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