Thanksgiving should be great

Wow, it sounds like it's been a busy week in Oregon. I'm sure everyone's pretty ecstatic about the football business (we are :-)), that sounds pretty awesome. 

To answer your questions, to cope with the weather, we basically just wear a lot of clothing and try to stay warm. If there's too much snow/ice on the ground, we won't bike, and walk instead. Other than that, it's pretty much just normal work! Okay, so we have had quite a bit of snow, especially on Thursday of this week. Our area isn't that big, but it is split by a very busy road, so that does make things a little tricky.

For Thanksgiving week, most of it is normal. People are a little less available, but we try anyways. The actual day of Thanksgiving, we are encouraged to spend the day with members, and to try to share as many lessons with them that we can. It'll be pretty cool.
 
This week was a good week, although it was again a little bit slow. We had a couple of really cool experiences, though. 

We were finally able to visit a family that we've been trying to get in touch with for awhile, and shared a message with them. A really cool thing about that, also, was that they have an exchange student living with them, and she sat in on the lesson too! Hopefully we'll be able to visit the family and this girl more. The exchange student is from Holland, which is awesome, because that's where our Mission President served his mission! We actually texted him, and he said that he would love to come along to our next visit. We'll see how that goes.

We visited another family who attends church less frequently on Friday, and probably because it was unannounced, they had some friends over, who were really friendly. Because of that, we didn't really get to share much of a message, but we were able to introduce ourselves to the friends, and share a little bit about why we do what we do. 

And then the best thing: there's a person who we've been trying to get in touch with probably as long as I've been here. We'd called her a few times, and knocked on her door loads of times, but she hadn't responded. Then, on Thursday, she called us back, and we were able to set up an appointment! It was awesome--we should be seeing her this Tuesday.

So, that's about it for last week. Thanksgiving should be great, and I hope you guys all have a great time too.

Only one month until Christmas!

Love,
Peter

Service, teaching and chess

Thanks so much for all the news and love. It's great to hear about everything going on at home. I'm glad to hear that the sisters in the Philippines are fine--I had heard that all the missionaries had been found safe and sound, so that's good to hear. It's also good to hear that I'll be back in time for the new Star Wars movie :P.

It is a little weird how many people you guys peripherally know in Colorado. We had dinner with the family that my companion knows pretty well on Thursday night, and I assume that they're who the photos you got originated from. It was pretty crazy, I guess they know a guy in our Oregon ward really well, so we talked about that a little. Kinda bizarre.


We were not involved with the carving of the pumpkins--those were actually the Sisters' handiwork. If I remember correctly, we went to their house to talk to the member they live with, and we happened to get there just as they were getting back from somewhere (Okay, I probably don't remember this correctly.) Anyhow, the sisters showed up as we were messing with their pumpkins, and took the picture that I assume you have.

Every week I send a letter to the Mission President and this is basically an expanded version of the letter I sent:

This week was certainly interesting--with some great parts and some not so great parts. 

We had Zone conference on Thursday, and it was awesome--I really enjoyed the trainings we got from the President, Assistants, and others, and the role plays that we got to do (one was role-playing street contacting, and how we could really do a street contact talking about any principle of the gospel. The one where we were asked to do a street contact about the law of chastity was particularly fun.) I feel like I learned a lot. 

Apart from Zone Conference, the week was pretty good. We got to do service at a couple of different places, and to visit a couple of families who haven't been attending church regularly. With one of those families, we committed them to study the scriptures a lot more than they had been, and they seemed really excited about that, so that was good. 

On Friday evening, though, my companion started feeling pretty terrible, and continued feeling sick through Sunday--we weren't really sure what it was, partly because the symptoms kind of kept changing. So, we stayed in on Saturday and Sunday, although we were able to get to Ward Council and Church on Sunday, which was good. 

He's feeling better now, though, so hopefully we'll be able to do a lot more work this week.

Things have been generally going pretty well. Thanks for all the news and the love that you've been sending me. I love you so much.

Love,
Peter

And follow-up questions:

Okay, it's true, the pumpkins were really impressive. I think they did use stencils, though, so eh. 

When you're sick, you usually call the Mission President's wife, especially if you feel like you'll need medical attention, or if you have to stay inside. If you're homebound, there's a variety of things you could do. I read from the missionary library some, played chess with my companion a lot--he was in his bed, but I guess was really wanting to play chess.

Okay, chess has been fun, but we've been playing a little too much. It has been a lot more competitive--my companion won almost every game on Saturday and Sunday, even with him being sick.

Zone conference was from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m, so pretty long.

Oh, and:
My companion (going home next month) has been trying really hard not to get trunky, and he's doing pretty well, as far as I can tell. Sometimes it does get a little weird, but most of the time we do pretty darn well.