July 26, 2010

It's going to be a sort of shorter email today, because i'm at a member's house and we're going to help clean up the house. Anyway, this week was better, we're still having a tough time, but someone finally came to church. We found Rita a while back in the area book. We've been teaching her for a little while. Anyway, she came on sunday, as it turns out she worked with Bete, and she lived right next to a recent convert, and we asked a member to sit with her and show her the ropes and such, and so by the end she had tons of friends. So that was good.

We had another integration night, this one Noite de Stroganof, which was great, and this time we finally managed to teach some of these people that came to integration night. We taught two teenage kids, Fabio and Rudi, they we going to come to church, but they ended up going out of town for the weekend, so they'll come next week. We found a few other people, last night we taught this girl, Alice, who was pretty cool, she understood everything really well. It didn't work to teach her inside, so we were outside at a little table, but there were tons of mosquitos. It was a little distrating, especially when Otávio (who came with me on a divsion) squished one on his face a blood came out. I'm still all itchy from the mosquitos, but i figure sacrifice is important and such. Next time we'll have to find a better place to teach them.

We've still got a couple lodgers in our house, and we're not sure about when they're leaving, but it's alright. For the most part it's fun, but occasionally it causes problems, and four guys using one bathroom is not ideal. But we're doing good. This week is crazy, we have two big conferences this week with Elder Teixeira, from the area presidency.

It is one again super hot and we're having a hard time sleeping, today we went and played around with a football and some of the jovens, it was fun.

Sort of an uneventful week, it went super fast though, and we're hopeful, things are starting to get moving. Some other cool thing have happened, Jessica and Alberto, two of Mariazinha's grandchildren who i taught a lot in Benfica were baptized this weekend. Jessica i taught a lot, alberto i didn't actually teach that much, but i did give him book of mormon aparently (i barely remember) As it turns out since that day he's read every day and was already halfway through when the missionaries there now talked to him. It's always cool to here about success in my old areas.

Congrats to Michelle on the mission.

That's about the news from this week, you guys have a great week, the weeks are flying by, i can't believe it's already monday again.

Abraços,

Elder Ammon

July 19, 2010

"But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry." 2 Timothy 4:5

Hey guys,

This week was better, in several ways, although for the most part we're still trodding along in the refiners fire. Aside from the difficulties, i've been learning and growing a lot, and having some very good experiences as i've been praying and studying and trying to figure out what we need to do to get things going here. This week they called a new bishop, our old bishop was incredible, i'm really a bit sad to see him go, but he moved to another area, so they called a new bishop, Macsuel. He made the t-shirts for us (i don't remember if i mentioned, we arranged to make t-shirts for our zone.) He's one of my favorite people here in Alverca, he's 26 years old. Our stake president, who is in his early 30's, talked about how he was only 23 when he was called as bishop, and stayed there for 10 years. It's sort of a scary though to get home from the mission, get life going, and then get called as bishop for 10 years.

This week, we made a goal to work harder, specifically to contact 10 people a day, it was great at first, we were talking to lots of people and we were excited, but then everything sort of fizzled out. We did, however, find an incredible family of 5. I've never seen little kids so well behaved. We're really excited for them, and hoping that they'll progress. the mom said she would come to church this week, and we're hoping to get them to come on wednesday to the Stroganof Night. We also found this russian lady, Natasha, who is very sincere and wants to learn more, but we're sort of stuck because she barely speaks portuguese, and we don't speak russian at all, but between movies and other church materials in russian, we're getting there. We talked to the mother of one of our potential investigators that came to hotdog night, and she said that he came home and said that he wanted to join the 'church of the elders'. Her first question was to ask if we were allowed to get married. We assured her we were, and after that she was ok with the idea. We're excited for that little family to. They live across the hall from Otacílio, who continues to be a blessing in the work. This week we're going to have a family night with Marcelo and Luciana and her friend Tita, who is the mother of one of the kids that came to hotdog night. We have some other members that have people for us to teach. there's a lot of potential in this area, it just hasn't quite gotten going yet, but we're working hard, and we're hopeful this work we'll see things get going.

We are, at least, healthy for the most part. My cough has gone away and Elder Mateer is doing a lot better. We are still living with the Vila Franca elders, but elder mateer found them a house with Remax and they'll be moving in sometime this week. Their new house is super nice, but pretty cheap. It's still hot, but no longer untolerably hot, and it's been getting cooler at night. Last night we went to help some people move, what looked like it would be a quick project turned out to be a 3 hour ordeal with us getting home late and thoroughly exhausted. I've found that helping people usually ends up being a lot more complicated than you expect, but it's generally worth it.

Anyway, not too much happened this week outside of that. All things considered, we're happy and excited to keep working. In conferences and such, President Torgan usually talks about how missions are supposed to be difficult, and if the mission is confortable you're doing something wrong. So that's a plus.

Sounds like things are good out there. Have a great week, and don't forget to help the missionaries.

abraços,

Elder Ammon

July 12, 2010

Sounds like it was an eventful week with the surgery and such. It's good to here that everything went well, and that Dad is back at work. i can see how he'd be a good missionary. Here in the mission field, the health issues continue, Elder Mateer got sort of sick today, we are in benfica for zone leaders council and we decided to just stay the night here, since we're going to have a zone meeting tomorrow morning.

Our week was one of those weeks, one of those "humble yourself even to the dust" weeks. But, i figure if humility is necessary for success in missionary work, it's ok. We're having a tough time in Alverca right now, it just seems like nothing goes right. It was interesting, because Elder Seraim (who is the AP right now, but was serving in Alverca before that) talked about how he had several weeks of rough times in Alverca before having a lot of success there. There's something about this area that grinds missionaries into the ground. I had heard about this before i came to Alverca, and i didn't want to come here because of that, but from what i've seen, for those who survive the trials, it's a really blessed area. Anyway, i'll stop complaining about how missions are tough sometimes and tell you how my week went.

There were a few very good moments this week. Wednesday's Hot Dog Night went really well. we had a great turnout (about 20 investigators showed up), and it went really well. We weren't completely prepared for everyone, and we're planning for how we can make it bigger and better for next time. Mostly we're trying to figure out how to teach these people, and not just feed them hotdogs, but it was still good. We're going to talk about this idea in our zone meeting tomorrow, because it's super easy to set up and is really effective, although i think the title actually works better in portuguese than in english.

The teaching the member thing went well, although we've been having a hard time holding our members down long enough to teach them. We had a really good lesson with Douglas and his family, and we're planning to set it up with the other members. Happily, the world cup ended yesterday night, so we won't have to cancel appointments because our investigators (and members) are watching football games.

We had a meeting with a member of the High Council on friday, it's cool because our Zone is the same area as the Stake of Lisbon, so we as zone leaders are going to start working with one of the high council members to have more communication between the missionaries and the stake leadership. It was cool, i don't know if i mentioned last week, i got to do the baptismal interview for Mariazinha's daughter. This week Elder Mateer did the Baptismal Interview for a friend of a member here in benfica who both of us knew while we were here. Benfica is doing really well. They've been baptizing almost weekly for the past month. Mariazinha's grandson is marked for baptism next week, and the elders here are working on getting Jessica (who i taught a lot) ready for the same day. It's always great to see the work going well in my old areas.

Our week wasn't all sickness and hard weather, we found a lot of really cool people. We worked harder this week and tried not to get discouraged and just work. We found 3 guys from nigeria who speak english, as it happens elder Mateer knows the branch president from Sacavém (an area near here) who is also nigerian, so we invited him to help in the lesson, which helped a lot. On saturday we also got to teach a great family, Neo and Mári, and their kids. It's always a blessing to teach families, and the mom (mári) told us that she felt like she wasn't where she ought to be and wanted to know which was the right path to follow and how to get to Jesus Christ. She is super ready for the Gospel, except for the fact that she works on sundays. Everyone here works on sundays, the work schedule in portugal, especially for immigrants, is rough, and makes it tough for them to have time for anything, especially church. At the end of the week a lot of people still didn't show up for church. We're sort of baffled, but we had a really good meeting with president and the other zone leaders today, and we're excited for this week. There's just something that has to click in alverca, and the work will explode. we're hoping to figure out what that is this week.

I don't remember if i said or not, we're now living with two other elders, Elder Silva and Elder Teixeira, who are working in Vila Franca but haven't found a house yet. It's fun, Elder Silva is from Porto and Elder Teixeira is from Cape Verde (the island of Fogo, the same as Elder Fernandes), but it'll be nice when it's just me and Elder Mateer again. Our house is not made for four people.

Anyway, that's about the news from out here. You guys have a good week, help the elders by getting them people to teach.

Abraços,

Elder Ammon

July 5, 2010

"They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them: for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall he guide them." ~Isaiah 49:10

It's a bit scary to hear about dad's health stuff, i'll be praying that everything goes well. We've had a sort of unhealthy week here as well. I haven't talked much about this, but i'd had a cough for a long time now, and Elder Mateer was convinced that it was tuberculosis (he was studying to be a doctor, and knows things like this) so he convinced me to talk to the mission doctor, who prescribed some pills that helped a bit, but didn't really get rid of anything. The final diagnosis was a very mild case of whooping cough (yeah, weird). He doesn't think it's tuberculosis because i don't have a fever and i'm not coughing up blood all over the place or anything like that. He just said to watch it and to get a whooping cough vaccine next time i get a tetanus shot, but that it's not really a big deal. Come to think of it i haven't really been coughing much recently. Elder Mateer seems to have eaten something and had been having some problems and feeling generally sick. I also got food poisoning, but that was last week, and that passed pretty quick after i threw up outside an investigators building.

It is absurdly hot in portugal today, i 'm not really sure, but i'm betting pushing on 100 degrees. It's the hottest i've ever seen in portugal, or i might just be out of practice with summer, but it feels really really hot. This week was good, we're still spinning our wheels a little bit, but i'll talk more about that in a bit. Today we heard about transfers and Elder Mateer and I are staying together here in Alverca. It's pretty likely that i'll finish the mission here, the way it's going, but we'll see. Thanks for the pictures, the family reunion looks like it was a lot of fun, with good perkes games. There are tons of people, kids and adults, that i don't recognize. Next family reunion there will probably be about 50 people i have never even met.

So things have gone like this, we've been finding quite a few people, for example, this week we found a little ukranian family, a house with 6 brasilians in it, and a young couple. They're all cool people, but the just haven't been going anywhere. We mark appointments and they're not home, and then we see them in the streets and it's just sort of awkward, just a lot of nice people without a lot of desire to do anything. Last night it was really sad, we saw Tucha, who is a single mom with two kids, who we had taught. We were really excited about her, but then she sort of disappeared. we finally ran into her and we marked for last night, but she wasn't home, and then as we were about to got home we saw her from about 30 feet away, and she saw us. As i was about to wave to her she turned away and disappeared behind the corner. All of this happened in about 2 seconds, but it was sad. This was at about 9:15. We go home at 9:30, and we weren't really sure what to do, it's sort of tricky to knock doors at that time, because people usually aren't super excited to talk to the elderes. Homever, i've stopped wearing my watch to avoid losing it and/or getting a super tan line, and Elder Mateer refused to tell me what time it was, so i thought of one more person to try, Márcio, a young portuguese guy we ran into looking for an ex-investigator a while back. We knocked it door and to our surprise he answered and let us it, we had a nice 10 minute lesson with him about prayer and what we're here for, at the end his girlfriend, who was also really nice came in (she came in to tell márcio to stop criticizing the catholic chuch, but she stayed for the rest) and we said a prayer with them and marked for this weekend. It was cool because usually at that time of night we just dink around until it's time to go home, but this time, we found two great new people.

Anyway, back to the point, we've been finding people, but nothings been going anywhere. So last night as we were talking with our mission leader, otacílio and talking amongst ourselves we felt that we should teach the members. We have a good relationship with the members, they like us, they feed us, we like them, we help them whenever we can, but i've been feeling like the members don't really look at us too much as fun guys who need food, as opposed to authorized teachers of the gospel who are here to teach their friends. So this week we're going to try that, and hopefully as we strengthen their testimonies and as they gain confidence in us, they will we more willing to invite their friends to be taught. We also have a ´Noite do cachorro quente´ on wednesday, which will be a great activity and a great opportunity to invite friends and stuff, so that's exciting.

Other exciting news is that our ward is getting another set of elders that will be working in Vila Franca. I was hoping to get sent up there to work, but president left me here, which is fine. It is good though, because it 's very hard to work up there, because it's far away, it's also a good step towards reopening the branch that they're going to have there soon. So things are good, we're getting acclimated to the summer and carrying water around to not die.

We have to go teach a lesson. Keep sending pictures of the reunion, and As Melhores to dad (that basically means 'all the best' i don't remember the normal way to say that in english). Have a great week.

Abraços,

Elder Ammon