Lagos 2 - Take one

Hello Happy Family!!

Lagos 2 is the official name of the new area that Elder Riley Evan Brown and I are opening up. But from the way we divided up the area with the other Elders (Elder Nair, also from my MTC group, and Elder Noda), we could also go by Lagos East-side (and them Lagos 1 / Lagos West-side)! Maybe we´ll stick with the official stuff. But whatever you call this new area, it is soo great to be back in the field and out of the mission office! YeeeHAW!! My body isn´t quite accustomed to the sudden jolt from being inside with air-conditioned office paper and computer work to being outside in the hot and sunny oven-like asphalt. The worst though was the shock from all the walking instead of driving around in a car - my calves were screaming rebellion until today. Anyways, the point is it´s great to be out working like full-time in-the-field missionaries do! 

Lagos is quite nice. From what I´ve seen in the past few days there isn´t a beach right exactly where we are (just as well) but there are tons of tourists around in beach clothing. The beach and boats are not very far away. We´ve started to get to know our area pretty well, and we´ve gotten a bunch of the potential investigators from the Lagos 1 Elders. We´ve also gotten one investigator who they said is progressing pretty well. He´s a Brazilian man from Espirito Santo, and he came to Sacrament meeting and seemed to enjoy it. Apparently it was his second (or maybe third) time. We´re excited to work with him and keep finding more men and families! Elder Brown is a great guy. Easy-going but really optimistic, ready to work and excited to be here. I´m such a lucky guy with a great companion to train, great elders to share the house (and area) with, and yet another pair of elders to also have in the district! Great stuff! 

Happy Belated Birthday Darrell! Hope you had a good one! 

Much love to/for everyone else, too! Have a great week everybody!

--Elder Spencer Ellis

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Constant Change!!

Helloo Lovely Family!

Well, today is the preparation day right before transfers, and the news of who-is-going-where is causing the typical excitement. Before all that business started though, President Torgan called me into his office and let me know in advance that I will be training an Elder Brown from Farmington Utah (he didn´t say the hometown, but I checked on the board) while opening up a new area in Lagos (down in the Algarve - that´s as beach bottom south of Portugal as you can get) and serving once again as a district leader. Needless to say, I am very very happy and excited for the new area, new companion, and new challenges - not saying anything bad about being a financial secretary with Elder Dias in Amadora. But I´m looking forward to be in the full missionary swing of things!

So, that´s the biggest news. Otherwise, things are looking good for the future of Amadora/Queluz. There is a man from Mozambique in his 30s named Manuel who has come to church the past two Sundays and has really liked everything. He came to the baptismal service of another man who was baptized last Saturday and really liked that too, and everything looks great for him to be baptized in a few weeks.

Should anyone desire to send further mail, please keep sending stuff to the mission office. If anyone needs a reminder, here´s the address:
Elder Spencer Ellis
Missão Portugal Lisboa
1500 Lisboa
PORTUGAL

So how is everybody? John and Laura and kids are all comfy cozy in Provo now, right? What´s new with everyone else? I hope you all have a great week, and I hope to hear from you all soon. Tchau!
--Elder Spencer Ellis

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What kind of name is Azzim? Irish? Culrish? ... Moorish!

Hello happy lovely family! Congratulations to Joy and Darrell for the safe and successful delivery of little Maurie! That´s niece #5 I have yet to meet - can´t wait to see her in person! As hard as it is to beat a new baby being born, I hope everyone else is fit, fine, fantastic, and having a blast! This week went really well - and really fast. Time is flying by, and I´ve gotta get the most of it. Our missionary district has started a tradition of having a street meeting every other week (every week would be ideal but doesn´t always work out) on Saturday mornings. This last Saturday was the turn for the meeting to be in our area, and it turned out great! We received about 22 people total who let us take down their contact information and get back to them, some of them seem very very promising. One of the last people we contacted turned out to be a Brazilian man from Recife, and it was fun to be able to say that I had lived there too! As far as our teaching pool goes, aside from that explosion of references, we´ve started teaching this one lady named Titi (teeTEE) who is super nice and loves learning with us. And Celinho and Vaníce are making progress - it looks like they´re really close to finding a good housing situation soon. Yipikiyay! Haha, and in regards to the quote from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, for our P-Day pleasure today Elder Walker, one of the other office Elders, and myself went to the Moorish Castle in Sintra, and it was quite fun. A lot of other people were there, including from the UK, Germany, probably Spain and Italy and who knows where else! But we still managed to take a lot of cool pictures, but only some of which I´ll include. I was in a meditative mood, you may say. Well, love all of you, and hope you all have a great week! Tchau! --Elder Spencer Ellis NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Great Week!!

Hello lovely family!
Well, this week was indeed big and busy, but it was very enjoyable and edifying, much to my surprise. Just goes to show that as we do our best the Lord will be by our side to help us out! This week was a testimony of that to me.

Last Monday we finished closing a missionary apartment (the elders had moved to a new one in the same city, very close to their chapel). Tuesday I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Elder Teixeira, which was quite uplifting. One thing I particularly enjoyed was his invitation for me to read two or three scriptures from the Topical Guide sections about Jesus Christ. The more I read and study about Him, the more I can focus on Him; the more I can focus on Him, the more I will desire and strive to become like Him, and be of service to others. It´s wonderful stuff, and I invite all of you to commence doing so, if you are not already doing some sort of study.

And throughout the week, despite being so busy - especially on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday - we were able to have a good amount of Spirit-led lessons. The two highlighting fruits of those labors for the week were 1) Edgar Gourgel, an 8 year old (soon to be 9) son of a member family that we´re working on strengthening was baptized and confirmed. He didn´t count as a convert baptism, but I´m sure both member and convert baptisms are valid and of great value to God. 2) Vaníce is now committed to being baptized (and she will count as a convert baptism)! Unfortunately though, we still have the obstacle of her living with her member boyfriend Célio, even though they´ve promised their not breaking the law of chastity. But to follow the Lord´s standards, we want to work on them getting married or living in separate apartments. (That´s still a challenge because Célio is having some family feud problems, isn´t working and doesn´t want help from his parents and a bunch of extended family.) But, as Dad has said and was quoted frequently by Elder and Sister Teixeira, onward and upward!!

So, life is great! Thank you all once again for the news, and especially your thoughts and prayers. Keep them coming, please! I hope everything is well as can be with Joy and lil´ Marguerite coming so close to delivery. Be strong, be well, and be happy! Have a great week, and I love all of you!
--Elder Spencer Ellis

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Hello!!

Hello beloved family!
Another week flown by, and this email reporting for two weeks in one! Sorry I missed last week, but these past two weeks have been the calm before the storm and the breath before the plunge. The storm and plunge I refer to is the fact that this week and next will be very busy. This week we have Elder Teixeira (who was a mission president in São Paulo while I was still around) coming to do a mission tour. He arrives today, there will be a leadership council tomorrow, a tri-zone conference on Wednesday, a typical bi-zone conference on Thursday (typical except for the fact that a Seventy is here), all back to back with organizing materials and lunches, etc etc. During and after said conferences we´ll also have to keep on top of our other financial duties, opening and closing houses, getting money, preparing payments, and monthly filing. Next week will be interviews, meaning the lunch stuff will happen all over again. YAY! "All things shall give thee experience, and be for thy good," right? Maybe all this financial experience is a suggestion from Upstairs saying I should look towards that kind of career? We´ll see soon enough...

Anyways, that was just the teaser for this week that´s starting. What happened the past two weeks included getting a new house for the Amadora elders and getting them moved in; getting a new checkbook; finishing moving the utility deeds to our name for Amadora and another missionary apartment, continue the search for an apartment in Vila Franca de Xira, sending our supply order for the month, updating the financial secretary manual/guide, and focusing on the investigators we´ve felt are closest to being baptized. We also had a cool street meeting by the train/bus station in Amadora with the Amadora and Linda-A-Velha elders.... And I turned 21 years old!! Now I´m completely legal, including being able to rent hotel rooms in the state of Indiana. But I´m not planning on doing anything in Indiana anyways, so no worries. My birthday celebration included lunch at Chili´s in Telheiras and phone calls from President and Sister Torgan and other well-wishing missionaries. Oh, and last Monday we cooked up some fajitas with that seasoning stuff Mom sent, and they (fortunately) turned out delicious! Thank you Mom and Dad!

Thank you everyone for your happy birthday wishes, and the usual awesome emails, prayers, and all other support! Congradz to Mark and Aup with the healthy little boy in the oven! I hope everything is going well with everyone else and their moves, studies, work, babies, and other great things! Love you all, and I hope you have a great week! Tchau!
--Elder Spencer Ellis

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Amadora ... Queluz? Take 4!

Hello happy family!!

Due to the snippets of emails I´ve received, I´m guessing everyone is having a fabulous time at the lodge! (Where this mysterious and fun lodge is, I know not, except it be somewhere in the land of Utah.) Well, the menus looked scrumptuous, and I´m sure the games and other activities will all be very fun... so enjoy! Meanwhile in the land of the Portuguese, things are going well. Elder Dias and I have looked at the office necessities for most of what we´ll need to do in the next 6 weeks, which will include a mission tour from President Teixeira (who was a mission president in São Paulo a few years ago - one of his office elders is in our ward by the way!), with interviews the immediate week after, and the other stuff. Lots of stuff to do! Yipikiyay!

Missionary work wise, we´re pretty excited. Like I said last week, our ward is receiving another pair of elders (who are the zone leaders now), and the area is divided and ready to be conquered - let´s go with converted! (By the Spirit, of course.) Also yesterday, President Torgan came to our ward for church and spoke in sacrament meeting, and told an allegory/story of him and his best friend for eternal life João (John). They were waiting in the pre-mortal existence waiting for their mortal mission calls, and when they got their call packets they found out Pres. Torgan would have the privilege of being born into a family already members of the Church and would be taught the gospel in his youth. João on the other hand was very solemn and anxious when he found in his mission call, he would not have that privilege of being raised in the gospel. João turned to Pres. Torgan and urged him to find him in mortality and bring him all the blessings of true happiness found in the Restored Gospel and Church. Then President Torgan invited the ward members to be diligent and find those Joãos and Marias who are really so dear to us, and need the gospel in their lives too. One member of a big less active family we´ve been working with came up to us after sacrament meeting and pointed to an investigator we´ve been working with (Vaníce) and said ´She´s one of those Marias!´ It´s great to have the members excited and to work with them!

Well, I wish you all the best, and a very fun time, at the lodge or elsewhere. Have a great week! Much love,
--Elder Spencer Ellis

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Hello!

Hello wonderful family!

Well, life is great in Portugal! This is the preparation day before transfers, and there´s a whole lot of stuff going on in the mission, lots of changes, lots of stuff to do. For example, our ward will be receiving another pair of elders (who will be the zone leaders too), so our area will be divided up. That will be great so that there can be a pair of missionaries to work fully in the area instead of being tied down so much with office stuff. Let the work move forward! But among so many changes and with so many missionaries coming in, that means new areas are opening up and Elder Dias and I have to find the houses for them. Looking things up on the internet is good but slow for getting feedback, calling up people/businesses takes a lot of time, and (besides Amadora) the areas are too far away to go house hunting ourselves. But, as Dad said, it´s great to be alive! So, we´re working on that a lot, and doing what we can to work with the members in our ward, especially strengthening the less actives and working with their friends.

Well, love all of you, and I´m happy to hear things are going so well with all of you! Keep going!
Much love,
Elder Spencer Ellis

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