We can't just give up when things are hard.

Hey!

I'm glad you guys all had a good conference weekend, it sounds there was a lot of important things accomplished :).

This week was pretty good for us! We finally got our car back on Wednesday, which made things a lot easier. On Thursday, we went on exchanges, and for the first time on my mission I actually stayed in the area, and my companion left, so that was kind of exciting. (I think that's a little weird, and mostly has to do with the fact that in the first two areas I didn't really go on exchanges much, and then last transfer I don't think I was particularly trusted to manage the area with my extremely limited spanish skills :)). So that was a cool experience--I also had the opportunity to drive for the first time in quite a while, which was a little (a lot actually) nerve-wracking at first, but I got used to it by the end of the day.

In terms of exciting missionary work type things, we were able to get in touch with two families of investigators that we hadn't seen in a while, which was great, and found a new family to teach also, which was super great. 

After dinner on Sunday, we didn't have a ton to do until about seven, and we were kind of just going around trying people, most of whom weren't home. I was getting fairly discouraged, especially when at 7, our set appointment wasn't home. But we tried his neighbor, who was actually a potential investigator, and they were home, and we taught them, and they are super awesome and receptive! So that was a pretty great testimony-booster of working hard for me. We can't just give up when things are hard. If we really persist, we'll find success.

And then conference! That was pretty sweet. In between sessions on Sunday, the missionaries in the ward made homemade pizza which was pretty great. And the talks were pretty awesome also. Some of my favorites were:

Elder Nelson

Elder Hales

Elder Zwick

President Uchtdorf's Priesthood Session and his Sunday Morning one

President Monson's Sunday Morning Talk

Elder Corbridge

and Elder Aidukaitis (and not just because of his accent :))

I really liked it, and I would definitely encourage you all to check out the talks you missed on lds.org, I particularly liked Elder Holland's and Elder Anderson's talks in the saturday morning session. I also (somewhat surprisingly) really liked the talk that the Counselor in the primary presidency gave on Sunday. I'll be honest, when I heard the word "primary", I kind of started worrying, but the talk was really good, I thought, even if it was delivered in a bit of a "primary voice".

To answer your questions:

General Conference isn't really a holiday for missionaries, we still have to work when General Conference isn't on--I guess Saturday was pretty unusual, but Sunday was actually a pretty normal Sunday--church ends ordinarily at 4:00 anyways, so there wasn't much of a difference.

There isn't a Ward Choir in the ward--if the ward wants to have a song in sacrament meeting, they'll just hold a few practices, and then do it. We haven't participated in that so far. Last month, we sang "Come unto Christ" which is I think a like youth theme song at an open house that we had. We sang the verses in english, and the chorus in spanish--it was pretty great.

No, we don't live close at all to the other Spanish missionaries, although the sisters that serve in the YSA branch actually live in our same apartment complex.

Yes, I'm feeling more settled in as a Spanish missionary, although I feel like I'll probably be "settling in" for my entire mission. I kind of do feel like I was trained, and then when I got here I was kind of trained again, which is a little frustrating, but it's alright--I feel like I've had a kind of weird mission so far, but I'm trying to make it work :).

We've had access to members' laundry machines as long as I've been here, but before coming here we've had to physically do the laundry. Here we kind of just drop off our dirty laundry and it magically comes back clean :). We're really grateful that the family does it for us.

Thank you for everything! I love you a lot, and yeah, Mother's day will be really great. I'm not exactly sure how that'll work, but it'll be great no matter what.

I hope everything's going well for you guys! I love you and miss you!

Love,

Peter