September

Well, I'm sitting here trying to remember what the heck happened this week, I seem to have forgotten just about everything. I don't really remember the 21st night of September, sorry, Earth, Wind, and Fire...

Well, we had a Zone Conference this past Wednesday. Elder and Sister Dyches, of the Seventy, were there as well. They gave really good trainings on the power and authority of our callings, and how we could improve our planning skills every day. I learned a lot of new stuff, and applying it has helped me out so much, it's incredible. I have an even greater testimony that all General Authorities of the Church are called for a reason. Also, President Mathews talked a lot on how our first few moments with people are. At times we like to take a lot of time getting to know the person and their background before we even speak a word of our message. He showed us that the very first thing that we should share is a message about the Restoration of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what truly testifies to people that we truly are representatives of Jesus Christ and that we bear His message. I saw a stark difference in how people reacted to our message as we switched to this way of contacting, and it's truly helped out the work.

We weren't able to talk to Giovana this week! We tried just about every day, but she just couldn't talk, and she missed our appointment too. And church. But we think we finally are going to be able to talk with her tomorrow too. We really hope to help her to remove her doubts. As for Isabelle, she's going very well also, but the problem is that she really does live with her boyfriend, Angelo. We taught her the Law of Chastity, and she really wants to be married now, but we fear that Angelo doesn't want to marry if they won't be in the same church. We can't talk to Angelo anymore because he has a whole lot to do. We're determined to get everyone in Varzea married though, so we're still trying hard.

We also have a few cool people that got to church yesterday. First was Zekinha (pronounced zikeenyah) who's a 50 year old pastor for the Pentacostal church here. He didn't seem to understand that by being baptized that he would need to leave his church to follow this one, but as we talked about the Book of Mormon and especially about the restored priesthood authority, he understands better. He's still unsure about making the change, so we're encouraging him to ask God what He thinks.

We also have Ginana, a boy in his 20s who seems to like our message, but he's pretty quiet in nature. We also learned that he has a medical condition where he can't understand much of what he reads, so we're going to try to read more of the Book of Mormon together with him. We learned something a little funny yesterday, so the last visit we brought some of the Young Single Adult women, because they've been dying to leave with us for a while. Well, he apparently thought that we were trying to woo him to come to church with some attractive girls... We laughed at that, and we figured that we should be a little more careful about that in the future. It's good to hear how people think of us from a member's point of view, it helps us to learn how we can keep better appearances.

I also would just like to say a few short words about my Grandma Penner, because she passed away this past Saturday. She was one of the most stark examples of following the example of Jesus Christ that I have ever had in my life, and I'm so lucky to have known her as a person. I'll miss her, but I know that she's finally home with the majority of her childhood family, so I'm happy for her. My testimony of the Plan of Salvation has grown as I've pondered about her and where she is right now. It truly is a Plan of Happiness.

That's it for now! Have a great week! Nhos ka fika kasubody!

Abraço,

Elder Penner

Sent from my iPhone

hehe, just kidding.