Bring it!

Hey!

So I have had a pretty great week! And it had been feeling like spring, until yesterday, when it dropped to the twenties and snowed! But aside from that, things are going pretty well, I'd have to say. 

As far as I know, my ward isn't planning anything special for Easter, just normal church. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. The only special thing I know of is that all of us missionaries are going to have dinner together (all 8!), whereas usually it's just four of us.

So there is an exercise routine that I guess I have been trying to do, which is out of a book that my companion has called "Bring it" by Tony Horton, the guy who does P90X. It's good, but it's hard for me sometimes to get up the motivation to work out in the morning. I'd say that's probably the thing I'm working the most on changing, obedience to the mission rules-wise.

Yeah, it was interviews. So that was pretty cool, it's always nice to chat with President Toombs. It was kind of weird, that was actually the last round of interviews that President Toombs'll do before he goes home! And he did have some words of wisdom, as always, mostly about getting the real desire to spread the gospel--not just a sense of duty, but of really wanting to go out and do missionary work. When I like get to know people, it's easy to want to share the gospel with them. It's mostly when we're finding new people to teach (e.g. tracting) that it's kind of a struggle to get motivated.

Luckily we don't tract too much, but some. There are a couple of apartment complexes that have a lot of spanish-speakers, and aside from that, sometimes we'll go check out some neighborhoods that have signs of being spanish families.

And I'm so jealous that you guys'll see Elder Aidukaitis. You'd better go, that accent is awesome! :)

For us, this week was pretty good, although lessons-wise, kind of slow again. There were a lot of complications, because one of the other Elders got sick, so we had to be at their house a couple of times, on Wednesday and Sunday, to help work things out, give a blessing, give the sacrament. We had to cancel a couple of appointments because of that sort of thing, and some cancelled as well, which was, as always, a little frustrating. But, again as always, there were some great things that happened this week too! 

There was an investigator who was referred from a member, and we taught her once, and then we were trying to get in touch with her for like a month. But then last week (two thursdays ago, I think), when I was on exchanges, We found her husband at home, and set up an appointment, and so we taught them last week, and it was awesome, and they're super receptive, and it was great! 

There's also a less-active family who we finally were able to teach, who have a son who hasn't been baptized, and he's 9 years old, so we're going to be teaching him, hopefully!

Aside from that, we had interviews, as I said, which were great, and we had zone meeting, which is like district meeting but twice as long and with all the zone. It's like halfway between district meeting and zone conference (three zones), and it was pretty great. It was a lot focused on the atonement. We were given a couple of talks beforehand to study, "His Grace is Sufficient" by Brad Wilcox (which Dad totally sent me last P-day), and "In the Strength of the Lord" by Elder Bednar, I would definitely recommend those talks to everyone.

So yeah, this week was pretty good!

Oh also you asked me last time about what I meant by feeling like I was in training for a while--mostly just that it took me a while to get back to where I was in english in spanish, and I'm still not there, and probably won't be on my mission. But that's okay! Heavenly Father helps me, and I can do his work!

I love you guys! Have a great week!

Love,

Peter

P.S. oh I forgot to tell this story, even though it was hilarious. Okay, so there's this one family in our ward that lives all the way in Boulder (no, I don't know why they come to this ward), so we can't come to their house for dinner. But they sometimes sign up, and then give us money or give us food at the church. So this week, they gave us a gift card to Chipotle. So we went there, and then while we were there, another Member from an english ward approached us and told us they were going to pay for our food. We couldn't really say no, so now we still have $ to chipotle, so we're probably going to go today, and some other time or whatever.

We can't just give up when things are hard.

Hey!

I'm glad you guys all had a good conference weekend, it sounds there was a lot of important things accomplished :).

This week was pretty good for us! We finally got our car back on Wednesday, which made things a lot easier. On Thursday, we went on exchanges, and for the first time on my mission I actually stayed in the area, and my companion left, so that was kind of exciting. (I think that's a little weird, and mostly has to do with the fact that in the first two areas I didn't really go on exchanges much, and then last transfer I don't think I was particularly trusted to manage the area with my extremely limited spanish skills :)). So that was a cool experience--I also had the opportunity to drive for the first time in quite a while, which was a little (a lot actually) nerve-wracking at first, but I got used to it by the end of the day.

In terms of exciting missionary work type things, we were able to get in touch with two families of investigators that we hadn't seen in a while, which was great, and found a new family to teach also, which was super great. 

After dinner on Sunday, we didn't have a ton to do until about seven, and we were kind of just going around trying people, most of whom weren't home. I was getting fairly discouraged, especially when at 7, our set appointment wasn't home. But we tried his neighbor, who was actually a potential investigator, and they were home, and we taught them, and they are super awesome and receptive! So that was a pretty great testimony-booster of working hard for me. We can't just give up when things are hard. If we really persist, we'll find success.

And then conference! That was pretty sweet. In between sessions on Sunday, the missionaries in the ward made homemade pizza which was pretty great. And the talks were pretty awesome also. Some of my favorites were:

Elder Nelson

Elder Hales

Elder Zwick

President Uchtdorf's Priesthood Session and his Sunday Morning one

President Monson's Sunday Morning Talk

Elder Corbridge

and Elder Aidukaitis (and not just because of his accent :))

I really liked it, and I would definitely encourage you all to check out the talks you missed on lds.org, I particularly liked Elder Holland's and Elder Anderson's talks in the saturday morning session. I also (somewhat surprisingly) really liked the talk that the Counselor in the primary presidency gave on Sunday. I'll be honest, when I heard the word "primary", I kind of started worrying, but the talk was really good, I thought, even if it was delivered in a bit of a "primary voice".

To answer your questions:

General Conference isn't really a holiday for missionaries, we still have to work when General Conference isn't on--I guess Saturday was pretty unusual, but Sunday was actually a pretty normal Sunday--church ends ordinarily at 4:00 anyways, so there wasn't much of a difference.

There isn't a Ward Choir in the ward--if the ward wants to have a song in sacrament meeting, they'll just hold a few practices, and then do it. We haven't participated in that so far. Last month, we sang "Come unto Christ" which is I think a like youth theme song at an open house that we had. We sang the verses in english, and the chorus in spanish--it was pretty great.

No, we don't live close at all to the other Spanish missionaries, although the sisters that serve in the YSA branch actually live in our same apartment complex.

Yes, I'm feeling more settled in as a Spanish missionary, although I feel like I'll probably be "settling in" for my entire mission. I kind of do feel like I was trained, and then when I got here I was kind of trained again, which is a little frustrating, but it's alright--I feel like I've had a kind of weird mission so far, but I'm trying to make it work :).

We've had access to members' laundry machines as long as I've been here, but before coming here we've had to physically do the laundry. Here we kind of just drop off our dirty laundry and it magically comes back clean :). We're really grateful that the family does it for us.

Thank you for everything! I love you a lot, and yeah, Mother's day will be really great. I'm not exactly sure how that'll work, but it'll be great no matter what.

I hope everything's going well for you guys! I love you and miss you!

Love,

Peter

Rejoice evermore!

Hey, Mom! And anyone else who reads this!

I'm glad you had a good spring break, it sounds like there was a lot of fun had by all :). I'm especially missing settlers--it was recently decided that we can't play it, even on P-days, because apparently it would take too much time. It makes sense, I suppose.

For us, this week was good, although kind of slow. We had a lot of appointments cancel, which was disappointing--we even had some appointments cancel, re-set, and then cancel again, which was a little bit frustrating. But we made it work, and we found success in other ways, I think. For instance, when one potential investigator cancelled, after we'd already gotten a member to come with us and everything, we decided to bring the member (our Ward Mission Leader) to try and visit another potential investigator, although we were a little apprehensive about the chances of finding him home.

Well, we did, and we were able to teach him, and the Ward Mission Leader did a great job, and the guy seems really interested in learning more! And then afterwards, Hermano took us to Wendy's! So basically what I've learned is that on a mission, just like in "real life", there are things that are hard about every week (every day, even), and things that make it better.

Sunday was a little bizarre for us, too--it was fifth Sunday, so the men and women had class together, and the missionaries (eight of us) were left in charge of the primary. That was pretty crazy--I'd forgotten how much energy little kids can have.

Oh, another kind of crazy thing--our car is in the shop right now (apparently there was a like minuscule dent on it that had been there since before I came that the vehicle coordinator finally decided needed fixing), so we've been on bikes for the past few days! It's been kind of insane, and difficult, but we've been trying to get as many rides as we can, and pushing through. Hopefully we'll be getting the car back tomorrow, but for now, we're enjoying the increased visibility--last night at like 8:00, we were actually walking our bikes, because the wind was so strong that we didn't feel like biking uphill would be effective at all, and a member stopped his car, parked, and gave us $! So that was kinda really cool.

All in all, it's been a kind of hectic week, but good as well. I'm really looking forward to General Conference, that should be really awesome. I'm pretty sure I'll be watching Conference in English. There will be a broadcast at the chapel in English, and I think in some other rooms it will be in Spanish, so I'll probably be watching in English.

Mission trivia answers: 

I would say that probably 75% or more of the dinners we have are Mexican food. There are a couple of families that usually give us non-Mexican food, like this one where I believe the husband works at an Italian restaurant, so we usually have really good Italian food with them.

Most things have been pretty normal, from the point of view of Spanish culture I think. Probably the weirdest thing that was an option has been at dinner on Saturday, where we were offered pig feet, to put in our soup. None of the missionaries took it, so I assumed it wouldn't be bad to not take it. So that was kind of weird.

I don't really do too much budgeting, because I don't buy too much stuff. The only things we have to pay for are groceries, laundry, and like personal stuff. The mission pays for rent, utilities, gas, and other stuff like that. So that's nice. So most of the time I don't have to be too worried about money, it's mostly just like don't buy too much food, which isn't really a problem too much, because members feed us so much.

And yes, we do do stuff like (play soccer with other missionaries) occasionally, but not like super often, because we the Spanish missionaries live really far away from the other missionaries in our zone. But once a transfer, we have this thing called a zone P-day, where like everyone in the zone gathers up and does play sports or something. Not always soccer, but something. And then like last week the four of us Spanish elders played soccer together, and today we're going to go play soccer with some members of the ward.

As long as the senior companion has driving privileges, he drives. Driving is never really a split responsibility here, there's always one "designated driver."

My collection of ties has grown, but really only once, when my companion gave me a bunch of ties when he went home. So I do have more ties than I did when I left!

There's actually a member who does our laundry for us, which is really nice of her. So we don't even have to spend money on that!

In almost every ward there's a person who will give missionaries haircuts for free, so we go to her. But if we can't find someone like that, we'll go to somewhere like great clips. 

I love you all.

Love,

Peter

P.S. a couple of scriptures that I've found the past couple of weeks that I thought were just pretty awesome, and wanted to share:

1 Thessalonians 5:16 (the second shortest verse in the bible, also: awesome)

Jacob 6:12 (also awesome and short)

Happy Spring Break!

Hey!

Sounds like a good week! I'm glad everything's been going well (especially with March Madness :). With that, like the Olympics, we don't get too much news here in the Spanish Ward, although I don't know if that'd be different in an English Ward. Probably. Go Stanford, I guess!). Also, it's pretty cool about the Eagle project at the Co-op.

Another just random thing I was thinking about re: spelling and stuff, that was brought up by reading in my spanish-english dictionary the section about English pronunciation, is that the letter "e" has a really bizarre role in some words. For example, the word "Father". How would you pronounce that word differently if it was spelled "Fathr"? The "e" in "Father" really doesn't have a sound. The only difference I can think of is that if you ommitted the "e", I don't think my mind would "sound" the "th" (I guess the difference is between the "th" in "the" and "threat", if you get what I'm saying"). "E" is weird, man.

Wow, sorry, that was a super long tangent. Anyways, my week went pretty well. We got to go to the Temple, which was super cool, as always. Afterward, we went to the Deseret Book that's really close, and I got a scripture case, finally! Hopefully my scriptures won't fall apart now :). 

On Saturday, we had breakfast at the Stake President's house, which was a lot of fun--it's like a tradition thing, that we do the first saturday of each transfer. So anyway we had french toast, which I think that was the first time I'd had it in like all my mission, so that was pretty awesome. 

Sunday was probably the best day of the week. Aside from getting to go to church, we actually had someone come to church! He isn't technically an investigator yet, as we haven't taught him, but he was a referral from some other missionaries. We'd been trying to contact him for a while, without luck. We tried calling him on I think Friday, and he picked up, and asked for where the church was, and then he came to church! Yay! So that was really awesome. We really hope we can teach him some more and help him come into the church. 

Also on Sunday, one of our appointments cancelled, so we went looking for another investigator, who we hadn't been able to contact that week. He was home, we taught him, and he seems really great! He really has a desire to follow Christ, and we were actually able to set him with a baptismal date! That was great. So, this week was pretty good, and we're looking forward to an even better week next week. Really looking forward to General Conference, too, in a couple of weeks.

I'm glad Ward Conference went well; we had ward conference last week, and that was pretty great, too. Lots of translations with the Stake people talking, but it was good anyways. I got to see a bunch of people who I remembered from a past ward, including the High Councilor who's responsible for our ward (and actually also speaks spanish pretty well), so that was pretty cool.

Things are going pretty well with Spanish. Sometimes I mess up, or realize midway through a sentence that I don't actually know how to say what I'm trying to in Spanish, but things work out. I think I have had a couple of experiences dreaming in spanish, which is a little weird, and actually, according to my companion, I've been talking in my sleep in spanish a little bit, which is bizarre, because as far as I know, I haven't really had a problem with sleep-talking before. Must have something to do with my brain going crazy.

It's great that my brothers enjoyed the missionary crafted bookmarks. Here's the wonderful secret of laminating as a missionary: packing tape :) The only problem with the packing tape is that it loses the effect when the thing you're "laminating" is larger that the packing tape. But it works, ish.

Have a great week!

Love,

Peter

Someone's going to pinch me!

Hey!

Ack! I'm not wearing green! Someone's going to pinch me!. Maybe we'll stop home really quick so I can grab a green tie or something.

To answer your questions: I am.... still here, still serving with the same companion, for the next 6 weeks, at least. So that should be good, we'll be continuing to work with those that we've been teaching so far. It'll be great!

And other than rats, what kind of wildlife is there in Colorado? Um, the things that I've seen the most of have been: groundhogs and rabbits. There are tons of both of them, it's kind of insane. Aside from that, not a ton of out-of-the-ordinary things.

This week was pretty good, and pretty busy as well! Lots of service, which was good, and lots of teaching, which was also pretty awesome. 

On Tuesday, we helped a family (who if I'm understanding the situation correctly is related to a bunch of members of our ward, but goes to the local English Ward) to move, which was pretty great, because it was snowing pretty hard for like the whole time. But it was alright, because afterwards, they gave us some really good food! So that was pretty awesome! 

On Wednesday, we went up to my former area to do service at this place called Kidz Quiltz, which I think I've told you guys about before, and I actually finished the quilt that I was working on, which was exciting. I'll attach a picture so you can appreciate the majesty.  We like to serve there because basically it's the most entertaining service we have, and we have the miles for it, as long as we carpool occasionally with the other set of elders in the ward. We don't have a ton of local options for service, and the one that we do have bores my companion immensely, so we don't go there too often. To make the quilt, I cut out fabric, sewed together the fabric, put the like filling stuff in, sewed it all together, did the little tie thingies, all with a lot of help from others :). I don't know anything about quilting terms like binding, I just know what I did.

Another really cool thing on Wednesday, was that we got to teach a new investigator, who was a referral from a family in the ward, with that family. It's always the best when you can teach people with members that they're already familiar with helping--there's a support system built in, as I think it says in Preach my Gospel. 

On Thursday, we had a zone meeting, which was pretty awesome--we had seven trainings in total, one from each of the district leaders in the zone, from each of the zone leaders, and each of the sister training leaders. So that was a ton of training, which was great.

Sunday was a pretty cool day as well, even though none of our investigators were able to come to church (that seems to be a problem that we have here, is that we aren't able to really help those that we're teaching understand the importance of coming to church). 

On Sunday, though, we were able to teach with a couple of families that I think I mentioned last week. Both of those lessons went pretty well, and we got to know about their situations a little bit more, which was interesting. The first family apparently grew up believing in the Book of Mormon, and that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but doesn't have a testimony that the Church is true. I think we can help them with that :). The other one, we found out, is actually going to a different church, right now. But we're helping them to read the Book of Mormon, so they can find out for themselves that this is the true church.

But yeah, that was my week. Nothing new with transfers, only two out of the eight missionaries in the ward are leaving, so things are largely staying the same. We see the the other Elders every day, because we have dinner with them, and we see the sisters fairly regularly, whether at service, or at district meeting, or at church. 

I hope everything's going well for you guys. I love you lots.

Love,

Peter

Okay this member made us hats, it's supposed to be Mike Wazowski, and it's awesome.

It randomly died...

Hey!

It seems like everything is going really well, also many thanks for the reminder of Prairie Home Companion--it's funny the things that make you smile.

It sounds like, from all reports, that Footloose went really well--hopefully there will be opportunities for me to see clips or something when I get back :).

And, wow, that's super exciting that she got her call! I'm sure she'll do a great job, and really enjoy the MTC--it's a great place. Basically, it was pretty awesome... I can't think of anything in particular, but if they have specific questions, I'd be happy to answer as best I can, although it's probably a bit different now.

For me, this week was pretty good, although a little bit slower than in the past. We had quite a few cancellations, especially from investigators, which is disappointing and hard, but it's alright. 

We were, though, able to get in touch with some people that we hadn't been able to in the past, which was exciting. It's been really difficult to get in touch with that one family that came to church a couple of weeks ago, but we finally reached them, and set up an appointment with them for this week, so hopefully that'll go through. We were really worried for a while, because they hadn't been answering their phone, but when we dropped by last night, there didn't seem to be any problem, so hopefully all is well.

Another pretty great experience: on Thursday(?), we had dinner scheduled with a family, but they ended up passing us off to her Mom, who also lives in the ward. The cool thing was, though, that at dinner, some other relatives who are a part-member family, showed up, and we were able to talk to them, and actually set up an appointment for yesterday, which they kept! We'd been trying to get in touch with them for a while, so that was pretty great. They seem really awesome-- it's like, the Mom and her 10-year old son, her Boyfriend, and the the Mom's 16-year-old sister. They're awesome, and we can't wait to see them again.

It is pretty cool what can happen when we're just confident enough to talk. That's one thing that I'm really trying to improve on, is just getting over the fear of talking to people, especially in Spanish. I feel like once I can get comfortable just talking to people, I'll be a much more effective missionary. 

It's kind of crazy that this is the last week of the transfer, that it's possible that one of us could be gone next Monday. We'll see what happens! This transfer went by really quickly, actually. It seems like the further I get in my mission, the faster time seems to go by. Kinda bizarre!

Here's some pictures!

-So for district meeting we were asked to wear polka dots, but I didn't have any polka-dot ties, so I cut out some sticky notes. Yeah.

- Oh, the joys of apartment living! Seriously, it just randomly died under my bed. We don't know why or how, it just was there, dead one day.

Love,

Peter

If you can't stand temperatures below 20, I would recommend never living in Colorado.

Hey!

This week was pretty great, we've been doing a lot of good work, and it seems like these past few weeks have really just flown by.

So the biggest crazy thing this week was that we found quite a few new investigators, like 10, all of who were families that we'd run into earlier, and were following up with this week.

With one of the families, we had one of the craziest lessons I've been in. This was the family that came to church last week, who we met when we were looking for a less-active member. So, we had a really good plan for this family--we were really excited for them. We had another family in the ward all set up to come with us. So, that night, we went with the members to the investigators' house, and proceeded to teach a 2.5 hour lesson, all about the restoration. So, it turns out that the Dad had studied with a different church for a long time, like 4 years, and although he didn't join their church, it left a lot of leftover concerns, and a little bit of distrust for organized religion. 

We also met a couple of other families, including one kind of bizarre situation: Both the Mom and Dad were raised by Grandparents who were members, and apparently grew up thinking that they were church members, but weren't baptized for whatever reason. Their kids, though, are baptized, and their daughters are semi-active members of the local English ward. The parents go to church a couple times a year, and they have a Book of Mormon, but they don't know when the last time they read it was. Hopefully we'll be able to help them realize the blessings of being a member of the church for reals.

It sounds like the concert was pretty great, I wish I could have been there! Trinity Cathedral is so awesome. If you liked "Aurora," I would recommend (although probably you've already heard it) "On the Transmigration of Souls" by John Adams (The guys who wrote Nixon in China, not the founding father :)). It's his tribute to the 9/11 victims, and it's pretty dang awesome.

On Saturday, I went on exchanges with a missionary who was actually in the Mexico City MTC with me, although not in my district.

I feel like one big thing I'll be bringing back from my mission is a real appreciation for the fact that in Oregon, it rarely if ever gets below 30 :). If you can't stand temperatures below 20, I would recommend never living in Colorado.

Anyways, it was a pretty great week. I got the valentines' day package on saturday, and amazingly, the toblerone is still here. I'm trying to pace myself :).

Thank you all  for everything. I love you all!

Peter

Here are some pictures, too:

My companion & I at the Temple.

I'm confused why they had to ship all those "components" of the foam basketball to Mexico to be made.

March paper monster, pretty cool.