When you feel like you're making a difference in someone's life...

Hey!

So Thanksgiving's probably going to be pretty low-key this year, it isn't a really big thing in the Hispanic culture, so not too different. We will be having Thanksgiving dinner with a white family in our ward, so that should be fun! As in they go to our ward because they really like Spanish but they are both white. They used to live in Portland! They're pretty cool. And then our ward mission leader is gonna have us over for a Mexican Thanksgiving too, with this really good Mexican soup called posole, it's really good. So it should be a good day.

So this week was pretty good for us! We've had a lot of pretty neat experiences. A woman we're teaching is getting closer and closer to baptism, so that's really cool. We taught her about the word of wisdom yesterday, and as soon as we mentioned coffee, she just immediately was like "ooh, I guess we can't drink coffee anymore!" So anyways that was cool.

This week we also started teaching someone really cool. She's living with some members, and has come to church a few times. She's from the Dominican Republic, and was taught by missionaries there, but she's basically completely forgotten everything except the first vision. BUT she tells us that she completely knows the church is true and wants to be baptized! So that was really neat.

One more cool thing. We've been teaching this 15-year old girl this transfer, who was less active. She started to go to church basically the first week of this transfer, and it seems like she's been liking it. But she basically knows nothing about the gospel, so we've been teaching her a lot of the like really simple stuff. But anyways, we had dinner at her house yesterday (Her mom's a super active member), and she told us about a missionary experience she had! She was apparently talking to her brother's girlfriend, who's going through a really hard time, and she basically just bore her testimony to her! She told her about how much happier she felt going to church, and learning more about the gospel. So that was really cool to hear. It's those times when you really feel like you're making a difference in someone's life. Really neat.

So with our companionship nothing happened with transfers! Yay! But all of the other companionships in the district changed, so that's fun. Also, I'm now the district leader in the ward, so that'll be a fun new challenge thing I guess.  Things are really just going great. My companion's awesome, we're working hard, and it's pretty cool. Love,Peter

Things have been cool, literally and figuratively

Well, it sounds like a pretty dang eventful week! You guys have got me feeling pretty jealous about the board games. That is one thing hat I realized was a kind of a big part of our family-like tradition, and so it's annoying that there's not really much opportunity to do any of that stuff here. But it's okay I guess.

The weather has been pretty dang chilly. It is a dry cold, I guess you would say, and I've got pretty good cold weather gear thanks to you guys, but when it's like 2 degrees outside, it's still really cold. It's a little disturbing when it's like 20 degrees and when you go outside you're like "oh, it's not so bad today!". So anyways it's cold. And I think we probably got your missing snow over here in Denver. It's kind of really cold and snowy here. So I'm having fun experiencing driving in the snow for the first time ever! This week should be better though, supposedly!

W/r/t transfers, it's not like a guarantee that we'll be staying together, but it's a pretty sure thing. There are a lot of reasons why a trainer might be separated from his trainee, but I'm feeling like we'll probably be staying together. We'll find out on Saturday!

Anyways, for us this week was pretty dang busy! We had kind of a lot going on. We had zone conference on Thursday, which was pretty cool. The theme was "change", so it definitely left me a lot to think about. Obviously there's a lot I can change before I'm perfect, so I guess it helped me think about that more, and to set some more specific goals for just you know how to be better. So that was cool. 

On a kind of sad note, we always have car inspections at zone conference, and well to make a long story short we won the award for worst car! We didn't even get a prize! Just shame! I guess next time I should probably take the Halloween window clings off the windows before inspections...

Good thing about this week, we were able to teach a lot more investigators than we have in the past while. We actually doubled the number of investigator lessons we had from last week. And it was pretty cool! I'll share a pretty cool highlight right here: So we went looking for a person who'd been taught by the missionaries about two years ago, to see if he would be interested in learning again (especially because our records didn't have any reason why he had stopped investigating the church.) So when we knocked on his door, his sister answered, and explained to us a kind of crazy situation. So a while after this man had stopped investigating, he was in some horrible accident or something, and had gotten really hurt and suffered some really severe brain damage. He's still alive and stuff, but he can barely talk and is not super coherent. And because he's here illegally, he can't really get the best care. So we weren't really able to teach this guy, but his sister told us that she felt like our visit was from God! She's taking care of him, and it's been really hard for her, and she needed something to help, and she felt like God sent us there. We gave her a Book of Mormon, and she said she'd definitely read it! So that was pretty freaking awesome. The only thing is that she's gonna move to Mexico in like two weeks. So we're gonna give the Mexican missionaries a great referral!

Another pretty cool thing! We had two less-active families come to church for the first time in a long while yesterday, even with the cold and snow and stuff! It was really cool to be able to see the difference, especially talking to one of them after church. He said that he felt so much different, that he felt the way that he felt back when he was active. So that was just super awesome.

I'm sorry for the pretty short email! The thing is that we're gonna go play a dungeons-and-dragons style game based on star wars, and we kind of have to hurry or else there will literally be no time to play. As it is probably half of the three hours we have scheduled will probably be setup and character creation, you know how it is :). Kind of funny, we have an investigator (part of a part-member family) who's super into Star Wars, so we took some suggestions from him re: what our characters should be. So that's pretty fun!

Anyways, things have been cool, literally and figuratively. I love you all! Sorry to break up the streak of photos, but I forgot my camera today :(.

Loads of love,Peter!

How radically different Joseph Smith's theology was...and zombie polar bears?

Hey!

Thanks for the responses to my questions! I really appreciate it! I figure as many personal insights I can get from investigators (I know you don't like that word, sorry :)) about the process of being taught, the better. I'll be honest, sometimes it's a little hard to put oneself in their shoes and think about how it would feel to be learning about all this stuff.

And then okay I'm so jealous of the Terryl Givens fireside, you don't even know. Reminded me of a talk I read by him a few months back about how radically different Joseph Smith's Theology was, and how much that had to do with the strength of the church. (http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=1508).

My companion

It was a pretty great week! It started out pretty awesomely, with our P-day being pretty dang great. It was a "free day" at the Denver Zoo, which is in our ward, so we went there with some other missionaries, which was a blast, even though it was a little chilly. Then on the way home I introduced my companion to Voodoo Doughnuts, which was pretty great. I'll send some pictures!

It's like a freaking zombie polar bear!

That lion was so close to the glass!

Wednesday was a pretty interesting day, and kind of showed some of the great parts, and some of the not so great parts of missionary work. We had two appointments cancel on us, and an investigator tell us that she wasn't interested in meeting with us anymore, which was pretty disappointing. But there were some great things too! We met and taught a less-active that I'd never met, taught, or even heard of before, which was pretty cool. We did some pretty cool service at the food bank, and met some pretty cool people there, and a member took us out to Red Robin for dinner, which was pretty sweet!

We also were able to set the investigator that we've been teaching a lot, who's husband is a member, on a baptismal date! We actually had dinner with her on Friday (super good. She cooks really well.), and then we taught about the plan of salvation and invited her to be baptized on December 6th, and she accepted, and it was great!

So it was a pretty good week. I went on exchanges with our district leader, and it was pretty cool. It's been a while since I've been with a missionary who's been out for more than a few months, so it was kind of cool.

So basically it was a good week. I love you all a lot!

 

Love,

Peter

I know, it's a miracle.

Hey!

First of all to answer the first question, yes I very much liked sleeping in guilt-free! It was awesome. Although the problem was our phone didn't change time until like 8:00 in the morning, so it woke us up at 5:30, and it took me like 10 minutes to figure out that I could actually go back to sleep.

With Halloween, it actually didn't change much, and we were still able to do a lot of work. It's really nice having a companion who really wants to work, and hasn't been like jaded by the routine of missionary work yet, because it gives me a lot more energy, and motivates me to keep working hard. So yeah it was a good week. The only less-productive time was actual Halloween day, when we were asked to be in our homes at 6:00. We didn't actually get home until like 6:45, but we made an effort. So we watched a church movie and reminisced about Fairview for a bit. Apparently my companion has actually been to the Fairview house! I guess when he was younger he was pretty close with Mason, and Mason took him over to the house. Pretty insane! It really is a ridiculously tiny world.

To answer your question, we did not see hardly anything for dia de los muertos. The only thing we saw was a picture of a less-active at a costume party with her face painted like one of those decorated Mexican skulls. Apart from that, nada. Kind of disappointing, but I guess that's what happens when you serve here in the states.

To just give a rundown of the week, things have been going pretty well. We had a pretty great lesson with the lady that I've been like focusing on the last two weeks, and she was at church yesterday, which was great, because we had some great testimonies, and the impromptu gospel principles lesson given by our bishopric's second counselor was about gaining a testimony! So that was awesome! She participated quite a bit in the lesson and it was just really cool. She even came without her member husband, who was sick! So that was super legit.

District - last transfer

A bit of less exciting news, though. If you remember that girl who we were teaching who has been coming to church for a while but doesn't speak Spanish? So her mom had given her permission to be baptized, and she had set a date to be baptized, but then this week we got a text from her saying that she doesn't feel ready yet. This was after she was acting really excited, and had set things up so that she could get baptized, and everything. That was really hard. I think maybe she just kind of freaked out a bit when it felt like it was actually going to happen. So we basically just bore her our testimonies that we knew that baptism was important, and that she didn't have to be perfect to be baptized. We'll see what happens with that. But I do know that when she does get baptized, her testimony will probably be even stronger for having gone through some of this uncertainty and stuff. So that's the bright side, I guess.

We went up to the food bank on Wednesday and did some pretty cool service there--we basically run around their big warehouse and collect large quantities of food for different organizations that are going to distribute them, so that was a lot of fun.

So all in all, it was a pretty good week, although, you know, there's upsides and downsides to everything.

With family member where we lived last transfer

Spiritual thought of the week: "God is not a God of superheroes, nor of people without weaknesses, for such beings do not exist" --Gerald Causse, 2nd Counselor Presiding Bishopric. (http://speeches.byu.edu/index.php?act=viewitem&id=2157) Isn't it great that the Lord uses us weak people to do stuff? I mean, he's kind of God, He could just do anything He wants to happen. But that's not really the game plan, because He wants us to grow. You all should watch or listen to that talk, by the way, it's awesome.

Also, here are some pictures! I know, it's a miracle.

Love,

Peter

It really is pretty amazing...

Hey!

Thanks for the email, the advice, and the report on the week! It sounds like a very rainy week, hopefully it was a little fun too :). It's actually been really nice here, which is strange, but I think that's gonna change pretty soon. It dropped like 30 degrees from yesterday to today... so that's fun.

So far, training's been a pretty great experience. Although sometimes I feel like maybe my companion's a little bit too enthusiastic, I get ahold of myself and try to remember that it's a great thing, not something to try to stifle or anything like that.

And then the power outage sounds like fun. Weird, I don't think I've ever actually been in a power outage here in Denver. I think I've woken up in the mornings a couple of times to see the clock blinking like there had been one, but not actually been awake for one. Weird.

So this was a pretty good week! We were able to teach a lot of pretty cool people--lots of less-active members here, if you remember from last time I was here in this exact same area 8 weeks ago (that's still weirding me out.), and some pretty great investigators too. Here's some highlights!

1) That lady that I told you guys about last week, who we "picked back up" from being a former investigator last week. So pretty funny story. So we had an appointment with her on Thursday, and we showed up, and her less-active husband said she wasn't there! He'd just come from work, and she wasn't there, and he didn't know where she was. So that was pretty disappointing, but we shared a short message with him and then went out and talked to a different investigator (who we found out had started reading the Book of Mormon without us even asking her to, that was pretty cool.) So at about 9:00 p.m. on the way home, we get a call from the lady we had the appointment with. She told us that she was there all along at home, she was just asleep with her kid, and didn't realized we were there! Her husband hadn't had time to find her when we showed up :). So we set up an appointment for the next day, and she was there for that and she was great, and she and her husband came to church on Sunday, which was great!

2) We had a pretty crazy experience on Wednesday. About a half-hour before an appointment, when we were coming back from a service project, our Elders' Quorum President called us and asked if we could come by and give a blessing at a hospital. So the hospital was like 5 minutes away, so we accepted. When we got there, at about 3:30, they told us that the guy we were gonna give a blessing to was in some tests and would be out in about 10 minutes. So then at about 5:00 we left the hospital, after having waited a long time, given the blessing, translated for the hospital staff, and a lot of craziness. It was weird experience, but it was good. And we were able to reschedule the appointment that we totally missed :).

3) We had a lesson with a less-active who's been trying to return to activity for a few months, and we taught her about service, especially in the church. She's a really like charity-minded person (she's getting ready to set up her own nonprofit), so we thought that'd be great. So at the end we invited her to talk to the bishop about getting a calling, and she got so excited! She didn't even know that was a possibility, and the idea of serving in the church made her really excited. I think sometimes we take it for granted that the church has callings, but when we really think about it, it really is pretty amazing that Heavenly Father allows us kind of really imperfect people to essentially run his church. Pretty cool.

 

Anyways, it's been a great week. I hope everything's going great with you. I love you a lot! 2 months until we get to Skype :)!

Oh, and thanks so much for the package. I really appreciated it. We've got the window clings up on the car, and the spiderman is already assembled. Thanks so much.

Love,

Peter

And she opened up the door...

Hey!

First off, I do remember singing Holding Hands Around the World in the primary program, and I remember standing with other kids, and it's definitely not our last primary program ever. You still have all the grandchildren that will hopefully exist, if any of us can get anyone to marry us.

I have been thinking about when I first got to Colorado. It's weird, because even though it wasn't very long ago, it's still surprisingly hard to remember. I guess you just get used to doing things some way, and forget there ever was a different way to do it.

Honestly, though, I think my companion is a lot more prepared than I was when I was new. So a lot of the freaking out experiences and stress aren't so much of a thing, at least for now. He's super great, I think I might be learning more from him than he's learning from me. I feel like my main responsibility here is to help him learn Spanish :).

To answer your other questions, it's pretty great being back in the ward, but a little weird as well. One thing that's pretty different is that previously, my other companion knew the area better than I did, so he made a lot of planning decisions. But now, I'm the one who knows the area, so it's like different, but cool.

We live in the same members' house that I lived in when I was here before. Yeah, it's the exact same area, living with the exact same members.

We do service at a couple of different places. There's this Oregon Food Bank-type place that we go to about once a week, and that's pretty great. There's also a couple of thrift stores that we can go to, but it's pretty boring there, so we probably won't be going there too often. And tomorrow, we're going to go help out this member to make Tamales for service! It's gonna be pretty dang fun, I think.

Pretty dang cool thing: my companion is actually from Fairview! So we've done a little bit of reminiscing, which is cool. Apparently Dad's cousin is in his ward, so that's kinda fun. And here in Colorado, yes, he's my first companion from Utah. One of my companions in the MTC was from Ogden.

Anyways, this week has been pretty sweet. We've been able to visit a lot of people, and hopefully we've been able to help them some. One really cool thing, is that when I was serving here before, me and my companion were teaching this really great part-member family. They were coming to church, they even went to someone's baptism! They seemed super cool. But then a couple weeks after I left, she (the investigator in the family), dropped the missionaries! She said she didn't really want to meet with them, so that was a huge bummer. But I remembered how cool she was, and so last Tuesday, I stopped by to try and see her. And she opened up the door and she was totally interested again! So that was pretty legit. What she said is that she was less interested in learning from the missionary who was my replacement. So we were able to teach her for reals yesterday night, and it's gonna be great, is basically all there is to it. I'm really excited. She's super cool.

On Thursday, we got a text from our zone leaders, with a referral! They'd just tracted into her and they said she seemed interested, but only spoke Spanish. So the next day, we went and tried it out, and we were able to teach both her and her husband, and they're pretty great. So that was something that was pretty cool!

Another super cool thing is that we had stake conference this weekend, and do you remember that one time we had stake conference broadcasted from Salt Lake? Well we had that here in Colorado! It was really cool. Craig C. Christensen, from the seventy, Cheryl Esplin, from the general primary presidency, and Elders Bednar and Scott spoke. It was super cool. One thing that Elder Bednar said really stuck with me, I'm probably butchering the quote, but it was something like "In the eternal sense, there is no such thing as sacrifice", because we know that everything we sacrifice in this life will help us to become a better person in the long run, and be worthy to live with God again. So it's not really a sacrifice! We get way more blessings than we could ever sacrifice in terms of things.

 

Anyways long story short it was a pretty great week. I'm glad to hear you guys have been doing good as well!

I promise pictures next week, I swear.

Love,

Peter

He finally got his visa!

Hey!

So well I'll just cut right to the chase with the whole transfers thing: I am back in the area that I just left six weeks ago and my companion is from Utah, who just got to Colorado yesterday. He finally got his visa! Ha, just kidding, I'm training. I'm only freaking out a little bit. Ha, just kidding, I'm kind of freaking out a lot, but it'll be okay. 

The ward I left was basically demolished by transfers--out of the 8 missionaries there, only 3 of them are still in there. 3 of them finished their missions and went home (including my companion), and I and a sister missionary went to the ward I left. So basically what happened was that me and my former companion (the guy from England) switched places. Kind of really weird, but that's okay.

It sounds like a pretty awesome week! Lots of family and lots of fun, I guess. Also I'm thinking you may have to upgrade to an actual camera, those pictures were kind of blurry :).

So anyways it was a kind of insane week! On Monday, we had to go to the DMV so that my companion could get his drivers' license renewed, and ended up waiting for like an hour before they called his number, then told him 15 seconds later his proof of address didn't work. So yeah, the DMV sucks, even as a missionary. 

On Wednesday, we got to teach this really awesome part-member family, where the Mom is a nonmember, and the Dad is less-active. They are super cool, but there's something missing. We taught them a little bit about revelation, and also showed them President Uchtdorf's talk about receiving revelation! It was pretty great.

Thursday, we watched Meet the Mormons! That was pretty awesome (partly because we got to watch a movie, I'll just be honest), I really enjoyed it. It wasn't like exactly what I was expecting, but it was really cool to see a lot of different perspectives on what it means to be a Mormon. And of course, the clip from the Simpsons at the very beginning had us all laughing a lot. And our mission president got us popcorn, so yeah.

Friday was pretty crazy--my companion and another missionary from the Ward who was also going home had to go up to the Mission home for their departing interviews, so me and his companion stayed together down here. Friday's our weekly planning day, so it wasn't too crazy, but it made it a lot more real that my companion was going home. And then Friday night, one of the Assistants called me to ask if I'd be willing to train! I was kind of expecting it (there were 9 Spanish missionaries coming in that transfer), but it was still kind of freaky.

Saturday I probably ate like a full cow's worth of meat, it was insane. So much Carne Asada, you wouldn't believe it. And then I got told I was going back to the other ward, which is pretty dang bizarre.

And then Sunday my companion and the other elder left for the mission home and didn't come back! I was with his companion for the rest of the night, and it was really weird.

And then yesterday was probably the weirdest day of all. It was super crazy. The other Elder and I were freaking out the whole day. It was insane. Then we went up to the mission office, picked up our new companions, and went back. We did have a really awesome dinner that night, though. So that was good.

Well, I'm still freaking out a little, but I'm sure I'll be fine. Hope everything keeps going great on the home front. I love you a lot!

Peter