He taught us a lot about how to teach

First off, thanks for the pictures! I would totally reciprocate (I honestly was planning on it) but I accidentally left the camera at home. I'm sorry!

Cool that you've been able to work with the sister missionaries! Let me tell you, lessons taught in members' houses are the best. So I'm sure the sisters were appreciative. Have you noticed a trend in how long missionaries generally stay in the ward? I'm just curious if it's similar to how it is in our mission.

It's been a pretty interesting week! We've been teaching some cool people--There's this one guy (who we're going to have to hand off to the YSA pretty soon :/ ) who's doing really well. He was going to come to church on Sunday, but then something came up. He's like 20, and he's had a really hard life, and is like living with friends, but he's really interested in learning, and we're really excited for him.

On Monday, we actually had a lesson with him at a member's house, which was really neat.

There's been some craziness in the zone which we've had to deal with, which has been interesting. There's an elder who broke his hand at a P-day activity, and it's a pretty bad break, so he has to have surgery on it. While he's waiting for surgery, though, the mission nurse has told him that he has to stay inside basically all the time. So he and his companion are going a little bit crazy. So we've gone on a couple of exchanges with them to let them get out and do some work.

We had pretty awesome meeting on Thursday with all the Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders, plus a few random other missionaries. The Director of Proselyting from the Missionary Department came down and talked to us about a lot of things. One of the coolest thing was that he taught us a lot about having shorter, simpler lessons. He said people can't stand a complicated, 1-hour lesson more than once a week, and that that's a reason why a lot of people don't progress. So he taught us a lot about how to teach using pictures and the pamphlets to teach simply and quickly, which will hopefully help us to have more productive, more frequent lessons. Pretty neat.

One neat thing: This week we have a temple trip! It's been a while, because the temple has been closed for the last two months. I know we're spoiled, but it's pretty nice to be able to go back after a while.

Love,

Peter

Church!

Thanks for all the news. I'm glad it's been a good week, and I cannot believe James is going to be 15. That's completely insane and not allowed. I guess I kind of have this idea stuck in my head that everything is supposed to stay the same while I'm here on the mission. But I guess that's not really how it works. Craziness.

It's been a pretty crazy week, but a good one. We had a lot of meetings. Like almost one every single day. I'll make a list:

Monday: Not really a meeting, but we had zone-pday, which was really fun. We went sledding! The STLs borrowed some sleds from members of their ward. They were like plastic boat-type things. It was a lot of fun.

Tuesday: We had a conference for district leaders that President wanted all the zone leaders to attend as well, even though we didn't actually do anything.

Wednesday: District meeting, and district leadership council, where we get together with the district leaders and sister training leaders and talk about what we can do for the zone.

Thursday: 2 more district meetings (we go to all the district meetings in the zone)

Friday: Mission Leadership Council, we got together with pPresident, the Assistants, and all the ZLs and STLs in the mission and chatted about the needs of the mission.

Saturday: Nothing, except we took like an hour out of the day to get a bike from a different zone for a missionary in our zone.

Sunday: Church! (I gave a talk at church! It was pretty exciting, it was about how I prepared for my mission/how I wish I would have prepared for my mission. I had 4 main points: Read the scriptures, pay attention at church and seminary, gain a strong testimony, and practice! It was fun.)

So yeah aside from the meetings, we had a pretty good week as well. The meetings are usually really short, like an hour or less so that makes it easier to fit in missionary work. We found some new investigators--one family that moved here from South Sudan about a year ago, pretty cool, and a 20-year-old guy who's had a pretty hard life but who has a lot of faith. This guy has an unusual name, and he's American. It's pronounced "Jaw-spin".

It is odd serving in English, but not as weird as I thought it'd be. It's that gift of tongues!

And we do still get to talk to quite a few Spanish people. There's a lot of street contacting to do and the Spanish concentration is pretty dang high.

One little thing that might be funny: I am so happy about daylight savings time! Even though it's pretty annoying to lose an hour of sleep the first day, it's so nice that it's light outside at 8:00 now. Makes knocking doors a lot more comfortable. 

Life really is good. It's warm outside, my companion's great, and I'm a missionary! It's pretty nice.

I love you all a lot. Thanks so much for everything!

Peter

Some pretty cool stuff going on

Well, to answer the subject line question, yes. February is crazy short! What the heck, am I right?

 

Thanks for the email, it sounds like it's been a pretty busy week! I hope there are more pictures of the musical on their way. Tom told me he really wanted me to see some of the costumes he got to wear :).

 

Really sad to hear that Sister Schutz died. She and Brother Schutz were really great. I definitely do remember the pinewood derby prep, and taking the sacrament.

 

Well so for us this week was pretty great! Lots of crazy crazy stuff going on. We spent 3 days this week on exchanges, literally every other day. So on Tuesday, I took over the area after only having been there for a week, which was a little bit stressful, but okay. And then on Thursday I went on exchanges with the assistants, which was pretty neat. They have a lot of stuff to do. And then on Saturday I went on exchanges in Denver 4th, the Spanish ward, which was super exciting! It was a lot of fun. Sad thing, the dinner we had in Spanish ended up just giving us money (I was totally hoping for a real Mexican dinner) so we ended up going to a Mexican restaurant that was pretty authentic, so that was good.

Some pretty cool stuff going on in the area. We had a few less-active members come to church on Sunday, which was cool, and we've been teaching this guy from Africa, and he has a baptismal date now, for the day before my companion goes home. That'll be great.

 

Something I'm kind of excited for: Next week, some head honchos from the missionary department are coming to the mission to like check it out, and they're gonna come and address the zone leaders and sister training leaders next Friday, so that should be a pretty neat experience.

 

Thanks for everything! Sorry, not a ton of stuff happened this week honestly :) mostly just like a lot of administrative stuff.

Love,

Peter!

CRAZINESS!

Dear Everyone,

It sounds like it's been a pretty crazy week! You're gonna have to send me any pictures you can get from the musical, that sounds like it's gonna be a lot of fun.

To answer the questions you had last week:

 

Yes I'm still in Aurora. I know a lot of the missionaries that are around here, because it's the same zone I was in last transfer. It's in the same stake. 

 

And we live at a members' house. It's pretty great because they buy all of our groceries.

 

But Oh MAN! It has been a crazy week, let me tell you. Just a lot of craziness going on. CRAZINESS! Let me give you some highlights:

 

1. 3 out of my first 4 dinners were pizza.

 

2. Met and started teaching a guy from Ghana who's a chief there, just visiting here for a while.

 

3. Went with a member to try some potential investigators, one of them spoke French, as did the member, so we sat there while the member taught the first lesson in French.

 

4. Had a less active deal my companion and the bishop a hand of texas hold 'em (the guy's not all there)

 

5. Completely insane blizzard Saturday evening. It got so bad we weren't allowed to drive our car (perk of this area: we get a 4x4 truck), so we had to get members to drive us around.

 

6. Our chapel is super old, from the time before there was the like standardized building plan. So the chapel has this massive mural of the Sermon on the Mount right behind the pulpit.

 

So yeah things are going good. Lots of meetings, and it's weird not being in Spanish, but I love this ward already. There are some really great members. Our ward mission leader's a really awesome guy, and the ward's just really supportive. We don't have a ton of investigators as of now, but that's alright! We'll get it moving!

 

One thing that's I've definitely learned even more this week is that sometimes, Heavenly Father's gonna put you in situations that you don't want to be in, not because He wants to torture you, but because He knows it's going to make you stronger and teach you something. I'm just doing my best to learn from all the craziness going on. It's a lot of fun.

 

Thank you so much for everything. I love you a lot!

Peter

I got transferred, but not moved :). Okay so I did move house.

To let you all know so you can stop freaking out, which is I'm sure what you've all been doing all day yesterday and today, I got transferred, but not moved :). Okay so I did move house. But the area that I'm serving in falls within the boundaries of the area I just left, if that makes any sense at all. I'm now serving as a Zone Leader in one of the English wards my Spanish area covered the last few transfers. It's pretty dang weird, but it'll be fun. 

My companion's actually also a Spanish missionary, so it's pretty cool. He's probably the most dedicated, hard working Spanish Elder in the entire mission, so I'm excited for that. He's from Texas. He goes home at the end of this transfer. He's pretty great.

Let me tell you, it was pretty sad to leave Spanish. I don't know how I'm going to be able to do it, not eating spicy food and having tortillas with every meal. So it's sad, but I know there's going to be a lot of new opportunities, so that'll be great. Hopefully I'll be back in Spanish before the end of my mission, though.

Time passes really quickly. It's pretty much crazy. I think also, the longer you spend in an area, the faster time seems to pass there. You kind of get into a routine and things speed up. So this week might seem to take a long time, because it's different. I don't know if you've experienced anything similar.

We didn't have anything really special on Valentine's Day. Bishop was planning on doing an activity, but it never ended up happening. So it was basically a completely normal day.

My last week in Spanish for a while was a good one, though, which made it harder to leave, honestly. We were able to find a few new investigators, which was exciting, and a less-active family that hasn't been to church in many months came! It was pretty cool. One of the investigators was pretty interesting--there's a stake that doesn't even technically fall within the boundaries of our ward, but we're the closest Spanish ward to them, so a set of sister missionaries sent us a referral from there, and we picked them up as investigators on Friday! It was pretty crazy, it was a like 20 minute drive out to where they lived, and so that was fun.

My former district is in my zone! And Zone Leaders lead zones! By doing things like helping missionaries in any way we can, like for example, yesterday we drove up a few missionaries on transfer day to a stake center like 30 minutes away. So basically like a district leader, but with more people to worry about.

 

I'm pretty excited for this transfer. It's going to be a lot of fun. I hope all of you had a great week, and that this week goes well!

Love,

Peter!

Hopefully he's just as interested...

Well, it sounds like a good week. Thanks for keeping me updated. It's been busy in Colorado, too, which is good. Highlights:

1. After a like 4 week drought, we were able to find a new investigator on Saturday, yay! The only thing is is he was kind of drunk when we taught him. So but hopefully he's just as interested when he's not drunk!

2. An investigator I'd basically given up on came to church on Sunday! I hadn't seen or heard from her in like more than a month, turns out she went with her member friend to the Dominican Republic, but's back now and we're totally gonna baptize her and it's gonna be great.

3. Thursday was pretty great. We had Zone conference, which was awesome. Basically President Mendenhall told us that if we weren't being obedient, we're Gadianton Robbers and need to repent. That was awesome! And for lunch, we had american enchiladas, the kind with lots of cream and cheese and chicken, and no salsa! At zone conference, we sang "Placentero Nos Es Trabajar" which is a song that's only in the Spanish hymnal, interesting, huh? Just our district sang, plus the one Spanish sister who was serving in the English zones that came. We had three zones (stakes) at the zone conference. Our stake is the only one that has a Spanish ward.

4. Things are going pretty well here in Denver. Right now what we're trying to do is find interested Spanish-speakers in houses, which is a bit of a struggle, but it's fun. We've found that in general, people who live in houses are a bit more legit as in like committed than apartment-dwellers. It's easier to find people who'll let you in in apartments, but there's a lower chance of progression, generally. So we're "discrimatracting" meaning we go to neighborhoods and look for signs of Hispanic-ness. It's exciting!

5. The weather is pretty fantastic! It's pretty much insane--it's been really nice and it's February! What the heck! I don't understand it, it's probably global warming. But I'm enjoying it while I can. It's been in the 70s for crying out loud. And it's FEBRUARY! OH MY GOODNESS WHAT IS GOING ON is how I feel, but it's good, so yay!

So basically it was a good week. It's crazy, this is the last week of the transfer. I don't know what's going to happen, who knows if I stay or go????? Crazy huh????

I'd definitely encourage you to read the scriptures as much as you can, that's a pretty awesome way to get ready for a mission, definitely. I wish I'd read the scriptures more before I came out here. 

Good luck with the everything. I know what it's like. It can be pretty dang nerve-wracking. Procrastination--not the best decision.

I love you all!

Love,

Peter

So I'm sure it's going to be a better week.

Hey!

Thanks for the email! I'm sorry, this is gonna be short because we have to go to a thing, it's actually pretty cool, we're going to sing a song in Spanish at zone conference on Thursday, and we have to go practice it.

A couple of things to answer:

Yeah the Super Bowl wasn't actually a very big thing, weirdly enough. Probably because the Broncos weren't in it, hah!

And a couple things about the Mexican flavors (at the ice cream shoppe):

1. Oh my goodness goat's milk caramel is so good! There are these lollipops that are that flavor and they are delicious.

2. You totally should have got the chili chocolate that sounds delicious.

So this week here in Denver was pretty interesting, in a kind of not very great way. Basically there were some things that were good, like we have some really great less-actives who are progressing, which is really cool (two of them came to church yesterday and bore their testimonies! And they were real testimonies not storymonies!) but then it also turns out that we don't really have any investigators, which is less happy. So that's good in a way, though, because it gives us the opportunity to evaluate what we're doing, and what we should be doing better. 

So we did a lot of evaluating, which was good. During our weekly planning session this week, we actually went through the missionary handbook and just looked to see if there was anything we could be better at. We aren't being disobedient missionaries by any means, but there are a couple things we could sharpen up. And then we were also able to take a moment and think about how we can find better. Mostly we've just been tracting, which is, surprise, not working like super well. But that's okay, because we've been developing this plan for how to use the members more, and we're really excited for that.

And we've got some exciting things happening this week, which is great. We'll have zone conference on Thursday. We've got a lot of cool appointments set up, and we have a less active guy taking us out to dinner at a place that my companion says is really good. So I'm sure it's going to be a better week.

I hope everything goes great with your week as well! I love you all!

Love, Peter