Up and Up

"We're gonna get it, get it together right now, gonna get it, get it together somehow"

Anyways, we're getting it together right now here! It was another good week of teaching and walking and more teaching and walking! One of the coolest things that's been happening is what we've learned about our new investigator Adelei. He's an absolute boss, every time we talk with him he just wants to talk about how good he's feeling and how he wants to join the church and how it's changing his life. We're super excited, he readily accepted a baptismal date for the 11th of June! There's only one slight problem: he's kinda living in Bela Vista, the area of another dupla of Elders. It took us like 20 minutes to walk to his house when he showed it to us. The good news is, it's only a temporary residence, and he's going to live with his aunt who lives in Tira Chapeu in our area next month. He also told us that he doesn't want to go to the other ward anyways, because his main friend goes here. So we decided that we can teach him in his friends house and have him baptized into our ward. So we're pretty stoked for that!

I went on a division with our Zone Leader, Elder Leyton this past week. I like Elder Leyton, he's pretty cool, and well obedient. The division was going well until we got to our appointment with Baka. He was too drunk for us to teach him! We were kinda bummed out, and he was still drunk when we passed by him the next day. We encouraged him to be sober so we could talk to him a couple of days after that. As we talked to him, we encouraged him to not drink, so we could teach him what he needs to know. I think we'll have to teach him the Word of Wisdom pretty soon here, but we still have a lot of hope for him.

Belarmino is SO DARN CLOSE to baptism, it almost hurts us. Last week we kinda just drove it in hard and asked him to pray and ponder about a date in June. He says that this past week he's come to realize the necessity of baptism, and he's made some impressive steps. He's apparently been a little worried that if he baptizes into this church, then his girlfriend wouldn't want to marry him anymore. So they've started talking about it. She lives in Portugal, so we don't really have the opportunity to talk to her ourselves, but maybe we could try and get some missionaries to knock on her door. We know that Belarmino is ready, and he's almost to the point where he knows it, too. I think by next week we'll know the true date of his baptism.

We've been having a really good time in our area recently, and have been seeing a lot of miracles. Adilson and Ineida made it to church yesterday, and were welcomed into the ward well. It's good to see the ward picking up their slack on helping the Spirit be strong and the ward itself to grow. They've called for every member to fast for the benefit of the ward, and they're getting some neat programs set up, so we think there's going to be some good improvement here.

Funny story: We were in a store with American products just trying to get stuff to make nachos, right? But then two of the most incredible things happened there. First off, this song from Coldplay's new album came on in the store, so I got to hear it for the first time! After that, we were about to leave the store when Elder Massey stopped dead in his tracks. There was a can of Mountain Dew sitting right there in the cooler that they had. I thought that was pretty great, but then I saw something much much greater. There, sitting at the bottom of this windowed fridge in this tiny little store, was a can of A&W Root Beer. I almost cried. It was a beautiful moment, and now I have a source (possibly the only source of A&W in all of the Cabo) where I can have just a little taste of what I took for granted back home. It was just a little trunky moment, but it made me happy.

Fun week, many blessings (spiritual and trunky-wise) and a lot of work, of course! I hope you all have had as good a week as I have, and even more that you have a better week to come!

Abraço,

Elder Penner