want to go trail blazing in new areas, but if i finish my mission here in alverca, i won't complain.

This week is sort of crazy, we have transfers today, and his weekend we have a baptism and a marriage. Leolinda and Joaquim Viola have been doing great. They announced the baptism in church (the bishop called Joaquim 'José' which was a little awkward, but after the opening song he corrected it) and the wedding. This is another baptism it feels like we're not doing anything for. Irmã Bete has been working hard for it though, staying up late and running all over the place to set the marriage up and resolve leolinda and viola's anxieties and such. She is president of the Relief Society here too, if she spoke english a bit better, She and Mom would get along really well. Yesterday, Otacílio had come straight from church and was still in his white shirt, which reminded me of Dad. It was a weird, surreal moment. Missions are so interesting.

Speaking of interesting, we're hearing about transfer calls right now, so hopefully here in a second we'll know stuff...

so i'm staying with Elder Mateer in Alverca, in the zone a bunch of stuff changed, although nothing too interesting other than the fact that Pontinha closed. It probably will only be for transfer or two, and is basically an opportunity to get out of that house.

Anyway, i'll be here for 6 more weeks at least, i'm happy.

Yesterday we taught Daniel and his wife Catarina. Catarina is a member and Daniel is not. They haven't been coming to church, the moved a while ago from Seixal, and haven't felt as at home in Alverca. They're way cool though. We went by the church yesterday to use the bathroom and Bishop was there, and asked us to pass by Daniel's, we went over there and they invited us in and gave us bread and cheese and cake and water and we talked and got to know them a bit better, and left a scripture and said a prayer with them and invited them to the baptism on Saturday. hopefully they'll come, they're really really cool. They'd be such a great young portuguese couple in the ward if they came.

Well, i need to call the rest of the zone and tell them what's up, sounds like you guys have an exciting week ahead. Have a great trip and i hope everything goes well with that and with the baby and everything. I'll try to get some pictures sent some of these days, it's always a battle to find computers that work for sending pictures. Thanks for your letters and everything.

até logo,

love,

Ammon

May 17, 2010

"E aconteceu que eu, Néfi, viajei novamente com meus irmãos pelo deserto, para subirmos a Jerusalém."

Hey family,

I've been getting a lot of deja vu recently, it's weird. I think it's because i've been doing the same things everyweek for the past year and a half. This week was good, one of the best parts was that I did a division in Pontinha, and got to see Mário and Aylton and Mariazinha. They'll all doing great. I got to sleep in pontinha again, i had forgotten how bad that house is. I'm glad i'm not still living there. The dona was happy to see me. She said that when you guys come you can stay upstairs in her house (she has a guest house, where i slept when it flooded around christmas. It's very nice actually). Speaking of that, we need to decide how that's going to be. In about two weeks, the mission office does trunky calls, where they call around to start setting stuff up for going home, so it'd be great if you could decide within the near future how that's going to be.

On the Alverca front, things are going well. We've been trying hard to work with a serve the members. Yesterday we went to Otacílio and Bete's house (that's who's house i was in when i called you guys, Otacílio is the one that talked to you). A week before we got there, President Torgan came to alverca and did this Noah's Ark thing where they talk about noah's ark and make the comparison between it and the gospel and then ask people to think about who they would want to save. In the end, we ended up with a list of over a hundred names that we've been slowly working through. We're starting to see the results of that. Vanessa, who i talked about last week, was on that list. The problem we've run in to is that the great majority of them live outside our area. Of the 20ish people otacílio wrote down, all but one of them live in brasil, and that one we already know. Anyway, while we were waiting for Otacílio to get home,Elder Mateer did all the dishes and swept the kitchen (Elder Mateer is very tidy). Then while Elder Mateer went through all the people with Otacílio, i made pancakes with Otávio for the family. We've been trying to find ways to help and serve the members here, and work with them to find people to teach. It's going sort of slow, but it getting going. Hopefully we'll see something come out of it all.

On thursday night we were walking back to the house and there was this oldish portuguese man walking home. We said goodnight to him as we were walking by, and he said goodnight, and asked how it was going with us. By this point we were a good 5 steps ahead of him, but we said yeah it was, and commented on the weather, which was really nice that day. The whole situation was very awkward, because we were aways ahead of him but sort of talking to him, and torn between whether or not to contact him, anyway, eventually we committed and went and talked to him. We started talking a bit about families and things and explained who we were and why we're here and ended up marking an appointment for saturday. On saturday we went there, we found his house , first floor, on the left, and knocked it, but the lady said that Acácio didn't live there, but he didn't seem like the sort of person to lie about his address, so i tried the first floor on the right. That lady said she had a cousin named Acácio, but that he didn't live there either. We thought a bit, and then we tried the third floor (third sounds a bit like first in portuguese, so i figured i could have misheard him) and sure enough, he was home waiting for us. We had a very good lesson, he's very prepared for the gospel. It was great, because you don't end up teaching that many portuguese people in portugal. Something dad told me before the mission, that i'd probably end up teaching more immigrants and strangers, has turned out to be very true, so the Portuguese people you teach here are really precious.

Yesterday i saw João and Debora, another one of my favorite people that i've taught, who i taught in Caçem. I talked to Elder Nixon on saturday, the week before they had baptized this guy Carlos, who i met my last day there, when we were saying goodbye to Jerryson. it sounds like things are going well out there.

Also on saturday, we taught Milca´s sister. Milca is a recent convert who got baptized a week or two before we got here, and her sister came down from Arruda (which is really far away) to be taught. We taught them with Leolinda and Viola, who are not baptized yet, but are marked for the 29th, and are really excited. That's another cool story.

On tuesday we had interviews with president, and we then made plans for the rest of the month, Leolinda and Viola were already sort of marked for baptism, but it wasn't really set, and it was marked for the 12th of June, but we felt like we should push it back to the 29th. They're waiting on getting married, which was in the works but wasn't really set in stone yet. They also had a few doubts they had to work out, one of which involving not having and praying to images of saints and such. Anyway, on tuesday we got home with a vague idea of what we should do but not really sure of how we were going to do it. That night we called Otacílio (who is the ward mission leader) and he passed us to Bete, who, before we said anything, explained that she had already gone and talked to Leolinda about saints, and was going that night to mark the marriage and the baptism for the 29th. We went there the next day (or rather Elder Mateer went, since i was in Pontinha) and the house is completely different. Honestly, the members of the church here are incredible.

I got the package, and am once again enjoying the use of contacts, which makes my life even better. Sounds like things out there are good. I have distint memories of kayaking and one time getting worn out and having to be towed. I also remember the Strong River and having to push it out going up stream. Ocasionally a mission feels a bit like that, but pushing against the current on force of will, but lots of times it's more of the fly down crazy fun rapids and end up in the water. Right now we're somewhere in between, but i think this week is going to be great. Next week is transfers, but i highly doubt anything will change here.

Anyway, i'm going to go run errands and then play ping pong. Have a great week.

Abraços,

Elder Ammon

May 10, 2010

"E entrou na cidade por outro caminho"

Hey guys,

It was cool to talk to everybody yesterday, although the video-cam part was just sort of distracting, it's crazy that that's the last time i'm calling home. Time just doesn't make sense. We in our fourth week here in Alverca, yesterday, aside from talking to everybody, was frustrating because things sometimes just don't work out right. We were talking a lot about how we wanted to work more with members and not have to find so many people through our own efforts (not that i'm lazy, i love knocking doors and contacting people, it just seems like we're not getting anywhere with that). As it happens, this week we have tons of member meals (one every day, and then some), and this morning, the week got off to a great start when we taught vanessa, who was a reference from two seperate members. She's incredible, she lives out in the middle of nowhere, but it was a great lesson, and she probably listened and understood better than anyone i've ever taught. We marked for saturday to set up a lesson in Elisangela's house (a member of the church here who is Vanessa's friend), so that's exciting. This week was rediculous. We went to lisbon 5 times in four days, being zone leader is starting to take it's toll on elder Mateer and I. We went down for p-day to play volleyball and handball with the zone, on tuesday we went to Odivelas, passing through lisbon, to go to a district meeting with one of the other district leaders. We didn't get back into our house untill about 2 o'clock and as we were finishing up lunch, the AP's called and said we needed to get to Benfica as soon as possible so that we could have a little mini-zone leader council. We got a ride from the AP's (which was an adventure) and we finally got there. President talked to us about why the mission isn't doing as well as it has over the past few months, and we suggested a bunch of things, planning, motivation, things like that. Then president explained we were all wrong, or rather, we were missing the deeper issue, which is a need for greater faith and love. So, it was good, we got back into our area, with a ride from the ap's, getting super lost on the way, and got back into our area at 8. On wednesday we had a zone meeting to talk to the zone about the stuff we had talked about with president, which was really good. On thursday we did a division with the AP's, so we came down in the morning. I stayed in Alverca with elder Seraim, which was great, he served here for six months before he went AP, so he knows the area really well and is a really great missionary and just a generally good person. He's brasilian, so it was fun to go the whole day speaking portuguese. All this crazyness meant we went almost a whole week without doing planning or studies, and which was rough. We ended up teaching more lessons than me have since we got here, but it could have gone a lot better if we had had plans, especially on saturday and sunday, we ended up wandering around a little bit unsure what to do. But this week we're going to work to do a better job of getting home earlier so that that's not a problem. This week we're going to do better, although it's going to be another crazy week. We have interviews tomorrow, a division on wednesday, a wedding on thursday, so we're going to have to do better about planning.

Me and elder Mateer are getting along very well, i wish i had talked a bit to his family yesterday, and had him talk to you guys, but whatever.

oh yeah, i found out this week that they do, in fact, have the running of the bulls on the continent, and it happens to be here in Vila Franca, so i'm hoping it will happen while i'm here, it's coming up soon, i'll have to find out about that. They also have bullfights here during the summer. They don't kill the bulls here, at least not in the arena.

Hmm, that's about all the news on our end. I'll send a couple pictures too. It was great to talk to everyone, thanks for getting that worked out. Happy birthday to Dad and Soren, have a great week everyone.

Abraços,

Ammon

May 3, 2010

Hey Family,

this week internet we went to lisbon in the morning and our regular internet place was inexplicably closed, so we're super late. Once again, you guys are lucky elder Mateer cares more about emailing his family that i do, if it were up to me i'd probably just wait until next week, although there are some important things to talk about.

1st, we lost our cell phone. We're actually suspicious that someone we teach stole our cell phone, but we have no proof of that and we can't just go around acusing people of stealing our cellphone. Yesterday, we told Viola that (viola is a guy we're teaching who is marked for baptism next month right after they're married. He's way cool) he was really concerned and now he want to go with us to talk to this guy. He's actually really excited to confont him, i don't think we're going to take him up on that, but it would probably be entertaining. This is a big deal for you because i don't know what my cell phone number is going to be on sunday. Probably the best way to do this is for me to send you a quick email during the week with my cell phone number, so sometime this week i send that so that we can talk on sunday.

This week was not the running of the bulls, although that would have been really cool. The açores are weird, Culturally they're really quite diferent from the continent (at least that's what i hear, since i've never been there and it's looking likely that i never will). Most missionaries (even natives) who go there don't understand their accent for the first while, and on the news they put subtitles on what people say so that the portuguese people can understand it.

I did not hear about the oil spill in the gulf coast, that's a shame. I hope dauphin island doesn't get ruined. The coast is having a rough time these days.

In portugal the weather has been beautiful, sunny and warm but not unreasonably hot and a bit windy but cool at night. It's starting to get a little bit too hot, but it's a nice change from rainy.

This week has been another week of hard work and good experiences. Basically we're realizing that we need more people to teach, and we need to organize our time better, and set up more marked apointments with investigators, we've gotten into the habit of passing by, which is dificult becase we can't bring people with us to teach and it makes planning harder. We found a great new brasilian guy, Edivalter, on Sunday (well, we talked to him in the street on thursday and taught him on sunday) with whom we marked three lessons a week and he's coming to church on sunday. Alverca is known for being a sort of tough area, mostly because it, even more that a lot of portugal, is just a place to sleep. There's not a ton of work here, but people live here and take the train or drive into lisbon to work, and get home late. This makes it tricky to find people. On thursday we had no appointments, which is always sad, so the night before we prayed and pondered and planned on some areas to go to. In the morning we went to choupal, right near our house, and tried our best to follow the spirit. It went pretty well actually. We were walking down the street, and Elder Mateer contacted this person, who was not too interested, but then a second later we ran into Campipi. who the Elderes here taught a while ago. We said hello and walked with him and helped him carry a big piece of scrap wood he wanted to save, and then he took us with us, sort of at random, to introduce us to a friend of his. In the end we have an appointment with this nice family tomorrow. After that we tried to visit some potentials old elders had left, but didn't really find much, although we ran into this nice woman who really needed some spiritual support, we didn't teach her or anything, but we talked about families and left her a pamflet and well see if anything happenes there.

Then, we ran out of people to visit and went over and sat on a bench to think a bit and call some people, i felt like we should go try this one building where we ran into 3 really cool people, one of which knew the missionaries 20 years ago but got offended by two who laughed at the way she prayed (which is really frustrating) and hasn't really heard from them since then. She's really nice though and said we could come back. We met this guy, Senhor Oliveira, who is not really religious, but likes learning about religion and is very interested in Family History. This is all between the hours of 11 and 1, which is usually i just sort of throw away because it's so hard to find people at home. After that, we went and bought flowers for one of the members here in alverca. She helps us a lot and gives us lunch every week and we missed in on wednesday because we were in lisbon. We called her husband (who is probably one of the most hardworking members i've ever met. He's our ward mission leader) to tell them, but he didn't end up passing it along, because this week he's really busy and doesn't really get to see his family much, so he didn't remember. We felt bad, and so we bought her flowers, which made her very happy. flowers here are cheap by the way, my impression is that flowers are expensive in the states, but i have no idea.

So that was cool. This week went by fast, because we did a division with the Elderes in Campo Pequeno, and then we had Zone Conference.

Well, that's about the gist of the week, we're really excited to see what's going to happen in the coming weeks, the ward is awesome, and i feel like i'm working about as hard as i ever have in my mission, although that might just be the heat. We're trying to work on serving the members, i made banana bread this week for two families in the ward. We kept another loaf for ourselves. It was really really good.

So that's life in Alverca, oh, i'm shocked that you guys got iPhones, never have my parents been so tech-savy. We're probably going to get a new phone in the next few weeks (aside from the replacement, the mission is due for new phones) but they probably won't be iPhones. But, fingers crossed.

have a great week, i'll send an email during the week as to when and to what you guys should call.

Abraços

Até logo,

Elder Ammon