Drop It Like It's Hot

Hi to all from the wonderful island of Fogo! Now I'm in the wonderful area of Congresso Baixo, with Elder Jhangiani, and I gotta tell you... IT'S SO HOT HERE! The afternoons here make me feel a physical weight with the heat. Also, everything here seems like it's at a 45 degree angle, so matter where I go, it's either up or down. After being stuck in an office and having a car for most of the day for 6 months, it's been a bit of an adjustment, to say the least.

Despite the heat and the new leg workout I'm getting, I really really like this area. The Congresso Ward is the strongest ward in Fogo, I hear. The chapel seemed just about full on Sunday, and the members were complaining about how low the frequency was! It's so cool! There are a whole bunch of returned missionaries here, too, which hopefully will mean that we'll be able to teach a lot with them. They ought to remember how important it was to have a member to teach with them. And that's another thing... the members here are like the most chill people I've met in Cape Verde. Every member wants to talk to us, they love the missionaries. I met the famous Gomes at the airport when I got here. Gomes is famous mostly for his tomfoolery and for the fact that he served his mission in Utah. He's the only member I know to have served in the United States. Super cool guy.

Elder Jhangiani is a righteous kid as well, he's got such a strong desire to teach the gospel and to learn the language. He's from Paraguay, so his native language is Spanish. You think it'd be easy to go to Portuguese from Spanish, but you actually just confuse things because they're too similar. He's got a really good heart, though, and he really wants to become a better teacher. I hope that I can help him out with that. I think we're gonna get a lot of good work done together.

This area has a lot of good potential, but this last week it was somewhat difficult to teach people. I came to notice pretty quickly that it's a little more difficult here to get people to sit down with you than it was in Praia, so I realized that I had to up my game. We started focusing more on contacting people everywhere we could, marking as many appointments as possible, completely filling up at least 2 days ahead with appointments for every half hour, and we're also trying to get as many references from members as possible. The turnout isn't a lot right now, but I'm happy with what we have achieved and it's going to augment pretty quickly.

Our most progressive investigator is a girl named Monica. She's a super prepared person. The Elders met her a week before I got here, and as they taught her she asked if she could be baptized. They marked her for the 9th of July right then and there. Since then she's been going so well! The two times I taught her last week, she expressed to us how good she felt when she read the Book of Mormon and how she's felt at church. She went to a youth activity that I didn't even know about on Saturday. So she's pretty much for sure getting baptized on the 9th.

I'm having fun! Good area, great ward, great comp! I'm excited for the rest of this transfer! Hope you all are doing well too!

Abraço,

Elder Penner

Thru the Fire and Flames (Transfer)

No time to talk today, but I went to Fogo! I'm in Congresso Baixo woth Elder Jhangiani now. He's new, and pretty cool, I met him once.

Sunday was probs the best day last week. I saw Marlene give a talk, Adiley got conferred the Sacerdocio (priesthood,) and we had a noite familiar in Adilson and Ineida's house! So I got to see all 3 of my recent converts in praia going so well. I also saw Bispo Ribeiro from my ward back in Sao Vicente, so that was a cool thing too!

I'mm gonna miss Elder Massey, he was a really good comp, we had a lot of fun and got a lot of work done as well. But I'm excited for what the grand island of Fogo has in store for me! I hope I don't die from too much heat here, haha.

Well, hope you all have a wonderful week! Happy Fathers Day!

Abraco,

Elder Penner

Welcome to Paradise

Hey all! What a wonderful week it's been! I chose this classic Green Day song today, even though the actual lyrics make it more of a satire, because we're welcoming two people into kinds of "paradise" today:

First off, our investigator Adiley (formerly known as Adelei until we filled his baptismal record and realized our mistake lol) was baptized this last weekend! Super spiritual experience. From the first couple of lessons that we've had with him, we've known that he's been ready for baptism for probably a long time now. We barely had to do anything ourselves, we just taught him what he needed to be taught and he did the rest on his own. The Bishop's second counselor, Nuno, is already trying to get us to get Adiley's info into the Church system so they can officially give him the Priesthood. Really cool stuff!

1. Adiley's baptism!

Our Ward Mission Leader, Chido (shee-doo) he's super cool, and an artist too

Secondly, we're welcoming my replacement into the office today: Elder Neville! I've known him for a little while, ever since Elder Maake trained him in the area next to mine while I was in Varzea. He was born right as I resurrected into the field. I think that he's going to be a really good secretary, and he's got a lot of good energy, which in any place is a good thing. So I'll get to train him for a week, and then it's off to my next area with all the rest of transfers.

The ward had been pretty weak for the past month or so, but especially this week it's been picking up very well. We had a really fun dinner for the Young Single Adults in our ward on Friday, and we brought Adiley so we got to hang around for a while. It was a super good bonding activity, and Adiley got to meet some more friends in a non-church meeting atmosphere. He really wants to get a good friend group in the church, because he doesn't like what he sees youth do here normally, always partying and getting into gang stuff. We're trying to get him to every activity we possibly can.

1. Our Ward activity we had. It was a YSA dinner thing, we brought Adiley (I'm sitting by him)

Our investigator Mundinho, who's also super cool and best friends with Chido. His family is like a part of the ward now, although they're not getting married until near the end of the year, they say.

Adilson and Ineida are becoming a good part of our ward now! Nuno and his wife Melissa went with us to have a little Noite Familiar at their house last night, and it was super fun. Adilson spent up most of the time ranting (jokingly) about how quiet some people in church are and how he can't hear a thing. The way he was talking about it was super funny, I love the guy. It's really neat to see how his character has changed since I knew him over in Varzea. He's a lot more at peace, and a lot slower to get angry. I think one of my favorite aspects of missionary work is how conversion really changes peoples' character.

On a slightly more humorous aspect, we're still working with Baka, but we just have to face the fact that he's a pretty weird guy. Every time we talk to him he tells us "I read the Book of Mormon every day from 5 to 7 a.m.!" but every time he changes the time that he reads. Every time, he reminds us about how it was HE that contacted US and not the other way around. He also just bursts out into random war stories because he served in some war when he lived in Guinea-Bissau. Our last visit was pretty good, because as we were about to leave he told us "I am the most blessed man in the entire world! Ask me why!" so we asked why and he pulled out 2 copies of the Book of Mormon and said "Last time you visited me, I went to bed with my book here. When I woke up the next day, I found a second book here as well! I'm the most blessed man by our Heavenly Father!" It turns out I had forgotten a copy that I had brought with me that last visit. We laughed pretty hard at that one and agreed with him. As we were walking away he shouted to us, "I'm going to give it to my woman! And if she doesn't accept it, I'll leave her! There's plenty of women out there for me!" We were laughing so hard after that. He's a sincere guy after everything, and he's already been to church a couple of times. We just have to work with him on his drinking problem and he'll be good to baptize as well!

That's all I have time for this week. Super cool stuff! I'm hoping for a great last week here in the office. I'll probably take pictures with a lot of people here, there's some guys that I've become really tight with. But anyways, have a good week all!

Abraço

Elder Penner

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

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

Passenger Seat

Good news! We can finally use our car again! Elder Massey finally received his replacement driver's license in the mail on Friday, which means that it's my turn to be the passenger seat guy for what'll probably be the rest of my time here as secretary. So I decided to give a shoutout to Death Cab for Cutie today. More people should really listen to them, it's sad how few missionaries have even heard of them here.

Anyways, we had a fantastic week here! I think one of the main highlights of the week was working with Belarmino over this past week. We talked to him on Tuesday about the baptismal covenant, and shared with him Mosiah 18:8-10, which basically says "if you want to help and serve others, and want to follow the true path of Christ, what's stopping you from being baptized?" We thought that he wanted to push off his baptismal date because he was scared that he wasn't ready. However, in that lesson we realized that he actually just wasn't understanding the actual importance of baptism itself. Elder Massey was inspired to ask him if he'd asked of God to know the truthfulness of our message yet, and Belarmino responded like "well yeah, but I don't think I've gotten the full answer yet." He's told us that he's felt good in doing what we've invited him to do, but he just hasn't felt that burning in the bosom that we all talk about all the time. So we've been working with him on that a lot. Later in the week we gave him the baptismal interview questions to show him that that was really the only thing that he really needed, because otherwise he's super prepared for baptism. We took him to the baptismal service on Saturday, and he was at church again this Sunday as well. We're really hoping and praying that he'll get his answer soon.

The main other guy that we've been working with is Nelito, who's been progressing well, except for the fact that it's been difficult to find him recently. When we found him a couple of days ago, we found out that he'd lost his phone, so it suddenly made sense why we hadn't been able to reach him. He's going well too, but he's also going to need a bit more time, because we haven't taught him everything he needs before baptism, so we decided to move his date to June. We think that he's super close to baptism too, so we're excited for that.

Also, a really funny thing happened this past week. First, we walked past this guy and I almost contacted him, but we thought that he could be Muslim (you can normally tell them apart here without being too nosy), and we have a rule that we can't contact them. So we walked past and forgot about him. Fast forward a few days, and he calls us over and says, "why don't you talk to me!? I want to hear your message too!" so we were like sorry and marked with him. Well, the first lesson came along, and the member that we were with said we should give him a baptismal date, so we marked him for June and invited him to go to church the next day. We passed by him Sunday morning, and he said that he had to wait for his boss to come back so he could leave his workplace. So we went to church kinda dejected, but he showed up like 20 minutes later! We think he's super cool, and the best part about it all is that his name's Baka, which is Creole for cow, lol.

Other super cool thing happened! A returning less-active member brought a friend to church, and the guy's awesome! His name's Adelei, and he went to church in Tarrafal and talked with the missionaries a bit there, too. When we got to talk to him, we were with Bishop and he asked us when he could get baptized. Bishop was like, "well, talk with these guys!" So we're super excited to start working towards baptism, and we don't think it'll be long!

A lot of other cool things happened, but I don't have time to talk about them, so sucks I guess. Anyways hope your week is as good as ours, and keep smiling!

Abraço,

Elder Penner

The pictures have nothing to do with his letter.  I asked him to take pictures of the marketplace there.  

The Stars and Stripes Forever

This week I felt a little twinge of patriotism, which I guess is pretty normal when you're off in a foreign country for a long period of time. I chose The Stars and Stripes Forever because we went to the US Embassy for the first time ever the other day, and just looking at the big old American flag that they have there just made me so happy for some reason. It's not like I worship the United States or anything, we have our own problems of course, but it was just a kinda subtle reminder of home. Also we talked to a lady there who was native, but spoke completely perfect English, like an American! Most people here who speak English do it with a Cape Verdean accent, or a New England one for those who lived near Boston. Elder Massey and I were super surprised when she spoke with the clearest accent I've ever heard here.

At the beginning of this week, Elder Poole stuck with us for a couple of days before he returned home. He's a super cool guy, and has learned Portuguese really well since he's been here for not so long. Sadly, and to no fault of his own, he had to return home a little early. I really like him though, so I wanted to give him a shoutout.

Anyways, since Marlene's been baptized, she's been such a happy person! We saw her a few times this past week, though we weren't able to teach her, and she's almost a completely different person. I love seeing the light of the love of God enter someone's life. We're working hard on our next goals, I think we've still got one more coming before the end of the month! We're working hard with Belarmino now, and we think that he'll be baptized on the 28th. We're praying hard for it!

We didn't get a lot of time in our area, which was kinda lame. However, the greenies arrived on Saturday, so a couple of them went out with us yesterday and we got to do a division for a few hours. All of a sudden we found the people we were looking for all week! We also found a lot of potential investigators, which is a blessing. I went with Elder Jhangiani. He's from Paraguay, and doesn't really speak Portuguese yet, although he understands it. It was funny because our investigator Nelito kept asking him questions in Creole and he had no idea what he was saying, so I had to translate. Elder Jhangiani's a good missionary though, with a good attitude and really excited about coming here and serving.

We finally sat down with a guy we'd met a few weeks ago named Denny. He's super cool, speaks perfect English from when he lived in Boston. Since I was with Elder Jhangiani we taught the Restoration in Portuguese, though I think he prefers to speak English with us. It was super funny, because when we first got into the house I saw his computer screen and right in the middle was a link to watch an illegally downloaded version (which is pretty normal here) of CIVIL WAR and I almost freaked out a little bit. After the lesson he OFFERED TO WATCH IT WITH US and I had to explain to him that we don't watch those kinds of movies. He thought it was a weird rule, but eventually understood at least a bit. I'd be wrong if I didn't admit there was a tiny little voice egging me on to watch it with him but then I told myself that that's dumb, why would I do that? It's kinda funny how things that are completely normal for people are somewhat of a big deal for us as missionaries. Just goes to show you the importance of the calling, I guess.

Anyways, we met a lot of new people yesterday, and we're hoping to have a week full of new investigators coming up! We're trying to get our next convert here, and we have high hopes!

That's about it for the week, just working like we do. I hope that all of your lives are filled with bright sunshiney rays of joy and all that

Abraço,

Elder Penner