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
