June 28, 2010

Thanks for the letters and more especially the pictures, the nephews look completely different. This week was a little tough, we walked and walked a lot, and a lot of things didn't go as we would have hoped, but we're looking at what we're doing and what we need to change, and this week is going to be better. We have 4 lessons today, one right in the middle of p-day, i've gotten to the point where i care very little about p-day, partially because there's nothing to do in alverca, and also because it's just the same thing every week. It's sort of a shame because we would like to clean the house, but we'll get around to that later. This morning we went in to lisbon to pick up our new cell phone, our old one having broken, and so until we charge it we have no cell phone. it's sort of crazy because we're completely disconnected from the world and especiallly the rest of the mission. Sounds like you had a good stake conference. It's going to be sort of nice to have general conference actually because it gets everybody together on sunday morning and sunday afternoon, so instead of just going to one sacrament meetings, we can go to two stake meetings and meet see pretty much everyone. It's good to hear that you got those tickets worked out, it would have been a shame to get shipped home. As far as vacation plans, i think it might be better for you guys to look into things to do, i have some ideas, but i'd rather see things i haven't seen yet (like evora) than things i have seen. there are some things we have to see though. Sintra (Castelo dos Mouros, Palácio da Pena, and Quinta da Regaleira.) There's tons of other stuff to see in sintra, i figure we could spend a whole day there, and then on our way back visit caçem, which is near sintra. Lisbon is cool, especially Belém. Other than that though, i don't know what is cool, i'd suggest looking into it and finding cool places to see around portugal. I have no idea about places to stay, i'll try to get the number of the landlady in pontinha to see if she'll be in town, i don't know who else we could stay with though, so i'd plan on getting hotels.

Despite what the first half of my letter suggests, i'm not super trunky, i feel like i'm doing a pretty good job of staying focus and not letting time pass me by. We had interviews with president on tuesday, those were great, he talked a lot about retention and temples and building up the church, and not just baptizing, but baptizing the right people and helping them to stay solid. There's a family here in alverca that got baptized a few months ago that are struggling a lot. They were doing great when we got here, but some family problems and work trouble made things seem complicated and they've been having a hard time since then. Actually everyone's having a hard time, i don't know how the "crise" (crisis) is in the states, but here in portugal people are having a hard time all around. Portugal is a sort of american dream for all the portuguese speaking countries, but immigrants are finding that things here are even worse than where they were, and few people are coming and a lot of people are leaving. It's sort of tough to help people in things like that, but you can see the difference the gospel makes in peoples lives, that even when things are rough there's hope where others would sink into despair. It's sort of tough because as missionaries, and as me in general, my life is very simple and i don't have to deal with economic crises or unemployment or anything. My life is very secure, and i'm here serving those who just don't have the same opportunities as i've had. There's a MormonMessage (i don't know if you know what those are, but they're on the church website, they're cool) from thanksgiving that we watched yesterday that talked about being greatful for everything, even adversity.

Even though i'm not super trunky, it blows my mind to only have three months left. i'm trying not to think too much about it.

I don't know if you guys remember Ros, who i found out got baptized last week. It turned out her cousin (or neice, i'm not sure which) also got baptized in brasil. Ros wants to come back to portugal, and has been praying that Joel will accept the gospel and be baptized (Joel was her "namarido" a handy play on the word namorado (boyfriend) and marido (husband)) and that things would work out between them. As it happens, we had a really good lesson with Joel last night, we talked about the importance of baptism and knowing which way is right and asking God to know the right way. Our bishop has specifically asked us to teach joel, he's tough because he works every day basically all day long, even on weekends. So aside from not being able to go to church, he's tough to find at home to teach, but generally he's home around 9:30 at night, right before we go home, and last night we were blessed to find him at home at 9. We're going to teach him again on wednesday, and we're hopeful that things will go well there. Ros is planning on coming back in september, maybe i'll have one last marriage before heading home.

We got transfers next week, it's likely something we're change, i doubt i'm leaving, i don't really want to leave, but i'm always excited to get to know a new area and new people and stuff, but i'd be perfectly happy to finish the mission here. It'd be crazy if you moved while i was here. Would you stay in mississippi or head off to bigger and better things? It sounds like Dad's testing the waters a bit for the next move.

Anyway, that's the news from out here, we're going to work hard this week to get things moving, it's been just a little stagnant lately, so next week expect to have all sorts of new developments. Anyway, have a great week, and watch out for hurricanes, oilspills, economic depressions, comets, fire breathing dragons, and everything else the world is throwing around these days. I'll be here, blissfully unaware. Seriously though, i am really grateful to be on a mission, we had a really good meeting with our ward mission leader, and i'm excited to make these last 3 months the best.

um grande abraço,

Elder Ammon

June 21, 2010

Well, as you guessed, the portugal game is starting right now, which works out pretty well for us, because this great little internet café that's closed on mondays is open at the right time.

The week was good, Teresa's confirmation went great yesterday, she's getting well integrated in the ward, which is great. We've been teaching a lot of women recently, not really on purpose, it's just sort of worked out that way. We've also been finding a lot of young families, which is great, we're hoping some of them will progress this week.

Happy Birthday to Isaac and Happy Fathers day to Dad, sounds like you guys had an eventful week, i cannot believe you bought year passes to Universal Studios. Those are transferable right?

Lets see, as far as news goes, things are pretty calm. We visited an evangelical church this week, that was interesting. One of our investigators, edinaldo, invited us, so we went, it was very loud. It was very enlightening though, i understand a lot better how to teach evangelicals now. One thing that was very impressive is how nice they all were. We went in and sat down, and almost every person made a point of coming up to us and introducing themselves and talking a bit to us. They were very welcoming. They also ask you every one who's there for the first time to stand up and they applaud you, that was a little awkward, but it's a nice gesture. I was impressed with the pastor and he seemed very sincere (and he sang very well). I don't know if you guys will remember this, but one time in fast and testimony meeting in the jackson branch, the elderes had brought a baptist guy who got up and basically started preaching, and kept going for like 20 minutes until Brother Stallworth got up and, very impressively, took him back to his seat. It made me remember that. We were hoping to be able to get up and preach, but they didn't give us that opportunity, there was a visiting pastor from cacem who i was less impressed with, he seemed to know our message, and he made some subtle but very obvious comments about it. He also asked me to stand up and basically told me i had been mislead and that God had another mission for me. I'm feeling pretty good about this mission though, and after i'm done i think i'll have had enough mission for a while. He sort of ruined his credibility though when afterward he asked everyone to buy his wifes ties (which looked suspicially like they been bought at the chinese store and marked up to 5 euros). Anyway, it was an interesting experience. The day after we talked to an adventist, who basically told me the same thing, she being thoroughly convinced in order to follow the bible you have to honor the sabbath on saturday. The seventh day adventists have a big advantage in portuguese because saturday is called Sábado, which is the word Sabbath. So the bible reads, "honor the saturday, to keep it holy" I'm really tired of having to explain that to people. In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, i'm just glad that my personal testimony isn't based on my interpretation of the bible. We try to explain to people that they just need to ask God sincerely and he'll answer, a lot of people's response is that God responds through the bible, basically that he can't say anything more than what he's already said.

Yesterday was had two lessons with people from people from that evangelical church, one was terrible, it felt sort of like bashing our head against a wall. The second was incredible, the spirit was great and we just talked about stuff, and read scriptures in the book of mormon and the bible. It was partly a difference in the people we were teaching, but the bigger difference was in the way we approached it.

Some other cool things that happened this week, on saturday we had a bunch of lessons lined up, at 5 o'clock basically all our plans had fallen through, and we were kind of lost and didn't know what to do. We were sitting on a bench basically with no plan. We went up to the church so i could take a pill (i talked to a doctor cus i still have a bit of a cough, and it's been a while and it's sort of annoying, and so he prescribed some medicine to take for three days)

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL! Portugal just scored.

anyway, so after that we prayed for a little while to figure out what to do. As i prayed and thought about what to do, i felt like we should go work on this street before a lesson we would have there, and as i imagined the street my mind fixed on a certain building that we had never tried. It's a cool little building, it had a little bridge from the sidewalk to the front door so that the basement can have front windows too. Anyway, as elder mateer prayed he felt like we should go visit this less active named Elizabeth Howard who we have tried several times but never gotten ahold of. Anyway, so we went to that street, i sort of forgot and we wandered around abit on that street, and then i remembered what i had though to do and so we walked back to the house. We knocked one door on the "quem é" box (i think i've explained this before but it's a little box that you push the buttons of the apartments and people say "quem é?" Happily this one was old and didn't have a voice box, so they just had to open it. I hate talking through those boxes) and we went up to the second floor. It was a portuguese girl, probably about our age, with two little brothers. we talked a little bit to here, she was actually pretty interested, and we're going to go back on wednesday. It's interesting how things like someone opening a door seem like a small thing, but every person who opens the door and listens to what you have to say is a miracle.

After that we had a nice lesson with Mauro and his wife and Alves (his friend, who's wife also lives there but wasn't there until the end) they're cool. Then we went out to chaza, where elizabeth howard lives, and knocked her door. We've knocked this door a hundred times, because it's intrigueing, we're in portugal and there's a person named Elizabeth Howard, you just don't see that much. Anyway, we've never found anyone, but this time we knocked the door, and the 20ish guy answered. He was nice, sort of in a hurry, but he said we could come back later, and he told us that elizabeth lives down stairs, so we knocked that door, talked to her friend, she wasn't home, but it was cool to finally make some progress there. then on our way back, Elder Mateer wanted to try this one door we had tried earlier, and we found a guy named Adamo, who has two sons and a wife and are moving back to brasil in a little bit. After teaching him, He referred us to his neighbor downstaires, who was the 7th day adventist, but she was cool to.

All in all, it was a very good end of the day, it was impressive to see the difference before and after the prayer.

One more cool story, we went to teach this couple yesterday, João and Glória, João was out but we taught Glória and her daughter, Margarida. Margarida was extremely interested, although she lives in a different area. Something they commented on was that before we got there, Margarida's son, Bruno, was crying and fussy, but after we got there he was super happy, and shouting for joy the whole lesson. It was sort of distracting, they were very impressed with the difference, and acredited it to the spirit. What was cooler, is after Margarida said a prayer at the end of the lesson (after a lot of coaxing and encoragement on our part) Bruno got very calm and stopped shouting and just hung out.

Anyway, good times here in portugal. Time continues to fly, but that's pretty normal at this point. I'm waiting on a call from one of my favorite members, Macsuel, who's helping us out by making t'shirts for our zone as a fundraiser for the youth of lisbon to go to EFY, he's going to email us the design before he prints it, so that we can ok it. While i wait i'll try to get some pictures sent off to you guys.

Have a great week, and don't forget to send pictures of the family reunion.

Love,

Elder Ammon

oh, p.s. I don't know what you're planning when you come, but if you can, it would be a good idea to plan on renting a car, it will make a lot of things a lot easier. One of the things i think would be really cool if it works out would be to go to the temple in madrid, it's a bit of a drive, but it's not too far, and it's just past Evora, which Elder Mateer says is worth visiting. Anyway, just keep that in mind.

Beixinhos

June 14, 2010

as it happens, flag day is not a holiday here in portugal, but there are tons of flags everywhere because of the world cup. This week was good, Teresa's baptism went very smoothly. Her Aunt who hasn't come to church in forever came and is excited to start coming back to church again. It's interesting, because she's the quickest baptism i've had on my mission (from meeting to baptizing) but she's one of the most prepared people for baptism. Marcelo Oliveira performed the baptism, it was great, because she's had about as much contact with the members as she has with us. Every lesson has been accompanied with members, and everyone who helped had a part in the baptism. It's like a textbook example of how things should go in the teaching process, i can't say i've finally learned the secret to missionary work, but if we can keep doing that it'll be excellent.

We also had zone conference, which was good, like always. It was fun to see Elder Nixon and Elder Fernandes who are Zone Leaders in the zone above us. And it was great to learn and get motivated and such. In the time i've been here, the mission has changed a lot. It's shrunk significantly, today it's about half the size it was when i got here, but a lot more people are getting found, taught, and baptized. In Odivelas, which is an area in our zone, the Irmãs (sisters) had baptisms every week for 5 weeks. When i got here that was unimaginable. The area presidency called president Torgan last week and said that we were the Hope of Europe. The coolest part of zone conference was the very end when President Torgan talked about how our purpose is to prepare the way so that there be a temple in portugal, and it made me think about that a lot.

We were surprised to see Ketely (the little girl that came to church last week) at church again. A 10 year old girl that can get herself up and go to church on her own is a bit out of the ordinary. We really want to teach her family, but they're sort of busy during the week. Speaking of families, i don't know how much i talked about Tatiana last week, but after setting the crib up and everything, we finally got to teach her this week. It was a great lesson, she loved it, and even asked if she could be baptized in the church. Today or tomorrow we're going to talk to the father of her baby, Lourenço, who arrived from angola yesterday, but we're really hopeful for them. There are two things that i haven't yet done in my mission: baptize an entire family and baptize a member reference. Considering that that's the way missionary work is supposed to work, i wonder why i haven't been able to do that yet, but we're hoping that Lourenço is as interested as Tatiana so that they can all come to church together and be united. It'd be great.

It sounds like the family reunion was great, just this morning i was thinking about how it'd be fun to play paintball, i'd definitely vote for going back there in three years. It's too bad i missed what sounds like the most epic family reunion in a long time, but i can't imagine missing this week of my mission. I appreciated your encouragement to not get trunky and focus and work hard. It's not as easy as i imagined to stay focused, especially when elder mateer likes to remind me how much time i have left, but i feel like i'm doing pretty good in not letting it interfere with the work. Today we're just relaxing and resting, it's been a while since we've been able to just relax. I'm still coughing from time to time (Elder Mateer, always a pal, suggested i might have tuburculosis) and he got some sort of mild food poisoning from something he ate for breakfast this morning.

On sunday i gave a talk about love, it was ironic because saturday night i had a dream where i had to give a talk but hadn't prepared anything and had no idea what to say. When i woke up i was so relieved it was sunday morning and that it was just a dream; then, just before church, Rui Marques, the second councilor, asked me if i could give a talk. The other two speakers were jovens, one who spoke for 2 minutes, the other who spoke for 5ish, so i was left with 25 minutes to talk. It went pretty well though i think, and luckily sacrament meeting is last, not first.

Elder Mateer has been having a hard time with the World Cup being on and not watching it. It's crazy, i wasn't expecting it to be as big a deal here as it is. Also i was expecting there to be craziness in the streets and stuff, but the streets are basically dead, and every café on every corner of portugal is full of people watching the game. I'm trying to figure out how we can use the world cup to our advantage, with people being home and such, but Elder Mateer says it can't be done. I'm thinking the only thing to do is teach woman and the oddballs that don't like football. The real problem is that for the first couple weeks there are two to four games per day. Anyway, we're managing.

That's the low-down from portugal, thanks for the pictures and everything, have a great summer and help the missionaries. We're still getting fed a lot. This week we have a lunch every day of the week. The members here are truly incredible.

love,

Elder Ammon