Fri, Nov 7, 2008

MTC life is still great, although I'm getting to be about ready to get out of here. The food is getting a little old though, and I'm ready to start teaching for reals. As far as Portuguese goes, I'm loving it. We went a whole day without speaking english this week, and by the end i was starting to almost think in portuguese, which was sort of surreal. I've started throwing small portuguese words into my thoughts generally. Teaching in portuguese is lots of fun, it gets a little frustrating when i know what i want to say but can't say it in Portuguese, but generally It just makes me teach better and ask more questions.

We are now officially the senior district (the elder elders, if you will) and It's starting to sink in that i'm going to be in portugal three weeks from now. Next week we get travel plans. It's going to be a awesome trip, we have 12 missionaries, ten elders and two irmas, all going out to lisbon on the same day. We ought to just convert the whole plane on the way over. I'm really excited to go out into the world. The MTC makes the idea of international travel seem even more sweet, since i haven't been more than half a mile away from where I am right now in the last 6 weeks.

What else has been going on. I'm sick. It was bound to happen eventually, but yeah, I all but lost my voice this week, which was a little prohibitive when i came to teaching and stuff, but i found out that barely being able to talk just makes your testimony that much more powerful. It also helped to keep me from talking too much in lessons. Hm...three more minutes, que mais?

It snowed here this week. It's been unusually warm (80's) up till now, and the snow melted pretty quick, but it's finally feels more wintery. I'm pretty excited about winter. Winter makes it possible to be warm. I'm curious to know if it snows at all in portugal. I've heard it mostly rains, and I'm not a huge fan of rain, but that's ok, it's portugal, so i'll live.

So that's the news from Provo. I only have two more emails and then I'm off to preach and teach and work as missionaries do. Hope everything's great back in Mississippi and all over. Happy first week of novermber. Tchau.

Moito Amor,
Ammon

Fri, Oct 31, 2008

Ola everyone!

Life at the MTC continues to be crazy, and awesome. Elder Perry came this week, i always like hearing from Apostles, we had a great devotional review afterward. Devotional reviews are things we do as a district where we talk about the devotional and what stood out with us and such, it was great. So lets see what's new this week.

I taught in Portuguese, that was something. I think i did pretty ok with the Portuguese, although our teaching ability went way down generally, we need to work on asking questions and really involve the people. One of our faux investigators fell asleep, but he's sort of like that, we had him last week, he's hard to teach, he doesn't go along with the faux teaching. But yeah, Portuguese is lots and lots of fun. I can't wait until i can speak it without translating in my head, because that's getting a little bit tiring actually.

Also this week, i got a real investigator! Every week we go to the RC and call people who ordered books of mormon and such, and i ended talking to this guy for like 40 minutes about life and such, and set up a return appointment to call him again. I talked to him a bit earlier this week to set up a solid time on saturday, so tomorrow morning i'm going to call and basically teach him the first discussion and try to commit him to taking visits with the missionaries. It's so cool teaching real people! I was talking to him about mercy and justice and how everything we do returns to us in this life or the next, and he asked something along the lines of, "but there's got to be like different levels in heaven right? I mean everybody can't just go to one place or the other" I was super happy, i read him the scripture in first Corinthians about kingdoms of glory, it's so different to talk to real people with real problems and real questions. I've had some great experiences teaching people pretending to have that, but it just doesn't compare.

What else, I went to the temple and did sealings today, that was cool. I think i like sessions more, but we had to get a haircut, so there was no time. I have a legitimate missionary haircut now, it's really very short, but that's cool.

Que mais....I'm still the district leader, I don't know if i mentioned that there was a chance i could get switch, but yeah, nothing has changed, I'm ok with that, I like being District leader, there's a small chance that my companion and I will get called as District leader on Sunday-ish, but i don't expect to, but we'll see. I always feel like i should have more to say in these, but not a whole lot changes at the MTC. Weeks blow by, but nothing major changes. I got new roommates this week, they're pretty awesome.

We talked a bit about the gift of tongues this week, and how it applies after all we work hard. It seems like that's a pretty general truth in the gospel, that God will do everything for you after you've done everything you can, which is nice. I spend a little time reading the new testement, not too much since we're encouraged to read mostly out of the book of mormon, and my free time is pretty sparse right now, but when ever i read the bible it amazes me how anyone can have any understanding fo scripture at all and not believe that the church is true. It's not like we have all these crazy ideas that came from no where, it's all in the bible too.

So what else, life is good, i seem to have avoided the dreaded MTC cold, which is nice. My leg has been hurting a bit from where i got it pinched in the see-saw (i don't remember if i told you that story, it's a good story), i went to the nurse and she said to take 600 mg of advil at every meal and see if the pain goes away. It did, but taking 9 advil a day is just a little much for me, so i'm going to avoid playing soccer for the rest of the MTC (the sacrifices we make...) and see if it takes care of it self. It's not bad pain, it's just the kind of thing i don't want to have for the next two years.

The weather is still really nice here. It's probably about 80 degrees, but today it's got that cusp feeling, and it looks like we're about to start winter off.

Today i took a picture in front of the MTC sign, and had every intention to sent that, but then i got to laundry and realized that I had forgotten my camera chord, so i'll send those off next week, perhaps.

Well, that's about all that's going on on the Mission Front. As of today, i haven't gotten my voting ballot, so hopefully that will come in, but if not, I'll survive. Tchau.

Love,
Ammon

Fri, Oct 24, 2008:

So, this week was great. We learned a good game this week that translates to speaking portuguese all day. My companion and I are working together great, and I am defying all odds by still not being sick. We got a new branch president this week, our last one having served his time, so i am looking forward to getting to know President Tanner. I need to find out if he is related to the tanners we knew out in belmont. I guess thats sort of unlikely, but i have found the world is tiny within the Church.

Anyway what else is new. Things stay pretty similar hear in the MTC. We got a bunch of new missionaries, and the last group that is older than us heads out in a couple weeks. Then we'll be the oldest, which is absurd. I can't believe i've been here a month, time goes entirely too fast. We start teaching in portuguese this next week, which should be fun. I love speaking portuguese. English is getting a little bit weird now. Spelling is hard (i spent like five minutes trying to figure out how to spell patience), and it's more natural for me to pray in portuguese than in english. We learned something sweet yesterday, basically to say that you really really plan to do something. There's not really something like it in english but in portuguese "hai-de ensinar o evangelho ao mundo" is like a solemn oath to do something. So that's pretty awesome, i'm going to try to use that in lessons.

We have two teachers, Irmão Zwick e Irmã Olsen, both are really awesmoe. The first day Irmão Zwick spoke entirely português, so for a while i thought he only spoke portuguese, but then it just turned out he was awesome. He is the sort of person I want to be, like he can just walk in and you know you are going to have a good day. Irmã Olsen is great to. She is a little less funny, but she is incredibly caring and sincere. It's also nice that she's here since we have three sisters in our district. I like them a lot, I feel like we pretty much got the coolest teachers.

So I might end up doing a musical number for a fireside or something. I need to practice this week, I'd be accompanying one of the Elders in my district who'd be singing. So that's exciting. I dunno if they show MTC firesides and devotionals on BYU channel, but if i do you could maybe spot me, if our audition goes well and we end up with a spot.

Elder Kronk is my role model. I'm running out of things to say, so i'm taking suggestions. Eu escrevia na português, que está sempre fiché, mas eu não tenho moito dizer na portugués. Uma de a melhor coisas soubre a CTM é os jogos durante o gymnasio. Nós jogamos quatro quadro e futébol, e joga-bol (eu não sei como se diz kickball, então, sim.) Mas, eu tenho não mais tempo, então eu precisso ir. Até proxima semana, adeus!

Ammon's First Letter!

Friday, October 3, 2008

So, Mission life is great. Portuguese is way fun, I think everyone should learn it, it's a beautiful language. The MTC is intense. The first day was probably one of the craziest days of my life, as was my second and third day. Since then it's tapered off a little, or else I've gotten tougher. I missed lunch the day I went in, and they didn't feed me until like 6, so I was pretty much naucious with hunger by the time we got food, which was unfortunate, but I got over that eventually. They made me district leader, which was a little surprising but pretty awesome. My companion, Elder Tracy, is pretty awesome, and thankfully very easy to get along with. My district is pretty cool, and I think I ended up with the strictest zone I could have possibly gotten, which is fine with me, I think I got the best one.

The first couple days actually felt a lot like college, expept instead of everyone having no idea what they're doing, only about 300 people had no clue, and everyone else knew exacly what to do. But the older missionaries were very helpful. I say older, everyone here is basically the same age, but the missionaries that have been here a few weeks appear almost visibly older. I think it's the food. I've heard praises and horror stories about the food, but I'm finding it to be pretty ok, better than the U's cafeteria, but not as good as home food. Wednesday nights they try to go all out with stake and potatoes or something like that to impress the newbies, but it always turns out mais ou menos.

The MTC is pretty structured, so except on p-days I have basically no spare time, and what spare time I do have is study time. P-day I get a bit of actual free time, to write letters, email, do laundry (generally at the same time) and go to the Temple, which is great. But I do pretty well with structured things, i get bored when there's nothing to do.

The Portuguese is coming great, I can pray and bear my testimony and say a few things in portuguese, as long as it's in present tense. Other than that it's just vocabulary. We have two teachers, Irmão Zwick and Irmã Olsen. The first day Irmão Zwick talked and taught entirely in Portuguese. We didn't even know he spoke English until the end of the lesson, so that was pretty awesome. Irmão Zwick is really awesome, I enjoy his classes a lot- he makes Learning Fun!

Que mais...it's weird how quickly Portuguese is working its way into my vocabulary. We're encouraged to say everything we can in Portuguese, and having a teacher that speaks almost no English to us helps with that a lot, but more and more of my little words are becoming naturally Portuguese. I keep wanting to type 'em' instead of 'in'.

We play soccer here every gym that we're outside, although outside gym time ends soon, due to weather, which is sad. Indoor they have basketball and four-square (19 year olds playing four square makes for some intense playground games) but it's not the same.

Conference is this weekend, that's exciting. Not only do I get to hear the words of a Prophet, I get to have two whole days with little or know scheduled time. It'll be a challenge to keep my district reasonably productive for that, but I figure it'll be fun. I've committed to memorizing the First Vision in Portuguese by next Thursday, which turns out is a pretty ambitions goal, but I think I can do it. With Fast Sunday last week, and Conference this week, our Sundays have been a little unique, but after this week we'll have to start preparing five minute talks to give in Portuguese every week on a different topic, so that ought to be exciting.

Que mais...we have two Portuguese speakers in my district, which is cool. One lived in Brazil for 5ish years where his dad was a Mission President, and the other grew up with Brazilian parents. Both of them speak Portuguese wrong of course (with a Brazilian dialect) but it's handy to be able to have a quick tranlator around at all times. I have three Sisters (Irmãs) in my district, who are fun, and provide a nice balence to the other wise Elder filled world of the MTC. Lots of things guys just don't think about, like when things happen, people's names, etc. We sing and pray in Portuguese before and after every lesson, which is cool. Singing Called to Serve in Portuguese is way fun, and there are a couple of portuguese specific 'pirate songs'. They're lots and lots of fun.

Que mais....I think that's about all. I went to the TRC (Teaching Resource Center) on Thursday and practiced contacting in Portuguese and teaching a first lesson to a mock-investigator. I'm glad people's souls weren't relient on our performance teaching that lesson, but I think we did pretty well. Well, that's about all, and it'll cut me off in about 3 minutes. Maybe next time i'll attach some pictures, so, until then, Tchau!

~Elder Ammon

Write to Ammon!

Here is Ammon's address while he is in the Missionary Training Center for the next 8 weeks or so. Write him letters!

MTC Mailbox #226

POR - LIS 1125

2005 N. 900 E.

Provo, UT 84604-1793

Bom Dia

Olã! I'm Elder Ammon. Like the title says, I'm going to try to keep this blog updated with the happenings on my Mission, with help from my sister (who might refer to me as Elder Hot Dog, for obvious reasons). There should also be pictures. I feel like i should introduce myself or something, but I'm guessing if you're reading my blog you know me, and if not you can probably get a good idea of who i am from reading my blog, either way, you'll just have to figure out who i am as time goes along.

At this moment I'm about a week away from entering the Missionary Training Center. I'm sort of nervous but extremely excited (or vice versa), and I'm still just a little skeptical that I'm actually old enough to be going on a mission, I still feel like I should be in high school, although I'm glad I'm not. I'll be at the MTC for a couple months, learning Portuguese and how to be an effective teacher, and then head off to Portugal.

Oh yeah, the title, "Não posso expressar nem a mínima parte do que sinto" is Portuguese for "I cannot say the smallest part which I feel". This is fitting (if somewhat awkwardly worded) in a variety of ways. First, as I'm sure you'll notice, I am far from eloquent in the expression of my feelings. Also, I'll be struggling with trying to teach in a language I just barely know. On top of that, I'm going to be trying to convey the awesomeness of a mission and the gospel.

Most of all, it is a quote by Ammon in the Book of Mormon (who is pretty much the coolest) as he's trying to express the oft overwhelming joy he feels having brought many people into the gospel. I can't think of a more fitting quote than a missionary named Ammon commenting on his inability to express the awesomeness of a mission.

So yeah, this is my mission blog, enjoy.