HAVE A HOLLY JOLLY CHRISTMAS

Who's as stoked as I am??? Every night I talk to Elder Clegg, our Zone Leader, he tells me to get stoked! And the closer I get to Christmas Day, the more stoked I get! At the same time, it gives me a lot of time to ponder about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, and the importance that he had for each and every one of us. As a mission, we've been reading the Gospels in the Bible to prepare for Christmas Day, and I realized that there are so many teachings that He gave us that I want to study and understand better. He truly was the Savior and Redeemer of the entire world, for all time. I feel His love for me and I want to share what I feel with everyone around me. If you haven't yet, share some of His love before Christmas Day!

What a week. I had planned to upload a lot of cool and interesting pictures, but none of the events where I had planned to take them took place!

To explain: This week we were super excited about André's baptism and we were passing his house every day to help him to prepare. He had been going very well, was getting pretty excited to enter into the church, and was even asking us if he was able to go on a mission! We explained to him that he couldn't, because he had kids and his responsibility should be with them now, and he understood. Well, we prepared for the awesome baptism that we would be having, and we called André at 2pm to make sure that he was ready. He didn't pick up the phone until 3pm, when he said that he couldn't be home until 5. Well, we moved the baptismal service to 6, and changed everything so that he could still be baptized on that way. Again, at 5 we called to confirm, only to have his coworker pick up and say that he wouldn't be done until 7! We were so disappointed, and we even tried for a little bit to have it done at 8, but we knew it was a lost cause. We ran into him at about 8:15, and asked him to give us a bit of a heads up next time. He also didn't get to church the next day, because he said that he was too tired from the previous day's work. We figured that it wouldn't be a good idea for him to be baptized this upcoming Saturday either. We're disappointed, but we'll continue to work with him, and I'm sure that he'll make it to that font.

In happy news, our work with the less-active members of this ward has been running very well! We were able to confirm that 3 members were brought back into activity this past Sunday, with more along the way! I'd say we owe this success in the most part to the visits that are being done by the members here. When I first arrived in this ward, the home teaching system wasn't set up at all, and they resolved to fix it up. We've been watching and following up with what's been happening, and we're finally seeing the good results! So I say this to all members out there: do your duty! Go visit those families you've been assigned to teach! Who know's how many souls you could save by just taking a couple hours out of each month?

As I may have previously mentioned, the only other Elders in my District are the Secretaries here, so they have a lot of work to do. Because these next couple of weeks are going to be super busy for them, we had a bit of an emergency division yesterday. I went to their area with Elder Arguello. I really like him, he's a good Elder that is very good at establishing a good relationship with his investigators. I think I need to improve that in my teaching, if only just a bit.

Other quick facts: We had planned a district activity to go to Cidade Velha (old city) which is a cool tourist attraction, but Sister Haycock got really sick, so maybe next week. Elton John had his baby, who he apparently named Kelton John, haha. We met new investigator who was telling us of this Illuminati conspiracy theory he saw on a YouTube video. We're teaching this guy who doesn't believe in God, which is pretty rare here. This transfer is going to be a week longer because they couldn't find flights for the first week of January.

Well, that's about all I have time to talk about this week, but I really hope that all of you have the greatest Christmas ever! Ficam bem!

Abraço,

Elder Penner