So I'm really excited for this week is basically what I'm saying.

Oh My Goodness I'm going to see you guys in a week! Is that not the craziest thing ever? Yes.

I am super happy I have had (and still have for another week) the opportunity to be a missionary. It has been so great. And don't worry, it's actually a mandate from President Mendenhall that we write him a letter talking about our feelings and remember the people we've worked with. So I'm working on that, and I'll make sure to make you copy of the letter.

It's kinda crazy, these last two years have probably been the longest time I'll be apart from you guys. I hope, at least. I am super glad to be able to see you all soon.

I guess I'll report on the week, even though I'll being seeing you guys soon enough. It was a pretty good week! We actually had an investigator come to church yesterday, which is the first time that's happened this transfer! She's 9, and basically the cutest thing ever. Her mom is a member who's been less active for a long time, but she wants to get baptized, and is really cool. We've taught her twice so far. Last time, she told us she had read the introduction to the book of mormon, but she didn't really understand any of it (because she's 9), so we showed her how to get the Book of Mormon Stories picture book via the Gospel Library app on her mom's tablet. She was pretty excited. We also had some less-active members come to church who haven't come in a while, so that was cool.

On Wednesday, we had my last zone conference, which was really great. President Mendenhall and the assistants gave some great trainings on being converted. Definitely a lot to think about.

Then, on Saturday, I went to the baptism of an investigator I was teaching in my last area, that part member family I told you guys about! That was really cool. He asked me to give a talk about baptism, so it was really neat.

Man, this coming week is going to be awesome, though. On Wednesday, the sister of the guy who got baptized this Saturday is going to be baptized (she had something going on this Saturday, or she would have been baptized then). Then on Thursday, I'm going to have my last interview with President Mendenhall. Interviews are always great. And then on Saturday, a member of Denver 4th Ward who I started teaching about two weeks after she was baptized is going to the temple for the first time, and she asked me to go with her, along with some other missionaries, so we're going! It's going to be so cool. So I'm really excited for this week is basically what I'm saying.

I think the last part of my mission, probably about the last 6 months, have definitely been the best. It's probably been the time when I've been happiest doing the work. I wish I'd gotten to that stage earlier, but I guess that's how it goes. I promise I'll keep working hard throughout this week.

I love you so much, and I'm so excited to see you all next week.

Love,

Peter

The gospel is pretty darn amazing

Well, this is kinda weird. This is the second-to-last time I'm going to send you email like this. AHHHHHHHHHHH!!! It's really weird let me tell you. But I promise I'm not getting trunky. At least, not too much. We're still working, and I'm still trying to do the whole self-evaluation thing to see how I can do better as a missionary.

So! This week in terms of being here in Colorado was pretty freaking interesting, that's for sure. On Wednesday, like I told you, we had an all-mission meeting. Yes, those are pretty rare; we've only had three other ones during my mission. So it was a pretty cool experience. Mostly it was just to tell us to shape up and work hard. It was interesting - after the meeting, President gave us a half-hour to just reflect on how we can be better and how we can be better missionaries. It was nice to have some time to reflect.

Cool experiences: We were tracting in a neighborhood, when we tracted into this young man. We were just starting to talk when he mentioned that he has some cousins who are members. I didn't think too much of it, until he told us where they lived, and I realized I knew his cousins! They're members of another Spanish Ward where I've served, and actually live in the Area my companion just left! It was pretty cool, as soon as we started talking about the cousins, this guy let us right in, and we were able to teach him about the Restoration. We have a return appointment with him tomorrow, which should be sweet! He seems pretty interested.

Other cool stuff, We started officially teaching this 9-year-old unbaptized child of a less-active we randomly tracted into, we randomly tracted into another less-active, and we had a less-active come to church and stay for all three hours! (Usually she only comes for the 3rd hour, weird, right?) Oh and also we had a less-active's Mom give us cake on Saturday! Pretty sweet.

And then something happened that was not so sweet too. I'll tell you if you promise not to freak out: We got in a car crash on Friday night--we were driving and this kid missed a stop sign and hit us. We're all fine, but it was a pretty crazy experience. We're totally healthy - my only injury was a bruise on my shoulder from where the seat belt was. My companion's fine. He thought he might have a concussion, so we took him to the ER, but he's fine. So that was an interesting night! Crazy stuff. I was like, come on, I only have two weeks left :). I'll send you a picture of our car after the crash, it was kinda crazy.  And yeah, the documenting was fun. Especially because it was a church car, so we had to do even more work filling out the church's required report. Fun!

Oh, and then on Saturday I got a call from one of the members telling me that they were supposed to give a talk on Sunday, but wouldn't be able to, so they wondered if I could give a talk instead. So I prepared a 15-minute talk on missionary work in about 30 minutes and gave that on Sunday. Fun stuff!

Aside from that, things were pretty normal. Working hard, seeing awesome miracles. The gospel is pretty darn amazing, how it can change people, but only if they let it change them. That's something that I've been seeing lately, is just the sadness I feel when people know something is good, they just decide not to do it. I know that if they would just try it, it'd be awesome, but they aren't willing to give it that first step.

I love you all so much, and I'll see you in a few weeks!

Love,

Peter

You know how much the gospel will bless them

Sounds like a pretty boring week--I guess we all need one of those every once in a while. We can't be going a million miles an hour all the time. Tom described the week as "eating Trader Joe's tamales and watching Band of Brothers." Sounds like a pretty good week for me.

Things are going well in Denver. The weather's been completely nuts--about half the week it was blazing hot, and the other half it was overcast and rainy. I kinda enjoyed that :).

In terms of the work, it was a really good week here, too. This area is just so cool! We have been working hard, and there are just so many Spanish-speaking people here that it's hard not to work! I think this week we taught more lessons than I ever have in one week on my mission (24). So, there are a lot of really neat people. For example, last Monday, we tracted into this lady who told us that she'd met missionaries before, a long time ago, and that she'd actually been to our church and met our Bishop! She said she'd lost contact with the missionaries, but that she wanted to learn more! So we set up a return appointment with her for the very next day, and taught her the first lesson! We're going back tomorrow, and we're really excited.

Or, for another example, yesterday at like 8:30 at night, we tried visiting this less-active. She didn't have time to meet with us, so we were kind of stuck. In that area, there were very few people in the area book, and most of the people that missionaries had talked to before had said they weren't interested. So we tried the one person in that apartment complex that hadn't said they weren't interested. (I know this isn't really making sense, sorry), but anyways we tried this guy, who we really didn't know anything about, at 8:30 at night, and he let us right in and we were able to teach the first lesson and leave him with a copy of the Book of Mormon! Super cool.

 

The only problem is getting people to progress. It's hard sometimes to respect other people's agency when you know how much the gospel will bless them, but some of the people we're teaching are just not going anywhere very fast, so we may need to stop teaching them, sadly.

We have a mission-wide meeting on Wednesday of this week, which will be cool. President sent out an email today telling us all, essentially, to get stoked. So it should be good. It's weird, though, thinking that this will probably be the last time I see some of those people.

 

I try not to think about how much time I have left too often, but it is really weird. Right now I'm just trying to force myself to do the very best I can, to "leave it all on the field," as they say. Being a missionary is great.

Love,

Peter 

He'll be a great member

So it sounds like you guys had a good week, a good 4th of july! I was missing the Oak Hills fireworks and the awesome seat we usually get :). Aurora did a fireworks display, and our Ward Mission Leader took us to it, but it was ridiculously packed by the time we got there, so we had to go really far away to watch the fireworks. It was cool anyways, though.

So here in Aurora, even without the 4th of July, it was a pretty dang sweet week. This area is pretty awesome. I've been reflecting on some of my misson experiences, and I've realized that I've been really lucky. For the past like year of my mission, I've had companions who have all been awesome. They've been hard-working, they've wanted to be obedient, they've been easy to get along with. Plus I've been in areas where there's a lot to do, a lot of people to teach. Of course it hasn't all been just super easy--I have had some struggles, and there have been some hard times. But it seems like generally Heavenly Father has been making it pretty easy for me to be a good missionary. I definitely feel very blessed. Even just the fact that Me and my companion are both new to the area is a really neat thing--it makes it a lot harder to slip into routines when everything is so new.

So I know you probably want to know what sort of cool things happened! Well here you go!

1. Our most progressing investigator has been worried for a while because he doesn't feel like God is answering his prayers. He's been hoping that God's going to send him some incredible experience proving that the Book of Mormon is true. But when we taught him on Saturday, he was starting to realize that God has been talking to him, just not in massive ways. He talked about a "joy" that he feels when we come, and a peaceful feeling he has when he reads the Book of Mormon. He's so cool. He probably won't be able to be baptized while I'm still here, but I know that he's going to progress so much in the gospel. He just seems like he'll be a great member.

2. Friday was just full of miracles. We had planned to just do some tracting in the early afternoon, but while we were doing our weekly planning session, I was just messing around with the phone and remembered a referral that the English Elders had sent us. They said he was available any time, so we decided to swing by and check him out. We did, and he immediately let us in. He is super cool. He actually requested that missionaries come, because his best friend who lives in California is a member. Apparently they'd always been super close, but they used to essentially be gang-bangers together. They led a really sketchy, dangerous life. But this friend of his learned about the church, and was able to completely turn his life around. So now he wants to know about it. When we got there, he showed us how he already has the gospel library app downloaded, and everything. He said he's been listening to the Book of Mormon for a few days, too. Super cool.

 

3. Another miracle on Friday: We stopped by a less-actives' house to see if they were home. They weren't, so we did a little bit of tracting in the apartment building. after a few doors, it seemed like the building didn't have very many Hispanic people living there, but we decided to knock a few more doors. When a Hispanic lady answered, we started off with the normal door approach: "Hey, we're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Have you ever spoken with Missionaries like us before?" (in Spanish). Her response surprised us a lot: "yeah, actually I'm a member of the church!" We had no idea this lady lived there, she wasn't on the records or anything. But she's less active, she wants to get active, and she wants us to teach her 9-year-old daughter so that she can get baptized. Super awesome.

Iguana tacos - yum!

4. And then this wasn't a miracle, but pretty fun--they told us that either we had to be in at 6:00 PM on Saturday because of the 4th of july, or we had to be with members. So we had our Ward Mission Leader pick us up, and we hung out with him for a few hours, just talking about his mission, and other church stuff, and everything.

Being a missionary is great! I'm going to miss it a lot, so I'm trying hard to maximize these last few weeks of it.

Love,

Peter

You can tell they're converted.

So I don't know if it's just that you guys only ever put in the interesting things in your regular emails, but as always, it sounds like a fun week. Of course I'm jealous of the coast trip, and Salt & Straw--there's a member of the Denver 4th ward who lived in Portland for awhile, so we were actually talking about Salt & Straw just a couple weeks ago. That'll have to be a part of the program when I come back.

I read your talk, it was great! Your explanation of who I was was kind of weird to read--I guess I hadn't realized it, but the ward must have changed in the past two years. I really liked the idea of God's work being to create engines, opportunities to let us grow. We just have to decide whether we're going to use them! One other "engine" that I was thinking about as I read the talk might be the trials we face in life, the difficult times. We get to decide whether to use those engines to move us forward in the eternal sense, or not.

The new area is really neat! It's probably the 2nd-most ghetto area in the mission, so there's a lot of good times. Lots of less-actives, lots of Mexicans! Yay! It's kind of weird knowing that I'm guaranteed to only be in the area for one transfer. I guess it's good motivation to just give it my all, "leave it all on the field", as they say.

So things are going great here in the CDNM! Lots of really cool things are going on. It's been pretty hot, but I guess that's a nationwide thing or something? Global Warming's a hoax though, so it's okay :P. I guess there was a tornado here last week! We were driving from our dinner appointment to the church for a baptism of one of the other companionships, and there was a ton of wind and tornado warning sirens were going off, and we got a couple texts from the National Weather Service. Crazy! I guess it wasn't a very big tornado at all, but there were a lot of tree branches knocked down and stuff. Lots of fun.

Aside from the excitement of the tornado, it was a fairly normal week, in terms of missionary work. Highlights:

1) Being new in the ward, we're having to figure a lot of things out. The missionaries before us didn't leave us too much, to be honest, but there's one Awesome investigator who they did leave us! He's a member's son who's living with her while he's recovering from surgery. Because he's recovering, he can't work, so he has plenty of time to read the Book of Mormon! He's great, and is really interested and wants to know if the Gospel really was restored. So he's really awesome. We were able to meet with him three times last week, which is pretty unusual, but great!

2) My new companion is pretty great too. He's pretty new, which is helping me stay focused, which is good. I think if I had a companion who had as little time left as I do, it would probably be a lot easier to get distracted. But he's great, he has a lot of energy and is a lot less jaded about a lot of the realities of missionary work than a lot of missionaries are. We're working hard!

3) Like 5 hours of tracting Saturday. Not super fun, but I realized that my attitude towards those sort of activities has changed a lot. I used to really dread long periods without appointments and things like that. But now, it's a lot more enjoyable. Hopefully that's a sign of losing oneself in the work.

 

4) I found out last night that the part-member family I was teaching in my last area accepted a baptismal date! Super cool!

5) This isn't really a highlight, but on Thursday, we had a big meeting where they installed something called a "TIWI" in our cars. It's this device that keeps track of our driving, and reports to the mission office if we're speeding, or driving without our seat belts, or driving unsafely. Fun! I guess it's good, it'll help us be safer.

 

Not much else to report! The ward is cool; there are some really neat members here. We had dinner with one family on Friday, and even though we were eating at a restaurant, you could feel the spirit strongly when they talked about the gospel. You can tell they're converted.

I'm really excited to see you guys soon. Not in a trunky way, don't worry. But I am excited.

I love you a lot.

Peter

20?!?

Well, it's been a good week. A bizarre week, but a good one, and a good week for a birthday. I still don't feel 20, let me tell you, but that's okay. I'll adjust, I guess.

Interesting things that happened this week:

1. The Denver Stake singing thing took up a lot of time, between the practices (like 2.5 hours on Tuesday and Friday), and the actual performance. So there wasn't a ton of real missionary work going on in our area, sadly. But it was a pretty neat opportunity, and I did record it, so I'll try to send it to you next week. (I forgot my camera and voice recorder at home today. Sorry.) It was a lot of fun, with a lot of pretty cool music going down.

 

2. So I mentioned once in passing to this awesome part-member family we're working with when my birthday is. So I guess they remembered. So when we showed up for our appointment with them on Friday, they had a lot of food and cake there for me. It was pretty awesome, and kind of crazy. They are just super cool.

3. We ate iguana yesterday. Yes, Iguana. Like the reptile. Really. Our Ward Mission Leader is awesome, but he's also kind of weird, plus he's native (like 100%, not mixed with Spanish people or anything), so sometimes he likes weird things. I guess he was watching some movie where someone had an iguana for a pet, and it reminded him of when he used to eat them in Mexico. So, he asked his brother who still lives there to get him some, and his brother went out, caught some wild iguana, and sent them in the normal mail to our Ward Mission Leader. So, yeah. Iguana tastes like fish, but much chewier. Yum. I have pictures, don't worry. Next week, I promise.

Aside from that, it was a pretty normal week. Lots of driving to dinner, sadly.

 

So for my last transfer, I got transferred! I'm now in the other Denver Spanish ward. And my new companion is my grandson! I trained Elder C, and Elder C trained Elder G. He seems like a good guy.

I'm excited, it should be a lot of fun. *Semi-spiritual thought* I'd been in the other stake/zone for 6 transfers in a row--I'm sure it would have been a lot easier and more comfortable to just stay there. But I'm excited that Heavenly Father trusts me with a different assignment. It'll definitely make things interesting. Hopefully it'll keep me out of the trunky mode.

I love you all! Have a great week!

Peter

Sketch-tastic!

Hey!

I'm glad summer's off to a great start in Oregon. Here in Colorado, it's been (sort of) feeling like summer for a while. It's been hot for the last 3 weeks or so, but it's also been raining a ton. I kind of assume that's how it's gonna keep going. We'll see I guess.

I got the packages on Saturday, I have so far resisted the temptation to open them :). Thank you for thinking of me! It's weird to think it's my birthday. Holidays don't really seem like holidays as a missionary. It's just going to be a regular day.

So this week was pretty interesting. We still taught a lot, but we've been running into a problem known as flakiness. We keep finding these people who are willing to hear our message, but then are never willing to keep a return appointment. Like, we'll share the message of the restoration, and they'll seem really interested, but then when we come back, they're gone. It's kind of frustrating, but I guess that's how missionary work is sometimes. It's like, what are we supposed to do, not teach people? But I guess it's alright. Like it says in Preach My Gospel, "No effort is wasted."

Aside from that, things are going pretty good. This is a really fun area to work in, that's for sure. There are just so many dang people! Transfers are coming up, and I honestly don't know if I want to be transferred. Obviously it's not my decision, but it's weird to think about. Especially because this will be my last transfer(!)

Fun times: our ward had a Fathers' Day Activity on Saturday, and it was probably pretty different from any ward activity you've ever been to. We were enlisted to bring in the Giant speakers so the hired DJ could play his really loud Mexican music, so that was fun. And we ended the night teaming up with a bunch of the missionaries to try to get our Ward Mission Leader (single, in his 20s) to dance. We succeeded eventually, with the help of this super cute 9-year-old recent convert :).

Interesting thing happening this week: Without my knowledge I was drafted into this musical performance thing. I guess the Denver Stake is putting on a concert of missionaries performing this Saturday, and I'm going to be singing in a quartet with my previous companion and the two assistants. So that'll take up a lot of time this week--two practices plus the performance Saturday evening. So we might not do as much actual missionary work this week. But it'll be fun!

Here's some pictures of what it's like in our area. Pretty great!

1. My companion standing outside an investigator's house.

2. Legit street art

3. Driving through downtown

Do you remember my first couple of weeks, when I was pretty down and couldn't believe I could possibly make it through 2 years of this? Well, it's pretty crazy, but you were definitely right when you told me I could. And it's gone by way too fast.

Missionary work is great! That's the feeling I've been having lately. Even when we're tracting at 8:30 at night, and we have some drunk guy tell us about how all the (people) come from this giant space battle, and that Lucifer and Jesus are basically the same, but Satan's evil, missionary work is awesome! I really wish I'd come to that realization earlier on in my mission, because I only have a few more months to enjoy the work now. But it's just great.

Thanks for everything. I love you a ton.

Love,

Peter

Sorry again for the short email. I really do love you.

Sounds like a lot of good stuff and some crazy stuff in the Oak Hills Ward! I'm excited to hear about a missionary heading to Argentina! Basically the Oak Hillls Ward sends out a lot of Spanish-speaking missionaries is the message I'm getting.

We're actually doing better with dinners being super far away, though. This week, we have three dinners in a row that are actually within our area! Exciting!

So, this week was pretty crazy for us, in a good way. Yes, there was a lot of rain, but I haven't noticed any intense needs where we are, stuff that would require service. The craziest thing was last night, as we were driving from our dinner to an appointment, there was a ton of rain, and the roads up where we were working weren't really designed for that, so there was a lot of flooding. We did fine, but there was one car that was stuck in the rain. Aside from that, just a lot of rain.

 

Aside from the rain, we actually had a really good week. Something kind of crazy is happening: people have actually been willing to talk with us. There have been like 6 people this week who when we've asked them if they have a few minutes to talk, they've actually said "yes". That's pretty crazy.

Other really cool thing: We're teaching this part-member family. I think I've mentioned them before. They've been coming to church the past two weeks, but they usually have soccer games on Sundays--soccer basically is their life. But we've been meeting them a couple times a week, and they are super awesome. The two youngest kids want to be baptized, so we're trying to figure out how we're going to make that work. Awesome: they cancelled one appointment we had with them, and we just stopped in on them Saturday afternoon. What we didn't know was that the UEFA Champions' League Final was going on at the time we came by. So of course, they were watching it. But when we stopped by, they just turned it off, and said "it's okay, we'll just record it". They're awesome.

 

Another cool miracle. There's another less-active family that we've been trying to contact for the last 4 weeks, but it's been impossible. But as we were just walking down the street, this lady in a truck shouted out "Elderes!" and had us come over. Turns out it was the mom of this family, and she really wanted us to come over! So we were able to meet them, yay. We have dinner with them tomorrow!

In terms of the college stuff, I've got it all figured out, I think all should be well. I sent in a picture that my companion took of me.

I'm missing the father-son campout! Hopefully next year it'll take place when I'm not at school or something. That's one thing that I miss being out here: camping.

Thanks for everything! p-day should get back to normal with me emailing everyone semi-extensively next week! I promise!

Sorry again for the short email. I really do love you.

Love,

Peter

It's hard, but I can do it!

Sorry, another kind of short email, also please apologize to everyone for me not emailing them these past two weeks. To start off, it's been a kind of crazy week, plus I've been working on these dang forms. But they're coming to a close, finally.

For us this week, it's been pretty great. Still struggling to find the right way to use our time as wisely as possible, what with all the driving and such, but it's getting better. And we've had some really cool success with some of the people we're teaching. There's this part-member family we're working with, where the members (the parents) haven't come to church in years, but they came this Sunday! And it seems like they really liked it. We're having dinner with them tonight, and we're going to invite the kids to be baptized, it's going to be awesome. One of the coolest things is that even though they hadn't attended church in almost 10 years, one of the members of our ward remembered them from when they were coming, and talked to them a lot. Really sweet experience.

Also, on Thursday, we met a really awesome family. They are probably one of the friendliest families I've met on my mission. We just street contacted them, and they were so friendly in letting us in to hear our message and listening with an open heart. We came back just a few days later, and after the lesson, they gave us a bunch of food. We'd just eaten lunch, so it was a little bit hard to eat it all, but it was awesome. The craziest part is, the husband is blind! But he's a really funny guy, and it's been a really neat experience teaching them so far.

We had interviews with President Mendenhall on Wednesday, which was great. It's kind of weird, that was my last "official" interview with him. One thing he talked about was how because I'm getting towards the end of my mission, I need to make sure that the various things I've learned before are applied in my work now. This should be the culmination of the previous 21 months of my mission, not just a time to kick back and relax. So that was something that really struck me, along with something our district leader said on Thursday at district meeting. So I'm striving to savor every moment that remains of my mission, and not take it for granted. It's not something I'll be able to redo.

Still working on the being critical and making fun of people :). It's hard, but I can do it!

I love you so much, thank you for all the support you've been giving me. And again, sorry for the shorter email today.

Love,

Peter

There's a lot of pretty cool things going on here in Denver.

Dear everyone,

When holidays fall on Pday, we have a normal Pday (so we got really sunburnt yesterday playing baseball :( ), and then also we get two hours to email on Tuesday, whenever it fits into out schedule. So that's what's going on right now. We're at a branch of the Denver Public Library System. There is a huge library like Multnomah County Library, but it's pretty far away from where we live, so we come here instead.

I wouldn't say Denver really reminds me of anywhere I've been before, but I think that's mostly because in the "big cities" I've visited before, it's been mostly to like see the sights, rather than to work. So it's a different perspective. It's pretty awesome here in downtown. One thing that's really interesting: in most areas where I've served in the past, there's like one huge apartment complex that has a ton of Spanish-speakers that we spend a lot of time at, or something similar. Here, it's not like that. The city is very heterogeneous, I guess you could say. So there could be one really rich apartment complex right next to a small little Mexican home, or a small apartment complex that's exclusively Hispanic. It's pretty fun.

 

There's a lot of pretty cool things going on here in Denver. We're kind of starting over--it's been pretty difficult to get back in touch with the investigators the sisters were teaching, but that's okay. We've been finding new people to teach! One lady lives at the very very top of our area, in a really sketchy looking house--we were up there trying a different house of a person who'd met with the missionaries before, but they weren't there, so we did a little bit of tracting. When we saw her house, it looked totally abandoned, and we honestly just wanted to knock it because it was so weird. But she answered the door, and we've been able to teach her, and she's really neat! She has a lot of good questions, and understands everything we're teaching pretty well.

Another family we're teaching were being taught by the sisters, but for some reason the sisters stopped visiting them. When we knocked on their door, the dad answered it holding the Restoration pamphlet! It was pretty awesome, and we were able to teach them yesterday for the first time.

There's tons of crazy street murals here, I'm going to have to take some pics.

The hard thing is driving: today we have dinner with a family on the other side of the ward, and we're going to have to drive for an hour just to get there. Yay.

One thing that I'm trying to work on personally is humility: for a while I've been thinking that I'm pretty dang humble, because I don't think I'm super awesome or cool or anything. But I've realized that the bad habit I have of being really sarcastic and critical of others is kind of a form of pride. So that's something to be worked on, definitely.

Anyways, I'm going to go work on those dang Stanford forms now. Fun!

Love,

Peter

The bigger email! :-)

Dear Everyone!

Okay, so here's the bigger email!

So it's super awesome to be back in this ward. There are a lot of members here that are super cool. As I was sitting in Sacrament Meeting yesterday, I just had this feeling of love come--there are so many awesome people here. And yeah, it's bringing back a lot of memories, but my new area's pretty awesome too, so there's not really temptation to go work in Aurora :), especially because we can go anywhere in the ward for dinner appointments, so we'll be able to see a lot of the members I miss anyways.

I saw a recent convert at church yesterday, and she's still super active, which is awesome!

Yeah, your experience with the sisters seems pretty similar to the daily life of a missionary. So much fun!

So this week was pretty crazy. Downtown is awesome, but there are some challenges--if we want to go anywhere else in the ward for dinner, we have to drive for like a half hour because of all the traffic. It's also interesting because we're "sweeping"--we're both new in the area, and the last missionaries to be here were sisters. So it's interesting getting to know all the investigators and members that loved the sisters so much. There may be a few investigators that we'll have to drop because they aren't so much interested in the gospel as they are in the sister missionaries.

But there's some really cool things going on. We were able to meet a part-member family who seem really cool. He is the nonmember, but he says he believes in the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, he just works every Sunday, so it's hard for him to come to church. We were also able to meet a few of the less-actives in our area, who seem pretty great. One pretty interesting thing about the area is that there are only 4 active members in the entire area. But it's such a densely populated area that we can work hard anyway without a ton of member support.

We're doing service at this really cool place called Metro Caring, which is a small food bank. The people there are really nice and appreciate our help, which always feels good.

We're living in a pretty sketchy apartment building off of one of the sketchier streets in Colorado. I don't know the address, sorry :(. The apartment smells pretty strongly of weed :D.

Thanks for the updates! Have a great week!

Love,

Peter

Happy Day After Mother's Day!

Well, we did just talk yesterday, but I guess I'll email you too. It sounds like you've had a good week, sounds like the 10K was interesting :D.

Last week was pretty slow for my companion and I. Lots of appointments cancelling, all that good stuff. Plus we had to go up to the northernmost end of the mission three times for a few reasons, so that was fun. But we did have one really cool lesson, with an investigator couple. We read a little of the Book of Mormon, and they were just talking about how great they feel when we come over, and really saying that they felt the spirit when we were there. They were saying they've talked to a lot of missionaries and people from other religions, but they've never got the feeling they have when they talk to us. So that's really cool!

This week's going to be pretty dang interesting. We don't really know what we're going to do yet (in my new area), but we'll figure it out! I'm really excited to work in this area. It seems like it has a lot of promise.

Love,

Peter!

Miracle story o'the week

Dear everyone,

WELL! It's been a week! Like every week. Holy cow.

To get to the most important stuff first: This Sunday is going to 100% insane for us too. In addition to Mother's Day, it's the day before transfers, which means we as Zone Leaders get to drive one (1) missionary to the mission home so he can go home the next day. You'd think that wouldn't take too long, but because we have a pickup, we're also picking up two other missionaries' luggage and taking that up to the mission home as well, so we're literally going to be busy until probably like 7:15 or 7:30 our time, so that's probs when we'll be skypeing it up.

 

So interesting fact about Zone Conference: We actually didn't have to do anything except set up and attend. The trainings are done by the Mission President and the Assistants. But we did have to set up and that was a little stressful, especially because we had to call up one of the Bishops to unlock a closet last-minute so that we could get the key that lowers the projector screen in the gym. So that was fun. That was probably the most stressful thing. Also, we went to another one of the Zone Conferences to inspect cars (there are three Zone Conferences, 3 zones each), so that was kinda fun. At our Zone Conference our car won second most clean. Yay? Well so the thing is that everyone went to the car wash before Zone Conferences. It's a competition every Zone Conference to see who can get the cleanest car. We waxed it, shined the tires, and all that good stuff.

So we don't do anything except the usual like contributing at district meetings, but we plan and teach at a monthly zone meeting, and set up other events. So yeah, we're mostly just problem solvers.

Aside from Zone Conferences, this week was pretty cool. Miracle story o'the week: We had an appointment with this less active, so we went to his house to teach him. Turns out he's living with some friends of his from work. So anyways his English isn't that great (he's from Liberia originally), so when I asked if he was sharing with his friends (as in, the apartment), he I guess interpreted it as me asking if we could share the lesson with his friends. So he went and invited them and they totally came and we totally taught them about the restoration and it was great! They understood it really well, and we have a return appointment.

There were some stressful zone leader things going on, which was not great. but things seem to be resolved for now. We went on a lot of exchanges with some cool people, which was fun, including the Assistants on Saturday. Pretty funny--I stayed here in our ward with one of the APs and we had a lesson with this less-active who's kinda funny, and she told the AP how it really was, it was pretty hilarious. Lolz.

Anyways, that was the week! Transfers coming up, we'll see what happens! Scary. I'm hoping I get put back in Spanish, but I have no idea what'll happen.

See you soon!

Love,

Peter

Running the risk of sounding trunky

Well, it sounds like it's been a pretty interesting week for you. It's been really interesting for us as well. Like really interesting. Details will follow :).

With the whole "youth really don't know what missionaries do," it's totally true. I mean, to be completely honest, I had no idea what the missionaries did at home. Literally the only things you'd learn is the crazy stories in the church magazines or stories people tell you about from their mission. I don't necessarily think it's a huge problem (you figure it out pretty fast), but the best remedy to that would be having the youth go out with the missionaries, which we as missionaries like a lot, by the way.

So! This week! We had some interesting adventures, that's for sure. The beginning of the week was pretty boring, honestly. Meetings, tracting, meh. Things started to pick up on Friday, when just before going to dinner, we met this African dude who's apparently a pastor in Cameroon. He wanted to pray for us, so he grabbed our hands and like shout-prayed. We went back to teach him on Saturday and he just talked at us for like 40 minutes. Then we shared a 30-second Restoration and his son who was sitting there understood all of it, so that was awesome. 

Also on Friday we went out with a member to some really flaky appointments, but they actually both went through, which was very exciting. On Saturday, though, was when the most excitement came in. We were on exchanges, and at about 4:30, I got a call from another set of elders who were also on exchanges, saying they wanted to chat. So they came over after dinner, and we chatted. I guess they'd caught their companions breaking some mission rules, and were seriously concerned about what to do. So we talked it out for about an hour, and they decided they were going to call president. So they did, and then president called us. We're still not exactly sure what's going to happen, but it's no bueno. It's kind of funny--sometimes I feel really bad about myself because I'm not always the most focused, or I don't do all 30 minutes of exercise in the morning. And then I hear about other missionaries and I don't feel so bad about myself :).

And then on Sunday we ate some hot sauce that was incredibly painful to eat. It was seriously bad. Apparently it was 4 million SHU which I guess is how they measure hotness, and the hottest chile in the world is like 1.5 million SHU.

So it was just a crazy week. We have zone conference this week, which should be cool. Other than that, nothing too crazy planned. So, yeah.

I'm glad it was a good week! Sounds like the Utah trip was enjoyed by all. Running the risk of sounding trunky, I am definitely looking forward to seeing the extended family this summer.

Things are going well here. I've definitely been fortunate for the past few transfers, in having really solid companions. I'm really liking this area, but I'd also like to go back to Spanish before the end of my mission. We'll see what happens in a couple of weeks.

Love,Peter

P.s. The picture is of a baptism I went to on Sunday. It was an 8-year-old son of a less-active family I worked a lot with in my previous area.

Yay!

Thanks for the update on everyone's week. It sounds like there's been a lot of cool stuff going on, and that everyone's been busy. Lots of excitement, I'm sure.

Here in Colorado, things have been pretty interesting this last week. I think probably something weird or cool happened literally every day this week:

Monday: We had to orchestrate an emergency transfer (I think I told you about that) It ended up being a lot less complicated than it was going to be, so that's fun. Hopefully all the parties involved are happier now. Also, I bought a portable digital voice recorder that I've been using as a journal lately. I can get a lot more motivated to just talk into a voice recorder for a couple minutes about how the day went than I can to write in a journal. So that's been fun!

 

Tuesday: Not too crazy, but cool. We had a lesson with an investigator, and he'd been pretty closed off to having members come with us, but we brought one and they hit it off really well. Yay!

 

Wednesday: Temple Trip! That was super great! Also we went to a district meeting, and one of the companionships had brought one of their investigators to the district meeting, so that we could answer her questions. The question my companion and I drew was "Why haven't we had contact with aliens?" So yeah we totes answered that from the scriptures.

 

Thursday: We taught a lesson in Spanish! That was a lot of fun, we just got let in trying a potential investigator and so we taught in Spanish! Yay!

 

Friday: We got let in by another potential (This doesn't happen very often) and we taught them and they seem interested! Yay!

 

Saturday: We were literally doing finding the entire day. No appointments. Yay.

 

Sunday: We had a linger longer with the ward, so that was a lot of fun! Also finding the entire day with no appointments.

 

So yeah that was the week! Lots of cool stuff. I love being a missionary, it's pretty great.

Love,

Peter

My companion sent me some pictures!

Well, it has definitely been a very interesting week, we'll say that! It's been good, and a little bit crazy, but that's basically the norm around here. I certainly hope we don't get any snow around here, but yeah it's definitely possible. You never know here.

I'm excited to hear what the Oregon Portland Mission STLs have to say! You'll have to hurry up and get that to me before email time is up :). For the record, our first step was to ask our zone's STLs. I was just curious what others thought :).

Like I said, it's been a kind of crazy week. Lots of craziness with the zone:

1. On Friday, just before we started our weekly planning session, we got a call from some sisters telling us that they needed us to go pick up a new phone for them. So we called the mission office and found out that we could literally only get it from there that day at that time, so we had to go all the way to the mission office, about 45 minutes away, to get the phone, and then come back and set it up for the sisters. So that took a while. Those are the things you don't really expect to spend your time doing as a missionary :). But it's okay. We're definitely lucky our mission is so tiny, too.

2. Everything was going pretty well this week until last night at 10:00 p.m., when we got a call from one of the district leaders telling us that some of the elders in their district needed help. So the district leader went out at 10:10 p.m. to pick up the elder.

With our ward mission leader

Some cooler things with our ward, much happier news:

1. We met this guy last Sunday between General Conference sessions, and he is super cool. We haven't even been able to teach him yet, because he's been sick (he's going through chemo), but he is just super awesome. He had a copy of the Book of Mormon from a while back, and he's reading it while he lies in bed recuperating! Who does that? He's already almost done with 2 Nephi!

 

2. We were walking around on Saturday night, going to try a potential investigator, when we randomly started talking to this guy in a parking lot. Turns out, he'd been investigating in a different ward that my companion served in previously, and almost got baptized, but lost contact with the church when he moved. But he wants to come back to church and was super grateful to us for talking to him, which was just a really cool experience. Sometimes, all you have to do is open your mouth, and the rest just follows.

 

We're looking forward to a temple trip this Wednesday, which should be great, and we're going to have a great week!

I hope all the exciting things go according to plan this week for you.

Love,

Peter

Well! Happy Easter!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend, because we sure did. I hope you also enjoyed general conference, because it was pretty awesome as well.

 

Favorites from General Conference - I especially liked a couple of talks:

Bishop Causse's talk about the wonder of the gospel

Elder Pino's talk about having an eternal perspective,

President Uchtdorf's talk in Priesthood session about not being "artificial disciples".

Obviously all the talks were great, and it was awesome to see that President Monson's still got a lot of energy, but those were probably my favorites.

Fun--we watched conference at the church building where all the Spanish members meet, so whenever there was a talk in Spanish, we'd run over from the English room to the Spanish room to hear it. It was pretty great. And for Priesthood session, our ward has a tradition that we should definitely implement in the Oak Hills Ward. An hour before conference, we went as a ward to 5 Guys and all got burgers there, and then went over to the church to watch General Conference. So that was a lot of fun.

For us, it was kind of a crazy week. In addition to General Conference, we also had a day-long meeting at the north end of the mission on Friday, which was good, but long. We talked about such things as how to involve the Sister Training Leaders more (maybe you could ask the sisters in Oak Hills about that, we're kind of struggling here), and whether or not missionaries should be allowed to have lunch together as a district. So you know, lots of excitement.

Other than meetings, we had a lot of appointments cancel, which wasn't super happy, but that's kind of how it is. One really cool experience, though: between sessions of General Conference on Sunday, we went out tracting. I was pretty apprehensive, because it was Easter and all that, but we went out and worked anyways. And we found this really awesome old guy! He's had friends who are members, has a Book of Mormon that he wants to read more of (even though he's never met with missionaries), and he wants to come to church! So Heavenly Father definitely blesses us when we show faith in Him, that's for sure.

Love!

Peter!

We had a lot of fun and worked a lot.

Dear everyone,

First of all, our housing coordinator has also been complaining a lot about all the couches that missionaries pick up from members. So it's a worldwide problem, probably. Here's something you could ask the elders that I'd like to know: do most missionaries in the Oregon Portland Mission live in apartments, or with members? Here, it's mostly with members.

So it's been a pretty great week. Like you said, kind of crazy with having two companions going home, but honestly, it wasn't that weird, because they acted pretty much the same. We talked a little bit more about what their plans were at home, but we worked just as much, if not even a bit harder. Really solid missionaries. There were a couple things, like we went to our Ward Mission Leader's house Saturday night before our transfer meeting to say goodbye, and the Bishop invited us over to have ice cream, but other than that, it was pretty standard. We had a family from the Denver 4th ward invite us over Saturday night for dinner--we had carne asada, and it was really good.

With the 3 companions thing, yeah, the guy that joined us midway through the transfer sat in the back seat the whole time mostly. He was okay with it though.

Not a whole ton to report in terms of the missionary work--things are still a bit slow. One cool thing, though: We were able to get in contact with a less active that we haven't seen in forever on Sunday (I may have told you about that last week) so we met with her again on Saturday, and she had a really neat experience--she was reading the Book of Mormon on the bus, and she felt like the bus trip took way longer that it usually does, so she had time to read a lot more! She described it like she had her own personal "time zone" where time took longer! It was pretty cool.

Another cool thing: We went on splits on Thursday night--I went with a ward member to try potential elders, and the other elders went and taught a part-member family. I honestly wasn't expecting much to come out of trying the Potential Elders, but the first one we tried let us in, and we talked for about 45 minutes. He's a really cool guy. He joined the church about 6 years ago, but had some problems and left. He's going to some nondenominational churches right now. But he told us that the churches that he's going to just don't feel the same as when he was going to the LDS church, and that he wants to come back, he just has some doubts. Really cool thing: he said he hadn't had contact with missionaries in years, but that that morning, he'd been talking to some lady he met on the street who was LDS, and who told him he needed to talk to the missionaries. Then we knocked his door! Pretty awesome. So that was a really cool experience.

I guess there was more to talk about than I thought.

Transfers came, of course! I'm still here. My companion is also Spanish speaking and came out the transfer after I did. He's a great guy. So it's going to be a great transfer, I'm excited.

I hope everything goes great! I love you all!

Love,

Peter

Excerpt to a brother: 

...anyhoo, things went really well last week. Even with the triple companion action and zone leader thing and with being a missionary. We had a lot of fun and worked a lot. Pretty crazy. And now I have a new companion, who's great as well.

Imma just go ahead and talk a little bit about what it means that I am a zone leader or what it means I do:

-We go to loads of meetings. We go to all three districts' district meetings, we have a zone leadership meeting every week, and every month we have a 6-hour long mission leadership meeting called MLC. Try to guess what it stands for.

-We try to help missionaries if there are weird situations going on. For example, there was a companionship who had a missionary who had to stay inside for a while, so we went on exchanges with his companion so he could get out. 

-We give permission for things like: going outside the zone, calling people outside the zone, kissing girls, things like that (jk obvs on the kissing)

-We report a lot of things to the mission president and the assistants to the president.

Anyways that's basically what we do. It's fun. Lots of work though.

Anyways Love Peter