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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Belated

Hello family!

First off, this is late because President Torgan decided to have my zone´s interviews (and the whole meeting that goes with the interviews) yesterday. So since the Preparation Time was sapped, I quickly write ya´ll now to let you know all is well in Portugal!

Always lots to do, especially in the office. The whole last week was interviews with all the zones, so we prepared all the requested materials and supplies, as well as the lunches for some of them. And when we weren´t bogged down with that and other office stuff, we tried meeting with the investigators and less actives with whom we are working. A little bit slow, especially in comparison with how super prepared Fábio was and is, but we´ll keep doing the best we can in helping these people and keeping our eyes out for the elect, as always.

Thanks everyone for your emails, prayers, and support! It really is great to hear from you. I´m really happy that Cosette´s ear infection is gone - yay! Good luck with everything on that end, John and Laura! Joy and Aup, keep being strong for those little babies in the ovens. My prayers are with you, and all of you, for what challenges I know you face and that everything may go according to God´s tender-mercy-filled plan for us. Love all of you, and hope ya´ll have a great week! Tchau!

--Elder Spencer Ellis

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Hello from Portugal!

Hello happy Family!!

Thank you everyone for the news, emails, etc! It really is so amazing that we can keep in touch so quickly, and over thousands of miles too! Everything in Portugal is going great. There´s lots of horns honking, so I guess everyone´s favorite teams are winning in the World Cup. We´ll have to see who makes the noise when Brazil and Portugal play... But on to the better and more important things - I had the honor of baptizing Fábio Daniel de Jesus Grilo on Saturday afternoon. The water heater wasn´t working, and we tried to make do by heating water in big pans in the kitchen, but the water was still a little on the chilly side. But despite that and other tiny obstacles, everything went really well. Elder Dias voiced the confirmation yesterday during sacrament meeting, and a lot of members (besides the mother and daughter that have already supported him a lot) gave him a warm welcome and congratulations.

It doesn´t get much better than that. Now we just need to find more Fábios (seja, the ready and willing elect)! Thanks again everyone for your news, updates, blog posts, and other emails. My prayers will be with little Cosette in particular, but as always with all of you as well. Have a great week!
Much love,
Elder Spencer Ellis

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On the road again!

Hello greatest family in all the world!!

 

How is everybody?? Emails have gotten a bit slack - please read Alma 60:6. Thank you oh ye faithful ones who have continued writing regular (ou seja, weekly), please continue with your weekly correspondences. As for the rest of you, I know ya´ll are busy, but I´m certain you can budget your time to take 10 minutes to write a simple, personal email to your favorite missionary in Portugal. The blogs are great, but personal emails are even greater. And I will respond to every personal email I receive, as best I can with the time that I have.

 

Just kidding! Haha, well, sort of. I don´t really mean to sound stingy at all, but it would be nice to get more personal emails from all of my lovely family! That would even suffice as my birthday present, since I don´t want extra weight in my luggage from sizeable gifts or extra pounds from goodies since I´m getting chubby enough being fed every day by members and not walking it off because driving around in the car. (Oh the car, I´ll get to that soon.) So the birthday list will suffice as such: personal emails/letters for the rest of my mission as much as possible; drink mixes (easy like tang - just add to water); other cool things that will not add to my baggage or personal weight as ya´ll desire. And for all of you with the matchmaking itch, you can pass around this little application too. Lots of laughs ahead... oh, and all mail can be sent to the following address:

 

Missão Portugal Lisboa

Apartado 40054

1500 Lisboa

PORTUGAL

 

Well, hopefully that answers all questions asked or that would be asked in the near future. This week has been great! Driving has been a blast - accident free, stress relieving, and fun! I won´t sign up for drag races just yet, but I´ve driven regularly throughout this past week and am starting to feel confident with stickshift. Yeehaw! Aside from driving and the boring office stuff, things are going great! Fábio is all set to be baptized this Saturday, and if the elder who first started teaching him about a year ago can´t come up from the Alentejo to baptize him, then I will have the honor of baptizing him. Hard to beat that good news! Other people are coming along, and it is a great joy to help people obtain and strengthen testimonies of the restored gospel and act on those testimonies to receive true conversion. Life is great! Such persons are a young woman named Veníce who is humble and eager to learn, and she has the great support of the huge Gourel family, some of which are stalwart members, others can use a boost. We´re also working with the family of an Elder Barbosa who is serving in this mission, and his mom and a sister aren´t baptized yet, and the others need to be reactivated, and we´re happy to help!

 

Well, that´s all the news for now, I guess. Have a great week everybody! I´m looking forward to hearing from all of you! Much love,

--Elder Spencer Ellis

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Great things are happening to me...

Hello beloved family!

 

Well, thanks everyone for your emails, updates, and news. I´m happy to hear everyone´s doing great! And things are going great in Amadora as well! To get everyone on their toes - especially Mom - and maybe on their knees for praying more, I´ve started driving! Bring on the Portuguese road rage, muahaha! Just kidding. I got my Portuguese license on Saturday, and have driven three our four times and all is well. Thanks for all your prayers so far, and I´ll go ahead and thank you in advance for the rapid increase in prayers that no accidents occur. The only thing that is a real bummer about it all is that I had to exchange my Texas driver´s license for it, and I´ll never see that piece of plastic again. On the bright side (if driving and getting stick under my belt wasn´t enough) this Portuguese driver´s license will be good for 30 years or more, so we can start planning family reunions to Europe where I can be the legally licensed driver for all of the European Union! So I´ll just have to make a trip to Texas sometime and get another driver´s license there.

 

And even better than driving, is planning for baptisms! When we met with Fábio on Saturday he told us he had prayed (he´s such a stud, praying always) and had decided to be baptized on Saturday June 19!! Our ward mission leader was helping with that lesson and we started planning out the next two weeks of when to get certain things done, like trying on the baptismal clothes, filling out the baptismal form, having the baptismal interview, etc. Thank you all for your prayers in Fábio´s behalf, and I thank God for the tender mercies He is pouring out on us. Aside from working with Fábio, there´s this huge (said just like Natalie and Rachel love to say it) African family (Família Gourgel) that range from steady faithful to dwindling less active, and in working with them they introduced us to a friend of theirs, a young woman of 24 named Veníce who has wanted to be taught. We visited with her Friday and Sunday (she also came to church with some of the Gourgel family), and everything´s going great with teaching her from the beginning and helping out the less active members of the Gourgel family. So far she´s really receptive and we have hopes she´ll be ready for baptism soon.

 

I love and pray for all of you and hope you have a great week! Much love,

--Elder Spencer Ellis

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