Lift up your head and be of good cheer

Thank you so much for the news and updates on things going on at home. It sounds like a lot of really great things are going on, in addition to that whole Christmas thing.

We actually have been having a great week. This ward, and my companion, are awesome, and I'm really enjoying serving here. The majority, or at least half, of the work that we did last week, in terms of teaching, has been with members, just sharing Christmas thoughts with them and encouraging them to share the testimony of Christ that they have. We've also been visiting a few other people, though, including a couple of really awesome families who don't attend regularly, and one or two recent converts. One of those recent converts has actually invited us to his house for Christmas, so we'll probably be skyping there, from his Xbox, which could be cool.

There's also a couple that we actually taught twice this week, and they are seriously the most awesome people ever. The first time we met with them, only he was able to make it. So, we shared the Plan of Salvation with him, using this little visual aid thing that my companion has. Then, we asked him if he could take it home and share the Plan with his girlfriend, and he agreed. Then, just yesterday, we met with them again, and she had the whole thing completely down! They are really open to the gospel, and just really want to learn more.

This coming week should be pretty great. Monday, we're allowed to watch a movie off of a list that President Toombs made (which list is actually pretty sweet, if a bit short--it includes stuff like Toy Story 3, The Princess Bride, Remember the Titans, A Christmas Story, and some more. It'll be awesome.).

Then on Christmas I'll be able to Skype with you guys, which will be great! (Caveat emptor, though, we're only allowed ~40 minutes.) We'll also be going Christmas caroling as a zone on Christmas, which will be super fun.

So, things have been going pretty great. All is well in Zion, I suppose.

This is a message I've been sharing recently about Christmas. Sometimes, when we think about Christmas, even after we've gotten over the whole Santa, Christmas tree, presents, thing, and focus on Christ, we find ourselves really only focusing on the nativity. We'll read Luke 2, we'll talk about the wise men, we'll remember Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. Sometimes, though, we forget that thousands of miles away, there was another Christmas story going on among the Nephites and Lamanites that we can read in the Book of Mormon. 

It had been five years since Samuel prophesied that there'd be a night without darkness, and the people who didn't believe him had set a day where they would kill everyone who did believe. (This always seemed a little extreme to me, but oh well.). So the night before that was going to happen, the prophet Nephi prayed to God. He "cried mightily to his God in behalf of his people." The response that Christ gives him is one of my favorite passages of scripture ever. He tells Nephi: "Lift up your head and be of good cheer; for behold, the time is at hand, and on this night shall the sign be given, and on the morrow come I into the world." 

I think that we can use the same advice now, even though we don't have people trying to kill us because we believe in Christ. We can always "Lift up [our] heads and be of good cheer," because of Christ. Because of his birth, because of his life, because of his death, we can be happy. We can be completely clean. We can live with our Heavenly Father and with our families forever.

I love you, and I'm super excited to talk to you guys on Wednesday.

Love,

Peter

Apparently there will be skits involved...

Hey, so I'm obviously sorry I wasn't able to email yesterday at the usual time. Transfers were that day, and things were a little bit crazy. To just give you the update that I'm sure you're dying to hear (where I am, who I'm with), I have a new companion who's from San Antonio, Texas; he has been out on his mission for 16 months, and is Spanish speaking. We should be able to at least practice the espanyol with each other. I was actually moved, which was a little bit surprising, but is I'm sure what Heavenly Father had planned for me. I'm now in another English-speaking ward, which is kind of towards the south of the mission, and closer to Denver proper than I was. Yesterday we were able to meet with the ward mission leader, and he seems really awesome. I'm really looking forward to serving in this ward.

We are close to the temple. We have the opportunity to go once a month, on the third Wednesday of the month (although we won't be going tomorrow, due to the whole Christmas devotional thing.) It'll be nice not having to get up at 4:00 in the morning to get there, though (we only go to the early-morning sessions, so that's a party.)

There are five missionaries in the ward, us two, and a trio of sisters. My companion has been here for one transfer and things are looking up! We had a really amazing lesson with one of their investigators last night, and he seems super receptive. So things are going good.

I'm sure I'll be going to Spanish eventually. We had interviews with President Toombs a while ago, and I asked him about that. He said that usually, Spanish Missionaries will serve two or three transfers in English areas, so I'm assuming that after I serve here for a transfer or two, I'll be finally going Spanish. We'll see, though. I'll go where you want me to go, right?

The weather is a little bit crazy--honestly it's too warm :), but I guess I probably shouldn't complain too much. 

We will be having a Christmas thing tomorrow. I'm not exactly sure what it'll entail (although apparently there will be skits involved, because the zone is practicing one today at 2:00), but it'll be from like 9:00 to 2:00, so that should be good. I'll probably get to see some of the people that I haven't seen in a while, as well as some people I just left, so that should be awesome.

Hooray for the Christmas Tree! It's always exciting to have that up, and I'm sure you guys will have fun decorating that. In my past area, we were able to help a couple of members decorate their trees, so we did get the chance to do that, even though we aren't (well, I guess I'm not) able to be home for Christmas.

Okay, weekly report time:

It was a weird week. There was a lot of stuff we had to get done to get my companion ready to go home--he had to pack, he had his exit interview on Saturday, and we also had to say good-bye to a lot of people, so that made it a little bit difficult to get the like normal "missionary work" done. It was alright, though. 

One cool thing, though, did end up happening with regard to "the work". So, the members we were living with have a grandson living with them, who hasn't attended church much. We've gotten to know him pretty well over the past many weeks, and he seems to like us quite a bit. So, we had a family home evening with them on Monday night, and he participated and everything. Then, he actually ended up coming to church this Sunday, which was super awesome. He's a great guy, and I hope that the new missionaries who come keep working with him.

Saturday (when we found out information about transfers), was pretty weird. I was really surprised to be transferred, and honestly a little bit scared. However, since getting here, I know that everything's gonna be awesome. I'm going to work hard, do the right thing, and it'll be good.

(On his way home to Hillsboro, Peter's companion stopped by our place to hand-deliver news.) I'm glad he was able to make it over to you guys. It was actually his idea to do that, so you can thank him, I guess. I hope that was cool. He's a good guy, so I'm glad he stopped by.

OH! Another important thing! It turns out that we will be able to Skype with you guys on Christmas! I'm not exactly sure what changed, but I guess it was approved. So, you'll have to tell me how I can get ahold of you guys. If you can set up the whole Skype thing, that'd be pretty awesome.

Okay, I think that's all. I love you guys.

Peter

Angels from on high?

Thanks so much for all the news from home. It sounds like things are going pretty well, and that you guys are enjoying the whole Christmas season thing :). I'm remembering the last time we had one of those Sacrament Meetings--I remember it was really cool to just know that just because people aren't necessarily coming to church, it doesn't mean they don't have a great testimony. Also, hooray for Stanford!

This week has been pretty great. We were able to see a couple that we haven't been able to get in with for a while. Actually, it was awesome, because we were on splits, and the member I was on splits with knew the couple pretty well. We were also able to see the investigator that's planning to get baptized the end of the month. Even more exciting about her, she came to church yesterday, which was super awesome. One of the talks in Sacrament Meeting was by a young woman who's about her daughter's age, and she seemed really impressed by that, which was cool. 

We've been suffering through the cold weather, which hasn't actually been too terrible (actually, it has been pretty bad), and I also really enjoyed the First Presidency Christmas Devotional.

We have been able to get a lot of rides, and when we aren't able to, we generally just walk. My companion's bike has been pretty messed up for a while--his back tire has really just been going flat every hour or so, and we can't find a hole in the tube, so we basically have shrugged our shoulders and walked. In any case, my companion actually sent his bike home last Saturday (since he's going home in a week), so even if it did work, that wouldn't be much of an option. It has been pretty cool, but we've been dealing with it--staying just really bundled up, and getting rides.

To answer your question about the cardigan, it's actually a super awesome story: Okay, so I think I mentioned in an email to my grandparents that I was really wanting to buy a scarf sometime soon (which I did, and it's awesome). I guess they decided that even though I was going to get one of my own, they wanted to help me out by giving me one they didn't need anymore. Well, anyways they found one of their old scarves, and sent it to me, which was cool, it's a really nice scarf. I guess, though, while they were looking for the scarf, they found the cardigan that's in the picture. From the fact that it fits me, you can guess that it doesn't fit Granddad anymore, so they decided to send it to me. It's a really nice cardigan, and I'm really grateful for it. However, the most amazing part about the story is this: the cardigan is 50 years old. Apparently Grandmother gave Granddad it as a gift the very first year they were married. So needless to say, I'm going to take really good care of it.

Okay, here's a pretty hilarious story: okay, so my other grandparents sent me a Thanksgiving box, with a lot of caramel corn (a reference to a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?), chocolate, etc. In addition, they sent a can (well, more of a tub) of powdered "Gourmet Creamy potato soup mix". So, we never really got around to making said soup, and I decided to save it for a cold day. So, I think this Wednesday, it was very cold, and to make things even better, my companion was sick, so we didn't get out till about 4:45. Anyways, I decided it'd be a good idea to make the soup. So, I got out a pot, boiled some water, and even cut up some carrots and a little bit of turkey (leftover cold cuts :)). And then, I opened the can of soup. Inside, I find: Cookies. Grandma had needed a package for the cookies, and decided to use the soup can. And I'd never opened the can to check that it was in reality soup. So, we had to like throw away the cut carrots and stuff, dump out the water, and we ended up having scrambled eggs for lunch. So that made me feel dumb, but I'm sure It'll make me laugh in the future. It'll be a good anecdote.

Good luck staying warm in the cold Oregon weather--that sounds like it's colder that it'd been for a long while. Also, keep me updated on the Sing-off, I didn't even know that they'd be having another season!
 
Thanks so much for the prayers for my personal warmth :).

Have a great week. I love you, and miss you all. Merry Christmas!

Love,
Peter

I truly am a missionary now!

Hey!


Sounds like things are going pretty well, and the family's getting into the holiday spirit with aplomb. Thanks for all the updates about all that is happening with the ward and everyone. Some of it's sad news, but I appreciate knowing about it. I'll be praying for them and their families.

I'm laughing at the picture with Santa--both at that coat's extremely reflective zippers and at the brother wearing my socks -.-

This week was pretty good! We have been trying to contact a member referral for a long time, and finally got in touch with her on Saturday. She seems really, really receptive, and accepted the invitation to be baptized! (Okay, this is something I didn't tell the Mission President: one big reason we weren't able to contact this referral for a full eight weeks is that we were knocking on the wrong door--she lives in this town-home complex, and her address was #200. We found a 200 in the complex, and just kind of assumed that there was only one in the complex. I guess we were wrong.) Right now we have her and her son on baptismal date for the 28th of December!

We were also able to visit a few great families and talk about how important church is--we even were invited to spend part of Thanksgiving with a family who doesn't regularly come to church, which was great. One really cool experience was being able to visit a family with one member where she hasn't attended church for a long time. Her Dad was there, and he attends about as often. He told us that even though he hasn't been to church in a while, he knows how great it is, and how much he wants his daughter to be able to find the blessings of the church. It was really great to hear his testimony of the Book of Mormon, and see how much he cares for his daughter.

Thanksgiving was pretty awesome. We ate too much food, but that's what Thanksgiving's all about, right? We started off the day with a breakfast appointment. We had Cinnamon Rolls, and played Five Crowns, which was as "fun" as always :). We had Dinner with a different family, who are also awesome. They fed us the usual--Turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, gravy, stuffing, etc. While we were waiting, we had a little bit of a nerf gun fight--Brother apparently does a lot of prop design work for the high school drama department, and had made these awesome black and silver nerf blasters for a production of "Back to the Future"--so cool.

One not-so-cool thing: I finally crashed on my bike on Saturday. My companion tells me that this means I truly am a missionary now. I actually feel really blessed, though--the crash was kind of bad (I flipped over the handlebars), but I escaped with very little injury--basically just a scrape on my hand and knee. The crash was actually pretty similar to the high adventure mishap, although it was on pavement rather than gravel, so I got less hurt, I think.

I haven't had a ton of time for making music, although I've been trying a little bit to get into the Christmas hymns while we wait for everyone to show up to district meetings. I've mostly just been playing piano, although I have been having a lot of fun singing Christmas hymns in Sacrament Meeting.

At last transfers, one of the sister missionaries serving in the trio left to work in another area. It's interesting that there's always just an adjustment when you're used to working with a person, and then you aren't working with them anymore.
I've been really enjoying the decorations you sent me. The lights are hung up around the bedroom door, the mobile is hanging from the smoke detector, and the nativity stickers are up above my bed.

On Thanksgiving, the Second Counselor in the Bishopric (who actually is now the ward mission leader, as of this Sunday) invited us over to make gingerbread houses, which was awesome. The other missionaries were busy making beautiful houses, but I made sure I remembered what mattered--I'm pretty sure I got the most candy on mine :). 

I've been reminded out here that missionary work doesn't just have to be to non-members, but that everyone can really benefit from your testimony, whether it's a non-member, a less-active member, or an active member.

The weather actually was not bad at all this week--it stayed in the 50s most of the time. Apparently when it gets really bad is the real winter, January and February. I think I've got enough warm clothes that it shouldn't be too bad, though.

Love,
Peter