April 1, 2009

And the new colega is....

Still Elder Oram!  That's right, april fools aside, i'm going one more transfer with Elder Oram.  No one's ever heard of anybody going 4 transfers (6 months) with their trainer, so that's pretty epic.  It also means i probably have another 3 months in Mafra, so that's cool.  Elder Dean is headed out to the Açores, for which he's pretty excited, and we're getting Elder Linquist in our district, who was in my group in the MTC, so that's fun.

Sounds like crazy times in the U.S. The weather here has been pretty calm, is got a little cold and windy this week, but we survived, barely.

Maiery is doing great-ish.  Her family is very evangelical, and many of them are pastores, and are thoroughly convinced of several things that are simply not true (we're of the devil, we worship joseph smith, don't believe in the bible, don't believe in Jesus Christ, etc.).  It's a little bit frustrating when people lie about things they know nothing about, especially to members of their church, but yeah, if anything Maiery is even more dedicated to being baptized. She chose a date for baptism (i think that happened this week) and her and her mom went to church and family night again.  She's planning on going to General Conference this weekend, and even invited a friend.  It is handy that anyone who spends more than 5 minutes at church sees very quickly what we believe.  It's rough sometimes to see us creating family strife, when we're all about helping families, but sometimes, we are not come to bring peace but a sword (i really need to start bringing my scriptures with me so i can actually quote stuff, but that's in matthew ch 7ish i think).  Basically Maiery doesn't have doubts, she already read and prayed and knows this is the right thing to do, having 'opened her heart that she may understand', it's just hard for her to get so much flack from her family.  Her mom and brother, atleast, are fairly supportive, but her mom keeps passing along doubts from Maiery's aunts and uncles, a couple of 20 year olds who barely speak portuguese vs. several evangelical pastores wouldn't seem like a very fair match-up, but we survive.

Anyway, all this to say she's great, and it's such a blessing to have found her.  Maura is also doing great, she's choosing the songs and all that for her baptismal program which will be on the 11th,  i was worried i was going to get transfered and miss that, but as it happens here i am.

With the knowledge that we're going 6 more weeks together, elder oram and i are trying to figure how to work a little bit better.   After 3 transfers in one area (or four if you're elder oram) you get the feeling that you've talked to everyone and knocked pretty much every door, so we have to figure out how to combat that.  I love mafra, but 3 more months will be rough if we do it wrong.

I'm pretty excited about general conference.  We watch almost all the sessions, aside from saturday morning, on sunday, becaue of the time change.  So that will be an epic day of conference watching.  I still don't know quite how it's going to be, where, when, in what language, etc, but either way, it'll be great.

We've been having a lot of appointments fall through lately, we had 11 this weekend.  It sort of weakens my trust in the honesty of people, so we need to work on avoiding that, it's ends up taking lots of time and doesn't get a whole lot done.

As far as other investigators, Wanderlay is doing well, he made us dinner on monday that was really really good, but we had both just eaten and so we weren't extremely hungry, and there was an extreme amount of food.  He wants to get baptized before going back to brasil, so we're thinking about that, and how advisable it is is baptize someone and then send them to a different country, but it could still happen.

Manuel is struggling, and we're not sure why.  He's missing appointments, he's stopped coming to church, his wife said he's been sort of weird lately, so we're hoping to get over there sometime soon to sit down and talk about what up.

So that's more or less my week.  I'm sure there's other crazy awesome things that i'm neglecting to mention, but when my autobiography comes out in 20 years, you can catch it then.

6 Months with Elder Oram, we decided that means we're probably going to have to stay in touch after the mission. Anyway, thanks for your prayers, support, and everything.  I know that this gospel is so true.  The scriptures are pretty epic also.  I definitely never had as great an appreciation for how incredible the book of mormon is before the mission.  Anyway, i've got groceries to do, so i'm going to head out here.

Ficem bem, todos, e até proximo.

~Ammon

March 25, 2009

That's right, 6 months ago yesterday i wandered into the MTC having pretty much no idea what i was doing. Now i have a beautifully vague idea of what i'm up to, and happily, so do you:

This week was good. Today we went to Almada do visit an old investigator of Elder Oram who got baptized. It took a long time, but i got to write a few letters and ride on a boat, which reminded me of boston. I wonder how many cities there are in the world with a boat included in their public transportation.

This week we moved to the new house. It's quite a bit nicer, all though there's tons and tons of random things from the donna everywhere that makes it easy to get cluttered (because we don't have anywhere to put our things) but it's in the center of mafra so we don't have to walk so far everyday. Also this week, appropriately at my 6 month mark, i decided to revamp some goals and such. I become a bit too laid back in the work in mafra, helped in part by my week of not getting to work consistantly, but i think i talked about that last week, anyway, all this too say i made a bunch of goals and am going to try to not become lazy or sloppy in the work. I also bought a sweet new study journal with lots of paper, my studies have gone way down since i ran out of paper to think on.

This week we realized that April 4th won't work for Maura's baptism, due to general conference (which i am way excited about), so she got pushed back to the 11th. Manuel and Wanderlay are also choosing a date this week, so it's pretty exciting. Hopefully after general conference we'll be out in São Pedro da Cadeira (if i haven't talked about that yet, we're moving the chapel out of mafra, which makes some things a bit simpler, and lots of things a lot more complicated). General Conference will be cool, all the missionaries watch it together in english, i'd kindof like to watch in portuguese, but i'd much rather hear the real voices and understand everything well. This will be my second General Conference on my mission, i expect to get a lot more out of it than last time.

So, others news: Transfers are coming fast, it'll be weird because one of us is almost definitely going to be transfered, things change so much in missions, it becomes so normal to have everything change every 6 weeks, i imagine real life must be extremely slow.

This week we had some cool experiences. We contacted this lady as we were walking back from Vila Velha, talked to her a bit, and testified about how she has a heavenly father that loves her. She works in Swissa (switzerland, i'm pretty sure) and is hardly ever here, so we couldn't set up an appointment, but we left her a pamphlet with our number. Later that night she sent us a text message that said “Thankyou for making me feel that i am finally not alone, I have God with me” It was definitely one of the most meaninful text messages i've ever gotten and it is so incredible to actually be an instrument in the hands of the Lord.

We also had a really good Sacrement Meeting this week, lots of people showed up, including Maiery, whom i need to talk about. This is the goldenest investigator i've ever seen. She read the introduction and beginning of the Book of Mormon, took detailed notes, and prayed about it before our second lesson, she also answered all the questions in the 'addition study' in the back of the restauration pamphlet. She went to family night at Francisco's house, and went to seminary last night. She's 17, and wants to serve a mission when she's old enough. We met this girl a little over a week ago. It's great, and we're hoping it's not too good to be true, sometimes it feels like your getting set up, but since i'm all about faith, hope, and charity, i believe she's as incredible as she seems.

Anyways, i would like to right more, but as it happens we have some shopping to do before p'day ends, so Ficem bem todos, leiam as escrituras, orem, e desfrutem a primaverra. Faz seis meses que estou cá, sem voçés, então eprero que não me esqueçam, nem tenham tantas saudades minhas. Pronto, tenho de ir. Obrigado pelas orações e apoio. Até Proxima Semana.

Um grande abraço,

Élder Ammon

March 19, 2009

I'm not sure how to make patrick a portuguese name, but paciência

Happy St Patricks day, Pi Day, Ides of march, and any other insignificant holiday that passed you guys by this week (unless you were in boston, teaching math, or in rome, respectively)

As far as answers to the questions, there are not fire ants, nor mosquitos, but i'm pretty sure i've gotten flees at least twice. It's really not as bad as i was expecting, it's just like chiggers, and they don't seem to hang out for very long, which is good.

I believe President Terry is going home in July also. I've heard the new mission president was cheif of police or something in Brasil, and that he was on the winning olypic voleyball team. So hopefully he doesn't go militarian on us, or make us all play volleyball on p'days.

This week continued to have all kinds of crazy stuff, church on sunday was in the afternoon which meant we got to study on a sunday (it was weird) and then ate lunch at the house of Isabel, who is an awesome member here, and a bunch of other members were there too. We had Gonçalo do a lesson on the atonement, he had to do 10 pushups for every person, so that they could get a candy egg, even if they refused. We had gotten him ready for it before hand, and it worked out really well. For his parents especially, they had a suprisingly hard time seeing their son go through that. It was a really special lesson, and then i read Isaiah 53 where it talks about really beautiful the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It was good.

Monday we had a Zone meeting in Caçem, and we didn't get back until about 6. That night we had family night with Francisco, and did a lesson about missionary work, there are a few members here that are a bit discouraged because after praying and fasting and working they haven't seen a ton of success. But that doesn't mean they're giving up, which is good. The Members here are so great.

Tuesday i went to Lisbon a second time to do the second half of my visa, which took up most of another day. Something i've learned over the last couple weeks is that not doing anything, just like working hard, is both addictive and extremely habit forming. It's hard to get going after sitting around for a while, and there isn't anything much more tiring than doing nothing.

As far as news, This saturday we're moving! So go ahead and sending all sorts of exciting things there. I'm going to be living above a pastry shope, and a pizza place. It's going to be dangerous. The elders found and signed a house up in torres vedras, so their moving up there. It's all very exciting.

Lets see...other news. Oh yeah, transfers are every six weeks, and my next tranfer starts the first week in april. The Smart money is on Elder Oram heading out and me staying here one more, but you never can tell with bees. We have a baptism the first saturday in April of Maura, who right now is our golden ray of sunshine in a pool of struggling people. She stopped drinking coffee this week (they have this stuff here called Brasa, that is pretty much fake coffee made from barley. I've heard they have it in the states too. Some of the members are really good at it and it ends up very coffee like. I've heard it tastes almost, but not quite, nothing like coffee, but it gets the job done. Lots of missionaries start drinking it because it's actually not that bad, as well as lemon and other types of herbal tea, which are incredibly good and i'll definitely keep drinking them after the mission. Wow, i digressed, Maura, who is incredible, is doing well and will be baptized in a couple weeks here. It's amazing and very rewarding to teach people who actually want the Gospel in their lives.

We taught this guy yesterday, Joaquim, who we've taught a quite a few times, but it looks like we'll stop since he is not progressing at all. It was intense though, this time he kept trying to disprove the church with the bible (which doesn't really work, especially if you know the bible much) but it was a struggle to keep it from turning into an argument. At the end he pulled out Jehova's Witnesses doctrine on us and told us that their book, "What the Bible really says" is a really good book. It was a little suprising. Sadly Maria was also there, i would have liked to have a more uplifting lesson with her, since it looks like maybe her husband just died (this was the first time we taught her, though we've met her a couple times) but it at least she recognized the gaping holes in joaquim's argument, but the spirit of contention is never the best.

Anyway, the other elders are waiting on me and elder oram wants to go play tennis. This is the first day of my mission that i've warn 'p-day' clothes. So yeah, stay well everybody, lots of love, thanks for the support, letters, prayers, candy, and everything else, until next week.

Abração

~Elder Ammon

Editors Note: I've posted Ammon's new address on his facebook account. For security reasons, he's asked I not have his actual address on here, just the address of the mission home which will work all through his mission.

March 11, 2009

Happy Ides of March everybody, watch out for assassinations and the IRS (or any combinations of the two)

Things are good here in Portugal, but now i have to type quicker because my letter just dissapeared and i only have half an hour or so. The weather has been has been beautiful again, right now i'm in Mossamá, the area of the zone leaders. We're doing a divisão (or for those who don't speak portuguese missionary jargon, we traded companions for a day) which has been fun. today we're going to lisbon to do some adventure or something. It'll be cool. I hate typing these things over, it's never as good the second time.

Anyway, in sad news, Ezequiel left this morning to the north because there's no work down here. Rogério will also be heading out tomorrow. It feels like the early 1900's with the economy crashing and everybody moving west, except they're going north.

Yesterday was zone conference, which was really good. I like zone conferences, all members of the church should have zone conferences every six weeks, but that probably wouldn't work very well. Sunday was stake conference, which was cool and in português. The choir sang Chamado ao Servir, which was epic. Members here are awesome. We taught Isabel and her daughter Isabelinha and pretty much all the youth of the branch were there too hanging out. We had them practice talking to their friends about religion. It was lots of fun and was clear that it's really difficult for them. The next day elder Oram and i practiced it in comp study and it turns out we're still pretty bad at it, even being missionaries. But these members really are incredible, it's impressive that the church has only been in portugal 35 years.

This week i got chased by a dog for the first time. I figure that's got to be somesort of important milestone. Saturday we did a divisão with Elder Dean and Peterson (the torres vedras elderes) and elder dean and i were down doing some searching, and went up to knock on this house. So i was standing in front of the door waiting, and looked to the left and saw this little dog house. About 5 seconds late a dog poked it's head out, stared at me for a second, and then got very upset and launched out of the dog house. Elder dean ran out and shut the gate, so i had to jump over this little fence-wall thing. It was pretty intense. I laughed and laughed. Missions are so absurd sometimes.

Tomorrow i do have to go to lisbon to get my visa renewed. You might be getting the impression that i've had very little time to do real missionary work the past few days, which would be true. It feels like it's been almost a week since i worked a normal day in mafra.

As far as work goes, it feels like we're in a sort of rut, several of our investigators are slowing down for whatever reason, and one of our new converts has missed a couple weeks of church. Missionary work, like all things, comes in waves, so these next few days we'll be working hard and trying to teach better. Teaching is funny. It's so hard to teach well when teaching well should be so easy, because it requires so much less work than bad teaching, bad teaching being talking for 40 minutes, good teaching being having a conversation and reading from the scriptures and answering questions. Someday i'll get the hang of this whole mission thing.

Lets see, to answer a couple other questions, i did get the addresses, i'm not sure what's going to happen as far as moving, the other elders are searching for a house in torres vedras, they'll hopeful they'll get out there withing a week or so. I really hope so, since we're set to move out of our house at the end of march, and we can't all live in that one house. The sun goes down at about 6:30 (arrebol is the color of the sky at sunset), dsl still hasn't kicked in, but elder oram says they do have it here, so we'll see if that happens.

Lets see, i dunno what else has been happening here. My zone leader, elder marriot, reminds me a lot of logan in his mannerisms and the way he talks. He lacks a sweet beard, but so do all the missionaries.

Scripture study is good stuff. 2 Corintios 15 is incredible (i think it's 2nd, it could be 1st), as is the story of ammon in the book of mormon. He was such a great missionary, and a really good teacher. Plus he had a sweet arm-slash move that he used on at least two seperate occasions. (in case your confused, break out alma ch 17 and keep reading) Alma 26 is cool too, his little homecoming talk (from where the title to my blog comes) Yeah, scriptures are cool, especially to think about that these people actually lived and were hardcore a long time ago.

So that's the news from portugal. Ficem bem, todos, cuidado com os ides do março, e não se esquecem de pagar o SIR

Com Tanto Amor,

Élder Ammon

March 4, 2009

This week was good. On the last day of february portugal remembered that it was winter and decided to make the most of it, so we've had chilly and rainy days, but that just means more time before we get bored of beautiful weather. Yay opposition!

I just got my second haircut in portugal, i meant to make a big deal about it the first time because it was the first time in my life i paid for a haircut. I spent a whole thirty seconds today with a faux-hawk. Good times.

So yeah, on to my week, several exciting things happened this week. First of all, we got up way early friday to take Daniel (which, by the way, in portuguese is pronounced like the girls name) to Malveira to catch a train. Several things happened, and in the end we wound up driving to lisbon where he had to leave his dog, Jesse, with some guy he found out there because they wouldn't let him take it on the train. But he got to his home without any complications and so that was good. We moved out of our Chapel this week, at the moment we're meeting in the Casa do Povo, which as it turns out is a beautiful building. Last week we didn't have a piano, but lots of people showed up (we had 8 investigators!) and the testimony meeting was great. We had Maria da Graça, who quit her job so that she can continue going to church. Her faith is incredible. Jobs are not easy to come by here either. I ended up getting called by President Esteves to lead the music, which, when you lack a piano, is a lot harder, as it includes picking the first note. Standing infront of forty people and awkwardly decided what note on which to start Vinde Ó Santos is one of those things i didn't plan on doing in my life. They sung beautifully however, and it made me feel like we were pioneers or something, it was cool.

The branch out here really is incredible. They're always happy to give there little bits of spare time to help the missionaries teach, which is good, because we teach here quite a bit. This week we adopted all the Irmãs investigators, which is complicated. When we had the irmãs here, whenever we had a woman that we couldn't teach alone we would give her to them, and they ended up finding a bunch on their own too, and so now we have several single women that are amazing but sort of difficult to teach since we always have to find members. One of them is Maura, who is brasilian and the very definition of golden. She lives in this tiny house/shack out an the edge of Seixal with her husband and son. She's marked for baptism and is way excited about it. Her husband and son hadn't showed much interest in learning about the church, although they never opposed her, but earlier this week we taught the husband and he liked it alot. He wants to learn more, but he can't read, so Maura has started reading the Book of Mormon to him. A couple days ago we watched 'The Prodical Son' (which is so wonderfully nineties, and even better in portuguese) which really touched her, and even more Isabel, who was there with us, as she has a son who is a bit rebellious and doesn't want much to do with the church. The son watched it too, and said he liked it a lot when the father and son prayed together at the end. She told us yesterday that that night he read the book of mormon with his dad. These people are so great!

Lets see, other news. Rogério is probably going to move up to the north this week with family, at least for a while. It's a complicated situation that i won't try to go into detail about it now, but he's doing great. You know a recent convert is doing well when they read jacob 5 and have a pretty good idea of what it's talking about.

Oh yeah, i carried a piano down two flights of stairs this week, that was fun. Yesterday we were teaching this family that is from Cape Verde and is pretty cool, when there's a knock at the door. We assumed it would be the mother, but as it turns out, it was the other dupla of missionaries. They had scheduled an appointment with him at the same time. So we had a little lesson with four elderes. I think we need to get together and coordinate a little better. They're searching for a house out in Torres Vedras, but in the mean time they're also working in Mafra, where they don't really know anybody or have any where to start from, so it's a little sketchy.

Fun fact:

Did you know that the city of Ammon (now called Amman) in the old testement was eventually conquered by the greeks and given the name Philadelphia, which, as it happens, is the place where i was born.

Other things...theres a word in portuguese for the color the sky makes at sunset. This week we tought some lessons with Gonçalo, the little brother of Filipe Esteves who is currently in Brasil waiting to head off to Moçambique. He's cool. We taught Wanderlay, who said he wants to be baptized, so that's fun. The work in Mafra is incredible. It's hard to believe i've already been here 3 months and i'll probably be here 3 more. Wow, that's a lot of time in Mafra, but the it's a great time to be here, and it's a nice place to spend a quarter of my mission.

Anyways, i'm out of time here and Elder Oram i think is kinda bored of internet, so we're going to head off. I'll try really hard to write some letters today, there's a growing pile of peole i owe letters, so we'll see how it goes.

Anyways, Obrigado pelas orações e apoio, ficem bem, todos,

Até proxima semana, Abraço

Elder Ammon

February 25, 2009

February 25, 2009

Carnival came and went with out anything crazy. There was no egg throwing, although we saw a few around on the ground. We did almost caught some balloons, but they ended up missing us and the nice lady that was next to us. Carnival is funny though because it seems like people get dressed up in costumes but then don't do anything special, so you see a bunch of people in costumes shopping and going about their business. We celebrated the first day of lent by buying a shocking amount of groceries for suprisingly small amounts of money and later today we're going to clean our house. President Terry decreed that this p'day everyone in the mission is staying home and cleaning the house, because they've been getting out of hand. We don't do all that many adventures, so our house isn't that out of hand, but it's definitely due for some cleaning.

I forget when my new president starts, but they did say their names would come up soon on church news or the ensign or something like that. My address will probably stay the same until about the end of march, when we'll be moving into the other house. The Elders there are in the process of looking for a house in Torres Vedras, but they can't go up there until the chapel moves, which could still take a little bit of time, so we're hoping we don't all end up living in the same predio, but it could happen. But basically you're probably safe sending stuff to my house for a little while, or to the mission office.

Speaking of the mission office, thanks a whole bunch to everyone who send me stuff. I'm going to work to respond to everything today, but it made me extremely happy and successfully killed the idea of going a tranfer without sugar. Elder Oram had been pushing for it, but it died pretty quick. It was all over when we found an ice cream bar.

Today I we became regulars at the internet place. Now we have a tab. Oh, and it was cool to hear from Max, it's fun to imagine him MTCing it up, i think the italian elders are on the same floor as the portuguese elders, the 3rd floor of the devotional building, so he needs to keep an eye out for portuguese missionaries and teachers, especially Irmã Olsen, since she's probably still over there.

Anyway, i think that's all the news, this week was pretty cool. The weather here has been beautiful and incredible and we've been leaving the jackets at home. There are little lizards running all over the place and our clothes have never been so dry. Filipe and Irmã Maxfield left, and Elders Dean and Peterson came in. They're pretty cool, and it will be interesting to have a district of four elders. It's my, and almost elder Oram's, first time to be in a district without Sister Missionaries, there are lots of Irmãs in Portugal for some reason, but that's pretty cool.

As far as the Investigators, they're doing good. Wanderlay wants to be baptized, but isn't sure if he's going to be going back to Brasil or staying in portugal. He, like what seems like everyone else in portugal, is unemployed and having a hard time. Things are rough economically here, Manuel is currently not marked for baptism, i think maybe Elder Bednar made him feel unprepared for making a covenent, but he still wants to get baptized, we just need to help him feel more prepared, and he too is out of a job, which makes his life rough. It seems like pretty much all the people we teach are out of work, which i suppose isn't that suprising, since the people that have jobs are almost never at home.

This week we met a guy named Daniel. Or rather we met him a couple weeks ago, but we started talking to him a bit this week. So this is the story of Daniel: Daniel comes from the North, near Guarda, i'm not sure why he came down here, but he's been living with his wife and dog, Jessie (the dog). I'm not quite sure in what order this happened, but it basically went like this. When he was pretty young his mother died, i think it was about then that he lost faith in God, and then a few months ago his father died. His boss has refused to pay him, so now he pretty much broke. His wife is leaving him, and he's getting kicked out of his house on friday, and last week he feel out of a four story building. No joke, he was putting his clothes out on the line and he reached out to grab his cat and feel off the balcony, getting pretty torn up in the process by the clothes line, and the ground didn't help. But he is pretty much miraculously alive, for having falling 40 feet and landing about a foot away from a big cement block (the place he landed was grass). So we went to visit him on monday and found out about all this and talked to him for a while. We talked to the branch president and we got his medicine taken care of (he had gone a week without having money for the pain killers) and we're going to get him up to the north where he has friends to help him, since here he has pretty much no one. But yeah, falling out of a building is intense. There's some crazy stuff that happens in the world.

Reading Dad's journal this week has been really surreal. It's the weirdest thing to read my dad's writing when he sounds like a young, naive kid from Hyde Park. Also seeing my dad make typos is really interesting. The weirdest thing though is when he describes something the exact same way as i've experienced it, like his feeling when he got into the MTC, or as he was leaving the MTC, or in the church activity when he did almost the exact same thing my companion and I did (stand behind your companion and be their arms and do funny things). Also, there's about a 7 month gap from his first few months to when he's been there for a year. There's such a huge difference in the writing, i wonder if i'll mature that much in the next 7 months. So yeah, that's been a cool experience.

Lets see, what else happened this week? Not to much, it was a good week, we had our last sunday in the chapel, next week we're in the Casa do Povo, and then we have stake conference, and hopefully the new chapel will be ready soon after that, it's pretty much just waiting for some papers from the Camera Municipal, so we'll see how that goes. But that's all the news from me, i'll try to make sure i'm being safe and wise.

Então, ficem bem todos, agradeço pelos dons e orações, até proxima semana. Abraço
~Elder Ammon