Baptisms and Transfers

Hey everyone! Hope y'all are doing well back home. I'm still chillin in quarantine but this week was one to remember.

First off not sure if I mentioned it but our AC broke last Sunday which made Florida feel a lot like Brazil. Then as luck would have it, it took them 5 days to fix it so we had the wonderful opportunity to appreciate AC for what it truly is: a miracle.

Also we had our baptism this past Wednesday, was super awesome. There weren't a lot of people there but I felt the same spirit. We had wonderful talks given by the girl's parents on baptism and the Holy Ghost and because most of the people there were non-members who of course don't know the hymns and we had no pianist and we were all wearing masks. Let's just say the hymns were definitely interesting and pretty much just consisted of me singing terribly to try cover the embarrassment of those non-members and bring some spirit to the baptism. Not (my favorite part for sure).

Lastly of note Elder M, one of my companions, was unfortunately transferred this week so we will be sorely missing him because he is the only one with formal tennis training and the rest of do not know what we are doing (and of course because he is super awesome). We've also added in sand volleyball to our daily exercises to switch it up a bit. Might add pickle ball soon though so I'll keep you updated.

Few photos this week
-Elder Pettingill

-View from our apartment
-got bored and built a card fortress(totally didn't fall 5 or 6 times before I was able to complete it)
-Baptism!!
-my zone leader and I watching the others play tennis

Miracles Happen

Not sure if this week was good or not. I think it was more good than bad though so let's go with that. This week we had a lot of success! Actually we didn't but we worked a lot harder so we felt better. We were always trying to find people and trying new techniques to help people. We focused a lot on serving people so we made a bunch of cookies and have been giving them to members that have helped us out or things like that. Then on top of that we've been praying super hard to have a baptism this month. Which meant that pretty much unless some miracle happened wasn't going to happen. But guess what God loves giving miracles when things seem impossible because we brought cookies to the Bishop here and we mentioned baptism in a prayer and he brought up a part member family who had a little girl who hadn't been baptized. We called them up and now we are baptizing her this Wednesday! They actually already wanted to baptize her but thought because of the Covid-19 they couldn't. We had called them on Saturday night and they even wanted to baptize her yesterday but they decided it wasn't enough time to let people know so we are doing it on Wednesday. I loved the wonderful way God answered our prayer. Another goal I made was to finish Jesus the Christ in 3 weeks which is very hard. Each chapter (there are 42 chapters) takes about 45 minutes to read but I love it. I've already learned so many things that I never even realized I didn't know. If you haven't read it and want to, I highly suggest it. Other than that not too much happened this week. We still played a lot of games and watched a couple of church movies. I hope you are all doing well. I'm always praying for you guys!
-Elder Pettingill

Season 3 Episode 1 The Beginner's Guide to Munchkins

Hey guys it's been awhile so let me give you a rundown. Corona hit, really messed everything, I came home, didn't do much for 10 weeks, was reassigned to serve in the Orlando, Florida mission until Brazil opens back up and then I might be able to go back but since Brazil is even more messed up because of Corona that could be a while.

So I'm here in Florida in a trio although most of the time it feels like we are actually in a group of 7 because our zone leaders and district leaders spend a lot of time in our house. I don't mind I love them all so much already. My 2 companions are Elder D, who we all call gramps because he's 27, and Elder M who's from Texas and has nice way a sayin y'all that gets me every time. All three of us served in Brazil before all this and we have the honor of being over all Portuguese investigators in our zone so it's super fun to speak in Portuguese together.

Thing is though there isn't a whole lot to do. We spend most of our time searching for people by either going through our records of who the missionaries have taught in the past to see if they would like to meet with us over zoom, trying to meet with members and get to know them, or playing games. And let me tell you we play a lot of games because those first 2 don't take a lot of time before you run out. So we've mainly played, if y'all know them: Hearts the card game, Munchkins (this game gets crazy) and Villainous (imagine Descendants but you're not the children and you're not good so maybe not actually like that all) but we've been having a good time. Luckily we also get 2 hours of sports everyday as well so Elder D and I crushed Spikeball for the first few days until everyone was sick of losing and we played some basketball and some tennis.

Now I know y'all are probably thinking you missionaries do nothing and you're almost correct but not completely. We did find two awesome people to teach, 1 Brazilian lady whose phone died in the middle of a lesson, and another lady who was super excited to start talking with us again. And we have had some awesome lessons with members this week, so yes we don't do much but the stuff we do is darn good quality.

One scripture I love from this week's Come, Follow Me is in Alma 10: 6-12. These verses talk about Amulek, who was a very well known man in the city, and his story. I love his courage and I especially love in verse 12 where it was his testimony that really helped the people understand and believe. Because the wonderful thing is when two people testify of the same story it makes it a lot harder to disbelieve so I challenge all of you to read that little bit if you haven't and share what you believe with someone else. You never know how you might affect someone. Don't be called many times and still not listen because you might change someone's life.

I love all of you guys and I pray for you
-Elder Pettingill

Arrived!

We are excited to have Elder Pettingill serving with us in the Florida Orlando Mission.  Attached is a picture with his first companion, Elder D and another picture with President and Sister Ashcraft, who have great love for the Missionaries. 
Elder Pettingill will be serving in the Conway Area.

Thank you for your sacrifice and support in hastening the work.

Sister E
Florida Orlando Mission

Mission Intermission

Elder Pettingill came home from his mission because of the worldwide pandemic on March 27. He had to quarantine for 14 days. He decided to go back out as soon as possible, and received a reassignment on May 5. He will continue his service in the Florida Orlando Mission on June 8.