End of the Movie

Somewhat of a more random thought for a song title today. It's a song by Cake, and it talks about how there's things and people that will "get their hooks into you" and try and get you to give up or leave. It then says simply, "but you still don't like to leave before the end of the movie." It's kinda been like that as a Secretary recently. There's a lot of things that make me annoyed or stressed. I can start hoping for my next area to be better, or I can just focus on the now. And I realized that I really just care about focusing on what's happening right here, right now.

What a week! We started out with some inspiring revelation at Zone Conference, which gave me some good insight on what it means to teach the Doctrine of Christ, and I learned a good example of the importance of obedience and how it ties in to how we teach. We also got to go on divisions with the Maio elders, so I brought Elder Willes to meet some of his recent converts in this area. It was sweet.

Working with Adelei this week has brought me to feel that he could be one of the most golden investigators that I've ever met. We taught him the Plan of Salvation earlier in the week, and he was telling us how he'd read up to Mosiah already. He even used a scripture from Second Nephi talking about how "every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess"! He's going super well. Yesterday was a Conference broadcast to all of West Europe, so we had church at 10 instead of 8:30 as we normally do. Well, Adelei ended up coming at flipping 7 o' clock! He wanted to get here early so he could prepare properly. I don't think I've ever seen that kind of devotion to getting to church early. I could probably learn from that! But anyways, he's getting baptized this Saturday, because he's sure as heck ready!

Other than that, it's just been a busy week. Transfer work has started. I may or may not know where I'm going next ;). But really most of what it means is that our time in our area is getting cut short some days. Other things this week cut it a little short too, like Zone Conference, a division with Elder Leyton (he's a boss), and a baptismal interview that I had to do for the Zone Leaders. We still taught a lot of cool people. I think the coolest new people we've met are Zito and Isa. Zito's nickname is Bassoura, which is Krioulo for "Broom". I love the nicknames here. Isa is a very animated lady, and she likes to joke around a lot. At the end of the first lesson we had with them, Elder Massey had forgotten her name so he asked and when she told him, he said "oh, I was just checking to make sure that you remembered it" and she just went off on him, haha. She used the term xuxanti (shoo-shan-tee) which means annoying but in a more endearing way.

We haven't been able to talk to Belarmino this past week, though we desperately need to. He's been a regular at church, his studies have been going very well, and last time we'd met he talked about how he was understanding the importance of baptism. He's almost there!

Adilson and Ineida are back to regular church attendance, which is awesome news! I keep telling the ward that they're going to be the coolest members of the ward. We had a Family Home Evening in their house the other day, and it was super fun.

Other than that, not much is changing. I'll get to start traning my replacement relatively soon, so that'll be interesting. We'll also have Zone Meeting this week, where hopefully we'll learn if we've been approved to wear sunglasses! Have a good week all!

Elder Penner