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This week I officially hit the six month mark in my mission. That means I'm a fourth of the way done here. It's insane to think about how fast the time has gone. It feels like I just got here a few weeks ago. Everyone tells me that after you hit 6 months, the time REALLY starts to fly, so I'm preparing for it to move even faster. I felt the song Zoom by Last Dinosaurs was appropriate for this week. It demonstrates how ridiculously short my time has felt here, even though the first month or so seemed to last so long. As Ferris Bueller said in the greatest movie ever made, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it." I'm not planning on missing any of it. I'm gonna take advantage of all the time I have left.

We had some investigators take some good steps forward this week, and had a miracle in church on Sunday. Diana accepted a baptismal date about a month in the future. We're hoping that with the goal in place, she'll start reading and praying about the Book of Mormon every day like she needs to to gain a testimony. She came to church this last Sunday too which is always a good sign. We met with the Jaramillo family as well this week. We shared with them the Restoration movie and they liked it a lot and were interested to learn more about Joseph Smith. There's potential there, but after telling us they would come to church this week, they didn't show up. We're work with them on that for sure.

Ok so in church on Sunday, we were talking with a few members when one of them pointed out to us that a man in the back, who had come with his member-wife, wasn't a member. It was strange because he knew exactly what was going on. We never would've guessed that he hadn't been baptized. We talked to him and found out that he had met with the missionaries here about a year or so ago. We got his number and went home to eat lunch without thinking about it too much. We decided to open our area book and see if we could find the teaching records from when the Elders here met with him before. To our surprise, he had been taught literally everything already and was keeping all of him commitments. He even had his interview to be baptized, but then was unexpectedly called to work in Barcelona before they had the service. I can't wait to meet with him this week and see what we can make happen. He told us he goes out of town for work for long periods frequently, so we'll see how it goes, but overall, it's pretty amazing that he came and we found him.

Things are starting to pick up here. It's hard to believe I've only been here two weeks. I've already made some great friends here. We explored the city a little today, so I've got some sick pictures on the way. Love you all and I'll talk to you next week!

Hasta Luego,

Elder Penner 🇪🇸

Calle Fuerteventura 4, 2 Oficina 8-B

28703 San Sebastian de los Reyes
Madrid, España

Pictures:

1. & 2. El Casco in the city (Spanish as heck)

3. View of the Casco from El Valle, a lookout point just south of the city