Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Validation

Two songs came to mind that talk about New Years, the first being New Year's Day by U2 and the second New Year by Death Cab for Cutie. Both of them give a general description of New Year's as "nothing changes on New Year's Day" "and I've got no resolution." What a lame attitude! So instead, I'll reference a lesser-known video on YouTube titled Validation. It's a really well-done video on a man that instead of giving parking validations, gives his own kind of "validation." I highly recommend that you watch this video.

Something that's really come to my attention this week is that your attitude about things makes a whole world of difference in everything that you do. In our District Meeting, we were talking about how our areas have so many problems and difficulties, and we realized that since the beginning of this transfer, our numbers had steadily been decreasing. When it's that prevalent for 3 pairs of missionaries, you can't blame that on outside circumstances. We realized that we needed to GET STOKED and so we did! Guess what? The difference was immediately clear! We managed to get a lot more lessons than we had been that day! And it just kept getting better! With nightly calls, I've been getting similar reports from the other areas as well. It just goes to show you that you really can't teach the happiest message in the world if you don't have a smile on your face! Get out there and smile, yo!

We've been working harder than ever in this nice area of Varzea, and my hope just keeps getting brighter. We found one kid who we thought was 17 but turned out to be 14, but after just teaching the Message of the Restoration he wants to become a member, which is awesome! His name's Junior, and we're really excited to teach his entire family this week! Andre's been improving, but he hasn't been getting to church for the past 3 weeks now, which is never a good sign. We'll keep working with him. Elton John's well, but he still has a lot of problems with marriage and he hasn't been to church since his first time, and I feel like we've been passing by him less as a result. This week feels like more of a transition week than anything. We've been moving to focus more on some new people that are really interested in the gospel, and passing by some of our older investigators less, because they're not progressing. It happens. I never like dropping investigators, but there's just too many people and too little time. It has to happen every once in a while, or else you're denying others the chance to find the gospel.

New Year's wasn't much different than any other day this week, except for the fact that there were about 3 huge parties going all night near our house. I got to sleep anyways, so all good, right?

That's all I have time for this week, what a great time to be alive, though! Transfers this next week, so stay tuned! Get stoked! Be happy! You choose to do it!

Abraço,
Elder Penner


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