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
