Elder Penner in Cape Verde: Quarterblack

Psych Reference! Also reference to the fact that I'm a quarter of the way through my mission already! 6 months of service! (Not that I'm counting down the days...) Also slight reference to the fact that I'm actually tanning! Like not even kidding! I swear I'm at least a little darker than when I got here!

First week in my second area ever, and I gotta say that I'm loving it! The first thing I've noticed about my area is... it's small. Like I'm not sure if it's even 1/4 the size of my last area, which is a big difference. I feel like I keep running into the boundaries at times. Also, it's pretty early in the day when we feel like we've passed by all of our investigators. Twice. It doesn't help that half of our area is apartments that we can't get into without knowing someone on the inside. The people here are really awesome though, and I keep finding new and cool things here! Also the dogs don't hate my guts here!

As for things that happened this week, it was a little slow as for lessons. I think I'll just talk a bit about the people. There's one investigator here, Melanie, who likes to have lessons with us in English, which is a weird experience. She's really awesome, and has been prepared for baptism for a while. The problem is, she's 17, which means her parent's need to give permission for baptism... and her parents just happened to watch a documentary about polygamy in the early church. You know, I really didn't think I'd run into that problem here. Most people don't even know us as Mormons, they just say it's the Church of Elder. We laugh at that.

We also have Gilson, an investigator who we're really trying to mark a good date for baptism, but the problem with him was shown to me when he told us he wasn't going to church. He said he had housework to do, and didn't have time for church. We told him that church is way more important than housework! He told us that God would excuse him for it, and we were just like it doesn't work that way! God has commandments for us, and he has a way for us to fulfill them! He doesn't excuse us when we fail to meet his requirements. How would we show our faith if God excused us from following him because of simple things like cleaning the house?

Last, but most certainly not least, we have Ilidio, who was just baptized and confirmed this weekend! I haven't had all that much time to get to know him, but he seems really cool. I had the opportunity of practicing the baptismal interview questions with him, and he was just like "Claro" which means "Clearly" with every question. The problem is that he doesn't normally like to stay until the end of church, we think because he's a little intimidated. We'll work with him on that. I'd have a picture to show you guys if my camera didn't somehow DIE WITHIN THE SPACE OF 4 HOURS since I charged it!

Well, that seems like a full update to me! Hope to have some more awesome new experiences with these awesome new people. Keep it classy.

Abraço,

Elder Power

(someone called me that once. I laughed all day.)