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
