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
