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
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