Changing

This past week was the last week of the transfer, being only a 5 weeker this time, and so we wanted to bring about some changes in our area.

On Tuesday, we had our last District Meeting as our existing district of Bela Vista, and since the Assistants were away on Zone Conference, I used it as an opportunity to show charity for my district in their absence and I made them all brownies, after I gave them a harmonica solo. They were all very proud of me, and I think my companion was too :) 

One of our focuses that we talked about at District Meeting was marking more baptismal dates with a higher frequency, since we happen to be the biggest district in not only the Zone, but the mission, so the way our district does is a big part of how the Praia Zone does. In focusing on that this past week, we marked two new baptismal dates with two really cool investigator, one guy named Toni who has these gross ring earrings, and another with a girl named Claudia, who has to be one of the sweeter investigators I've met on my mission. It was nice because marking those dates gave us a bit of an up on how we help our district progress, and the work in our own area, 

We also had Carnaval this past week, the national day of Apostasy in Cape Verde. Everybody in the Praia Zone knew it was gunna be a struggle of a day, so basically Elder Amado and I just did what we could, and the Lord blessed us a ton. On that day, we weren't really expecting to find much, but we ended up teaching like 6 lessons, to both investigators and less actives, AND our area didn't get so rowdy that we had to go in too early! With that, though, brought some interesting sights, some pretty darn funny, some that would be nice to erase from memory. Men were dressed as women, women were dressed like men, just about every little girl had cat face paint on, and the amount of neon clothing we saw was enormous. By the time it was late, we decided to celebrate our successful day of Carnaval by getting bifana's, which is just like beef on a bun, and we passed by some teenagers who may have have a little to drink that day, and proceeded to watch them throw giant cobblestones at each other while they ran around and chased each other. Pretty memorable. 

 

Another memorable part from this week was the night that the two biggest soccer teams in Portugal, Benfica and Porto, played each other, and LITERALLY everyone in our area was watching it or listening to it, be it in a bar, on their phones, or at a buddy's house. We had one less active member tell us that Porto (who I like) was going to lose for sure, and she even jumped up and down on her bed when Benfica scored, but as the night went on, cheers went loudly through our area as Porto scored two more goals, and won 2 to 1. My comp made sure we rubbed it in her face. 

A few more changes happened recently too. Being the end of the transfer, we were certain that my companion would leave the area, and I would get someone, buuuuut the surprise was all ours when President Mathews called and said that Elder Amado would be the new district leader, and that I would be moving to serve in the office beside my heartthrob Elder Penner. Sooooo, with that today I'm saying a big 'ol goodbye to Bela Vista, and a big 'ol 'hello' to staring at a computer or talking on the phone every day :) I'm stoked to serve Elder Penner, we're gunna take down the office together :) 

Penner and Massey - reunited bros from the MTC!

LOVE Y'ALL

Elder Massey