The bigger email! :-)

Dear Everyone!

Okay, so here's the bigger email!

So it's super awesome to be back in this ward. There are a lot of members here that are super cool. As I was sitting in Sacrament Meeting yesterday, I just had this feeling of love come--there are so many awesome people here. And yeah, it's bringing back a lot of memories, but my new area's pretty awesome too, so there's not really temptation to go work in Aurora :), especially because we can go anywhere in the ward for dinner appointments, so we'll be able to see a lot of the members I miss anyways.

I saw a recent convert at church yesterday, and she's still super active, which is awesome!

Yeah, your experience with the sisters seems pretty similar to the daily life of a missionary. So much fun!

So this week was pretty crazy. Downtown is awesome, but there are some challenges--if we want to go anywhere else in the ward for dinner, we have to drive for like a half hour because of all the traffic. It's also interesting because we're "sweeping"--we're both new in the area, and the last missionaries to be here were sisters. So it's interesting getting to know all the investigators and members that loved the sisters so much. There may be a few investigators that we'll have to drop because they aren't so much interested in the gospel as they are in the sister missionaries.

But there's some really cool things going on. We were able to meet a part-member family who seem really cool. He is the nonmember, but he says he believes in the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, he just works every Sunday, so it's hard for him to come to church. We were also able to meet a few of the less-actives in our area, who seem pretty great. One pretty interesting thing about the area is that there are only 4 active members in the entire area. But it's such a densely populated area that we can work hard anyway without a ton of member support.

We're doing service at this really cool place called Metro Caring, which is a small food bank. The people there are really nice and appreciate our help, which always feels good.

We're living in a pretty sketchy apartment building off of one of the sketchier streets in Colorado. I don't know the address, sorry :(. The apartment smells pretty strongly of weed :D.

Thanks for the updates! Have a great week!

Love,

Peter

Happy Day After Mother's Day!

Well, we did just talk yesterday, but I guess I'll email you too. It sounds like you've had a good week, sounds like the 10K was interesting :D.

Last week was pretty slow for my companion and I. Lots of appointments cancelling, all that good stuff. Plus we had to go up to the northernmost end of the mission three times for a few reasons, so that was fun. But we did have one really cool lesson, with an investigator couple. We read a little of the Book of Mormon, and they were just talking about how great they feel when we come over, and really saying that they felt the spirit when we were there. They were saying they've talked to a lot of missionaries and people from other religions, but they've never got the feeling they have when they talk to us. So that's really cool!

This week's going to be pretty dang interesting. We don't really know what we're going to do yet (in my new area), but we'll figure it out! I'm really excited to work in this area. It seems like it has a lot of promise.

Love,

Peter!

Miracle story o'the week

Dear everyone,

WELL! It's been a week! Like every week. Holy cow.

To get to the most important stuff first: This Sunday is going to 100% insane for us too. In addition to Mother's Day, it's the day before transfers, which means we as Zone Leaders get to drive one (1) missionary to the mission home so he can go home the next day. You'd think that wouldn't take too long, but because we have a pickup, we're also picking up two other missionaries' luggage and taking that up to the mission home as well, so we're literally going to be busy until probably like 7:15 or 7:30 our time, so that's probs when we'll be skypeing it up.

 

So interesting fact about Zone Conference: We actually didn't have to do anything except set up and attend. The trainings are done by the Mission President and the Assistants. But we did have to set up and that was a little stressful, especially because we had to call up one of the Bishops to unlock a closet last-minute so that we could get the key that lowers the projector screen in the gym. So that was fun. That was probably the most stressful thing. Also, we went to another one of the Zone Conferences to inspect cars (there are three Zone Conferences, 3 zones each), so that was kinda fun. At our Zone Conference our car won second most clean. Yay? Well so the thing is that everyone went to the car wash before Zone Conferences. It's a competition every Zone Conference to see who can get the cleanest car. We waxed it, shined the tires, and all that good stuff.

So we don't do anything except the usual like contributing at district meetings, but we plan and teach at a monthly zone meeting, and set up other events. So yeah, we're mostly just problem solvers.

Aside from Zone Conferences, this week was pretty cool. Miracle story o'the week: We had an appointment with this less active, so we went to his house to teach him. Turns out he's living with some friends of his from work. So anyways his English isn't that great (he's from Liberia originally), so when I asked if he was sharing with his friends (as in, the apartment), he I guess interpreted it as me asking if we could share the lesson with his friends. So he went and invited them and they totally came and we totally taught them about the restoration and it was great! They understood it really well, and we have a return appointment.

There were some stressful zone leader things going on, which was not great. but things seem to be resolved for now. We went on a lot of exchanges with some cool people, which was fun, including the Assistants on Saturday. Pretty funny--I stayed here in our ward with one of the APs and we had a lesson with this less-active who's kinda funny, and she told the AP how it really was, it was pretty hilarious. Lolz.

Anyways, that was the week! Transfers coming up, we'll see what happens! Scary. I'm hoping I get put back in Spanish, but I have no idea what'll happen.

See you soon!

Love,

Peter

Running the risk of sounding trunky

Well, it sounds like it's been a pretty interesting week for you. It's been really interesting for us as well. Like really interesting. Details will follow :).

With the whole "youth really don't know what missionaries do," it's totally true. I mean, to be completely honest, I had no idea what the missionaries did at home. Literally the only things you'd learn is the crazy stories in the church magazines or stories people tell you about from their mission. I don't necessarily think it's a huge problem (you figure it out pretty fast), but the best remedy to that would be having the youth go out with the missionaries, which we as missionaries like a lot, by the way.

So! This week! We had some interesting adventures, that's for sure. The beginning of the week was pretty boring, honestly. Meetings, tracting, meh. Things started to pick up on Friday, when just before going to dinner, we met this African dude who's apparently a pastor in Cameroon. He wanted to pray for us, so he grabbed our hands and like shout-prayed. We went back to teach him on Saturday and he just talked at us for like 40 minutes. Then we shared a 30-second Restoration and his son who was sitting there understood all of it, so that was awesome. 

Also on Friday we went out with a member to some really flaky appointments, but they actually both went through, which was very exciting. On Saturday, though, was when the most excitement came in. We were on exchanges, and at about 4:30, I got a call from another set of elders who were also on exchanges, saying they wanted to chat. So they came over after dinner, and we chatted. I guess they'd caught their companions breaking some mission rules, and were seriously concerned about what to do. So we talked it out for about an hour, and they decided they were going to call president. So they did, and then president called us. We're still not exactly sure what's going to happen, but it's no bueno. It's kind of funny--sometimes I feel really bad about myself because I'm not always the most focused, or I don't do all 30 minutes of exercise in the morning. And then I hear about other missionaries and I don't feel so bad about myself :).

And then on Sunday we ate some hot sauce that was incredibly painful to eat. It was seriously bad. Apparently it was 4 million SHU which I guess is how they measure hotness, and the hottest chile in the world is like 1.5 million SHU.

So it was just a crazy week. We have zone conference this week, which should be cool. Other than that, nothing too crazy planned. So, yeah.

I'm glad it was a good week! Sounds like the Utah trip was enjoyed by all. Running the risk of sounding trunky, I am definitely looking forward to seeing the extended family this summer.

Things are going well here. I've definitely been fortunate for the past few transfers, in having really solid companions. I'm really liking this area, but I'd also like to go back to Spanish before the end of my mission. We'll see what happens in a couple of weeks.

Love,Peter

P.s. The picture is of a baptism I went to on Sunday. It was an 8-year-old son of a less-active family I worked a lot with in my previous area.

Yay!

Thanks for the update on everyone's week. It sounds like there's been a lot of cool stuff going on, and that everyone's been busy. Lots of excitement, I'm sure.

Here in Colorado, things have been pretty interesting this last week. I think probably something weird or cool happened literally every day this week:

Monday: We had to orchestrate an emergency transfer (I think I told you about that) It ended up being a lot less complicated than it was going to be, so that's fun. Hopefully all the parties involved are happier now. Also, I bought a portable digital voice recorder that I've been using as a journal lately. I can get a lot more motivated to just talk into a voice recorder for a couple minutes about how the day went than I can to write in a journal. So that's been fun!

 

Tuesday: Not too crazy, but cool. We had a lesson with an investigator, and he'd been pretty closed off to having members come with us, but we brought one and they hit it off really well. Yay!

 

Wednesday: Temple Trip! That was super great! Also we went to a district meeting, and one of the companionships had brought one of their investigators to the district meeting, so that we could answer her questions. The question my companion and I drew was "Why haven't we had contact with aliens?" So yeah we totes answered that from the scriptures.

 

Thursday: We taught a lesson in Spanish! That was a lot of fun, we just got let in trying a potential investigator and so we taught in Spanish! Yay!

 

Friday: We got let in by another potential (This doesn't happen very often) and we taught them and they seem interested! Yay!

 

Saturday: We were literally doing finding the entire day. No appointments. Yay.

 

Sunday: We had a linger longer with the ward, so that was a lot of fun! Also finding the entire day with no appointments.

 

So yeah that was the week! Lots of cool stuff. I love being a missionary, it's pretty great.

Love,

Peter

My companion sent me some pictures!

Well, it has definitely been a very interesting week, we'll say that! It's been good, and a little bit crazy, but that's basically the norm around here. I certainly hope we don't get any snow around here, but yeah it's definitely possible. You never know here.

I'm excited to hear what the Oregon Portland Mission STLs have to say! You'll have to hurry up and get that to me before email time is up :). For the record, our first step was to ask our zone's STLs. I was just curious what others thought :).

Like I said, it's been a kind of crazy week. Lots of craziness with the zone:

1. On Friday, just before we started our weekly planning session, we got a call from some sisters telling us that they needed us to go pick up a new phone for them. So we called the mission office and found out that we could literally only get it from there that day at that time, so we had to go all the way to the mission office, about 45 minutes away, to get the phone, and then come back and set it up for the sisters. So that took a while. Those are the things you don't really expect to spend your time doing as a missionary :). But it's okay. We're definitely lucky our mission is so tiny, too.

2. Everything was going pretty well this week until last night at 10:00 p.m., when we got a call from one of the district leaders telling us that some of the elders in their district needed help. So the district leader went out at 10:10 p.m. to pick up the elder.

With our ward mission leader

Some cooler things with our ward, much happier news:

1. We met this guy last Sunday between General Conference sessions, and he is super cool. We haven't even been able to teach him yet, because he's been sick (he's going through chemo), but he is just super awesome. He had a copy of the Book of Mormon from a while back, and he's reading it while he lies in bed recuperating! Who does that? He's already almost done with 2 Nephi!

 

2. We were walking around on Saturday night, going to try a potential investigator, when we randomly started talking to this guy in a parking lot. Turns out, he'd been investigating in a different ward that my companion served in previously, and almost got baptized, but lost contact with the church when he moved. But he wants to come back to church and was super grateful to us for talking to him, which was just a really cool experience. Sometimes, all you have to do is open your mouth, and the rest just follows.

 

We're looking forward to a temple trip this Wednesday, which should be great, and we're going to have a great week!

I hope all the exciting things go according to plan this week for you.

Love,

Peter

Well! Happy Easter!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend, because we sure did. I hope you also enjoyed general conference, because it was pretty awesome as well.

 

Favorites from General Conference - I especially liked a couple of talks:

Bishop Causse's talk about the wonder of the gospel

Elder Pino's talk about having an eternal perspective,

President Uchtdorf's talk in Priesthood session about not being "artificial disciples".

Obviously all the talks were great, and it was awesome to see that President Monson's still got a lot of energy, but those were probably my favorites.

Fun--we watched conference at the church building where all the Spanish members meet, so whenever there was a talk in Spanish, we'd run over from the English room to the Spanish room to hear it. It was pretty great. And for Priesthood session, our ward has a tradition that we should definitely implement in the Oak Hills Ward. An hour before conference, we went as a ward to 5 Guys and all got burgers there, and then went over to the church to watch General Conference. So that was a lot of fun.

For us, it was kind of a crazy week. In addition to General Conference, we also had a day-long meeting at the north end of the mission on Friday, which was good, but long. We talked about such things as how to involve the Sister Training Leaders more (maybe you could ask the sisters in Oak Hills about that, we're kind of struggling here), and whether or not missionaries should be allowed to have lunch together as a district. So you know, lots of excitement.

Other than meetings, we had a lot of appointments cancel, which wasn't super happy, but that's kind of how it is. One really cool experience, though: between sessions of General Conference on Sunday, we went out tracting. I was pretty apprehensive, because it was Easter and all that, but we went out and worked anyways. And we found this really awesome old guy! He's had friends who are members, has a Book of Mormon that he wants to read more of (even though he's never met with missionaries), and he wants to come to church! So Heavenly Father definitely blesses us when we show faith in Him, that's for sure.

Love!

Peter!