Mawiage is what bwings us togevar today

So some pretty crappy things and some pretty awesome things happened this week.

As for crappy things, you know how I was really excited for those teenagers Kuk and Janete to be baptized last Saturday, along with Feliz?  None of them were able to be baptized. Feliz didn't get to church this week, and Kuk somehow got it into his mind that he was going to wait until he was 18 to be baptized. We talked to them about the responsibility of baptism, but also about how if they're sure about becoming members, the Lord doesn't want them to wait. The good thing is that this Sunday, Kuk talked to us that he changed his mind, he prayed and realized that he was ready! The new problem is whether their dad will let them now. It's a rule to have signatures of the parents, and we're not sure whether their dad will agree. A member talked to him and he said he'll think about it, so we're praying and hoping for them.

Oh, and another thing is that President Matthews isn't happy with the numbers that the mission is producing right now, so he established some temporary restrictions to get the mission refocused on the work. We're not allowed to play soccer together on P days anymore, or do anything with other missionaries besides church, baptism, meetings, and one authorized activity with the district each month. Apparently some elders weren't using their P-days with wisdom (like not doing studies during the morning) so he's put the mission on probation. Elder Figueiredo and I are obviously sad that we can't play soccer or have lunch with the other elders on P-days, but we had been following the rules and we understand that the mission needs improvement. I wouldn't put it really as "crappy," but I think I'll miss playing soccer these next few weeks.

As for awesome things, I already mentioned it last week, but Arlinda and her daughter Nicole have about a 90 percent chance of being baptized this week, along with Kuk and Janete. Also, we had a really awesome lesson with Tutone and Maria, whose only problem has been their fear of getting married. I can happily announce that they've decided to start their marriage papers! We brought Irmão Tuk with us to that lesson, who had a similar situation while investigating, and he was able to give them some advice that they took! We went with them today to start the papers!

Well, that's really all that I have to write about. Most of our work is finding new people and weeding out those that won't accept the gospel from the ones that have a good chance. We want to keep and work with all of them, but our area is just too big and with too many people that we meet to keep those not progressing. And I know that it seems that the bad things outweigh the good things this week, but this is definitely not the truth! It would take days to explain all the awesome things happening here! Still going as strong as ever! Hope you all are doing well, as always!

Abraçazão,

Elder Penner

Everything is Awesome! Everything is Cool...

Hey all!

Don't have all that much time today, but I want to say a few cool things that happened this week. We just ended our first transfer here, and it seems that every companionship in São Vincent is getting separated except for Elder Figueiredo and me. We finally have an Elder who's a native English speaker in our district! I was happy, the other elders laughed at how excited I got.

I´m pretty happy that I´m staying here this transfer, because it feels like a lot of our hard work is paying off, and we plan to bring at least 6 members into the fold within the next two weeks! We're so excited. If you guys can remember Kuk and Janete, who had the problem of being too young to be baptized alone, we found a solution. Elder Figueiredo called President Matthews about them and another investigator named Feliz. Pres said that Kuk and Janete can be baptized as long as they have support of the ward and permission from the parents. We were really happy about that, because they're really awesome and really love the church, and everyone was really disappointed that they couldn´t get baptized this last Saturday as planned.

Now as for Feliz, she's an awesome person that we ran into one day. She had a confirmation of the truth of the Church of Jesus Christ, and she's making a lot of great changes in her life, like going to church and ditching alcohol. The only problem we were worried about was that she sells alcohol basically out of her house, which means that her house is always full of drunk people. Really not good, we sometime's can't have a good lesson because they're always filling the place. But we asked President Matthews, and he said that we don't have a rule about it, so she can be baptized but we should work as hard as we can to help her to stop selling alcohol. Even moving to another place to sell it would be better, though obviously not ideal at all. We have much hope for her, though. She and her daughter will be ready really soon, possibly next week we think.

We also had a surprise, which was our investigator Arlinda getting to church twice. It was a surprise because we didn't think that she was really progressing at all. But once she got to church the first time, all that changed. We´ve been able to teach her a lot of wonderful things, and we've realized that she's been prepared by the Lord since long before we arrived.

Anyway, that's cool, I thought my letter would be shorter, but I think I've said everything I want to. Everything's still awesome, looking forward to "kill my dad" Elder Figueiredo in this area. He doesn't like to talk about home anymore, and I think it's kinda funny. He's trying hard not to die before he dies, if you know what I mean. But yeah. Hope everyone's doing great! Everything is awesome! Everything is cool when you're part of a team!

Abraço,

Elder Penner

We took another photo in Nelido´s house, he´s doing great! the other guy is Roney

We found out that we have a roof! Cool!

We had a Zone Meeting a week ago, about half of those people have moved now though, because of the transfer.

Awkward, ever awkward

Yo yo, from Mindelo.~

Sooooo this week was pretty great. I can´t believe that the new transfer is next week, it feels like I´ve only been here like 2 weeks or something. I´m pretty sure that Elder Figueiredo and I are going to stay here. Elder Cruz, the last elder that was here, tells me that there´s a curse on this area that one missionary stays in the area for like 5 transfers and switches companions every 1 or 2 transfers. I hope that doesn´t happen with me. Don´t get me wrong, I love the area, love the people, but half the area is on a mountain, and our area was actually more like 2 and a half areas before, but they don´t have enough missionaries in the mission, so they combined them. We have a lot of ground to cover, and there´s one part we haven´t visited yet, because it´s waaaay too far and we don´t know anyone there.

I wanna talk a bit this week about my companheiro, Elder Figueiredo. The guy´s a literal boss. He used to be Assistant to the Mission President and Zone Leader twice, and is now here as a District Leader for his last 2 transfers before he dies. He´s a one of a kind power missionary, he is. I can tell even from the short trainings he gives during district meetings that he was meant to give them. The guy just does everything effectively, and we´re really on a role with the exact obedience a missionary should have, I think. He learned English on the mission, so he´s really not half bad at it at all, but the first couple of weeks I kind of struggled a bit because he´s not perfect, and I missed talking with native English speakers like bad for a bit. I´d say I´m comfortable with only speaking English in the house and a bit with the natives here that know a bit and like to speak it for fun. I´d say I speak just about 20% English.  

Okay, that´s about all we have for this week, except for that we ask for your prayers this week that our investigators will be touched by the Spirit to have the will to go to church, because they need to do it to be qualified for baptism, so we can help these people save their immortal souls, dangit. Seriously though, keep them in your prayers! Hope you all are well and happy! 

Abraço,

Elder Penner

Ayyyyy

Okay, this week, lemme tell y'all a story of some lame things and some really cool things that happened here in Mindelo.

So we have this really cool family, who are like really really ready to be baptized. The problem is, not all of them are. The two kids, Kuk and Janete, love the church and they're totally pumped for their date on the 14th. Fredeilson, their older brother, is really pumped, too.  He even bore his testimony yesterday! The problem is, he´s living with and has a kid with a girl that he´s not married to. So we have to get them to at least marry before their date, which we put for April 4th. His girlfriend is somewhat hesitant about marriage, though, so it might be a problem. Then there´s the mom, Maria, who we have to plead with every lesson to read the scriptures, and she still hasn´t come to church once, though she has a baptism date on the 14th. A lot of people here are like Maria. They say they believe our message, they read the introduction to and pray about the Book of Mormon, but after that they don´t read it anymore and don´t go to church (they ALWAYS say "I didn´t have time, I had a really important thing" and when we pry they admit they were just washing clothes. It´s always washing clothes, too.)   They just don´t understand that faith requires works, as the scriptures say.

But the biggest problem we´ve had with the family is the father, Manuel. First of all, his work just happens to be the exact same time as our working time during the week. We´ve been trying since we arrived here to get an appointment with him there. We finally managed to see him on Tuesday, and had our first appointment with him on Saturday. The first thing we noticed when we got there on Saturday was that he was drunk. We then tried to teach him the first lesson, but we could tell that he couldn´t take in all the info we were giving him. So we just decided to focus on eternal families instead. He kept telling us that he believed in our message, but he´s Catholic and didn´t want to switch faiths. We tried to explain to him that if he believes our message, that there are some things that he needs to do in order to be with his family forever. He was adamant. We were really straightforward, really direct, like we told him straight out that he can´t live with his family forever if he doesn´t do these things the Lord commanded, and he just didn´t get it. It was really sad, for me. I mean, we can still baptize the kids with the permission of the parents and neither have a problem with that, but the gospel is about families and we want them to be together forever. We´re gonna try to see if we can´t get an appointment with him when he isn´t drunk.

On the other hand, something really awesome and unexpected happened this week, and that would be our first baptism here! We met Nelido 2 and a half weeks ago, and he accepted the baptism date that we gave him for the 14th of March. We taught him about the importance of church, and he came to church both of the following Sundays, which was a blessing in itself. We were still a little worried, though, because most people here have at least a little problem with the Law of Chastity and the Word of Wisdom. But we taught them both to him last Tuesday, and he told us that he´d been following them for at least a month! He told us he´d made the decision for his health, but I don´t think it´s a coincidence that he made that decision a week before we got there. Well, when we heard that, we invited him to be baptized this Saturday, and he accepted! We held the service on Saturday, he received the Holy Ghost Sunday  and we couldn´t be more excited for him! In the picture I sent, he´s the one next to my companion. In the middle is Fredson, a really awesome ward missionary who performed the baptism (his first time baptizing, too!) And next to me is another awesome ward missionary named Roney.

Well, that´s about all I have time for this week. Hope you all are well! As they say here, Te Cool (which literally means have cool).

Abraço,

Elder Penner

Cachupa with eggs and sausage

Mr. President?

Yep, still love this place. The people here are so awesome and open, they'll always let you into their houses, whether they know you well or you're a stranger. I love the people. And they say the funniest stuff, too. There was a guy (probs drunk, half the population is constantly drunk here) who was upset when we got his friend's phone number and not his, so we got our planners back out and asked him his number, and he said he didn't have a phone! We laughed pretty hard at that. There's another guy we just met who thinks I look like Bill Clinton. I don't know.  And yeah, like I said, half the people here are constantly drunk. You have to be careful or else they'll try to talk to you about the Bible and how nobody else but them ever wants to hear the true word of God, but they of course do.

I think there were more drunk people this week, though, because it just happened to be Carnival. Mindelo happens to have the second largest Carnival celebration in the world. We're not positive, but we think it ended yesterday. It started the Sunday before, but the main celebration was on Tuesday. The streets were completely empty, and only like two of our appointments were actually there. The Zone Leaders told us to go home at 6:30 just because they were worried about too many drunk people. Nothing really happened in our area. We saw some wicked awesome costumes, though. I didn't get to take pics, but they were wild!

The food here is pretty weird for me, but my companion from Portugal says it's not really that much different from there. I mean, we eat rice with pretty much every meal, and the only meats here are fish and chicken with the very rare beef, but other than that it's not crazy different, I guess. For breakfast I usually have a fruit, a yogurt, and a cereal that's kinda like Honey Bunches of Oats. There's only like 5 cereals to choose from on the entire island. And my companion has this stuff that's kinda like oatmeal, but you add cold milk and tastes like crap to me. I've had cous-cous (I think that's how you spell it) though, and it's really good, kinda like cake, but not really. It's hard to explain. The desserts here are all weird. They have donuts and chocolate cake, though! And all of the bread here is to die for.  There's this coconut bread that I love and I don't even like coconut. I'm doing pretty good here with food. The fish here is actually bearable. Not awesome, but bearable. My biggest thing to adjust to is that we don't have an hour for dinner, because the people here can't feed us. We just take 2 hours and make a big lunch. I'm pretty good now, but it was hard for a while.

Other than that, it's just been all-around awesome. Everybody here will accept the invitations that we give them, like they'll say they believe and that they'll read the Book of Mormon and everything, but we get there the next time and they didn't do it. Almost every time. But we're working hard on stressing the importance and some people get it, so that's good. We have a lot of baptisms set up for the 14th next month, but that requires these people to get to church! We talked with about 30 people to get to church who all swore on their mothers' graves that they'll get to church, and 9 showed up. My companion says that's about normal. There's a family we met about a week ago that I have a lot of hope for, because they really are interested, and they prayed to know it's true and they got to church yesterday and everything. We'll see what happens, I guess! 

Only 3 more weeks in this transfer, it feels so short to me! I hope I get to stay and work with these people a little longer, maybe, but I also am really curious about the rest of Cabo Verde!  From what my companion says, every place is pretty unique here. I think it would be really rad to be assistant to the mission president at one point, so I can visit all of the islands for Zone Conferences and stuff like that. I'm kind of at a point where I want the rest of my mission to happen all at once. Gotta learn this language a little better, first.

Hope everyone's having as much fun as I am! Love you all!

Elder Penner

 

Food

Jordan’s brothers were very interested in what they eat in Cabo Verde, so his letter this week is about that. He promises a more detailed email about his missionary work next week.  He spent a lot of his computer time trying to get drop box setup so he can share more pictures with us. 

He answered:  We just eat chicken, rice, and beans, mostly. My companion's good with spices, though, which is awesome. Most of the people here can't afford to feed us dinner, so we basically just take 2 hours for lunch instead. Took me a couple of days to get used to that. But we found this really awesome place which is basically a house made into a restaurant, which serves a really big meal for only 200$ (which is like 3 bucks in our money) per person. It's awesome. Stuff here is cheap, when you see it in relative to American money.

My companion told me that the juice here would make me sick when I first drank it, because they use unfiltered water to make it. I've drunk quite a bit of juice from a couple different places, and I've honestly been fine. No problems, whatsoever. My companion was freaking out a bit.

Seriously, though, I've talked to other American elders in my zone, and they haven't been any worse than a few fevers and some intense diarrhea.

I'm doing great! Missing home a little more than I did at the MTC, but still determined to work hard! I am in physical pain trying to imagine a hot shower.  My companion can speak English, but sometimes I have to translate for him because he's Portuguese.  It can get lonely at times.  I am learning a lot from him even though sometimes it is hard to communicate.  They say it takes 2 transfers to get the language down.  I admit, I am looking forward to that. 

Oh yeah. We play intense soccer for 2 hours every P-day. I'm not even bad, which is really surprising for me. I've assumed my rightful place as front and center striker, of course.

 Last but not least, a great pic of the city from the mountain I have to hike every day to get to some investigators (I get a nice workout, let me tell ya)

The 3 day journey to Cabo Verde

The last week at the MTC was pretty normal, besides the fact that it was my birthday! Thank you to everyone who sent me Dear Elders, it took me a while to sort them out, but I got it. It was a really nice surprise. We ate the cupcakes and let loose a confetti blaster that sounded like a shotgun (I thought we would get in trouble, it was so loud). Also, missionaries going to Portugal got surprise reassignments. There was a lot of crying. Turns out that most of the visas came the very next day. Only 4 people still had to go to their reassignments, out of 20 or so. So that's good. Sister Savage and Sister Jarnagin from our district went to Arcadia, California and Tucson, Arizona. The people going to Portugal had to wait another day in the MTC for their visas to show up.

Well, then we left for Cabo Verde at 6am last Tuesday. The flights through Atlanta up to Madrid were pretty uneventful, and we only got like 3 hours of sleep each during those 12 hours. When we arrived in Madrid, Elder Masubelele and Elder Maake (from South Africa) got taken away by customs, and we had no idea why. We waited for about an hour, until the cops came back without the elders and told us that their visas wouldn't get them through, and that they would be sent back to Atlanta. We went right away to find a phone. The airport was big, and had literally no phones anywhere. When we finally found one, everything was in Spanish, so we had no clue how to work it, of course. When we finally found the language button, we tried calling an operator to hook us up with the MTC Travel Office. The operator hung up when the electronic greeting came on. We were pretty ticked off about that. Finally, after 2 hours trying to work them, I finally managed to get the cards my parents gave me to work. Elder Massey called his mom, who helped us contact everyone. It took them 3 hours to tell us what to do. They told us to get on the next flight to Lisbon. We were like "we could have done that hours ago". The next flight wasn't for another 3 hours, so we had to wait even longer. We ended up spending about 10 hours or so in Madrid. I don't really like Spain anymore.

Well, once we got to Portugal, the Mission President, Brother Fluckiger, and his wife let us stay at their house. They're really awesome people. The food was awesome, the view was fantastic, and people were a lot nicer there than the Spanish. We took the next flight to Cabo Verde, at 1pm the next day. We had probably the worst in-flight meal I've ever had. Some weird cheese crepe. So gross. But anyways, when we got there, we met President Matthews, and he told me to stay at the airport, I was going straight to my area! I met my companheiro, Elder Figuereido (I think that's right) at the airport. He´s a super awesome person, really strong missionary, and a Portuguese native who learned English on the mission! (I was grateful for that.) We landed in Sao Vincente, and the ZLs took us to our residence in Mindelo. We're in the 5th ward in the stake here, I think there's only one stake on the island.

The ward I'm in is kinda in the ghetto, with garbage all over the streets. Our apartment is nice, except the fact that it smells funny, was absolutely disgusting looking when we arrived (we had to ask a member to clean it for us, we didn't have time), and the showers are forever cold. There are stray dogs everywhere, every one of which will growl and bark at you. Also, I can't understand the slightest bit of Creole, so I've been basically sitting in lessons looking lost, bearing a short testimony when my companheiro looks at me.

In all honesty, I'm pretty much having the time of my life! The city is absolutely beautiful, and the night sky is so clear I can't even describe it. Soooo nice. Even though I can't understand anyone, they're all really understanding and nice. Like they'll let absolute strangers into their house if they ask. Everyone. Also, on Saturday my companheiro asked me if I could give the invitations to read the Book of Mormon, pray about it, and be baptized if they confirm it. I was nervous at first, but the first person I invited, George, accepted! We even have his baptism set for the 28th! We also found another investigator who we put for the same date, named Claudia. The problem is, we asked both to come to church, and neither were home when we showed up on Sunday. Also, we're 99% certain that George has a serious smoking problem. He has a good heart, though. When we showed the picture of the First Vision, he literally just burst into tears on the spot. It was so cool. I love it here, I love the people (who I can't understand, but my companheiro says my Portuguese is good, so at least they can understand me!), and I love serving! We had a Zone Meeting on Saturday, and the other Elders here are awesome. They said it took about 2 transfers for them to have any idea what was going on during lessons. I hope it doesn't take that long for me, 3 months without any clue seems really long. I'm still having a fun time, and can't wait to get back out there!

Hope everyone is doing well,
Elder Penner

All the Cabo Verde missionaries at the MTC

All the Cabo Verde missionaries at the MTC

Portugal Mission home

The 6 of us that made it through to Portugal

The view from my apartment