It did rain on Sunday...

Hey! Happy President's Day to you as well!

It's great to hear that everything is going well in Oregon, that the snow's melted, and that things are getting back to as normal as is possible.

And, it sounds like the Olympics are going well, and that you're all having fun watching them--it's pretty bizarre over here, we really haven't heard anything about them. I guess the Spanish members aren't as interested in the Winter Olympics as I am :).

So, this week was pretty good. We weren't able to teach as much as last week, but we did some good work, and were able to find some new people to teach that hopefully we'll be able to follow up with this week.

Things were slowed down a little bit over the weekend by my companion suddenly falling ill, which made it so we couldn't do a ton of work either Saturday or Sunday. We were able to work for about an hour both days, although we were also able to make it to a service project on Saturday--it was the one, if you remember, where we go to retirement homes and sing songs to seniors, which was pretty great. On Sunday, we weren't even able to make it to church, which was sad, but it was okay, a couple of members were able to bring us the sacrament, which was very nice of them.

But so aside from the whole sickness thing, we were able to get quite a bit done. The family we're focusing the most on right now is really good friends of a family in the ward who introduced them to the church. They're super great, are really eager to learn more about the gospel, and are reading together in the Book of Mormon, which is super cool. There are two boys, ages 12 and 10, who we're also teaching, and then they also have a 4(?) year-old daughter, who's hilarious. The ten-year-old is super good at drawing, at least cartoon characters, so he's been drawing characters from Adventure Time and Regular Show for us. We're really trying to emphasize the importance of coming to church with them, because, while they've been super open and friendly (I mean, they had us over for dinner on Friday, for goodness' sake), they haven't been able to make it to church yet, and we really don't know why.

To find new people to teach, we've mostly been going through the area book, which is like the record of all the missionary work that's gone on in that area in the past five years or so, and identifying people who were at one time interested in the gospel, and then tracking them down. So far, it's brought at least some success--we were able to teach one former investigator last week, and set up appointments for this week with a few more.

Oh, and then yesterday, on P-day, we had our "zone p-day", which is the one P-day set apart of the transfer that we're allowed to hang out as a zone, because normally we aren't allowed to hang out with sisters on P-day, because stupid missionaries in the past have done stupid things, I guess. But so that was a lot of fun--we played soccer, kickball, ultimate, and just generally had a good time. It's kind of bizarre--I left this zone only like 9 weeks ago, and then came back 2 weeks ago, and there are so few missionaries that are still here. I think there are like 5 still here from when I was in the Zone last time, out of the something like 25 missionaries.

We have zone P-days at different places, depending on things like the weather. Normally, we'd have it in a church building, but yesterday, it was warm enough for us to have it at a park. It took us a while to get to from here, but it was a lot of fun. It's pretty crazy, although at times like these, you have to remember that two weeks ago, the temperature was below zero. Apparently winter extends like into April here, so that's something to look forward to.

It did rain on Sunday, which was, I think possibly the first time I've seen it rain while I've been here in Colorado. Bizarre.

Oh, I completely forgot, we had Zone Conference this Wednesday, which was great. The main focus of the training we got from President Toombs was making sure that everyone we teach has a correct understanding of who God really is. It was great--I think a lot of the time we just skim over that, but the knowledge of who God the Father is is so integral to our faith that we can't afford to let it slip by when we're teaching someone. It was a pretty great reminder. Sometimes it's good to just go back to the basics--that Heavenly Father loves us, and then everything else goes back to that.

Tomorrow we get to go to the Temple, so that should be really great. I'm looking forward to it, but maybe not the part where we have to get up at 4:30 in the morning to make it there on time. But it should be great!

Love,

Peter

There are, you know, snowplows

Hey, it's, as always, great to hear from you guys!

Wow. That's a lot of snow, especially for Oregon! I imagine things'll probably be closed for a little while longer... It's been fairly snowy in Colorado, but I don't think it's been as bad as it is in Oregon, esp. because there are, you know, snowplows :). Sounds pretty crazy.

I wouldn't say it's "tiring" to teach in Spanish, because mostly I haven't been doing a ton of teaching. My companion has mostly been covering that, and I've been putting in a few remarks--not to say that I haven't been teaching or anything, but I haven't been as active a participant in lessons as I was in English wards. I feel a little bit like I'm in training again, but it's obviously different in several ways. I feel like I should be able to get out of the like less-teaching shell within the next couple weeks, and then things should be pretty normal.

It was super cool to go to Church in Spanish! I can understand ~90% of what's being said, so the difference is mostly just cultural. One bizarre thing: We have like "backwards" church, where we have Priesthood/RS first, then Sunday School, and then Sacrament Meeting last. Probably Sacrament meeting was the most different--There were only two talks: one from a member of the ward, and one translated one from a high councilor. The first one went way long--it was the first time in a long time that I've seen a bishopric member get up to tell the speaker to wrap it up, and it also included a lot more um audience participation than any talk I've ever seen before. So that was kind of awesome.

This week has been pretty great! We've been able to teach a lot--more lessons in this week than I've taught my whole mission--I think we taught a total of 22 discussions. We mostly met with a lot of less active members, recent converts, and active members, but we also had the opportunity to teach a couple of investigators, one of which is a four-person family, who've committed to be baptized soon, which was really cool. We also did a lot of finding work, trying to find more people to teach. We mostly went through a bunch of former investigators and potential investigators, trying to set up times this week to meet with them. We had some success with that, and should have a lot of investigator lessons this week, which should be great.

It's been nice to be in a car--we've been able to get in between appointments and activities a lot quicker than we ever were on bikes, which is nice. The heating is also a big plus--when you step out of the car and you can feel your eyebrows freezing, it really makes you grateful to have the car :).

We've been doing some service too, at two different places. One is a thrift store called ARC, and the other place is this retirement home place, where we get together with a bunch of other missionaries and sing hymns and old songs (e.g. bicycle built for two) that I think are intended to remind the people of their childhoods or something like that.

All in all, it's been a pretty great week. The apartment is pretty tiny, but it works, and we don't spend too much time in it, anyways. The members have been super great to work with, and things are just going well.

I love you all. Thanks so much for the email, and the pictures, and the love.

Here's a picture that explains a reason I'm very happy for a car.

Love,

Peter

Word for the week: moving

Hey hey hey!

I was in fact transferred. So, my companion will be staying in the ward, and he'll actually be training a new missionary. I am now back up in my first zone, although I'm not actually in the same town. I'm now in a Spanish(!) ward that covers the north end of the mission. The ward is enormous and we cover part of it. So, this'll be a whole new adventure. I'm still working on the spanish, obviously, but hopefully I'll be able to get into the swing of things relatively quickly.

I have not seen much of Denver proper yet, mainly because I haven't served in an area that covers downtown Denver, and we really aren't allowed to go outside our zone, even on P-day. It's definitely a possibility that I will.

What we on our day off depends a lot on the area. So, in my last area, it was mostly shopping, email, sit at home for awhile unless there's some sort of like zone activity, because there wasn't much to do and we couldn't get anywhere on our bikes. It was fairly similar in the first area, although we would get together as a district a bit more often, largely because there were a lot more elders. I'm not sure what we'll do up here, but I at least hope it'll be a bit more eventful, at the very least because we actually have a car.

Okay, my week: It was a pretty good week, although a little bit slower than normal. We started it off with a family home evening with a member couple that was moving that week, which was a lot of fun. On Wednesday we helped them move their furniture and stuff to a storage unit, as part of their preparations to move to Turkey(!). I guess he got a job teaching English at a university in a town called Gaziantep. As a like thank-you gift for helping them move, they gave both of us books that we aren't allowed to read! For my companion, "The Way to Perfection", by Joseph Fielding Smith, and to me, "The Brothers Karamazov". I'm still deciding whether to ship it home, or just carry it around with me, and not read it :).

Tuesday was a little bit rough--a couple of people that we can usually always count on being there when we drop by weren't, so we had to do some tracting. It was okay, but we always like to do other things that could possibly be more effective.

Lots of service this week--we volunteered at Covenant Cupboard and project c.u.r.e., and also helped with two moves, one moving out and one moving in. 

Saturday, we met with the couple that we've been teaching all 7 weeks of this transfer, and taught the word of wisdom with them. It went really pretty well--a couple of hang-ups with drinking (I don't think I've ever really realized what an incredibly social thing it is), but they're going to be awesome. Hopefully they're going to be married on the first of March (they set it up, and then told us--we were like super freaking excited when they told us.), and hopefully I'll be able to make it down for that.

And then right after that lesson, we had our transfer meeting thing, which was kind of crazy. We found out where everyone was going, took pictures, signed "transfer journals", which are basically like yearbooks without the pictures, and generally had a good time.

Sunday was the super bowl, which meant that it would probably not be the best day for missionary work, especially considering the result :). So, I spent most of the day packing, and then said good-bye to a few people, and had a like two-hour dinner with a member. Then, yesterday, it was transfers. It's always a little crazy the first couple of days, but I'm sure I'll get settled in pretty dang quick. My companion seems really cool, and things should go really well.

Oh, fun fact--today we actually helped the senior missionary who is the housing coordinator move furniture and stuff into an apartment nearby ours (oh yeah, I'm living in an apartment now), and afterwards, he took us out to lunch! It was awesome!

It is a big change, but things seem like they'll be fine here. Not really too excited or sad about it. My new companion has been out six more weeks than me, although I think we go home at the same time. He's from SoCal and has been serving in this ward his whole mission.

I still have my bike, but I don't anticipate using it anytime soon. But yeah, right now it's just sitting in the apartment.

We're teaching mostly in spanish--the typical situation (at least as far as I've seen in the like three appointments I've been to so far) is that the kids will speak to us in english, parents in spanish. I understand the lessons, for the most part. The tricky thing right now is getting out what I want to say, but I'm sure that'll come.

There are eight missionaries serving in our ward: four sisters, four elders. There is definitely only room for me and my companion in our apartment.

I'm anticipating we'll be fed as much, if not more, than in other wards. I have heard that if there is one thing spanish members are good at, it's feeding the missionaries.

Welp, I think that's about all. Love you all, miss you. Thanks for the pictures!

Love,

Peter

Something terrible we did to ourselves during companionship study on Saturday. Angel food cake+Oreos=delicious

So, what did I do this week?

Hey!

Sounds like things have been going well in Oregon--I'm a little bit unsympathetic about the fog and cold you've been getting...to get to the library today we biked something like 3 miles while it was like 20 degrees outside. But it's okay! Actually, the weather here has been really nice, considering it is January--a couple of days ago it was in the like 60s, which was pretty dang insane.

So, what did I do this week? Lots of stuff. Some highlights, though:

So, during the tracting thing that we did a couple of weeks ago, we found a person who was interested in hearing our message. We taught her one other time, but then our ward mission leader decided that it'd probably be a lot easier to coordinate if we handed her off to the Sisters. So on Tuesday we visited her with the Sisters, and it went okay, but later, the Sisters kind of decided that they felt that we would be better to teach her. But then our ward mission leader decided the Sisters needed to try again, which is I think the next step at the moment. So kind of a lot of chaos there.

Another kind of cool thing--we had an appointment with another one of our newer investigators, but he wasn't super available, so we went and tried another guy who we'd found during tracting, and he was there! We were able to share the message of the restoration, and he said he'd read the Book of Mormon, yay!

Last super cool thing: so there's a recent convert in the ward who's recently been struggling to come to church, but he came this Sunday! And we had a lesson with him that same Sunday, and we were able to teach his non-member wife as well, and she said that she'd be interested in hearing the missionary lessons! YAYYY!

So anyways, that was basically the week. We were also able to do quite a bit of service, at the Covenant Cupboard and Project Cure, which was cool.

I love you all, and miss you guys! See you in a while!

Love,

Peter

It really doesn't seem like it was that long ago...

Hey! I have been having a pretty great week, and it definitely is very strange to think that I've been gone for 5 months. It really doesn't seem like it was that long ago that I got on that plane to Mexico City. It seems like things tend to go a lot quicker out here, away from basically all other influences. Kind of strange, I guess.

Also, I've come to realize that the prediction made oh so long ago that you all would still be going to pack meetings when I was in college will never come to pass. So sad.

Okay, to answer your questions: The temple was super great. It's always super great to go there, but it was made especially awesome by the fact that it'd been like 3 months since I'd been there, and because (this was pretty cool), I saw the new temple video! I thought it was really great, and I'm glad I don't have to wait another three months before I get to go the temple again.

We just had interviews this week with our mission president. It was pretty great to get to just talk to him for 15 minutes or so.

This week was pretty great. We got in contact with a couple of the people that we found while we were doing all of that tracting--one of them actually almost dropped us, but we were able to help her resolve a lot of the concerns that had cropped up, so that was cool.

We also got to visit another guy who we'd found. He's had quite a bit of contact with the church--he had a Mormon roommate in college, and is actually dating at the moment a less-active member. He seems really open, so we're encouraged by that.

We were also able to go to a baptism that was really special--it was of an eight-year-old, but the kid's Dad had just been baptized about six months ago. We'd been working a lot with him (the Dad), because he'd been struggling a little, but with the motivation of his child's baptism, he was basically able to rededicate himself (I think he probably would have done it without us), and was actually able to baptize his kid, which was super duper cool.

Another kind of interesting thing: In the past like three days, we've had two members, both of whom are fairly recent converts, tell us that they're struggling with drinking coffee. It'd never really crossed my mind that after baptism, that would continue to be an issue, but it completely makes sense, I guess. When something like that's been a part of your life forever, I imagine that it would be fairly easy to give it up for enough time to be baptized, but significantly harder to keep it out of your life. I don't really know, though. Just thought it was interesting.

Transfers are in two weeks--February 3. Coming up soon! Don't really know what's going to happen. A lot of people are predicting that I'll be finally going Spanish, but I have no idea. We'll see!

Love,

Peter

Okay, here are some pictures:

1) the first of those paper toy things you sent for Christmas--I finally got a glue stick!

2) The Denver Temple, yay

3) one place that we do service, covenant cupboard

We did miss whatever this polar vortex thing is

Well, it sounds like you've had a pretty busy week. I did too, which was pretty great. Thanks a lot for all of the news about things going on in Portland.

Okay, this week: This week was pretty great! We had a lot of teaching going on, and were able to even find some new people to teach!

So I think two Tuesdays ago, the zone leaders challenged us to knock on 150 doors between two Thursdays ago and last Wednesday (inclusive). That could be tracting, visiting members, set appointments with people, etc. But mostly the focus was on tracting. So for the first few days of that challenge, we weren't able to do much of that, because we had a lot of set appointments. By last Tuesday, we found ourselves having about 110 doors to go to make it to the 150 number (and we'd been promised food if we could make it, so there was a little bit of motivation right there). 

So, on Tuesday, we went tracting at this apartment complex for something like three hours straight (I'm sure to Dad this doesn't seem like anything special, but that's probably more tracting than I'd ever done on my entire mission combined so far). We knocked something like 105 doors (we got the rest the next day), and we were actually able to find some receptive people, which was awesome. There was this one lady who said that she was going through a hard time in her life, and that she was really disillusioned with the religion that her parents had tried to force on her all of her life. She was really impressed, I think, with the friendly way that we presented the gospel. 

Then, there was a couple who also seemed pretty receptive. He said that he had a couple of friends who were actually serving missions, and that his boss was actually a member of the church as well (there's that power of example!). So, we set up times to meet with them tomorrow, and hopefully all that will go well!

We also were able to have a lesson with the other couple taking the lessons that I think I've told you guys about before. We went with the Ward Mission Leader, and talked about commandments, and it went pretty well. They're great--I think we're meeting with them three times this week. The ward's also been really welcoming to them--all three of the times we're meeting with them, it'll be at a member's house, with food involved :).

The injured elder is actually doing a lot better, and has been okayed to start working again--I think that happened midway through last week. He's still not 100% well, but he can work!

A couple of exciting things about this coming week: We get to go to the temple on Wednesday, which will be awesome! That'll be the first time since October that I've gone--in November my companion wasn't able to get up at the 4:00 time that we would have had to, and we weren't allowed to go in December due to Christmas and things. So this'll be great.

And then also on Wednesday, we'll be having interviews with our mission president which should be really cool.

I do know that being on a mission right now is the right thing for me. That doesn't necessarily mean that I never wish that I could listen to music or read books :), but I know that this is the right thing for me.

As far as I can tell, we did miss whatever this polar vortex thing is. Things have been decent recently--there has been some snow, but it's been manageable, and it hasn't been too terribly cold. So we're doing alright.

In terms of other service, we have a couple places that we do community service. First off, every Friday we go to this place called "Covenant Cupboard", which is basically a food bank/pantry/I don't know associated with a Presbyterian Church. We get to help distribute the food, and it's a really cool place. We also go to this place called project Cure, although not super often, and we help them pack and ship medical supplies to like third-world countries.

Well, I think that's about it. Hope you're having a great day, week, year, etc.

Oh, and here's some pictures! they're of Me & My companion, and of my terribly messy desk.

Love!

Peter

Happy New Year!

Hey!

Thanks for the email, news, etc. 2014 has had a great start here in Colorado.

I am still in the same place, and it is probably okay to send mail there. Probably starting in about two weeks, it'd be better to send things to the mission office, just in case of transfers and fun stuff like that.

This week has been pretty awesome, with only a couple of hitches. The week before (Christmas), we had planned basically everything about this week, and so we were able to get a lot of good work done. Making set appointments really helps things! What a surprise! 

So, we visited quite a few people. Even with the pretty bad weather, we were able to get a lot of rides from appointment to appointment, and things really just went smoothly.

One crazy thing that happened: so, there's this member in our ward who's from Ethiopia. We had an appointment with him last Friday, and beforehand, he actually called us to see if he could bring a friend (also from Ethiopia). Well, we showed up at his house, expecting his friend to be there with him, and found out that in fact, he (the friend) was waiting for us at his house. So, the member that was coming with us drove us to this guy, and we shared the first lesson with him. Odd things about the lesson: his house was not only out of our area, but out of our zone (going out of the zone is not a good thing to do in general), and we're not really sure how much of the lesson he understood--his English was not super good. However, we're gonna try to keep teaching him (probably we'll have him come to the member in our ward's house or something), and maybe we'll have him translate into his language, which I think is called Amharic.

Aside from that interesting thing, we also spent a little bit of time in the another area. On Christmas Eve, one of the missionaries in the district was fooling around, and fell on the ground and actually cracked his skull. So he has to stay in bed most of the time. We went to help his companion keep working in their area. So that was pretty interesting, and a little bit weird. 

And then, on Sunday, my companion was fairly sick with what looks like the flu, so we had to stay home basically all day :(, although we were able to get to sacrament meeting, which was good.

Things are going really well here, and it seems like we are doing good here. I'm really glad that I'm able to serve in this area, and to serve with my companion. I hope things are going well with you guys. Happy New Years! It's pretty crazy that it's already 2014.

Love,

Peter