Jardin Ipê Week 1

So this week has been exhausting. I don´t know exactly why. My companion Elder Sousa is the district leader here, and Elder Herlin and Elder Salazar (he is from Ecuador) are the zone leaders. Elder Salazar (apparently ``Z`` is a th sound in Spanish) only has two transfers left so this will be his last area. My area is called Jardin Ipe. It is said like jarjin Eepê--i is an ee sound.

My area here is big, not as big as my other one, but still big. Elder Sousa is really animated, and he likes to joke. It was a problem this week because sometimes I can´t tell if he is joking, because he keeps going with the joke for about 15 min, but we talked and all is well. We have some good investigators,and some good recent converts in the area. We will have a baptism on the 15, and another on the 29 so far, but we hope to mark some more. It feels like we are opening an area because Elder Sousa was the only one that was here before the transfers and didn´t work a lot in our area, so we don´t have a lot of investigators. We will really have to focus on finding new investigators this week so that we always have a lot to do every night, but everything is good here. 

Elder Herlin is from Colorado, but he doesn´t speak English with me, which is good. I like not speaking English, it gets me better at speaking Portuguese. Also I am having problems now with knowing the meanings of some words in Portuguese

So Elder Sousa is my brother because we were trained by the same person, and Elder Salazar is my Grandfather, because he trained my trainer. So basically we are a family here. Also today I cut their hair. Elder Salazar was with scissors.

The house we are living in right now is really small, especially for 4 missionaries. It has 4 rooms, and two are bedrooms, one is the entrance room where we keep all our clothes, and the other is a kitchen. We do have a part behind the house, but it is small as well. We are hoping to move houses this transfer. 

Also I lost one of my nametags so I will be asking for a new one. It happened when we were walking. 

The ward here is really good, and the members are really helpful with the work. The Ward Mission leader is a very animated person. Most of the members here live in Jardim Ipê A which is the area of Elder Salazar and Elder Herlin, but we still have good people here to teach, and some good members.

We do have one investigator that lives in the mission Curitiba, but we are allowed to visit her because it is really long for the missionaries there to go there, and they don´t have anyone else to teach there, so I get to go outside my mission every once in a while

I am doing well here, and the people here are great. I am so glad to be a missionary here in Brazil where I can help people come unto Christ.

Next week we are going to the temple on the 18th, so I will have my pday on Tuesday not Monday.  

I love you all, and hope that you are doing well. 

-- Élder Pettingill

P.S. These are pics from this week and last week. One there is the pic from the 4th of July Pizza we had.