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

June 28, 2010

Thanks for the letters and more especially the pictures, the nephews look completely different. This week was a little tough, we walked and walked a lot, and a lot of things didn't go as we would have hoped, but we're looking at what we're doing and what we need to change, and this week is going to be better. We have 4 lessons today, one right in the middle of p-day, i've gotten to the point where i care very little about p-day, partially because there's nothing to do in alverca, and also because it's just the same thing every week. It's sort of a shame because we would like to clean the house, but we'll get around to that later. This morning we went in to lisbon to pick up our new cell phone, our old one having broken, and so until we charge it we have no cell phone. it's sort of crazy because we're completely disconnected from the world and especiallly the rest of the mission. Sounds like you had a good stake conference. It's going to be sort of nice to have general conference actually because it gets everybody together on sunday morning and sunday afternoon, so instead of just going to one sacrament meetings, we can go to two stake meetings and meet see pretty much everyone. It's good to hear that you got those tickets worked out, it would have been a shame to get shipped home. As far as vacation plans, i think it might be better for you guys to look into things to do, i have some ideas, but i'd rather see things i haven't seen yet (like evora) than things i have seen. there are some things we have to see though. Sintra (Castelo dos Mouros, Palácio da Pena, and Quinta da Regaleira.) There's tons of other stuff to see in sintra, i figure we could spend a whole day there, and then on our way back visit caçem, which is near sintra. Lisbon is cool, especially Belém. Other than that though, i don't know what is cool, i'd suggest looking into it and finding cool places to see around portugal. I have no idea about places to stay, i'll try to get the number of the landlady in pontinha to see if she'll be in town, i don't know who else we could stay with though, so i'd plan on getting hotels.

Despite what the first half of my letter suggests, i'm not super trunky, i feel like i'm doing a pretty good job of staying focus and not letting time pass me by. We had interviews with president on tuesday, those were great, he talked a lot about retention and temples and building up the church, and not just baptizing, but baptizing the right people and helping them to stay solid. There's a family here in alverca that got baptized a few months ago that are struggling a lot. They were doing great when we got here, but some family problems and work trouble made things seem complicated and they've been having a hard time since then. Actually everyone's having a hard time, i don't know how the "crise" (crisis) is in the states, but here in portugal people are having a hard time all around. Portugal is a sort of american dream for all the portuguese speaking countries, but immigrants are finding that things here are even worse than where they were, and few people are coming and a lot of people are leaving. It's sort of tough to help people in things like that, but you can see the difference the gospel makes in peoples lives, that even when things are rough there's hope where others would sink into despair. It's sort of tough because as missionaries, and as me in general, my life is very simple and i don't have to deal with economic crises or unemployment or anything. My life is very secure, and i'm here serving those who just don't have the same opportunities as i've had. There's a MormonMessage (i don't know if you know what those are, but they're on the church website, they're cool) from thanksgiving that we watched yesterday that talked about being greatful for everything, even adversity.

Even though i'm not super trunky, it blows my mind to only have three months left. i'm trying not to think too much about it.

I don't know if you guys remember Ros, who i found out got baptized last week. It turned out her cousin (or neice, i'm not sure which) also got baptized in brasil. Ros wants to come back to portugal, and has been praying that Joel will accept the gospel and be baptized (Joel was her "namarido" a handy play on the word namorado (boyfriend) and marido (husband)) and that things would work out between them. As it happens, we had a really good lesson with Joel last night, we talked about the importance of baptism and knowing which way is right and asking God to know the right way. Our bishop has specifically asked us to teach joel, he's tough because he works every day basically all day long, even on weekends. So aside from not being able to go to church, he's tough to find at home to teach, but generally he's home around 9:30 at night, right before we go home, and last night we were blessed to find him at home at 9. We're going to teach him again on wednesday, and we're hopeful that things will go well there. Ros is planning on coming back in september, maybe i'll have one last marriage before heading home.

We got transfers next week, it's likely something we're change, i doubt i'm leaving, i don't really want to leave, but i'm always excited to get to know a new area and new people and stuff, but i'd be perfectly happy to finish the mission here. It'd be crazy if you moved while i was here. Would you stay in mississippi or head off to bigger and better things? It sounds like Dad's testing the waters a bit for the next move.

Anyway, that's the news from out here, we're going to work hard this week to get things moving, it's been just a little stagnant lately, so next week expect to have all sorts of new developments. Anyway, have a great week, and watch out for hurricanes, oilspills, economic depressions, comets, fire breathing dragons, and everything else the world is throwing around these days. I'll be here, blissfully unaware. Seriously though, i am really grateful to be on a mission, we had a really good meeting with our ward mission leader, and i'm excited to make these last 3 months the best.

um grande abraço,

Elder Ammon

June 21, 2010

Well, as you guessed, the portugal game is starting right now, which works out pretty well for us, because this great little internet café that's closed on mondays is open at the right time.

The week was good, Teresa's confirmation went great yesterday, she's getting well integrated in the ward, which is great. We've been teaching a lot of women recently, not really on purpose, it's just sort of worked out that way. We've also been finding a lot of young families, which is great, we're hoping some of them will progress this week.

Happy Birthday to Isaac and Happy Fathers day to Dad, sounds like you guys had an eventful week, i cannot believe you bought year passes to Universal Studios. Those are transferable right?

Lets see, as far as news goes, things are pretty calm. We visited an evangelical church this week, that was interesting. One of our investigators, edinaldo, invited us, so we went, it was very loud. It was very enlightening though, i understand a lot better how to teach evangelicals now. One thing that was very impressive is how nice they all were. We went in and sat down, and almost every person made a point of coming up to us and introducing themselves and talking a bit to us. They were very welcoming. They also ask you every one who's there for the first time to stand up and they applaud you, that was a little awkward, but it's a nice gesture. I was impressed with the pastor and he seemed very sincere (and he sang very well). I don't know if you guys will remember this, but one time in fast and testimony meeting in the jackson branch, the elderes had brought a baptist guy who got up and basically started preaching, and kept going for like 20 minutes until Brother Stallworth got up and, very impressively, took him back to his seat. It made me remember that. We were hoping to be able to get up and preach, but they didn't give us that opportunity, there was a visiting pastor from cacem who i was less impressed with, he seemed to know our message, and he made some subtle but very obvious comments about it. He also asked me to stand up and basically told me i had been mislead and that God had another mission for me. I'm feeling pretty good about this mission though, and after i'm done i think i'll have had enough mission for a while. He sort of ruined his credibility though when afterward he asked everyone to buy his wifes ties (which looked suspicially like they been bought at the chinese store and marked up to 5 euros). Anyway, it was an interesting experience. The day after we talked to an adventist, who basically told me the same thing, she being thoroughly convinced in order to follow the bible you have to honor the sabbath on saturday. The seventh day adventists have a big advantage in portuguese because saturday is called Sábado, which is the word Sabbath. So the bible reads, "honor the saturday, to keep it holy" I'm really tired of having to explain that to people. In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, i'm just glad that my personal testimony isn't based on my interpretation of the bible. We try to explain to people that they just need to ask God sincerely and he'll answer, a lot of people's response is that God responds through the bible, basically that he can't say anything more than what he's already said.

Yesterday was had two lessons with people from people from that evangelical church, one was terrible, it felt sort of like bashing our head against a wall. The second was incredible, the spirit was great and we just talked about stuff, and read scriptures in the book of mormon and the bible. It was partly a difference in the people we were teaching, but the bigger difference was in the way we approached it.

Some other cool things that happened this week, on saturday we had a bunch of lessons lined up, at 5 o'clock basically all our plans had fallen through, and we were kind of lost and didn't know what to do. We were sitting on a bench basically with no plan. We went up to the church so i could take a pill (i talked to a doctor cus i still have a bit of a cough, and it's been a while and it's sort of annoying, and so he prescribed some medicine to take for three days)

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL! Portugal just scored.

anyway, so after that we prayed for a little while to figure out what to do. As i prayed and thought about what to do, i felt like we should go work on this street before a lesson we would have there, and as i imagined the street my mind fixed on a certain building that we had never tried. It's a cool little building, it had a little bridge from the sidewalk to the front door so that the basement can have front windows too. Anyway, as elder mateer prayed he felt like we should go visit this less active named Elizabeth Howard who we have tried several times but never gotten ahold of. Anyway, so we went to that street, i sort of forgot and we wandered around abit on that street, and then i remembered what i had though to do and so we walked back to the house. We knocked one door on the "quem é" box (i think i've explained this before but it's a little box that you push the buttons of the apartments and people say "quem é?" Happily this one was old and didn't have a voice box, so they just had to open it. I hate talking through those boxes) and we went up to the second floor. It was a portuguese girl, probably about our age, with two little brothers. we talked a little bit to here, she was actually pretty interested, and we're going to go back on wednesday. It's interesting how things like someone opening a door seem like a small thing, but every person who opens the door and listens to what you have to say is a miracle.

After that we had a nice lesson with Mauro and his wife and Alves (his friend, who's wife also lives there but wasn't there until the end) they're cool. Then we went out to chaza, where elizabeth howard lives, and knocked her door. We've knocked this door a hundred times, because it's intrigueing, we're in portugal and there's a person named Elizabeth Howard, you just don't see that much. Anyway, we've never found anyone, but this time we knocked the door, and the 20ish guy answered. He was nice, sort of in a hurry, but he said we could come back later, and he told us that elizabeth lives down stairs, so we knocked that door, talked to her friend, she wasn't home, but it was cool to finally make some progress there. then on our way back, Elder Mateer wanted to try this one door we had tried earlier, and we found a guy named Adamo, who has two sons and a wife and are moving back to brasil in a little bit. After teaching him, He referred us to his neighbor downstaires, who was the 7th day adventist, but she was cool to.

All in all, it was a very good end of the day, it was impressive to see the difference before and after the prayer.

One more cool story, we went to teach this couple yesterday, João and Glória, João was out but we taught Glória and her daughter, Margarida. Margarida was extremely interested, although she lives in a different area. Something they commented on was that before we got there, Margarida's son, Bruno, was crying and fussy, but after we got there he was super happy, and shouting for joy the whole lesson. It was sort of distracting, they were very impressed with the difference, and acredited it to the spirit. What was cooler, is after Margarida said a prayer at the end of the lesson (after a lot of coaxing and encoragement on our part) Bruno got very calm and stopped shouting and just hung out.

Anyway, good times here in portugal. Time continues to fly, but that's pretty normal at this point. I'm waiting on a call from one of my favorite members, Macsuel, who's helping us out by making t'shirts for our zone as a fundraiser for the youth of lisbon to go to EFY, he's going to email us the design before he prints it, so that we can ok it. While i wait i'll try to get some pictures sent off to you guys.

Have a great week, and don't forget to send pictures of the family reunion.

Love,

Elder Ammon

oh, p.s. I don't know what you're planning when you come, but if you can, it would be a good idea to plan on renting a car, it will make a lot of things a lot easier. One of the things i think would be really cool if it works out would be to go to the temple in madrid, it's a bit of a drive, but it's not too far, and it's just past Evora, which Elder Mateer says is worth visiting. Anyway, just keep that in mind.

Beixinhos

June 14, 2010

as it happens, flag day is not a holiday here in portugal, but there are tons of flags everywhere because of the world cup. This week was good, Teresa's baptism went very smoothly. Her Aunt who hasn't come to church in forever came and is excited to start coming back to church again. It's interesting, because she's the quickest baptism i've had on my mission (from meeting to baptizing) but she's one of the most prepared people for baptism. Marcelo Oliveira performed the baptism, it was great, because she's had about as much contact with the members as she has with us. Every lesson has been accompanied with members, and everyone who helped had a part in the baptism. It's like a textbook example of how things should go in the teaching process, i can't say i've finally learned the secret to missionary work, but if we can keep doing that it'll be excellent.

We also had zone conference, which was good, like always. It was fun to see Elder Nixon and Elder Fernandes who are Zone Leaders in the zone above us. And it was great to learn and get motivated and such. In the time i've been here, the mission has changed a lot. It's shrunk significantly, today it's about half the size it was when i got here, but a lot more people are getting found, taught, and baptized. In Odivelas, which is an area in our zone, the Irmãs (sisters) had baptisms every week for 5 weeks. When i got here that was unimaginable. The area presidency called president Torgan last week and said that we were the Hope of Europe. The coolest part of zone conference was the very end when President Torgan talked about how our purpose is to prepare the way so that there be a temple in portugal, and it made me think about that a lot.

We were surprised to see Ketely (the little girl that came to church last week) at church again. A 10 year old girl that can get herself up and go to church on her own is a bit out of the ordinary. We really want to teach her family, but they're sort of busy during the week. Speaking of families, i don't know how much i talked about Tatiana last week, but after setting the crib up and everything, we finally got to teach her this week. It was a great lesson, she loved it, and even asked if she could be baptized in the church. Today or tomorrow we're going to talk to the father of her baby, Lourenço, who arrived from angola yesterday, but we're really hopeful for them. There are two things that i haven't yet done in my mission: baptize an entire family and baptize a member reference. Considering that that's the way missionary work is supposed to work, i wonder why i haven't been able to do that yet, but we're hoping that Lourenço is as interested as Tatiana so that they can all come to church together and be united. It'd be great.

It sounds like the family reunion was great, just this morning i was thinking about how it'd be fun to play paintball, i'd definitely vote for going back there in three years. It's too bad i missed what sounds like the most epic family reunion in a long time, but i can't imagine missing this week of my mission. I appreciated your encouragement to not get trunky and focus and work hard. It's not as easy as i imagined to stay focused, especially when elder mateer likes to remind me how much time i have left, but i feel like i'm doing pretty good in not letting it interfere with the work. Today we're just relaxing and resting, it's been a while since we've been able to just relax. I'm still coughing from time to time (Elder Mateer, always a pal, suggested i might have tuburculosis) and he got some sort of mild food poisoning from something he ate for breakfast this morning.

On sunday i gave a talk about love, it was ironic because saturday night i had a dream where i had to give a talk but hadn't prepared anything and had no idea what to say. When i woke up i was so relieved it was sunday morning and that it was just a dream; then, just before church, Rui Marques, the second councilor, asked me if i could give a talk. The other two speakers were jovens, one who spoke for 2 minutes, the other who spoke for 5ish, so i was left with 25 minutes to talk. It went pretty well though i think, and luckily sacrament meeting is last, not first.

Elder Mateer has been having a hard time with the World Cup being on and not watching it. It's crazy, i wasn't expecting it to be as big a deal here as it is. Also i was expecting there to be craziness in the streets and stuff, but the streets are basically dead, and every café on every corner of portugal is full of people watching the game. I'm trying to figure out how we can use the world cup to our advantage, with people being home and such, but Elder Mateer says it can't be done. I'm thinking the only thing to do is teach woman and the oddballs that don't like football. The real problem is that for the first couple weeks there are two to four games per day. Anyway, we're managing.

That's the low-down from portugal, thanks for the pictures and everything, have a great summer and help the missionaries. We're still getting fed a lot. This week we have a lunch every day of the week. The members here are truly incredible.

love,

Elder Ammon

May 31, 2010

First of all, once again, congradulation on the newest nephew Tanner. I'm sure he'll make a good addition to the nephews.

As it turns out Elder Mateer had to take care of something with his family today, so we're doing email today, which is just as well because tomorrow is sort of crazy, we have a lesson at 10a.m. with Vanessa, District meeting at 11:30, then lunch, then we're planning on helping Leolinda and Viola move. More on that later

This week was great, it seems like it's been a really long time since last p-day, the first transfer is like that. I don't think i'm going to be able to get everything covered, so i'll start with the biggest stuff.

Leolinda and Joaquim Viola got married on wednesday, and baptized on saturday. The baptism was great, another one that had almost nothing to do with us. They were ready to baptize when we got here, and what little preperation was required was done by Otacílio and Bete, who are, by the way, on the list for Top 5 members of the church in the world. These people are Saints. Otacílio performed Joaquim´s baptism, and Elder Seraim came up from Olivais to do the baptism of Leolinda. After that we had a little wedding ceramony, which was cool. On sunday they got confirmed, they already seem like they've been members forever. They're excited about doing family history and going to the temple to get married in the temple a year from now. Leolinda is excited and working hard to bring the rest of her family, who all came to the baptism, to come to church. Marisa, her daughter, is living with Carlos, who was baptized some time ago but has since stopped coming, and Vanda and her boyfriend, who is younger and apparently used to have some difficulties but has calmed down a lot and liked the baptism.

This week has made me really grateful for my family. You guys are awesome, i'm so glad we all get along and there's no drama and Mom and Dad always were so good to us. The more i learn about other people's families, the more grateful I am to have a family so united and happy. We had a family history center open up in our ward, and so last p-day after email we went by there and looked at some stuff, i was amazed. Family history is the coolest. I had no idea we had so much family history on there. You can go back 27 generations to 1046. Also, i always assumed the Vail line came to utah from britain about the same time that the perkes family came, if not after, but it turns out they were in New England for along time, back to the Revolution. We probably had people fighting in the Revolutionary war and stuff. There's some Vail family that lived in Salem, Massachussetts in the 1600's. It was so cool to find out my roots are more interesting than Utah and England. We've been trying to show the people we teach about family history, and i've started carrying around a chart with all my family until the great grandparents. Yesterday we taught Sirlene and Paulo, a less-active member and her husband who's not a member, about family history, and they got really excited about it. It was cool, we've been trying to get ahold of this family for 6 weeks, and then we went with Otacílio for a day to do hometeaching and on our way back we passed by and they were at home and we taught Them, two of Sirlene's three daughters, and Ugo, her daughter's boyfriend.

We had some other cool experiences this week, on the wedding day we were up in Vila Franca (which is a ways away) to talk to Vanessa. She has a rough schedule so we talked to her for a bit in a Café, we talked abit about courage to ask for an answer from God and the importance of families and the way the gospel has blessed our families. I showed her a picture of our family (which i carry around in my bible in Malachi) and she was really impressed, she said she felt really strange looking at our family and how happy we were. We marked for today, but today we had to go to zone leader council. ZL Council was cool today, the mission baptized more than we ever have before, so President took us all to Chili's for lunch (yes, they have chili's in portugal) It was fun to spend some time withElder Fernandes and Elder Nixon and all the other Zone leaders that were there. It's funny how you guys don't know who these people are, and how close we are together. It's weird how close you get to your comps and other missionaries you serve with.

Anyway, on the way from Vanessa's to the Wedding, we saw this young woman standing at the top of the hill. This story is probably getting boring by now, but i felt like i should talk to her, but Elder Mateer was already a little ways ahead, and so i started to walk past, but i really wanted to talk to her, so by the time i was about 10 feet passed her and Elder Mateer was 10 feet ahead of me on the other side of a fence, i shouted to elder mateer to hold on a sec and i went and talked to her. I didn't really know what to say, but she had a big bag she was carrying and i sort of blurted out awkwardly, "Podemos ajudar com isso?" and to our suprise, she said "Sim!" ElderMateer (who is really good at serving people) grabbed her bag and we started walking with her to her house. And on our way I talked to her. I would learn later that that bag she was carrying was really really heavy, and she is five months pregnant, and i don't know how she was expecting to get the rest of the way to her house. We learned her name is Teresa, she's from Cabo Verde, the Island of Fogo, where Elder Fernandes is from. She had already been to church once in cape verde with her cousin, who is a member, but had never heard the lessons or anything. When we got to her house, it was crazy, because we had knocked her door before, because she is the niece of a member who used to live in Vila Franca (who is now living nearby with her newish husband). We talked a little bit with her, said a prayer and set up a return appointment, but later we felt like we should go back that day, so we got António Gomes, who lives nearby, to come with us, and he helped us a lot. We taught her the first lesson, she loved it, she said she'd read and pray (which she has) and she'd come to the baptism (which she did). We're going to teach her again on teusday, we're pretty excited for her.

I'm checking out some random family history stuff. I just found a great^nth Grandfather named Captain John Jacobs born in Hingham, Norfolk, England, who (i can only assumed) sailed to Plymouth, Massachussetts and established the city of Hingham.

Lets see, anything else? We put together a crip for Tatiana, a lady we've been teaching, who had a baby this week, and didn't have a crib. Last monday Macsuel (who is one of the coolest members in portugal, he's the brasilian Logan living in Alverca) asked us if we knew anyone who needed a crib, which we did, so that was cool. We're teaching her on teusday also. So, things are going good here, I'll try to get some pictures out next week, of the wedding, and baptism, and other crazyness has been going down this week.

oh, in relation to you guys picking me up. From the beginning i said i'd rather come home on the plane and come back with you guys later, but i like the idea of you picking me up too. Do whatever is cheapest and/or most convenient. To me, it doesn't make a big difference. Thanks for your letters, i'm excited for photos of the Tanner. My times gone, have a great week.

Abraços

'Captain' Elder Ammon