Quarterblack

Psych Reference! Also reference to the fact that I'm a quarter of the way through my mission already! 6 months of service! (Not that I'm counting down the days...) Also slight reference to the fact that I'm actually tanning! Like not even kidding! I swear I'm at least a little darker than when I got here!

First week in my second area ever, and I gotta say that I'm loving it! The first thing I've noticed about my area is... it's small. Like I'm not sure if it's even 1/4 the size of my last area, which is a big difference. I feel like I keep running into the boundaries at times. Also, it's pretty early in the day when we feel like we've passed by all of our investigators. Twice. It doesn't help that half of our area is apartments that we can't get into without knowing someone on the inside. The people here are really awesome though, and I keep finding new and cool things here! Also the dogs don't hate my guts here!

As for things that happened this week, it was a little slow as for lessons. I think I'll just talk a bit about the people. There's one investigator here, Melanie, who likes to have lessons with us in English, which is a weird experience. She's really awesome, and has been prepared for baptism for a while. The problem is, she's 17, which means her parent's need to give permission for baptism... and her parents just happened to watch a documentary about polygamy in the early church. You know, I really didn't think I'd run into that problem here. Most people don't even know us as Mormons, they just say it's the Church of Elder. We laugh at that.

We also have Gilson, an investigator who we're really trying to mark a good date for baptism, but the problem with him was shown to me when he told us he wasn't going to church. He said he had housework to do, and didn't have time for church. We told him that church is way more important than housework! He told us that God would excuse him for it, and we were just like it doesn't work that way! God has commandments for us, and he has a way for us to fulfill them! He doesn't excuse us when we fail to meet his requirements. How would we show our faith if God excused us from following him because of simple things like cleaning the house?

Last, but most certainly not least, we have Ilidio, who was just baptized and confirmed this weekend! I haven't had all that much time to get to know him, but he seems really cool. I had the opportunity of practicing the baptismal interview questions with him, and he was just like "Claro" which means "Clearly" with every question. The problem is that he doesn't normally like to stay until the end of church, we think because he's a little intimidated. We'll work with him on that. I'd have a picture to show you guys if my camera didn't somehow DIE WITHIN THE SPACE OF 4 HOURS since I charged it!

Well, that seems like a full update to me! Hope to have some more awesome new experiences with these awesome new people. Keep it classy.

Abraço,

Elder Power 

(someone called me that once. I laughed all day.)

FHE with some cool ward members

I googled this, it means "sweetheart'!  LOL!

Pizza and soda, it's like being back home

New companion Elder Adams

Kids Next Door

Hey hey hey, it's Faaaaat Elder Penner! Well, still not all that fat, but I'm getting there. I'll try harder.

Well, what a week! Completely full of surprises!

We found this awesome guy named Joao Lima, who apparently had been going to another ward for 2 weeks, and he's really interested in joining the church. He's a little too eager sometimes, we think, and sometimes he's so eager he doesn't quite understand our invitations. For example, we asked him to read the introduction to the Book of Mormon and ask God whether the book was true, and talked to him about how he would feel that he recieved an answer. His reply: "Okay, I'll read the Book of Mormon, and have an answer for your question on the next visit!" We have no idea what question he was talking about. But he's told us about the changes he's already seeing in his life from just these two times he's been to church, and he seems really prepared by the ward.

Also, on Tuesday, we went on a division. This time, I went to Campinho with Elder Adams. Highlights of the transfer include teaching my first lesson entirely in English (sooooo weird) and being sent to the port to look for a boat with more Books of Mormon... that wouldn't actually arrive until the next day. It was fun, I like going on divisions.

We also had Stake Conference this last weekend. It was a very memorable experience, to say the least. The missionaries go to the session for the Adults and the Sunday session here, though they had a session for the Priesthood, too. We were blessed to have the presence of a Seventy, Elder Adonay Obando (nobody can pronounce it) who left us a very inspiring message. Or at least, we think. The problem is that he couldn't speak Portuguese. Only Spanish and English. For the adult session, he tried his best with his very small knowledge of Portuguese, asking help from President Mathews the entire time. On Sunday there just happened to be a returned missionary there who also knew Spanish, so he translated. I learned that Spanish and Portuguese are pretty close languages, and the funny thing is that Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish (more or less) but Spanish speakers can't really understand Portuguese at all. He still got his message across, focusing on a few problems that Cape Verde struggled with, and he truly seemed inspired of the Lord to leave the exact message that he needed to. All in all, it was a really good Stake Conference.

And lastly, to explain the title of the day. Other than it being the name of one of the greatest TV shows from my childhood, it describes two events that happened this week.

Thing #1. O Dia das Crianças was last Monday. They literally have a children's day here. Back in America adults would just say that "every day is childrens day!" but Cabo Verde has it right. I truly think we can learn some important things from this wonderful country. Anyways, not much happened except the number of children in Mindelo tripled and there were a few parties that night that seemed more for adults.

Thing #2. TRANSFERS! After the session of Conference on Sunday, President Mathews pulled us all the missionaries aside and told them about transfers, seeing as he'd just call us anyways that day. Turns out, I'm leaving my area! I'm going to the wonderful new area of... Campinho! Right next door. I don't even change wards. My new companion... Elder Adams! Hey wait a sec, that sounds a little bit about a freaking DIVISION that we had just this week! I was like whaaaaaaaaaaat? But it's going to be a cool transfer. After working a bit with Elder Adams, he seems pretty cool. Campinho's a little small, but still seems cool as well! It was a little hard to pack today, seeing as I'm just moving literally a block away. I was like, can I just stay in this house and work over there? Apparently not. At least my new house has a microwave!

Well, that's my strange tale for this week. Hope you all have crazy lives as well. It's truly a great way of living.

Abraço,

Elder Penner

Hurts Like Heaven

Well, as my grandpa always says, how the heck are ya?

I first want to say that I'm sorry to hear about Elder L. Tom Perry. I feel like he's getting some good missionary work done in the spirit world now. A member told me last night and I was like whaaaaaaaat? I wasn't expecting that, but now that I mention it, I do remember someone saying that he was in the hospital a few weeks ago. The important thing is that he did some good work here, and he's probably seeing many blessings of his work now.

I'm not gonna lie, this week feels like one of the toughest that we've had since I've gotten here. Most of our appointments fell, and the members that we planned to join us all canceled on us as well. But we've been working our tails off, so we still managed to get about 26 lessons, a miracle if you ask me. I really don't have all that much to say this week, it's been a little slow. You know a week has been slow and hard when your legs start to give up on you. The problem is, we just won't let them give up on us.

I do want to mention that we've been meeting a fair amount of awesome people this week. It seems like the Lord has been blessing us with a lot of families to compensate for all the walking that we've had to do. We ran into a family who basically told us that they've been trying to find out how to know which church is the true church of Christ. That's a rarity here, most people will just tell us that all churches talk about God, so they all must be good.

Another pretty great thing that happened is that we managed to bump up our number of investigators in church to a solid 8! We were happy to see 6 that we'd been working with, and a member introduced us to his brother who showed up for the first time! We also got told by the Zone Leaders that someone from our area showed up in their ward and is really interested! We were like sweet, man! That just shows you that blessings do come from hard work, and because it's the Lord who we're serving, the reward is always sweeter than the trial was bitter. That's a really awesome thing about serving an all-powerful deity. Also you get to meet crazy and awesome people (sometimes both).

Stay tuned for next week, it's transfers! This is the first transfer so far where I have no idea whether I'm staying or I'm going! The other two, I've had like 90% certainty. Now I have none. We'll see! Stay Frosty, all!

Abraço,

Elder Penner

p.s. Do I look like Kevin from Home Alone? A member here told me that and now I'm a little worried.

Don't feel to bad for him for not having things like running water or warm showers.
He can still get things like frozen pizza there!
Also, he sends the most random pictures.  

Water You Waiting For?

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy all.

Well, this week kind of just built up in various trials. Members are taking tests, so our number of lessons with members went down by a fair bit. We had a record low of only 2 investigators getting to church, and one of them not even in our ward! We also have been hard pressed to get any of our other investigators to progress. Also, we're pretty sure that Ivandro guy lied to us about the house he said he was moving to, which means we lost him again.

We also lost our water for the first time a couple of days ago! It was a weird experience, I sat there for about 5 minutes trying to get my shower to turn on before I realized that it was the whole house. We opened our emergency barrel of water for the first time since I got here, to find out that was only a quarter of the way full! We had to struggle through a couple of less than fun days with the bare minimum. That was fun, let me tell you. You can imagine our pure joy when we saw the water slowly but surely return to us last night. You don't really truly appreciate the wonder of the average bathroom sink until it's taken away from you. Count your blessings.

Some really cool things happened, too! For example, Maria Alice was baptized this last Saturday! That was a really awesome experience, and we made brownies to celebrate! Elder Gilbert makes some pretty crazy sweet brownies, so we pretty much feasted. It's been a little while, yo. Also, we had a Zone Conference this last Wednesday, which is always fun! We get to sit for 4 hours while our leaders, including President Mathews himself, give us straight revelation. Afterwards, we get to eat beef stroganoff. Actual beef. Like, meat that comes from cow. It's wonderful.

Well, that's pretty much all I have to say about this week. Not a whole lot of progress, but a sure heck of a lot of work! What else can I say? I just listened to Thrift Shop in here. Forgot about that song. For some strange reason, most elders here like country songs better than rap (that's not Eminem, of course). Oh, well. I'll have my time. Lol.

Tell me if you guys do something cool, like get abducted or drink root beer or something. Ficam bem!

Abraço,

Elder Penner

Antonio baptizing his wife Maria and a cute kid who wanted to be in the picture too!
It was his baptism day too.  

Ludicrous Speed

A couple of days ago Elder Gilbert and I looked at each other and were like this transfer's half over!!! It's been going so much faster for me since I finished my greenie stage of the mission, it's insane. Also, yesterday marks 5 months on the mission. I'm almost a quarter of the way through! I'm sitting here thinking to myself that I just barely got here. And I've heard that the mission only starts going faster from this point on. Crazy.

Anyways, it's been a pretty good week for us here. We were able to reach most of our weekly goals, which was pretty awesome. We'd been having some problems getting investigators to church (only 4 last week, the worst I've ever had here) and with getting references from people. However, this week we've been seeing the results in our hard work in this area, which is always a really nice thing to see. One thing that I've truly noticed here is that true results are ONLY achieved with hard work and prayer. That's the secret. There's no shortcuts or easy way out. But oh, how the blessings are recieved!

I just wanted to give a little update on our recent converts. Nelido hasn't been getting to church for about a month now. We visit him through the week and he says "I'm going this week for sure!" and then doesn't show up. As they say here, we're going to "dar uma faca para ele." We've also got a few facas for Kuk and Janete, because Kuk also hasn't been going to church, and Janete goes, but not every week. Laura and Antonio Evora are as strong as ever though, we don't really have many fears about them. It's only going to grow stronger as we prepare for Maria Alice, Antonio's wife, to be baptized this week by Antonio! I've come to notice that the people who seem to have the least problems staying active are the people who have overcome an obstacle to join the church. That sure as heck doesn't mean that we're going to stop visiting Nelido Kuk and Janete and getting them to get to church every week. It's a little frustrating because we talk with them and they're like we know we're fubecas (i don't think there's a direct translation, but it basically mean's we know we're being dumb and we need to get better) but they still aren't doing what they need to. The answer truly is to read and pray every day and to get to church every week. Again, no shortcuts, no secrets.

Also, we saw a miracle yesterday! So there's this guy named Ivandro, who talked with other missionaries and was almost baptized, but he moved to our area. So we've been spending some good effort for 3 weeks trying to contact him and mark a spot where we can meet him (it's impossible to find people's houses here, there's no such things as addresses or even names to roads). He wasn't showing up to meetups we marked, because of a lot of bad luck. We had been thinking the last two days to stop trying, because it was wasting a lot of money we have to call people. However, yesterday this guy stopped us to ask us if we knew where this other person lived. We said no, but we'd like to visit his house to share a message about the Book of Mormon. We asked him his name and he said Ivandro, but we thought nothing of it because there's a fair amount of Ivandros here. But he also told us he was almost baptized recently. We asked how recently and he said a couple of weeks ago... we were like wait a sec. He said that some Elders had just called him the day before and we were like that was us!!! It was insane how we just found him on the street, because we have one of the areas with the most people in Mindelo. It was nothing short of a miracle. We're so grateful to have finally found him, and hope to report more good news about him.

Well, that's about all I have time for, hope you're all fantastic! Ficam bem!

Abraço,

Elder Penner

The Isaiah Chapters

I say that because we had the opportunity to see Antonio Évora be baptized this past week! We like to call him the modern-day Isaiah, because he used words and phrases that we don't even recognize to explain simple concepts of the gospel. We can't even get a word into the lessons, so we basically just helped him to teach himself with homework and inspired questions. It was some hard work, because he also had a whole lot of hesitation to become a member of the church. We were like, dude, you read the entire Book of Mormon and ditched coffee just like that! You shared your experience of the Holy Ghost confirming the truth to you! Apparently he feared that he wouldn't endure to the end if he became a member too quick. He told us that he entered the baptismal interview still not knowing if the time was right to be baptized, but it's a good thing he made the decision! We were so happy to see him enter the waters of baptism, and the next day during Elders quorum he asked "What is my purpose now as a member?" and everyone was like "Share what you discovered, of course!" I was filled with happiness that we have so many powerful members here to support him and show him the right way. Also, his wife Maria Alice got to church yesterday, which is awesome! She's a whole lot more open to the concept of becoming a member now that she's seen it happen with Antonio. Stay tuned, folks.

As for other events, we're finding a lot of cool new people, and making some decisions that'll probably help those not progressing. For example, we found this guy Ivan on the street and marked an appointment. Usually those appointments never come through but he was sitting there waiting for us! The next appointment he was there with Book of Mormon in hand just waiting for us again! And yesterday he was already prepared to get to church when we got there (NEVER happens here.) We felt truly blessed to have met the guy, and we're gonna work hard to help him learn and progress in the gospel, as we should! The sad thing is that Doris and Airton (pretty sure I've mentioned them) are progressing very well, but they just found out that they have to find a new house. Now they have to wait until they move until they get married. We wish there were something that we could do to help them out, but sadly us missionaries don't have real estate capabilities here in Cabo Verde.

Just to let you all know, yesterday Elder Gilbert and I made mashed potatoes and gravy and we literally rejoiced at the glory of it. It truly is the little things here that make you appreciate America all the better. Also as a side note, I need to go to Fogo. Legend tells of a place there where you can find real live actual bacon there. Like, bacon. From America. I'm getting hungry as I write this.

But enough of my mindless ramblings. How are you all? Having a good time? Anybody hear any good jokes recently? I'd share mine with you all, but you guys need to learn Creole first to understand it. Get on that. Hope you all have a fantastic week!

Abraçozão,

Elder Penner

p.s. Is All About that Bass still a thing there? No, wait, I don't want to know.

Antonio's baptism

The mashed potatoes they rejoiced over

A New Hope

What a week! Hope you guys had a calm one, this one was kinda crazy for me.

Elder Gilbert arrived at almost Midnight on Monday night. He's a really really awesome Elder. It's nice to have a native English speaker that'll understand your American references. He's been in Fogo for most of his mission, and he has some really crazy stories about the place. First thing, he was there when the volcano was erupting (though on the safe side of the island) so he got like the coolest view ever. He says that investigators used the volcano as an excuse to not go to church somehow. Also on Fogo there's this religion they don't have here called Admontists or something who basically are Christian with the only difference that they believe Saturday is the holy day. It makes a little more sense in Portuguese, because Sabado literally means Sabbath and Saturday at the same time. It's funny.  Also the goats are dying, and they're not completely sure why. Strange things, man.

But anyways, our area is still normal! Antonio Évora is so close to the waters of baptism! We're going to mark an interview date today, so wish us luck! As for other things this week, we mostly just spent a lot more time than usual on the street. New investigators, though! Also we found DOG CATCHERS here and we were like whaaaaaaaat???

I'm out of time for this week, sorry, but not too many crazy things happened. I give a promise for a fuller update of things happening here next week!

Bizot Ficam Drêt!

Elder Penner

FYI, they see a lot of stray dogs so he was surprised to see a dog catcher.  I keep waiting for this "mythical" longer update he's going to give!  Oh well.  We get to Skype with him on Sunday, so part of next week's entry might be about that call.
  ~ Kirsten