Teaching in Spanish, and service, and judging chili, oh my!

Wow, lots of news today! Sounds like a lot of good stuff is happening back home. I'll be looking forward to hearing that choir music! Speaking of which: we got a portable DVD player a while back, and I discovered that my CDs that did not work on the CD player at the last house do work on the DVD player. So that's awesome.

This week was pretty great. We've been teaching a lot, and things have generally been going well.

Starting from the beginning: last week on P-day we played frisbee golf: awesome.

Then, the next day, we met with this lady who hasn't been attending church since she was like twelve-I think I told you about her in my last email. So, we also brought a member with us, who was until recently also attending less than regularly. She was just awesome, and now the new woman kind of wants to come to church, if just for her son. It's pretty awesome.

We're still meeting with the ten-year old guy I told you about earlier (I think). He's planning on being baptized this Saturday (YAY!!), so we've been trying to coordinate everything, which has been a little bit hectic. He had his interview with our district leader yesterday, and everything just seems to be working well.

We've also met some other people who seem to be interested in learning more about the gospel, which is awesome. We haven't met too much with them, but I'll tell you about them next week if all goes well.

Oh, also: on Wednesday, I went on exchanges with the District Leader's companion, while the district leader came here. It was pretty cool to just get to know a different area, and see how other missionaries do things. 

Also, I got to teach in Spanish for the first time there, because there was a potential investigator who didn't speak much English, and neither of the assigned elders spoke any Spanish. I don't feel like I did very well, but hey, at least I'm practicing. 

Moving around isn't actually as bad as it would seem. We've done it so many times that it really doesn't take too long to pack and unpack anymore. I'm sure I'll be a complete pro when I get back. The family we're living with is really awesome, and things are going well. I've attached a picture of our new room; you should be able to tell that we're settling in by the mess we've already made. It's been really nice not to have to bike so far to get anywhere.

The ward does not have a choir :'(. However, we were able to sing in a choir-like setting yesterday, which was pretty awesome. There was a missionary homecoming (which was sweet), and so they had the missionaries and some other folks do this musical number--we sang "A Marvelous Work", by Lynn S. Lund--maybe you can look that up on YouTube or something.

We have been doing service, which has been awesome. Justserve.org is a thing that we sort of use; I think what happens is our Zone Leaders use it and then tell us what to do. But yeah, we've been doing some work. E.g. We've been working with the local food bank, which is pretty awesome. Most of the time, it's just run by this one lady, and we've been doing a lot of work helping her remodel the place. In fact, service is actually one of the standards of excellence in this mission--the goal is to get in ten hours of community service a week. It's great.

So, Saturday was the ward Halloween party, which was pretty great. It was a great opportunity to just interact with all the members and get to know them somewhat. My companion and I were the judges of the Chili Cook-off also, so that was pretty awesome. Grandma sent me a package with these Groucho-type glasses, so that was our costume for that day. It was great.

For Halloween, we're instructed to stay in after dinnertime, unless we have an appointment set up. Right now our plan is to go to the sisters' house and play games for the three hours between dinner and curfew.

Thanks so much for everything.

I love you all,
Peter

Lily's Purple Plastic Purse and deep-fried oreos

Thanks so much for all the news from back home. I really appreciate just, you know like, knowing what all is going on. Sounds like the whole Dance Festival thing should be great--I think I'll require pictures.

This week was a good week for me. In addition to just continuing to get used to the whole routine of being a missionary in the field, we had the opportunity to do a lot more teaching this week (In fact, we doubled the number of lessons from last week), which was good.

We got to meet two of our investigators--the one I told you about, and a kid that the sisters who we replaced were working with before we arrived. He's in a kind of interesting situation: his dad is less-active, but really wants his kids to go to church. His older brother (age 12) has already been baptized, has the Aaronic Priesthood and everything. So we'll be meeting with him a couple times this week, and next week, and then he'll hopefully be baptized on November 2nd. It'll be great. 

The other lady we met with, who we told you about earlier, is really cool too. She's Protestant right now, but she told us that her beliefs really line up more with the church's doctrines. We taught her the first lesson, about the restoration, and she seemed really receptive. She loves the doctrine and everything, and she knows that she should be baptized, but she's a little worried about the whole joining-the-church-thing, because she feels that she's really entrenched socially in her other church, and doesn't really feel like she can get out of it very easily. But we're going to keep meeting with her, and hopefully she'll realize how important the church part of the church is.

We've also been trying to meet with a lot of less-active members of the church, and that's been going pretty well. In fact, story: we went to this one house, where there's a lady who's been less active since she was like 8 years old. She told us that her son, who's like six, has been asking about religion and things, and that she wanted to have him learn about what we believe, because she had a good experience with the church when she was younger. Apparently she was having her aunt, who's active, try to get some people from the church over to her house, and then we showed up. So that was kind of a miracle, I guess.

In other news, the ward is really great--it's really starting to feel like home. We've had dinner at members' houses almost every night, and they're all really friendly and awesome. Last night, in fact, we had dinner at this one family's house, and they had a friend from out of town staying with them. He was great too, and to make things even better, he made dessert for us. Get this: it was deep-fried Oreos. He took Oreos, dipped them in like bisquik, and then just fried them. They were great.

 

The ward Halloween party is this Saturday, so we're looking forward to that.

Btw, forgot to tell you, but I wanted to share something: whenever I've been having a like less than optimal time, I've been remembering that timeless quote from Mister Slinger: "Today was a difficult day. Tomorrow will be better.". So I guess I just wanted to thank you for reading those books to me, I guess.

Another btw: The Young Men's president in the ward went to Stanford. It was kind of funny--we were talking to him about something, and someone, I think the ward mission leader, said something about us being "The three tree-huggers: Oregon, Oregon, and Stanford". So uh yeah.

I definitely agree that a sense of humor is vital--I've only had a few odd experiences so far, and I know that they could have like shaken me up if I hadn't been able to just laugh at them.

 

I'm also working on having a better attitude about just working in general. I know that working hard is one of the most important things in missionary work. I read a really great scripture today about that, actually. You probably know it already, but it was new to me: D&C 103:36, All victory and glory is brought to pass unto you through your diligence, faithfulness, and prayers of faith.

Everything's going pretty great. Good luck with Relief Society, the leaves, and everything. Thanks for the news and love.

Peter

Peter's life as a missionary - mom asked, Peter answered

Where does it feel like you are?

I don't really know. I would probably say the town, although right now, we really don't live in it, it's more like in the country area. However, on Saturday we'll be having fun moving yet again, to a place that actually is in town, so that'll be good--we'll be closer to everything, and it'll be a lot safer to be biking around, especially at night. I don't really know what place in Oregon to compare where we live to, sorry. Monmouth is probably pretty close, though.

When do you get mail?

Mail is kind of odd. It gets sent to the Mission offices, and then they send it to our current residence. The problem is, though, that they don't exactly have our correct address right now. We went to a family for dinner on Saturday(?), and they had some mail from both sets of grandparents for me. That was odd. We'll give them a call though, hopefully the package you guys sent will make its way to me before it gets too cold.

Who lives with you in the house you live in?

The only other people who are living with us in the house right now are the owners, a couple from the ward. He used to be the Bishop in the ward, so he knows a lot about a lot of people in the ward, which has been really nice.

Do you have your own space?

We share the kitchen with them, but we haven't really been using it at the same time very much. He gets up and leaves right about when we wake up, and she sleeps quite a bit later, so we don't share breakfast time, lunch is usually separate too, and dinner has usually been at other member's houses. So everything's been working out fine.

Do you really ever unpack?

I unpacked more here than the first place we lived, but I've still got quite a bit in my suitcases. Supposedly we'll be staying in our new place for like the rest of my training (~9 weeks), so I'll probably unpack fully then.

And, what do you know about where you'll be moving to?

They're an older couple. They're also both converts--he shared a little bit of his conversion story with us yesterday, as we got a ride from him. Apparently he was raised Catholic, and although he knew the church was true (his wife had converted quite a while before), he was afraid that his parents would be upset if he joined the church. So, after a while, after his Dad had died, in fact, he asked his Mom if they'd be offended if he joined the church. She told him, "Your dad and I thought you'd joined years ago!". It just goes to show, I guess.

Anything else?

btw I finally remembered something I wanted to share with you since I've been in the MTC.

There's this thing on nytimes.com called "1 in 8 million", which I think profiles folks in NYC. It's basically just some slideshows with narration from the person they're profiling playing, but it was super cool. They showed us some in the MTC, and basically asked us how we could try to teach the person who was being profiled in the video. I would encourage you guys to check it out, it was cool.

Hey, are you guys with the LDS?

Hello all.

Okay, first off: super sorry I wasn't able to send anything yesterday, I hope no one was worried. It was Columbus Day apparently, and because of that, the library was closed. So, we're doing our emailing today. However, I'll probably be on here for a while today, because my companion is working on his college application since he'll be going home soon.

I have been having a good week here in Colorado--although it hasn't been perfect, I've been getting a lot better about getting into the whole routine of the mission. 

This week was good. It was way easier than last week, I think, because I'm slowly getting used to the actual missionary routine. Even though there have been some problems and stuff, it's been alright, and they haven't really been bothering me much. So this week was pretty much occupied with meeting people who haven't been attending church much. We were planning on meeting some of them who we were planning on teaching, but those appointments fell through :(. That's alright, though, we'll be meeting with them sometime. 

We have a definite appointment with one family this week, and we'll figure out something for the other folks. We've been meeting many people, although again, we've mostly been focusing on setting up appointments for later, so we haven't had a ton of opportunities to teach. 

One member that we did get to have a lesson with this week is this guy. He's older, and he's gone through a lot in his life, it seems like. He's got quite a few health problems, which is at least part of why he hasn't been going to church much, and his wife died a while back. He's a really great guy, though, and I'm excited to meet with him more. Hopefully, we'll find a way so that he can become as active as his health will permit.

One thing that I've been enjoying out here are the meetings (weird, huh?). We've been having either a district (around eight missionaries) or a zone meeting (around twenty-five missionaries) every week, where we've had the opportunity to learn from our leaders (other missionaries). It's been really enriching, and I feel like I've been learning a lot about how I can become a more effective missionary.

Church was pretty awesome this Sunday. We had Fast Sunday (I think this is like the third time in six weeks I've had Fast Sunday, but it's all good.), and all five of the missionaries in the ward (I don't know if I told you this, but we're sharing the ward with a trio of sisters) shared their testimonies. I think this was the first time outside of the MTC that I've actually shared my testimony on Fast Sunday. It was a little awkward, but also good.

My companion and I have both been a little bit sick lately, but we're all good now.

Oh, one really cool experience: This Saturday, we were biking around. We had had three appointments fall through (well, at this point only two of them had fallen through, but later the third one did. woo hoo.), which was disappointing. We were biking down a street when a car pulled up to us, and a lady started talking to me. The conversation went a little like this:

Lady: Hey, are you guys with the LDS?

Me: Yep.

L: Would you guys happen to have a Book of Mormon I could have?

M: Ah, actually no [bizarre situation: at that time, the only copies of the Book of Mormon we had were in Spanish. We've fixed that, though]. We do have this pamphlet about the restoration, though--about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.

L: Oh, thanks, thanks.

M: Just curious, or what?

L: Well, I'm a protestant right now, but I've found that my beliefs line up more with your church.

After that point, we talked to her a little more and she basically invited us to teach her. We'll hopefully be meeting her today.

Long story short: A lady drove up to us and asked us to teach her. It was pretty cool.

Well, there you go. A pretty good week, some ups, some downs, but all around alright. I'm getting a lot more used to things, which is good.

I love you all and miss you too,

Peter

First snow

Thank you so much for the news from home and all. It's great to hear from all of everyone.

Well, this week was a pretty good week, but there were some challenges too. I think I'm going to really enjoy working here, but there are a few things that I just need to get used to first. Because my companion and I are both new to the area (something that's not very normal), we've been spending most of our time just trying to familiarize ourselves with the area and meet the people that we need to meet. Our ward mission leader is pretty great, as are our Bishop and Relief Society president. Again, because we're really new to the area, we haven't had a ton of chances to teach people, we've mostly just been working on setting up appointments to teach next week, so this coming week should be a lot more lesson-full. 

With the bike thing, It's alright. We share the ward with sisters, so we've split the area so that we don't have to bike incredibly far, only pretty far. Right now we're only covering the development of Lochbuie and the part of Brighton that's inside our ward boundaries. 

In other bike news, so far I think I've gotten something like three flat tires, from these bizarre thorn things that I'm slowly learning how to avoid. Everything's alright with the bike, we've been filling it with this stuff called slime, which fills the holes that the thorns make, so that's not a real problem. Just kind of funny, I guess.

My companion is also from Portland (Forest Grove, to be specific), which is kind of awesome. He's been out for awhile (In fact, I'm pretty sure I'll be his last companion.), so he knows a lot of stuff, which is great.

We've been having dinner at member's houses every day this week, which is great and stuff.

 

We had the first snow of the winter last week, which was a little ominous. It melted pretty quickly and stuff, but It was kind of scary. Everything's fine, though.

General Conference was really great. We watched conference at the ward building. I really enjoyed it, and I felt like I probably appreciated it more than I've ever appreciated General Conference in my life. In particular, I really liked President Uchtdorf's talk, and this one by a Seventy who's name I think is Richard Maynes.

I'm pretty sure mail should go to the mission office. We're moving around kind of a lot right now (it's kind of a long story, but by the end of this transfer I think I'll have lived in three different members' homes), so probably it'd be best to send stuff to the office. 

Thanks for all the news and love.

Love, Peter