Change of email

Dearest family,

This ldsmail account that I was using as a missionary will be shut down soon. Please resume emailing me to my hotmail account, modernstriplingwarrior@hotmail.com  . Should I change to a more sober sounding email address, I will be sure to let you all know. Thanks!

--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.

Keep breathing, that´s the key!

"We dwarves are natural sprinters! Very dangerous over short distances!"

 

Hello lovely family!! I love you all and am grateful for the emails sent. My prayers are with you all, especially with Rachel´s tooth situation. The final stretch has finally come, and I´m going to sprint to the finish! Love you all very much, and I´ll see most of you next week. Much love,

 

--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.

Lagos looking up!

Hello lovely family!

 

Great to hear the news, funny quotes from kids, and see pictures! I´m very happy everything is going so well for everyone!

 

Things in Lagos are going well. We´ve found some new people that look promising - a Brazilian family/friends group, a Brazilian couple (the husband was actually baptized a few years ago in Portimão, a neighboring city with a solid branch, but has been attending a different church for the past couple of years) and a Portuguese young man of 17. This young Portuguese kid, André, came to church on his own and liked it too! (Of course!) Yesterday was our zone conference, so we´re taking care of the Preparation Day essentials - groceries and internet - today. The zone conference went really well, and we´re really going to increase our efforts to focus on and find the elect. Then teaching and helping them be baptized will be easy as pie! (Apple... or chicken pie... take your pick.) So we´re going to focus on this young man André, and this 9 year old son of a less active woman who hasn´t been baptized yet. And all in all sprinting to the finish line!

 

Love you all, and I hope you have a great week!

--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.

Life at the Lakes

Hello lovely family!!

 

So life here in Lagos is going swell. (I´m pretty sure Lagos interprets as ´lakes´, but I don´t know of any actual lakes nearby. Just lots of beaches...) Anyways, Elder Brown and I have had a good week of hard work. We had some good lessons, and found some people that seem to have some great potential, but we are going to focus more on this week on helping these people to really start progressing and coming to Church. In other words, we´re going to try to work smart as well as work hard, and always follow the Spirit!

 

Everything´s going great though! We´re going to be playing ultimate frisbee as a zone today, so that´ll be fun. And we´ll be careful so as to not have any injuries. Can´t afford to slow down the work! Thanks everyone for your great emails of news and whatnot. Love you all tons! Thanks for all your help in ´cheering me on´ to sprint through the finish line!

 

Hope you all have a great week! Love you tons!

--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.

2 Lagos 2

Hello wonderful family!

 

Well things are pretty hot in the Algarve, and that is meant in both ways - it is quite hot and one sweats quite a bit wearing dark slacks, white collared shirt and tie, but also we had a great week starting from scratch! From dividing the area with the other elders, we had plenty of people on ex-investigator and potential investigator lists, as well as all the other people from our own contacts and door knocking. And while it is pretty tough with all that work, there is still the adage - "when the going get´s tough, the tough get going!" So it´s great to be working hard with optimistic Elder Brown focusing on finding the elect. It´s rather easy, because the people who don´t want to talk to us won´t talk to us, leaving it easy to tell between the people who are nice and people who are really interested. So... life is great!

 

Happy birthday Rob!! 28 and feeling great, right? Have the best birthday yet!

 

And congratulations to Kit and Kev on lovely baby #4 in the oven!

 

I love hearing from all of you, and hope you all have a great week! Love you tons!

Much love

--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.

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

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.

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

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.