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