Elder Pedro Letter: Tracting, Tracting and Raking Leaves!

I set a goal to work harder than I ever hard this past week, and the Lord bless us in our efforts. We found a lady named Allison tracting and we had a good lesson with her, she is awesome she grew up going to LDS services. We also found 2 new investigators by asking for referrals from our current investigators. We had two investigators come to church which was sweet! and we invited 4 people to be baptized! they all said yes so we just have to help them continue to progress in the gospel and set a date with them. Wednesday it started pouring so of course we decided to go knocking doors some guy let us in. He ended up being a born-again ex Mormon and he gave us all this false information about our church. That night it really started snowing and we had an appointment cancel it was 8 P.M. and I didn't know what to do so we just started knocking doors ( I don't think Elder Broderick was happy with me). On Thursday I went on exchanges with Elder Collette (Sr. Zone Leader) and Elder Amon (co-Zone leader) It was a weird day we didn't really do any missionary work we went to the middle of no where east of Brighton to do service and the A.P.s called and said there was an Emergency Transfer and the they came and took Elder Amon. on Saturday we had our ward chili cook off and of course we were the judges! there was some really spicy chili. We had an interesting lesson with Jim (the Native American) on Sunday we brought our ward mission leader, I think Jim had been drinking because he was saying some goofy stuff and he started getting hostile with Bro. Pabst. When we left he lesson Bro. Pabst said ''never invite me again'' haha of man it was funny. I had a great experience on Saturday... We were driving around Commerce City and a saw a lady raking her lawn and I had a strong impression to go help her, so I pulled over and ran to go talk to her. She was a Hispanic lady and didn't speak any English so she grabbed her daughter who translated for us it took awhile for them to agree to help but she finally said yes. We raked her leaves and bagged them as well. When we finished the lady's daughter had left so we couldn't really communicate with her but she started getting emotional and we could tell she was very grateful. I felt very certain that we had helped answer a prayer.

Elder Pedro: Success, Conference, and More Investigators!

Aloha,

We had a really successful week. Our finding has been really steady we found 3 new investigators and they all came from other investigators. The first half of the week our time was spent at meetings so we didn't get too much done on those days. Tuesday we had the first every mission wide conference. The group I traveled up with had some miscommunications so we got there pretty late, when we walked in they were giving announcements and were about to sing the opening hymn so we sat in the very back. After the Opening Hymn and Prayer one of the Assistants who was conducting stood up and said that President wanted to start with 3 testimonies about our purpose, out of the 200 missionaries there of course they said that Elder Pedro will go first, so I had to walk up from the back but it went really well. The meeting was very spiritual, President Toombs was at a mission president seminar all last week. He relayed to us all that is going on in the mission program, he said that they anticipate the number of missionaries serving to increase from about 30,000 to 50,000 in the next couple of months, because of the new mission age. We will be getting 60 more missionaries 1/3 of them will be sisters, a lot of wards will have to have 4 missionaries serving in them now. Wednesday we had interviews with our mission president and also had district meeting. I was on exchanges Thursday with Elder Quigg and we worked in the northern part of Thornton. Friday we got to work and we found two new investigators. Saturday the family we live with had a party so we got free food! Sunday there was a special Stake Conference and it was a broadcast all 58 Stakes in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana tuned in. We heard from Elder Nelson of the quorum of the 12 and a couple other 70s. We are teaching a lot more now so that is always good. Hopefully it keeps up next week .

-- Elder Pedro

Elder Pedro: Navajo and Baptism Goals

Hello Everybody:

The Lord is continuing to bless Elder Broderick and I here in the Woodglen ward. We found two more investigators and have been teaching a lot. I am finally teaching a NATIVE AMERICAN! His name is Jim and past missionaries had tracted into him and so we finally were able to get in and teach a lesson to him. He lives in the part of Denver that we cover. He is Da Nae and is from Shiprock, New Mexico. It was pretty funny he didn't talk to my companion that much and at the end of the lesson he turned to him and said ''sorry we natives just get talking and forget about your kind'' that was pretty funny. We have been teaching a guy named Jodie who just had back surgery, his wife is a member but she isn't too active. We had a really good lesson we pretty much told him that we are here to help you get baptized and he said that he knew it was true so and wants to get baptized. I think it might take a month or two before that actually happens. We had a good experience teaching a man named Robert his wife is also a member and not very active he is super Atheist but he thinks that church would be good for his family. We watched a General Conference address and talked about it, his son Garrett also watched it with us. We are turning our focus to Garrett because he is very close to becoming a member and is struggling with faith vs. logic. I went on exchanges on Thursday and went and hung out with Elder Albertson and worked in his ward, he has been serving there for almost 9 months (longest I have heard of a missionary staying in an area in our mission). He is on bike as well so I had to be on bike for the third time on my mission. Elder Broderick was with his companion Elder Beebe and they had an interesting experience they were knocking doors in our area and a man answered with a gun. Elder Broderick got pretty freaked out so he doesn't want to knock doors anymore and doesn't want to be out after dark so that's kind of been a struggle. Our mission set a goal to baptize 100 people in the month of December.. The past record has been 59 and our average is about 35. We definitely have some work to do. The whole mission is meeting on Tuesday, its been years since the whole mission has met at once. So keep us in your prayers that we hit that goal.

-- Elder Pedro

Elder Pedro: Five New Investigators, 40 degrees and two surprise visitors!

Yo, So week 2 in the Woodglen ward is finished. We had a lot of success again and found 5 new investigators. Us and the Zone Leaders are the only ones who have been able to hit the mission goal of 3 new investigators a week so far this transfer. I went on Exchanges twice this week. I first went with Elder Holben on Tuesday he is 23 and he is from Oregon he has only been a member of the church for a little over a year. He has some interesting stories about his past but he is doing well he is also about 6' 5'' and he was on the first season of Axmen or something like that I guess its on the history or discovery channel. He came and worked in our area it went pretty well we taught a couple of lessons and did some service. The next day we had district meeting and we went on exchanges again this time Elder Beebe came with me he is from Washington and has been out for 3 months. We went to Commerce city and Tracted a lot. We also gave a blessing to an investigator named Jodie who was going into surgery. The weather was not fun Wednesday it was 80 at lunch time and dropped down to 40 in just a few hours. General Conference was awesome, it was crazy to hear about the new mission age. We had dinner with a family Sunday night and the wife was telling us that her father is a bishop in a BYU freshmen ward and that within 24 hours nearly 30 people had requested interviews to go on their missions. Monday was pretty crazy as well we did service with Elder Beebe and his companion Elder Albertson and afterwards went down to the Commerce City Building, and I got a call from my Branch President in California he said that he was in Denver and wanted to meet up so Him and his wife came over and talked with us they even took us out to Subway! so I was thinking about it and I think I forgot to mention that a month ago I totally backed into a car and dented up this car, but it wasn't my fault my companion was backing me and I guess he didn't notice a car parked right in my path.

-- -- ImG_0007 - The Reimers and I.
Elder Pedro

Letter from Elder Pedro: Investigators, Puppies and Bingo!

Hola, This was a very busy week. On Monday we had the trainers meeting, President Toombs talked to us about the responsibility we have as trainers, he said that we will impact them into what kind of missionaries they are going to become. The Transfer van from Cheyanne was late coming in (it always is) so there was a 2 hour delay where we just sat there before we met out new companions. The Clark family is super awesome she is a Dog Groomer and has a million dogs. We spent this last week getting everything in order we visited every former investigator that has been taught in the ward and we taught 2 lessons that way, we have 4 set up for this week. We found a new investigator named Jennifer we tracted into her and taught her the first lesson on her door step. The week went pretty well we found 4 new investigators total we knocked on a lot of doors too, My companion is still pretty reluctant to speak when we knock on a door but I got him to start off once, so he is improving. So I got a new tracting approach for when the Broncos are playing, I basically have to start off with ''how's the game going?'' or else they don't want to hear from us. We tracted for 3 hours yesterday with no success and the last door we knocked on before going to dinner happened to be a less active member who hadn't been to church in 10 years he told us he has been thinking about church and he allowed us to share a lesson with him. Church was good the ward is really small for how big of an area it covers. We did a lot of service this week, the last Elders had us all booked up this week that was really stressful because instead of working we were tied to service every day. On Thursdays we got to a puppy shelter and we wash puppies it was actually pretty fun. Thursday afternoons we go to an old folks home and we call bingo. We helped a guy take out a wall on Friday. I am excited for next week I am going on two exchanges and we have a ton of appointments set up.