Beautiful Day

My attitude is still at record high as we pull through with a new wonderful week here in the Cabo! The weather has been really nice recently, and the nights have actually been pretty chilly. I hope it stays this way for the rest of my mission, because I love this kind of weather. Also we went through a pretty drastic change in the daily schedule this week. Then new schedule allows for an optional extra hour of sleep, and even gives us more time to prepare in the mornings, without us missing any teaching time during the day. We also saw a change in the Key Indicators, the numbers that we send to the Mission Office every week. In the past they counted how many lessons we had, and how many were with or without a member, and such. Now they focused on new and progressing investigators in the numbers that we send. I think it's really inspired, because it focuses more on our real purpose here as missionaries, instead of worrying us about how many lessons we're teaching or other less-significant numbers. While lessons are important, the real importance lies on helping investigators be converted and progress towards baptism. So I'm pretty stoked about all of that.

Anyways, we've had a really great week here! On Monday we were a little disappointed because we talked with Leo about the baptismal interview questions and he didn't seem able to respond to them very well. Well, I made him a bit of homework to help him out (nothing too fancy, just a few related questions) and the next time we visited he'd answered every question really well! I think when he was talking to us he just didn't know how to say what he wanted to. So we're going through with the baptism for this upcoming Saturday. It's always best to make sure about these things before jumping into it. This is an important saving ordinance we're talking about.

As for other cool stuff that's been happening, I can talk a bit about Aritson. He's living with his cousin Valtinho, who's a super cool member, and he loves to talk to us and really loves the church. Recently he's been acting a little weird though, so we went in this week to figure it out. We entered the house and some random woman walks in behind us and starts saying, "Sorry, sorry! I'm talking with the Sisters and I saw the Elders so I wanted to talk to them too!" It was one of the stranger moments that I've had for sure, but not the strangest, so we talked to her too. The next time we got down to business and Aritson really just wants us to talk with his girlfriend as well, because he mentioned baptism to her once and she seemed disapproving. We're talking to them both now, and his girlfriend Crisolinda is super cool as well. She just has an anti-Mormon family, as we found out. We'll have to play this one out to see how it goes, but I'm shooting for a happy ending.

Elder Olsen is learning a lot more quickly than I expected he would, which is sweet. He says he already understands almost everything that I say, which is always good. It's just that Creole that gives him the biggest headache. I know that was the hardest struggle for me, too. We had Cachupa the other day, and he fell in love with it as soon as he ate it. Cachupa is one of the greatest things about this country, to be honest. I'd learn how to make it, but they say it takes about 3 hours! So I'll take a recipe home and try it for my family.

This email was a pretty good sized one. I forgot to mention that today I turned 21 years old. I'll leave it to you guys to come up with some bad joke about how I'm legally good to drink now. Don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. Hope you all have a great week!

Abraço,

Elder Penner

PICS:

1. Us chillin at my boy Leo's house. We brought our homies Francisco and Djamila, who are farthest back by Elder Olsen

2. Our Branch President's son Abdel turned 2 a few days ago, so we stopped by for a couple of minutes. I'll do anything to get a good cake.​

(sorry the pictures are so blurry)