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