Out of the mouth of 3 or... 2 witnesses

Well, this week was a pretty eventful one, so it flew by pretty quickly! I can't believe it's P-Day, and I can't believe that we only have 2 more weeks until next transfer! The missionary lifestyle is such a fast one. I recommend it if you need to pass a couple of years as quickly as possible.

I guess I'll get the bad news out of the way first: Jovana (Giovana?) is even less sure about being baptized on the 14th, and we think that a lot of it has to do with the influence of her mother. She just doesn't think that she's prepared enough to be baptized so soon. I want to talk to her more about the decisions that she makes and how the Lord can help her to follow through with these decisions. Especially when we are baptized and recieve the Gift of the Holy Ghost, the Lord can and will help us through any rough patches in life, as long as we choose to follow His will. Well, I'll give you the update next week on whether or not the 14th will happen, I guess. We're praying for her.

Well, we had Stake Conference this week, which was a really neat experience. President Mathews gave a talk about the Europe Area Plan, which is to:1. Invite a friend to church, 2. Become temporally and spiritually self-sufficient, and 3. Find an ancestor. I really like this plan, and I think if every member applied it to their lives, then we'd have a stronger, more steadily increasing pool of members in every stake. We only had one investigator there, but she's progressing much better than we had previously thought, and we realized that we need to spend some more time with her! Her name is Isabelle, and she's the cousin of Junior, who's our go-to ward missionary, so it works out very well! She's very shy, but she's fascinated by the Book of Mormon and really likes what we teach her, and has some very good questions, which shows that she's learning well! Her only problem is that she lives with her boyfriend (we're teaching him too, and he's cool too) in the same house, but I think that he may have his own place to live in? We'll have to make sure, but if he does, it will make it much easier for them to start living the Law of Chastity.

In other news, we had our first division of the transfer, so we had Elder Farnsworth come over to our area and take Elder Andrade's place for a day. Elder Farnsworth is a really good missionary. He's very bold about everything he says, and even though he didn't know anybody that we talked with, he spoke the most out of the three of us! It's also pretty funny, because he was Elder Adams' companion before me, so we got to talk a bit of the funny things that Elder Adams did. We miss that guy.

And last but not least, we got the news that Elder Andrade would be starting a new area with a mini-missionary, since his visa for Brazil still hasn't come. Elder Andrade is an awesome missionary, and he taught me a lot about really getting to know our investigators, and helping them to feel welcome to speak freely when we talk to them. He left earlier today, and the house just seems a little bit empty without him. I mean, being in a threesome of Elders isn't the most fun, because things just naturally tend to happen a little more slowly and you seem to talk a lot less, but this threesome was a great one, and I hope to be able to continue doing well in this area as a twosome again.

Well, that's it for this week, stay tuned for a stunning week filled with: A surprise division with the Zone Leaders of Sal in our area, a Zone Conference with Elder and Sister Dyches (of the Seventy!) and possibly the start of some marriages in this area...

I hope all of you are well! Have a good week!

Abraço,

Elder Penner