Elder Pedro Letter: Birthday and a New Mission

It was an eventful week over here in Colorado. I was pretty sick last week and I had to go to the doctor and I guess I have an ear infection. Tuesday we had a meeting with Just Serve which is the new service program. Zone Leaders have a position in the committee. Thursday was my birthday! and The sisters took me out to eat at a Mexican restaurant and then some members from the Denver North Ysa took me out to a Mongolian grill it was sweet! on Friday President Toombs had an emergency conference call with all the Zone Leaders and announced that they are SPLITTING THE MISSION! There will now be a Fort Collins mission. The Denver North mission is picking up 3 new stakes from the South mission. So we will now cover Parker and also Downtown! We have no idea who will be in which mission but President said he has known for awhile and has been putting missionaries where they need to be. I hope I stay in the Denver North mission! It takes effect on July 1st. Saturday we had a baptism it was a girl named Angelena and it was so spiritual. My companion got to baptize her and I confirmed her. The spirit was so strong it was awesome. She is so solid she has listened to almost every General conference address since 2008 in the last couple of weeks. Sunday morning we had a ward council training in the YSA ward and it was a blizzard when we got there they made the announcement that they were canceling church. We couldn't drive either so We just hung with other missionaries all day.

Elder Pedro

Elder Pedro Letter - Arvada, Working Hard and 40 Nuggets!

Hey!

I don't know if I told you guys but this transfer is a 5 week transfer! We are trying to get aligned with the new MTC schedule. It also means that I will be coming home a week early now! We had a very successful week we found 6 new investigators! the zone found 12 which is the new record since the summer! President Toombs is very impressed with Arvada right now and the missionaries here are working so hard. Angelena one of our investigators is getting baptized this upcoming Saturday! She is a YSA and she referred herself through Mormon.org. Last Thursday I went on exchanges with Elder Young who is an assistant. We worked so hard we taught a lot of people and tracted all afternoon in the snow. We taught a new guy named Joe and we set him to be baptized next month! on Saturday we got the zone together and we did the '40 nugget challenge' and went to Mcdonald I gave a talk in the YSA ward Sunday and I think I did alright it is the second time I have talked in a month. After church we were visiting some former investigators and ran into a man named Steve working on his car we got to talking and he finally said ''Sorry guys I don't think the Jehovah's Witness is for me'' we explained who we were and talked about the Book of Mormon he felt the spirit so strong and he let us inside and he rounded up his family to listen to us. I can not even describe his facial expressions as everything seemed to just click to him. We are going back tomorrow. Elder Anderson and I are doing great. I think Arvada might be my favorite area now. We met with President Toombs on Sunday night and he is planning on keeping us together next transfer. Well I turn 21 this Thursday! it is going to be so crazy Love you all!

-img_0036 - after the 40 nuggets!!

Arvada Update - February 11 2013

Hola!

Everything is good over here in Arvada! The zone is on fire with finding and teaching right now. We are still serving two wards a family ward and a YSA ward. The family ward is awesome there are so many service giving priesthood men. There are two former stake presidents and the current stake president as well as 8 former bishops. They are helping us out a lot. The west side of the ward is very wealthy and we have had dinner in some huge homes! We found three new investigators this past week and one will be getting baptized on the 23rd of February. we are excited for her! we are still working on finding and I think I will do more tracting here than I have the rest of my mission combined. We are doing the ''just serve'' pilot as well which will start up pretty soon. Well hopefully this week will be a good one. My companion got the Flu and was really sick so we had a lot of down time. BUt he is feeling better now. SO funny story of the week. We were heading to Wal-Mart to buy some medicine for Elder Anderson and these girls were waving to us and I thought it was funny... Well when we came out of Wal-MArt there was a note on our window saying that they thought we were cute and they gave us their numbers. We called them back of course (because they were YSA) and one is a less active member but it was pretty funny.

-- Elder Pedro

Transfer to Aravada

Hey sorry it has been transfer since I have sent an updating email! Well last Monday I got transferred to ARRRRRRvada which is in the foothills just northeast of Denver. I was so bummed out to get transferred because I really liked my last area and companion and I was only there for one transfer. When we went to get the transfer doctrine it had Elder Cowley and I staying together but president called later and said that he was transferring me last minute. We had a baptism before we left though. Her name was Christy and she was a boss it was so sweet. I spoke in church my last week there too. My new companion is Elder Anderson we were in the same MTC district and he was one of my best friends there. I really like Arvada now, It is known for being really slow with the work but there is a good bunch of missionaries and we have been doing all we can to get them motivated. There are only 12 missionaries in the zone compared to 25 in my last zone so it is very small. We had a busy week and spent a lot of time moving missionaries and getting everyone situated. We worked hard though we cover two wards the Arvada 4th ward and the Arvada 7th ward. The 7th ward is a YSA ward Im excited to be able to work with singles still! We don't have too much work going on but it won't be long untill we do. We had a Zone Leader Council with President last week and with all the zone leaders and he banned a lot of stuff including having instruments. I was pretty bummed out but Its all good. he also made a 3 strike rule and will be sending elders home from now on. Well I won't be slacking too much on my emails from now on. Love you all!