Merry Merry Christmas!

Merry Merry Christmas! It's the most wonderful time of the year or something like that.

It sounds like everyone in Oregon's had a great pre-Christmas week. That's a whole heck of a lot of concerts to go to, though. I'm jealous of course. Not many concert opportunities on the mission.

I'm happy it never gets down to -20 here in Colorado.

I think I can probably best tell you how the week went by telling you that I learned this week that Ibuprofen and Tylenol are wonderful, and that Robitussin tastes really nasty. Kinda got sick this week for a while, it kinda really sucked. Had to stay in on Thursday and Friday with what we're pretty sure is the flu. But we're getting better, so we're really hoping to be better by Christmas. But even though there were some not super happy things like being sick, the week was still good. 

We were able to find a new family of investigators, just by tracting (People are just letting us in left and right nowadays, I think it's the Christmas spirit or something like that.), and we were able to visit a couple of less-actives who really needed it.

We also had a pretty fun little event on Thursday that we were well enough to go to--we did a Christmas devotional, which was basically a mini zone conference. Plus all of the zones put on Christmas skits (ours was a like mission 12 days of Christmas) and we got free food. What could be better? 

PLUS they had a missionary choir that I sang in and that was really fun. Spanish wards honestly don't sing too well, so it was really cool to sing with a lot of people who can actually sing pretty well. So that was pretty fun I'd say.

I'm really looking forward to Christmas, let me tell you. We've got some pretty cool plans--we're going to have dinner and lunch with all of the missionaries in the ward, and visit a couple of members, and of course... SKYPE HOME YAY. 

Christmas is just really great, everyone. It's a really awesome time to just remember all the things Christ did for us. I hope you all know that I know he really is our Savior. That's why I'm here in Denver, and not at home for Christmas.

I love you all a ton.

 

Peter

"I'm happier"

Dear everyone,

First of all, pretty funny that you got to help out with the zone conference lunch. It's weird how things are so similar everywhere in the church. I kind of thought that was just a Colorado thing to have zone conference lunch provided by the stake, but yeah that's totally a thing we do here too. We also always sing to the sisters that made and served the lunch. Our song is just straight up the "Army of Helaman" without any changed lyrics except that at the end after the "to bring the world his truth" we say "and thank you for the food." So anyway we're basically pretty cool I think is how that works.

This week was pretty great for us. The biggest, most awesome thing, was that our investigator was baptized and confirmed! It was really, really awesome. There was kind of a little bit of stress leading up to it, not being able to find the baptismal clothing, and some other craziness, but as soon as the baptismal service started, it was just great. The first counselor in the bishopric did the actual baptism, and our bishop confirmed her yesterday, so that was pretty cool. I got to give a talk about the gift of the Holy Ghost at the actual baptism--I think that was the first time I've actually given a written talk in Spanish here. I mean, I've borne my testimony plenty of times, and done some other like impromptu stuff, but in terms of a talk talk, that was the first time. The whole time the Spirit was just super strong. It was really just amazing to see how much she's changed, how much she wants to do the right thing. As we've been teaching her, she's been talking about how much different she feels than before. And then after she was baptized, we were just telling her how happy we were for her, and she just told us "I'm happier." And you know that just felt so awesome. It really is an amazing experience to see someone change so much. We talked to her yesterday after she received the Holy Ghost, and she just told us that she felt so good. Leading up to her baptism she was feeling kind of nervous, but she said that she just felt completely calm and great. So basically I just can't come up with enough ways of saying that it is just completely great to be a missionary.

Another pretty cool experience came from a girl we've been helping to reactivate. Basically she's gone from completely not active when we got here to completely active now. I've mentioned her before, because she's really cool basically. Something really awesome is that most of her family is either less-active or nonmembers, it's just her and her mom that are going to church right now. Her Mom told us that her Dad is like really not friendly towards the church, and actually tried to get her to stop going to church. But apparently her reaction to that was a "He[ck] no!" So basically when I heard that I laughed a lot and fist-bumped her :).

 

And then after the baptismal service we had the ward Christmas party which was pretty good too. Had some weird dessert thing where you basically just make a really crispy (not burnt, not sure exactly how that works) tortilla, and then completely cover it in cinnamon sugar. That was really good. And of course, lately we've been singing a lot of Christmas carols at basically any meeting we go to ever. So that's a lot of fun.

Things are going great. We're finally being able to get into the Christmas spirit now that it's finally started to snow and it's gotten below 40 degrees outside. I hope everything's going well with you all. I don't have details about Christmas calls/skyping yet, but I'll obviously make sure to make that happen next Monday.

 

Love you all!

Peter

 

P.s. I don't have the classic "in baptismal clothing" picture because things were a little crazy, but here's a picture we took during the ward Christmas party.

Everything is awesome!

Dear Mom! And everyone else!

It's Christmas time, and it's awesome! Although the thing is basically we haven't been having any Christmassy weather for a while now, and we won't be having any this week apparently, so that's kind of weird. It's supposed to be in the 60s this week. But it's okay, we've been getting into the Christmas spirit anyways, listening to Christmas music, and putting up Christmas decorations (Thanks so much for contributing to that! The "I don't even know what it is sticky nativity thing" was really cool, and we were both duly impressed with the sabuda pop-up.)

It sounds like you've been having a pretty dang busy week. I will always be jealous of people who get to go to the symphony while I can't. Sounds like a pretty neat week. I was surprised that you still don't have a tree, but then I thought about it and it makes sense, it's just that like every single house I've gone to lately has their tree all set up and decorated and everything. I think Hispanics are way more into Christmas than Thanksgiving.

This week was a little bit slower for us--we were doing a lot of tracting, but that's okay. You probably remember that closer to the beginning of my mission we weren't doing too much of that, but lately we have definitely been doing more. But there were some great things about the week too! Some highlights:

This Sunday I got to give a baby blessing! That was suuuuuper weird. There's a family who's been returning to activity for the last few months, and the dad has the Aaronic priesthood, but not the Melchizidek, but they wanted their baby blessed, so they asked me to do it. It was really weird, but really great.

Our investigator is still doing really awesome. She's so cool. We had her baptismal interview on Tuesday, and she passed, and it's just been really great. She is doing awesome, and she is so ready. The experience of teaching her has just been awesome. Her baptism is going to be the same night as our ward Christmas party, like immediately before it, so we're hoping a lot of people come for the baptism and stay for the party. The bishop's announced it the last two Sundays, so that's been really cool. 

I'm sorry, that doesn't seem like a lot, but that's basically the cool things that happened this week. We also were able to get in contact with some cool less-actives that I'd never been able to talk to, so that was pretty neat.

There are definitely some people who I hope to be able to keep in touch with as the years go by. I think one of the best parts of serving a mission is the huge variety of people you get to meet, and I definitely want to be able to keep up those relationships. There's definitely a lot of people I've gotten to know and love here that I probably would never even have talked to in "normal life".

Basically things are going well, my companion's awesome, being a missionary is awesome, and yeah basically that's it!

Again, thanks so much for the package, that was fun. I love you all a lot!

 

Love,

Peter

He is the Gift

Hi!

First of all, thanks so much for all the pictures! That was pretty great and awesome and made me a little bit jealous, but that's okay. And then I'm super jealous of the new game store thing. Last P-day we stopped by this game store in our area that was about like a quarter the size of Rainy Day Games, so anyways I'm jealous I think that's clear.

I'm gonna go ahead and answer your questions first!

1. I don't really have any requests for Christmas... maybe just that it not be something bulky. I'm kind of running very thin on luggage space, so that's fun. Probably the most like practical thing would be maybe like a new pair of pants?

2. I don't really know (how our ward with celebrate Christmas). I do know that members of our ward like Christmas a lot, e.g. one of our investigators has had a Christmas tree up for like the past 3 weeks, so that should be fun! We'll be having a Christmas activity a couple weeks from now, and that'll be fun.

3. Yes I have seen the new video about Christmas He is the Gift. In fact, the church has made these special pass-along cards for us all about the video, so we've basically been giving those out at every door we knock, so yeah, we've seen it. It's pretty cool, huh? I especially like how it invites us at the end to like do something about it. Not just be like "yeah Christmas!" but actually to act. And the music's pretty cool too.

4. What do district leaders do? Not a ton. (That's a palindrome). So far, we set up district meetings, answer a ton of questions from the missionaries in the district, and try to help encourage the missionaries to do good work! So pretty fun!

So this week was pretty great. Had a good Thanksgiving--there's this Anglo family in the ward, and they had us over for dinner along with a lot of their family, so we had a pretty standard Thanksgiving dinner. We even had Funeral Potatoes! So that was fun. The rest of Thanksgiving, when we weren't eating, we went and visited a lot of members and less-active members, so that was pretty cool. It still felt like Thanksgiving, but we were still working hard. So the best of both worlds, I guess!

Our investigator is getting closer and closer to being baptized! We had to push it back one week, so now it's gonna be the 13th, but it's gonna be awesome. Bishop announced it in church on Sunday, and we've been teaching her a ton this week, and it's been great. We taught her the law of tithing, and fasting, and she has no problems with any of it; she's just really prepared. It's really cool to just see how much she's changing and how much she wants to take those important steps in her life.

Things are going pretty good here. The transfer made things a little crazy, but things are getting moving - there were some transfers and some new missionaries so just kind of weird.

I hope you have a great week! I love you all!

Love,

Peter

When you feel like you're making a difference in someone's life...

Hey!

So Thanksgiving's probably going to be pretty low-key this year, it isn't a really big thing in the Hispanic culture, so not too different. We will be having Thanksgiving dinner with a white family in our ward, so that should be fun! As in they go to our ward because they really like Spanish but they are both white. They used to live in Portland! They're pretty cool. And then our ward mission leader is gonna have us over for a Mexican Thanksgiving too, with this really good Mexican soup called posole, it's really good. So it should be a good day.

So this week was pretty good for us! We've had a lot of pretty neat experiences. A woman we're teaching is getting closer and closer to baptism, so that's really cool. We taught her about the word of wisdom yesterday, and as soon as we mentioned coffee, she just immediately was like "ooh, I guess we can't drink coffee anymore!" So anyways that was cool.

This week we also started teaching someone really cool. She's living with some members, and has come to church a few times. She's from the Dominican Republic, and was taught by missionaries there, but she's basically completely forgotten everything except the first vision. BUT she tells us that she completely knows the church is true and wants to be baptized! So that was really neat.

One more cool thing. We've been teaching this 15-year old girl this transfer, who was less active. She started to go to church basically the first week of this transfer, and it seems like she's been liking it. But she basically knows nothing about the gospel, so we've been teaching her a lot of the like really simple stuff. But anyways, we had dinner at her house yesterday (Her mom's a super active member), and she told us about a missionary experience she had! She was apparently talking to her brother's girlfriend, who's going through a really hard time, and she basically just bore her testimony to her! She told her about how much happier she felt going to church, and learning more about the gospel. So that was really cool to hear. It's those times when you really feel like you're making a difference in someone's life. Really neat.

So with our companionship nothing happened with transfers! Yay! But all of the other companionships in the district changed, so that's fun. Also, I'm now the district leader in the ward, so that'll be a fun new challenge thing I guess.  Things are really just going great. My companion's awesome, we're working hard, and it's pretty cool. Love,Peter

Things have been cool, literally and figuratively

Well, it sounds like a pretty dang eventful week! You guys have got me feeling pretty jealous about the board games. That is one thing hat I realized was a kind of a big part of our family-like tradition, and so it's annoying that there's not really much opportunity to do any of that stuff here. But it's okay I guess.

The weather has been pretty dang chilly. It is a dry cold, I guess you would say, and I've got pretty good cold weather gear thanks to you guys, but when it's like 2 degrees outside, it's still really cold. It's a little disturbing when it's like 20 degrees and when you go outside you're like "oh, it's not so bad today!". So anyways it's cold. And I think we probably got your missing snow over here in Denver. It's kind of really cold and snowy here. So I'm having fun experiencing driving in the snow for the first time ever! This week should be better though, supposedly!

W/r/t transfers, it's not like a guarantee that we'll be staying together, but it's a pretty sure thing. There are a lot of reasons why a trainer might be separated from his trainee, but I'm feeling like we'll probably be staying together. We'll find out on Saturday!

Anyways, for us this week was pretty dang busy! We had kind of a lot going on. We had zone conference on Thursday, which was pretty cool. The theme was "change", so it definitely left me a lot to think about. Obviously there's a lot I can change before I'm perfect, so I guess it helped me think about that more, and to set some more specific goals for just you know how to be better. So that was cool. 

On a kind of sad note, we always have car inspections at zone conference, and well to make a long story short we won the award for worst car! We didn't even get a prize! Just shame! I guess next time I should probably take the Halloween window clings off the windows before inspections...

Good thing about this week, we were able to teach a lot more investigators than we have in the past while. We actually doubled the number of investigator lessons we had from last week. And it was pretty cool! I'll share a pretty cool highlight right here: So we went looking for a person who'd been taught by the missionaries about two years ago, to see if he would be interested in learning again (especially because our records didn't have any reason why he had stopped investigating the church.) So when we knocked on his door, his sister answered, and explained to us a kind of crazy situation. So a while after this man had stopped investigating, he was in some horrible accident or something, and had gotten really hurt and suffered some really severe brain damage. He's still alive and stuff, but he can barely talk and is not super coherent. And because he's here illegally, he can't really get the best care. So we weren't really able to teach this guy, but his sister told us that she felt like our visit was from God! She's taking care of him, and it's been really hard for her, and she needed something to help, and she felt like God sent us there. We gave her a Book of Mormon, and she said she'd definitely read it! So that was pretty freaking awesome. The only thing is that she's gonna move to Mexico in like two weeks. So we're gonna give the Mexican missionaries a great referral!

Another pretty cool thing! We had two less-active families come to church for the first time in a long while yesterday, even with the cold and snow and stuff! It was really cool to be able to see the difference, especially talking to one of them after church. He said that he felt so much different, that he felt the way that he felt back when he was active. So that was just super awesome.

I'm sorry for the pretty short email! The thing is that we're gonna go play a dungeons-and-dragons style game based on star wars, and we kind of have to hurry or else there will literally be no time to play. As it is probably half of the three hours we have scheduled will probably be setup and character creation, you know how it is :). Kind of funny, we have an investigator (part of a part-member family) who's super into Star Wars, so we took some suggestions from him re: what our characters should be. So that's pretty fun!

Anyways, things have been cool, literally and figuratively. I love you all! Sorry to break up the streak of photos, but I forgot my camera today :(.

Loads of love,Peter!

How radically different Joseph Smith's theology was...and zombie polar bears?

Hey!

Thanks for the responses to my questions! I really appreciate it! I figure as many personal insights I can get from investigators (I know you don't like that word, sorry :)) about the process of being taught, the better. I'll be honest, sometimes it's a little hard to put oneself in their shoes and think about how it would feel to be learning about all this stuff.

And then okay I'm so jealous of the Terryl Givens fireside, you don't even know. Reminded me of a talk I read by him a few months back about how radically different Joseph Smith's Theology was, and how much that had to do with the strength of the church. (http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=1508).

My companion

It was a pretty great week! It started out pretty awesomely, with our P-day being pretty dang great. It was a "free day" at the Denver Zoo, which is in our ward, so we went there with some other missionaries, which was a blast, even though it was a little chilly. Then on the way home I introduced my companion to Voodoo Doughnuts, which was pretty great. I'll send some pictures!

It's like a freaking zombie polar bear!

That lion was so close to the glass!

Wednesday was a pretty interesting day, and kind of showed some of the great parts, and some of the not so great parts of missionary work. We had two appointments cancel on us, and an investigator tell us that she wasn't interested in meeting with us anymore, which was pretty disappointing. But there were some great things too! We met and taught a less-active that I'd never met, taught, or even heard of before, which was pretty cool. We did some pretty cool service at the food bank, and met some pretty cool people there, and a member took us out to Red Robin for dinner, which was pretty sweet!

We also were able to set the investigator that we've been teaching a lot, who's husband is a member, on a baptismal date! We actually had dinner with her on Friday (super good. She cooks really well.), and then we taught about the plan of salvation and invited her to be baptized on December 6th, and she accepted, and it was great!

So it was a pretty good week. I went on exchanges with our district leader, and it was pretty cool. It's been a while since I've been with a missionary who's been out for more than a few months, so it was kind of cool.

So basically it was a good week. I love you all a lot!

 

Love,

Peter

I know, it's a miracle.

Hey!

First of all to answer the first question, yes I very much liked sleeping in guilt-free! It was awesome. Although the problem was our phone didn't change time until like 8:00 in the morning, so it woke us up at 5:30, and it took me like 10 minutes to figure out that I could actually go back to sleep.

With Halloween, it actually didn't change much, and we were still able to do a lot of work. It's really nice having a companion who really wants to work, and hasn't been like jaded by the routine of missionary work yet, because it gives me a lot more energy, and motivates me to keep working hard. So yeah it was a good week. The only less-productive time was actual Halloween day, when we were asked to be in our homes at 6:00. We didn't actually get home until like 6:45, but we made an effort. So we watched a church movie and reminisced about Fairview for a bit. Apparently my companion has actually been to the Fairview house! I guess when he was younger he was pretty close with Mason, and Mason took him over to the house. Pretty insane! It really is a ridiculously tiny world.

To answer your question, we did not see hardly anything for dia de los muertos. The only thing we saw was a picture of a less-active at a costume party with her face painted like one of those decorated Mexican skulls. Apart from that, nada. Kind of disappointing, but I guess that's what happens when you serve here in the states.

To just give a rundown of the week, things have been going pretty well. We had a pretty great lesson with the lady that I've been like focusing on the last two weeks, and she was at church yesterday, which was great, because we had some great testimonies, and the impromptu gospel principles lesson given by our bishopric's second counselor was about gaining a testimony! So that was awesome! She participated quite a bit in the lesson and it was just really cool. She even came without her member husband, who was sick! So that was super legit.

District - last transfer

A bit of less exciting news, though. If you remember that girl who we were teaching who has been coming to church for a while but doesn't speak Spanish? So her mom had given her permission to be baptized, and she had set a date to be baptized, but then this week we got a text from her saying that she doesn't feel ready yet. This was after she was acting really excited, and had set things up so that she could get baptized, and everything. That was really hard. I think maybe she just kind of freaked out a bit when it felt like it was actually going to happen. So we basically just bore her our testimonies that we knew that baptism was important, and that she didn't have to be perfect to be baptized. We'll see what happens with that. But I do know that when she does get baptized, her testimony will probably be even stronger for having gone through some of this uncertainty and stuff. So that's the bright side, I guess.

We went up to the food bank on Wednesday and did some pretty cool service there--we basically run around their big warehouse and collect large quantities of food for different organizations that are going to distribute them, so that was a lot of fun.

So all in all, it was a pretty good week, although, you know, there's upsides and downsides to everything.

With family member where we lived last transfer

Spiritual thought of the week: "God is not a God of superheroes, nor of people without weaknesses, for such beings do not exist" --Gerald Causse, 2nd Counselor Presiding Bishopric. (http://speeches.byu.edu/index.php?act=viewitem&id=2157) Isn't it great that the Lord uses us weak people to do stuff? I mean, he's kind of God, He could just do anything He wants to happen. But that's not really the game plan, because He wants us to grow. You all should watch or listen to that talk, by the way, it's awesome.

Also, here are some pictures! I know, it's a miracle.

Love,

Peter

It really is pretty amazing...

Hey!

Thanks for the email, the advice, and the report on the week! It sounds like a very rainy week, hopefully it was a little fun too :). It's actually been really nice here, which is strange, but I think that's gonna change pretty soon. It dropped like 30 degrees from yesterday to today... so that's fun.

So far, training's been a pretty great experience. Although sometimes I feel like maybe my companion's a little bit too enthusiastic, I get ahold of myself and try to remember that it's a great thing, not something to try to stifle or anything like that.

And then the power outage sounds like fun. Weird, I don't think I've ever actually been in a power outage here in Denver. I think I've woken up in the mornings a couple of times to see the clock blinking like there had been one, but not actually been awake for one. Weird.

So this was a pretty good week! We were able to teach a lot of pretty cool people--lots of less-active members here, if you remember from last time I was here in this exact same area 8 weeks ago (that's still weirding me out.), and some pretty great investigators too. Here's some highlights!

1) That lady that I told you guys about last week, who we "picked back up" from being a former investigator last week. So pretty funny story. So we had an appointment with her on Thursday, and we showed up, and her less-active husband said she wasn't there! He'd just come from work, and she wasn't there, and he didn't know where she was. So that was pretty disappointing, but we shared a short message with him and then went out and talked to a different investigator (who we found out had started reading the Book of Mormon without us even asking her to, that was pretty cool.) So at about 9:00 p.m. on the way home, we get a call from the lady we had the appointment with. She told us that she was there all along at home, she was just asleep with her kid, and didn't realized we were there! Her husband hadn't had time to find her when we showed up :). So we set up an appointment for the next day, and she was there for that and she was great, and she and her husband came to church on Sunday, which was great!

2) We had a pretty crazy experience on Wednesday. About a half-hour before an appointment, when we were coming back from a service project, our Elders' Quorum President called us and asked if we could come by and give a blessing at a hospital. So the hospital was like 5 minutes away, so we accepted. When we got there, at about 3:30, they told us that the guy we were gonna give a blessing to was in some tests and would be out in about 10 minutes. So then at about 5:00 we left the hospital, after having waited a long time, given the blessing, translated for the hospital staff, and a lot of craziness. It was weird experience, but it was good. And we were able to reschedule the appointment that we totally missed :).

3) We had a lesson with a less-active who's been trying to return to activity for a few months, and we taught her about service, especially in the church. She's a really like charity-minded person (she's getting ready to set up her own nonprofit), so we thought that'd be great. So at the end we invited her to talk to the bishop about getting a calling, and she got so excited! She didn't even know that was a possibility, and the idea of serving in the church made her really excited. I think sometimes we take it for granted that the church has callings, but when we really think about it, it really is pretty amazing that Heavenly Father allows us kind of really imperfect people to essentially run his church. Pretty cool.

 

Anyways, it's been a great week. I hope everything's going great with you. I love you a lot! 2 months until we get to Skype :)!

Oh, and thanks so much for the package. I really appreciated it. We've got the window clings up on the car, and the spiderman is already assembled. Thanks so much.

Love,

Peter

And she opened up the door...

Hey!

First off, I do remember singing Holding Hands Around the World in the primary program, and I remember standing with other kids, and it's definitely not our last primary program ever. You still have all the grandchildren that will hopefully exist, if any of us can get anyone to marry us.

I have been thinking about when I first got to Colorado. It's weird, because even though it wasn't very long ago, it's still surprisingly hard to remember. I guess you just get used to doing things some way, and forget there ever was a different way to do it.

Honestly, though, I think my companion is a lot more prepared than I was when I was new. So a lot of the freaking out experiences and stress aren't so much of a thing, at least for now. He's super great, I think I might be learning more from him than he's learning from me. I feel like my main responsibility here is to help him learn Spanish :).

To answer your other questions, it's pretty great being back in the ward, but a little weird as well. One thing that's pretty different is that previously, my other companion knew the area better than I did, so he made a lot of planning decisions. But now, I'm the one who knows the area, so it's like different, but cool.

We live in the same members' house that I lived in when I was here before. Yeah, it's the exact same area, living with the exact same members.

We do service at a couple of different places. There's this Oregon Food Bank-type place that we go to about once a week, and that's pretty great. There's also a couple of thrift stores that we can go to, but it's pretty boring there, so we probably won't be going there too often. And tomorrow, we're going to go help out this member to make Tamales for service! It's gonna be pretty dang fun, I think.

Pretty dang cool thing: my companion is actually from Fairview! So we've done a little bit of reminiscing, which is cool. Apparently Dad's cousin is in his ward, so that's kinda fun. And here in Colorado, yes, he's my first companion from Utah. One of my companions in the MTC was from Ogden.

Anyways, this week has been pretty sweet. We've been able to visit a lot of people, and hopefully we've been able to help them some. One really cool thing, is that when I was serving here before, me and my companion were teaching this really great part-member family. They were coming to church, they even went to someone's baptism! They seemed super cool. But then a couple weeks after I left, she (the investigator in the family), dropped the missionaries! She said she didn't really want to meet with them, so that was a huge bummer. But I remembered how cool she was, and so last Tuesday, I stopped by to try and see her. And she opened up the door and she was totally interested again! So that was pretty legit. What she said is that she was less interested in learning from the missionary who was my replacement. So we were able to teach her for reals yesterday night, and it's gonna be great, is basically all there is to it. I'm really excited. She's super cool.

On Thursday, we got a text from our zone leaders, with a referral! They'd just tracted into her and they said she seemed interested, but only spoke Spanish. So the next day, we went and tried it out, and we were able to teach both her and her husband, and they're pretty great. So that was something that was pretty cool!

Another super cool thing is that we had stake conference this weekend, and do you remember that one time we had stake conference broadcasted from Salt Lake? Well we had that here in Colorado! It was really cool. Craig C. Christensen, from the seventy, Cheryl Esplin, from the general primary presidency, and Elders Bednar and Scott spoke. It was super cool. One thing that Elder Bednar said really stuck with me, I'm probably butchering the quote, but it was something like "In the eternal sense, there is no such thing as sacrifice", because we know that everything we sacrifice in this life will help us to become a better person in the long run, and be worthy to live with God again. So it's not really a sacrifice! We get way more blessings than we could ever sacrifice in terms of things.

 

Anyways long story short it was a pretty great week. I'm glad to hear you guys have been doing good as well!

I promise pictures next week, I swear.

Love,

Peter

He finally got his visa!

Hey!

So well I'll just cut right to the chase with the whole transfers thing: I am back in the area that I just left six weeks ago and my companion is from Utah, who just got to Colorado yesterday. He finally got his visa! Ha, just kidding, I'm training. I'm only freaking out a little bit. Ha, just kidding, I'm kind of freaking out a lot, but it'll be okay. 

The ward I left was basically demolished by transfers--out of the 8 missionaries there, only 3 of them are still in there. 3 of them finished their missions and went home (including my companion), and I and a sister missionary went to the ward I left. So basically what happened was that me and my former companion (the guy from England) switched places. Kind of really weird, but that's okay.

It sounds like a pretty awesome week! Lots of family and lots of fun, I guess. Also I'm thinking you may have to upgrade to an actual camera, those pictures were kind of blurry :).

So anyways it was a kind of insane week! On Monday, we had to go to the DMV so that my companion could get his drivers' license renewed, and ended up waiting for like an hour before they called his number, then told him 15 seconds later his proof of address didn't work. So yeah, the DMV sucks, even as a missionary. 

On Wednesday, we got to teach this really awesome part-member family, where the Mom is a nonmember, and the Dad is less-active. They are super cool, but there's something missing. We taught them a little bit about revelation, and also showed them President Uchtdorf's talk about receiving revelation! It was pretty great.

Thursday, we watched Meet the Mormons! That was pretty awesome (partly because we got to watch a movie, I'll just be honest), I really enjoyed it. It wasn't like exactly what I was expecting, but it was really cool to see a lot of different perspectives on what it means to be a Mormon. And of course, the clip from the Simpsons at the very beginning had us all laughing a lot. And our mission president got us popcorn, so yeah.

Friday was pretty crazy--my companion and another missionary from the Ward who was also going home had to go up to the Mission home for their departing interviews, so me and his companion stayed together down here. Friday's our weekly planning day, so it wasn't too crazy, but it made it a lot more real that my companion was going home. And then Friday night, one of the Assistants called me to ask if I'd be willing to train! I was kind of expecting it (there were 9 Spanish missionaries coming in that transfer), but it was still kind of freaky.

Saturday I probably ate like a full cow's worth of meat, it was insane. So much Carne Asada, you wouldn't believe it. And then I got told I was going back to the other ward, which is pretty dang bizarre.

And then Sunday my companion and the other elder left for the mission home and didn't come back! I was with his companion for the rest of the night, and it was really weird.

And then yesterday was probably the weirdest day of all. It was super crazy. The other Elder and I were freaking out the whole day. It was insane. Then we went up to the mission office, picked up our new companions, and went back. We did have a really awesome dinner that night, though. So that was good.

Well, I'm still freaking out a little, but I'm sure I'll be fine. Hope everything keeps going great on the home front. I love you a lot!

Peter

Trujillo Family from Ecuador Answers the Call to Serve

I really, really enjoyed General Conference

Hey!

Well I'm glad we had something in common besides a last name this weekend :D. I really, really enjoyed General Conference as well. It was pretty great. And yeah, I could definitely see the themes going on, especially when we had three straight talks about following the prophet.

I really, really enjoyed President Monson's talk. The content was great, but even more than that, I loved the spirit he emanates. You could really feel that he was a prophet. At the beginning of conference, and even in priesthood session, you could tell that he's starting to slow down, and maybe isn't as physically capable as he was before. But when he started speaking, he just lit up with the spirit, and stayed that way until he'd finished. It was so clear that that wasn't his own strength, but that Heavenly Father was helping him fulfill his calling.

With the conference questions:

1. We watched it at our chapel.

2. There were quite a few missionaries, probably like a total of 14? 8 from our ward, 4 from D4, 2 from the English ward.

3. We watched the English (and portugese and Cantonese) talks in English, and the Spanish Talks in Spanish! We switched rooms when the language changed :).

4. We watched the Sunday Morning Session at a part-member family's house, and that was pretty great. They made us pancakes :)!

5. It's insane - only one more general Conference on a mission! aaahhhh.

About Meet the Mormons, yes, it's a thing here in Colorado, too. In fact, it'll be showing just down the street at the movie theater where the shooting happened! Yay! But even before it comes out in theaters, we're going to watch it as missionaries! We'll be seeing it this Thursday! I'm kind of really excited for it.

And thanks for the Mr. Incredible picture, that was hilarious.

Aside from conference being awesome, it was a pretty okay week. It's still kind of slow, but there were some really cool things. 

There's this less-active that we've been working with for the past few weeks, who hasn't been to church in like 4 years or so. He's not even on the records of the ward, some of the previous missionaries just happened to find him. Well, he went to conference on Sunday, and really liked it, and when we visited him later that night, he told us that although he'd been away from the church for a long time, now he was back, and he didn't want to go away again. It was super awesome. We'd also given him a large-print copy of the Scriptures earlier that week, and he was so excited, it was awesome. 

In other alternative scripture study news, we gave an audio copy of the Book of Mormon to a returning member who's older and can't read because she gets dizzy whenever she tries, and she was able to listen to the first part of 1st Nephi, and it was great! I was kind of not really expecting her to be able to figure the technology out, but she totally did, and she loved it. It's just really great to be able to help people find those blessings. Really cool.

Hahahahahahahokay I have had an interesting experience with cooking my own food. Definitely. We haven't really been cooking too much at our own house lately, because we don't really have a kitchen, so mostly we've been eating cereal and sandwiches for breakfast and lunch. But one day when I was on exchanges, we had a pretty great experience. We didn't really have much food, but we wanted to have some lunch, so we basically just put together everything we had. Which amounted to Hamburger helper pasta and sauce (without the hamburger), cold spaghetti, corn, tortilla chips, and some other stuff that I don't remember. It was really bad. I definitely do not recommend doing that yourself.

One, one other tidbit thing. Did you guys watch the world report? If you did, you probably saw the thing about the family from Ecuador that has 4 missionaries out? Well if you didn't you can watch it on my blog I think. Well anyways, the sister that it says is in the Colorado Denver South Mission is actually not, she's in our mission. She actually came out with me! I've never served around her, but I've talked to her a lot, and she's real cool and stuff.

I'm sorry, I still don't have any pictures, but I will try as hard as I can to get that situation worked out by next Monday. I promise!

I love you so much!

Peter

I've realized that Chex mix is a weakness of mine.

Oh my goodness it sounds like it's gonna be a pretty dang interesting week for you! Good luck!

I appreciate the news updates! Super exciting for Taylor, and I'm extremely jealous of the Chex Mix. I've realized that Chex mix is a weakness of mine. I can't buy it too often from the store because I know I'll eat it in about 2 days, and that's just kind of a waste of money :/.

Okay I'm just going to go ahead an answer the questions! So service! There's this really cool service project that we've been going to this transfer, that's called the Crisis Center. It's basically a homeless shelter, and it's just really great to help out there. We've been doing a lot of stuff, from making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to mowing their lawn, to cleaning out some rooms, and it's really great. The person who works the most with us is "Mama D", who is this awesome, extremely sassy black lady. She's basically the best part of service. 

And we have been having some pretty great weather lately. The only thing is, I kind of want it to rain more! It has rained a bit, but it always seems like it rains for like 5 minutes and then stops. I'm kind of missing the consistency of Oregon rain :).

This week was pretty good for us! It started out pretty slow, but we've seen a lot of good things the rest of the week. 

On Saturday, we found our first new investigator of the transfer (that's not a great thing for the rest of the transfer, but it was pretty exciting), he's a cool guy! He's 18, and it seems like his family just moved from Mexico, but I can't really tell. Hopefully we'll be able to see him a lot more. 

Another pretty cool thing was on Wednesday, we got to go out on splits with the ward leadership, and a bunch of people from the stake leadership, to go visit less active members. I went with the Ward YM president, and the Stake YM president and one of his counselors, and that was a pretty cool experience. I had a really cool experience at the very end, as well, when there was some like review going on with the Stake and the ward. The Stake YM president gave some advice to our YM president, and I could really just feel that it was revelation. It was really cool to get that sort of testimony that the YM president really was called by God, and that he did have that authority.

Apart from that, it was a pretty normal week. Visited quite a few less-active families, had a member take us out to get Pho, which was great, and yeah.

I'm really looking forward to General Conference! While emailing, I was listening to President Uchtdorf's Talk from Womens' conference, and that was pretty rad. Everyone should listen to/watch it because it's great.

Anyways, It's been pretty great here, and I hope everyone has a great week. I'll be praying for you!

 

Love,

Peter 

This week was kind of slow again

Hey!

It sounds like it's been a pretty entertaining week.

I'm pretty glad that I get to serve a mission too! It's pretty great. 

This week was kind of slow again--we had like 12 appointments cancel! But there were some pretty cool things too! We got to go to the temple, which was pretty awesome! Deseret Book is right next to the temple, so we went there as well. I got a book that they give in the MTC for missionaries who are learning Portuguese! So maybe I'll figure out how to speak a little bit of that by the time I'm home! That'd be pretty cool. 

We also had a pretty cool zone meeting, where we were trained about a couple of awesome things. One particularly interesting thing was we had one training about like family history work, but the main thing was to help us understand what is the spirit of Elijah. So they had us all tell stories in groups about our families. Then our zone leader asked us how we felt while we were sharing that. I guess those feelings of like happiness and love are like the spirit of Elijah! Who knew?

So aside from all that, we've been mostly working with less-actives and members, and trying to find more investigators, because we don't really have any right now. So we were actually able to get in contact with a lot of less-actives that it seems like haven't been taught or contacted in a really long time, so that was pretty cool (those were some of the appointments that cancelled, though, which was less happy...). Anyways, this week we're going to be doing more finding, and it's going to be great.

It's been a little bit of a slow week for us, but we've been working hard, and so hopefully things will pick up this week. Kind of fun story: We had dinner yesterday at probably the biggest, nicest house that I've been to since February, with the family in the ward that's probably the most well-off. Where do they get their money, you might ask? Well, he owns a Landscaping company. This is where sterotypes come from!

I hope things are all going great for you all. It was a kind of uneventful week for us this week, so sorry I'm not writing a super ton. But it's great to be here in Aurora. I really do love it.

Love,

Peter

I get to see Aurora every day

Hey!

Well first of all I'll tell you that there aren't really going to be any pictures today. Sorry. I've temporarily misplaced the cable that connects the camera to the computer. But don't worry! I'll find it soon and then send you some pictures probably!

I'm curious about how the sister missionaries are doing the whole facebook thing. That's completely not a thing in our mission. I actually kind of hope it never becomes a thing, at least while I'm here. I think that'd be kind of weird. But maybe it'd be great, I don't know.

I hope everything's going good, and that people are getting adjusted to being back in school again. For us, this has been a pretty good week. Better than last week, at least. Things are going pretty well. It is a bit of a task to get used to the new area, but it's good. I think the biggest things that's harder is just going from an area where there was quite a bit of work going on to an area where there isn't a ton of stuff, and having to work on getting that I guess "picked up".

As I was talking about last week, we're trying to help the members to strengthen their conversion, and it's been going pretty well. Something pretty cool happened with one family--We were kind of demonstrating the way it works to study Preach My Gospel, and this guy just was pretty stoked about it. He was like, yeah, this is way better than just reading it. He said he was actually learning stuff! So that's good! I think when we just read through the scriptures, it's nice and all, we can feel the spirit, but when we really study a topic or something, we can be taught by the spirit, which is what it's really all about.

We've also been able to find some less-actives that have been kind of out of the picture for a while, so that was good. We were finally able to talk to this one guy who's been working on getting back to activity for a long time, and he came to church this Sunday! I don't necessarily think that it was because of us, he's got a lot of like personal willpower as well, but it was really cool to see his desire to act on the things he believes.

It was a bit harder with investigators this week, though. The investigator family that probably had the most potential dropped us this week via text, which kind of sucked. But we've been doing a lot of finding work, which was good! And we'll be doing a lot more this week. Yay!

Well, I'm sorry you guys didn't get to see the Aurora. If it's any consolation, I get to see Aurora every day :). Beyond bad jokes, I'm very jealous of the hiking and camping trips and stuff. I guess it's only when you're not even allowed to go camping, and there's almost nowhere to hike that you realize how much you like doing that sort of thing.

One pretty cool thing also: So this Saturday, we had something pretty cool called "Mission Tour", which is a thing that happens every year, where a general authority comes to kind of inspect the mission, and to train us. So Elder Lawrence of the 2nd Quorum of the Seventy came this year, and it was pretty cool. He gave a 2-hour training about how important it is to be obedient (One thing from that training was that serving a mission is really a Launchpad for the rest of your adult life. In the LDS culture, the mission really is the beginning of adulthood, and the kind of missionary you are will have a pretty strong influence on the rest of your life.), and that was pretty good. Another pretty dang awesome thing was that his wife also gave a talk, and it was awesome. She's been a seminary teacher all  her life (apparently she was the first woman to graduate from the religious studies program at BYU?), and so she gave a talk about the House of Israel, the Gathering of Israel, and how that applies to our work as missionaries. There were some pretty interesting, kind of deep-doctrine stuff going on there. Pretty cool.

Btw you should check out this talk, it's pretty great! It's by Elder Bruce C. Hafen, and it's about facing ambiguity, and it's great. http://speeches.byu.edu/index.php?act=viewitem&id=651

So anyways that was the week, it was pretty cool.

I hope everyone at home has a great week!

 

Love,

Peter

I got over myself, thank goodness.

Hey!

Wow, this is super weird that it's the second time on my mission that everyone's going back to school. I mean, the last time was like only 2 weeks in, but it's still weird.

Okay don't worry, even if I was kind of really sad to leave the last ward, I'm doing great. I got over myself, thank goodness. My new ward is pretty cool too. There are a lot of really cool people. There hasn't been a ton of work going on here, investigator-wise, but we're going to really try to help pick that up this transfer. But the members and less-actives are really cool! I'm excited to work here.

Thanks for all the news. I'm still disappointed that my brother didn't wait for me to finish his eagle project, but I think I'll get over it. I have actually played pandemic! One of my companions owned it, so we played it a couple of times when we were together. I'm looking forward to seeing the lego movie.

So yeah, things have actually been going pretty great. We've been getting to know the area. We're kind of trying to get to know it together. Long story there, but my companion doesn't know the area too well either. Last transfer he was sick for two weeks, and then had to work two areas when one of the elders in the ward had to go home early for school. So it's been a little crazy, neither of us knows the area very well. But things have been going good. We've been getting to know the members, and the less-actives, and some of the investigators, although there aren't too many of those.

An idea that we've been trying to work with is to help the members learn how to use Preach My Gospel. I've been realizing lately how cool it is! If you know how to use it, it can help you learn how to study, learn how to follow the spirit, learn the basic doctrines of the gospel, learn about the Book of Mormon, learn how to become like Christ, etc etc. So it's pretty great, you all should probably read it too.

I heard Stanford's off to a pretty good start, although I did hear they did not exactly win against USC, which is sad. You'll have to keep me updated with the NCAA! Actually you probably won't have to. The family that we live with has a 13-year-old son who is absolutely obsessed with football, so he should be able to keep me informed. But know that I'm rooting Stanford on from here in Colorado!

So but anyways things are going good. The missionaries in the ward are pretty great and fun to be with, and the members are awesome too. I went on exchanges on Saturday (I think that's the quickest into the transfer I've ever gone on exchanges), and that was cool. I actually taught this one really cool investigator who I'd taught on exchanges also in my previous ward, but who'd moved to this ward, so that was kind of cool.

Love,Peter

This is going to be awesome too.

Hi everyone!

It's a little weird, but I got transferred! I don't really understand why, but after just 6 weeks in the ward, I got transferred right across the street to the other Spanish ward. It was really crazy. I know when I first found out about it, I was just super sad. I just felt like there was so much more I could do there, and that I didn't understand why I was leaving, and that I loved the people in that area so much. But I know that it'll be okay, and that things will all turn out. I really do hope I can come back to that area someday, though. It was awesome. But this is going to be awesome, too.

I guess it's a lot easier to predict when someone is going to be transferred than when they aren't. Usually, if you've been there for 3 or more transfers, you'd get transferred (which is why it's a little weird that I, not my companion, got transferred). It's actually interesting, if you don't get along with a companion, it's actually more likely that you'll stay with him until you get along than that you'd be immediately transferred away from him.

I am still driving, thank goodness. Our car was in the shop until this morning, so we had to bike yesterday evening, but now we're good.

This ward is much smaller. As opposed to the other ward, which covers 4 stakes, D3 (as we call it :)), only covers one, the Aurora Stake. I think there's actually more members in this ward. And there's 4 sets of missionaries here, just like in the other two Spanish wards.

So my former companion is still in that same area, for his 4th transfer, and his 4th companion. It's pretty crazy. I've met my new companion before, and he's a pretty great guy. So he was in the same zone as me for a couple of transfers. He was actually in the ward where I was trained! it's gonna be a great transfer, and we're going to do a lot of work!

But uh to answer your question, the work is going well in my former ward! Probably the most exciting thing is this one investigator that we're working with has just continued to be awesome. I think I told you about her last time. Her husband is a member, but she isn't. But she's been doing great. It really seems like she's just doing everything she can to find out if the Church is true. She even came to a baptismal service on Saturday, and it seemed like she really liked it. So hopefully my companion will tell me if and when she gets baptized. So, some really cool things going on.

So also though I guess I can describe where I used to live, and then where I actually do live right now. So we did live in a pretty suburban little development of like I don't really know maybe you'd call them condos? They were little houses that were being rented, I don't know what you'd call that. But anyway that was where I was living. Now I'm living in another members' home, also in a fairly suburban area. It's pretty nice, we've got quite a bit of space to move around and stuff.

And we didn't really do anything for Labor Day. The ward had a barbeque, but by that time we were already transferring and stuff. We did play some basketball with some members of the new ward, though, which was more fun than I was expecting it to be.

But anyway, that was basically what happened, it's really crazy. I love you all, I hope things go well this week, with everyone starting school!

I'm sorry I can't write a ton, because it is a Tuesday, and we kind of do have to to work, but I want you to know I love you a lot!

Love,

Peter

I know that's true, 100%.

Hey Everyone!

Well it sounds like it's been a really busy week. I guess that's good? It's been a pretty busy week for us too, which is great. It's always good to be busy (well, not always, but at least here on a mission, it's a good thing.). As one of the less-active members from Monte Vista would always say, if you aren't busy, that's when you start getting in trouble.

You know, seasons actually don't affect the work as much as you might think. It's really been basically the same throughout all the seasons, as far as I can tell. I guess the only thing that I might say is different is that when it's below zero outside it's quite a bit harder to get up the motivation to go knock doors :).

Sorry, I don't have any pictures of me and my companion to give! Sorry! But I'll see what I can do for next Monday (by which time one of us might be gone, transfers!) This transfer has just blazed by, it's insane. You can definitely tell that he's from England from his accent. I wouldn't say it's hard to understand or anything, but it's distinctive. He has only ever lived in England, yes, although I think he's visited here once or twice before. There aren't really any prairie dogs here, although I would say we're still in the suburbs. But it's a lot less like rural here than up in Thornton. Like in Thornton there were actually some farms about like 20 minutes away from our house. But here it's mostly just a bunch of houses.

So for the week report thingy:

It was a really good week this week, actually. We taught a lot of people, we had dinner with members every day (I had pupusas for the first time ever, that was cool), people are actually progressing, and things are just pretty cool.

Probably the top highlights of the week:

-So there's this one family where the Dad is a less-active member, and the wife isn't a member. We've been trying to teach them, but they've been dropping appointments and just generally not seeming super promising. But this week they kept two appointments we had with them (these were apparently the first two appointments they'd ever kept while my companion had been there, and he's been here for 4 months), both of them came to church, she read from the Book of Mormon, and maybe best of all, they invited us over for dinner next week :)! The wife, who isn't a member, really seems to want to learn more. And it's also been really cool to see her husband be really encouraging and supportive, he's been a real help in our lessons.

-So and then this one happened just last night. So two transfers ago, my companion and his companion at the time were teaching this one family (It's a pretty bizarre family situation, I'm probably not going to go into it). But then the daughter (not really, we'll just say that), who was the one who was the most interested, and who'd read from the Book of Mormon and felt like it was true, went on a three month vacation to Mexico to see her (real) parents, who are hardcore Catholics. So she got back like a week ago, and we finally got to teach her last night. I guess while she was there, she had some good experiences with the Catholic church, and is now like super confused because she's had spiritual experiences with both churches! So what does she do now? Well, during the whole lesson we really just talked about the holy ghost, and how God is really the only one who can tell us what is true. So we're going by today to drop off a copy of the Book of Mormon (she lost hers), and she's going to read it and figure things out, and it's going to be great. 

Throughout the whole lesson I kind of really just wanted to talk about how okay here are somethings that the Catholic church believes, do you believe that (like the whole till death do you part thing, or the whole changing the 10 commandments thing), but I knew that that really wouldn't help anything at all. We can talk about doctrine forever, but until people find out for themselves, it won't help. So that was a pretty great experience, anyways.

Lots of other cool stuff in the week. We got to go to the temple, which was great as always, we were able to take our ward mission leader out with us for like all of sunday, which was pretty awesome. Our WML is super cool. He got back from a mission in Utah about a year ago, and he's just so willing to help with anything.

I feel like I need to write something spiritual, because I really haven't like specifically done that in a while. Anyhow, I've been reading in Moses lately, and I was just thinking about a really cool doctrine in Chapter 1, v. 35. God's works are infinite, and we definitely can't imagine how many thing's he's created. But he knows everything, everyone, he's created perfectly. I know that's true, 100%.

I love you all, and I hope everything's going well. I'm asking everyone this, so hopefully someone tells me: how much time do you guys have until school starts again? Here it's been going on for like 3 weeks already, depending on the district.

 

Love,

Peter