Word for the week: moving

Hey hey hey!

I was in fact transferred. So, my companion will be staying in the ward, and he'll actually be training a new missionary. I am now back up in my first zone, although I'm not actually in the same town. I'm now in a Spanish(!) ward that covers the north end of the mission. The ward is enormous and we cover part of it. So, this'll be a whole new adventure. I'm still working on the spanish, obviously, but hopefully I'll be able to get into the swing of things relatively quickly.

I have not seen much of Denver proper yet, mainly because I haven't served in an area that covers downtown Denver, and we really aren't allowed to go outside our zone, even on P-day. It's definitely a possibility that I will.

What we on our day off depends a lot on the area. So, in my last area, it was mostly shopping, email, sit at home for awhile unless there's some sort of like zone activity, because there wasn't much to do and we couldn't get anywhere on our bikes. It was fairly similar in the first area, although we would get together as a district a bit more often, largely because there were a lot more elders. I'm not sure what we'll do up here, but I at least hope it'll be a bit more eventful, at the very least because we actually have a car.

Okay, my week: It was a pretty good week, although a little bit slower than normal. We started it off with a family home evening with a member couple that was moving that week, which was a lot of fun. On Wednesday we helped them move their furniture and stuff to a storage unit, as part of their preparations to move to Turkey(!). I guess he got a job teaching English at a university in a town called Gaziantep. As a like thank-you gift for helping them move, they gave both of us books that we aren't allowed to read! For my companion, "The Way to Perfection", by Joseph Fielding Smith, and to me, "The Brothers Karamazov". I'm still deciding whether to ship it home, or just carry it around with me, and not read it :).

Tuesday was a little bit rough--a couple of people that we can usually always count on being there when we drop by weren't, so we had to do some tracting. It was okay, but we always like to do other things that could possibly be more effective.

Lots of service this week--we volunteered at Covenant Cupboard and project c.u.r.e., and also helped with two moves, one moving out and one moving in. 

Saturday, we met with the couple that we've been teaching all 7 weeks of this transfer, and taught the word of wisdom with them. It went really pretty well--a couple of hang-ups with drinking (I don't think I've ever really realized what an incredibly social thing it is), but they're going to be awesome. Hopefully they're going to be married on the first of March (they set it up, and then told us--we were like super freaking excited when they told us.), and hopefully I'll be able to make it down for that.

And then right after that lesson, we had our transfer meeting thing, which was kind of crazy. We found out where everyone was going, took pictures, signed "transfer journals", which are basically like yearbooks without the pictures, and generally had a good time.

Sunday was the super bowl, which meant that it would probably not be the best day for missionary work, especially considering the result :). So, I spent most of the day packing, and then said good-bye to a few people, and had a like two-hour dinner with a member. Then, yesterday, it was transfers. It's always a little crazy the first couple of days, but I'm sure I'll get settled in pretty dang quick. My companion seems really cool, and things should go really well.

Oh, fun fact--today we actually helped the senior missionary who is the housing coordinator move furniture and stuff into an apartment nearby ours (oh yeah, I'm living in an apartment now), and afterwards, he took us out to lunch! It was awesome!

It is a big change, but things seem like they'll be fine here. Not really too excited or sad about it. My new companion has been out six more weeks than me, although I think we go home at the same time. He's from SoCal and has been serving in this ward his whole mission.

I still have my bike, but I don't anticipate using it anytime soon. But yeah, right now it's just sitting in the apartment.

We're teaching mostly in spanish--the typical situation (at least as far as I've seen in the like three appointments I've been to so far) is that the kids will speak to us in english, parents in spanish. I understand the lessons, for the most part. The tricky thing right now is getting out what I want to say, but I'm sure that'll come.

There are eight missionaries serving in our ward: four sisters, four elders. There is definitely only room for me and my companion in our apartment.

I'm anticipating we'll be fed as much, if not more, than in other wards. I have heard that if there is one thing spanish members are good at, it's feeding the missionaries.

Welp, I think that's about all. Love you all, miss you. Thanks for the pictures!

Love,

Peter

Something terrible we did to ourselves during companionship study on Saturday. Angel food cake+Oreos=delicious