"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
