which I think is a good thing, probably

First of all, sorry for being pretty late with this--when we first went to email the library's internet was down, so we went and did our other p-day stuff before coming here. But here I am! Still safe and sound!

To answer the questions you had: No, I did not know that Aurora's been in the news lately. What happened? Now that we're living on our own, we get a lot less news...

I have gotten to know or at least be pretty aware of some of the investigators in other missionaries' areas, for a couple reasons. First of all, I try to say hi to the ones that come to church, so there's that. Also, one of the things I try to do as a district leader is that I try to get to know what sort of things the missionaries in my district are doing, including the people they're teaching. So that's cool.

There are no longer ten missionaries in the ward. There are only eight now, both of the trios got taken down do regular 2-person companionships.

And the apartment's pretty great. The shower isn't great, but aside from that it's pretty cool, especially because we live a lot closer to most of the work in our area now.

For us this was a pretty good week, although things are still going pretty dang slow investigator-wise, which is rough. The last few weeks we've only taught one investigator the entire week. I don't even really know what our problem is. I guess we're just going through a slower time. We're still working hard though, and the one investigator that we are teaching regularly is really awesome, so that's fun. And we're doing a lot of less-active work (last week we taught 11 lessons to less-actives and recent converts, which is a lot.) And things are going pretty good with them! We had two less-active families at church yesterday, which was really exciting, and we were able to get in touch with and teach a few less-actives that we hadn't had any contact with ever before, which was cool.

We also had interviews this week, and it's always kinda cool to talk to President Mendenhall, although we didn't have a ton to talk about (which I think is a good thing, probably).

That's about it, basically. Sorry for being not super exciting this week :/

Love,

Peter! (was that exciting?)

We got to learn a lot!

Happy Martin Luther King Day yesterday to you too!

Anyways this week was pretty good! In some ways! We were able to continue to teach this great investigator that we found a couple of weeks ago. When we went over this week she gave us hot chocolate and that was awesome, even though it wasn't that cold. And it hasn't really been at all cold lately, which has been pretty ridiculous. Like it's hit 60 a few times last week, and it's January. What the heck.

And we also had a few less active members come to church on Sunday, which was really cool! So that part was good.

Aside from that, it was kind of slow, honestly. But that's okay! We got to learn a lot! Of patience! 

And there were some other cool things. Our recent convert is doing awesome. She's super great and continues to progress in the church. And this week is gonna be great.

RIght after I send you this, we're going to go and have a lady from the Monte Vista Ward help us learn how to do family history work, and that'll be great, and we have interviews with President Mendenhall this week too, which should be fun.

Cool that you're reading the goal-setting chapter of Preach My Gospel. It's a pretty good chapter. I guess I hadn't really thought much about its application outside of actual missionary work. What were some of the insights you guys had about that?

Yes, it's kind of bizarre how used to wal mart I am now. Honestly though it's not that different from target, at least in the way the store is. I'm sure the new missionary from our ward will get used to it eventually too :). 

I hope everything is great at home!

Love,
Peter

We have a dishwasher! Crazy!

Well it sounds like a pretty crazy week.

You have to tell me about the new board game. Okay guys check it out: for p-day today we're getting together with the whole zone and we're going to play board and card games including turns out some other elder's family plays "the name game" as well, so we're gonna play that and it's gonna be awesome.

I'm glad there's good football news in Oregon (going to the national championship), because people are generally pretty upset here. We were tracting during the game yesterday, and we could literally get no one to listen to us. So that was fun.

 

So anyways, this week went really well for us. My companion's a really great guy; we're getting along really well. He's really driven to like do the best he can, but he doesn't take himself seriously at all, so it's pretty great. So we're enjoying this companionship. 

The new apartment's actually pretty nice. We have a dishwasher! Crazy! Even the members that we used to live with didn't have a dishwasher, so it's exciting. And it's a lot closer to a lot of the work we have. We are still working in the same part of the ward, just a new living situation.

But yeah, a lot of really great things happened this week. We were able to meet with quite a few of the investigators we hadn't been able to see in a while, which was cool. This one lady is super awesome. We just tracted into her, but she has some member relatives that she really admires, and wants to find out more. We had a lesson with her this week with a member couple that went really well--they were able to testify of how much the gospel had blessed their family, and she actually came to church on Sunday, and seemed to enjoy it! So that was really cool. She's like half Peruvian and half Panamanian (which is cool--I'm trying to make a list of someone I know from every single Spanish-speaking country, and I hadn't met anyone from Panama yet :))

And then of course, it was really cool that Elder Bednar came! That was really awesome. There were like 300 missionaries there--everyone from our mission and then a lot from the Colorado Denver South Mission, and Elder Bednar was just so awesome. Beyond anything he taught us, I think the coolest thing about the event was just the amazing example he is. He's really humble, loving, and just radiates priesthood power. He would have individual missionaries stand up and make comments, and then he'd ask an extremely good question like immediately, which I don't know if you've tried to do that, is really really hard. So basically Elder Bednar's just amazing. And he's really funny, too. Pretty dang great. And then after the conference, our ward mission leader took us out to get pupusas, which was awesome. So basically things were just pretty great this week.

I hope everything's going great with you guys! Have a great week! I love you tons!

Love,

Peter

Some people are starting to make a lot of progress, which is neat.

Hey!

I guess I can imagine how excited everyone there in Portland is about the Ducks, that must be really annoying or something. And okay question: what was everyone's favorite part of Disneyland? that picture with Elsa and Ana probably, am I right?

So just to let everyone know about the whole like transfers thing, I am staying here; my companion moved out this morning, and he's headed up to the northern ward I served in previously. He's gonna be companions with one of my favorite companions so they'll do great. My new companion is pretty cool! He came out at the same time as my last companion, so he just finished his training as well. He's from St. George, and actually something really cool is that he knows my cousins! He was in the same trek family as one of them, and was in the same grade as the other, so that's kinda sweet.

This week was a pretty good end to the transfer, although a little bit hectic. We had to move on Friday, because the family that we were living with has some more family moving in and there isn't gonna be room for us. So we literally spent all day Friday moving. We finished moving everything into the new apartment at 8:59. We have to be in at 9:00 unless we're teaching someone, so we hurried and knocked our neighbor's door and talked to him so we could do at least a little bit of missionary work that day.

Aside from that, it was a pretty good week. We were able to teach a lot of less-actives, especially, which was cool. Some people who have been really less active are starting to make a lot of progress, which is neat. Investigator-wise, people are being really flaky lately, which is frustrating a little bit. I think it was frustrating my companion especially, so he might be a little glad to be somewhere else.

Also, it's been really cold. It's annoying. On Tuesday it got down to -10. It was so cold! Luckily we were able to spend most of the time indoors teaching and doing service. We did have a little tracting, but it was a miracle, the first door we knocked in the -2 degree weather let us in! That was pretty nice.

So anyways what I'm really super excited about today is that Elder Bednar is coming to talk to us in person in like four days! I'm really excited about that, it's gonna be really great. We're fasting as a mission to prepare for it.

Thanks so much for everything! I don't know our address right now so probably it'd be good to just send anything to the mission office.

I love you all! Have a great week!

 

Love,

Peter

Once you get working, things get easier.

Well as I've told everyone else so far it was really great to talk to you all on Christmas as well. That was a lot of fun. And yeah the family that we went with are really great. Don't worry, we thanked them a lot.

Yes I really actually do like the mango chili lollipops. They're really good okay. Don't doubt it. You just have to try them a bunch of times and then you start liking them. 

Re:scrabble, maybe it was that um some people actually like scrabble okay? It wasn't even me that suggested we play scrabble okay?

And tracting is okay. I have had a lot of interesting experiences. Pretty nuts. You don't get those experiences any other way, really.

This week was pretty great for a few reasons! First of all, obviously it was kind of Christmas or something like that. We had a lot of great things go on. On Christmas Eve we had a really great Dinner with members, then we went and hung out with the other missionaries (that was the scrabble), and then on Christmas, we started out the day opening presents, studying, and watching church Christmas movies. Then we had a really great lunch with all the missionaries in the ward and our ward mission leader--posole. Really good. Then we went and watched like the second half of Frozen, chatted with you guys, went to dinner, watched How to Train your Dragon 2 (really good, that was a lot of fun), and then I kind of watched the first half of Frozen on our tiny little portable dvd player. So anyways that was a really fun day. Maybe not a ton of missionary work, but it was fun. 

And then the rest of the week happened. We were able to do a lot of work, mostly with less-actives. We had quite a few appointments fall through, which was not very fun. But we were able to make the most of it, and it was good. One of the less-actives we've been working with actually came to church on Sunday, and he seemed to really like it, so that was really cool.

 

It's been a pretty tiring week, but one thing that I've definitely learned has been that if I just get up and get to work, I get more energy. It's a big temptation to not work hard, when things are not looking so encouraging. But once you get working, things get easier. As soon as we take that step of faith, Heavenly Father blesses us. That's something we're trying to get a lot of our less-actives to realize.

Happy New Year! We're probably not going to do much--we have to be home by 6 on new years' eve, and then on new years' day we have a huge mission-wide meeting that's gonna take up most of the day. We can do that sort of thing because our mission is tiny! Yay!

Anyways, I'm sorry I don't have a like ton to tell you, I did kind of just talk to you recently. I love you a lot!

 

Love,

Peter