Dear Family,
Thanks for your letters. This week was great. We marked Vladimiro for baptism this next saturday, he's doing great. We went and taught him today, he's excited. It's funny, the first time i talked to him, he spoke broken english i sort of passed him off as one of those guys that talks to the elders but doesn't really go anyway. I'm really glad we stopped him once and went to his house. Other than that, people are doing good. Graziele didn't make it to church this week, she's running into a lot of opposition, nothing big, just lots of little things. Friends show up from out of nowhere saturday night and so she doesn't make it to church. People invite her to come visit their church when we have lessons marked. Things like that. Anyway, today we're going to have a lesson with her and a married couple from the ward. We've been teaching her with Otávio, who is great, but is young, and we're not exactly old, and we're realizing we need to bring more mature influences.
Carregado (another ward) had a baptism here on saturday, and as we were on our way up, Elder Rivera suggested that we go pass by Sidney. Sidney is a good kid, we taught him a couple times, but when we invited him to go to church he said he didn't like it. He just didn't quite get it. Anyway, out of the blue, he said, "sure" and came to the baptism, and loved it. Sunday morning, all by himself, he woke himself up and got to church, and loved it. It's tough to teach him during the week because of school, but he's excited for church and we're going to teach him on the weekend. There's always a moment, or a few moments, when everything clicks, and people start to act.
This week we had Zone Conference, it was good, I, and a bunch of missionaries from my district, bore our 'last testimony'. The whole thing was very sweet, i was remembering a lot of moments on my mission, from the MTC, from other zone conferences, and from being in Benfica. I've had all but 3 of my zone conferences in Benfica. The whole thing is all very strange. It honestly just feels like another week.
Oh, i have to say how Vladimiro got marked for baptism. Usually the baptismal invite is the climax of all the teaching and it's very well prepared and very spiritual. On saturday we had a barbeque and Elder Rivera was introducing Vladimiro to all the members and talking about when they had been baptized (the majority of people there were relatively recently baptized) and the elder Rivera said that Vladimiro was preparing for baptism also. Vladimiro responded, "Yes, i was thinking about next weekend" and so Elder Rivera suggested saturday, and out of nowhere he was set. He is so ready though. He used to drink aobut 10 cups of coffee a day, just before we started to teach him he decided to quit, and quit, and hasn't had a problem since then. I am really greatful that, the last real week of my mission, i'll end with a baptism. Nevertheless, we have a bunch of people who are doing really well, and our plan is to have someone for the week after that also, at General Conference on sunday night. I can't really think of anyway that would be better to spend the last night in the country.
When Elder Teixeira was here, he talked a lot about the way we finish our missions. He made very good point: He asked us to think back on the Lords mission on the earth, and what he did in his last week. Most of the most important things that happened during his life happened in the last week, even the last few days. It was a good thing to think about and be motivated to work hard until the end. It would have been pretty disastrous if Christ had slacked off in his last few days.
Another cool thing we did for the first time this week: We got a bunch of pass along cards and wrote our numbers on them and went from store to store (there are about a million little stores in portugal) and asked if we could leave them on the counter. With only one acception, everyone said yes and was extremely nice about it. Missionaries get this feeling that portuguese people are mean. It's really untrue, they're just not too interested in discussing religion, but they're great people, for the most part. As we were walking along the street today we got a call from some random person, we think he might have gotten one of these cards, we marked for wednesday, so that will be exciting. Alverca is incredible, by the way, we have a meal almost everyday this week, and two days with two meals. I'm so glad i got to stay here.
Well, you guys have a great week, pray for Vladimiro. I'll talk to you next week.
Love,
Elder Ammon Perkes
