5/14/12 - Mother's Day

Man I am almost done with my 3rd transfer. It has gone by so fast. I am pretty excited to find out what's going to happen to me next transfer, I am pretty sure that I am going to get transferred. I just hope I stay in a Vehicle, I hear the summer months are brutal on bike. It was a rainy week this last week. So everything is green! I went on exchanges twice this last week so that was fun. On Tuesday I went with Elder Nielson who is from Idaho he is a really small guy and a lot of people asked if he was old enough to be on a mission while I was with him. We got to go to the temple, it was such a great experience I love going to the House of the Lord. We took a belt route to get there so I got to Denver from the outskirts and it was pretty cool. We passed by the Airport too! Elder Nielson made them comment that I probably won't see it again for 19 months haha. Wednesday we did almost no missionary work because the Vehicle Coordinator called us and gave us a laundry list of stuff we needed to fix on our truck, so we spent the day driving around and making the repairs. on Thursday/Friday I went on exchanges again this time with Elder Baker who is serving in Lafayette. We did service at the Rec Center and we also went to the Dentist! I hope my teeth survive the rest of my mission with all the desserts I am fed. We also taught Kyle again and we set hime with a Baptism date, so as of right now he is getting baptized on June 9th I hope everything works out because I don't think that I will be there for it. Sunday was pretty awesome too! I got to call home and talk to my family. It was so good to hear the voices again and to hear that they are all doing great. Church was good too beacsue Kyle came and had a great experience both the Gospel principles class and the Elders quorum's lesson was geared to him and He is really starting to get how this gospel is working. Well this time next week I will know where Im getting Transferred! -Elder Pedro

New Pictures from Elder Pedro

Mom mailed some matching ties to Elder Pedro and his new companion Elder Holliday. Don't they look handsome!

Elder Pedro Letter: Clean Car Award, Sushi and a YES!

I was thinking about it... my brother is now 18 that's pretty awesome! That makes me feel old, I am turning into an old man, it seems like I am always sore too. We had zone conference this week. It was held in Arvada, it was cool going to a part of the mission that I had never been to before. Even though it was only 30 miles away it seemed like a whole another state, I wouldn't mind serving down there. Elder Holliday and I spent the night before cleaning our truck, We wanted to win the 'clean car award' so we cleaned every inch of it. We got a perfect score but so did some other cars, and since we didn't have the seat belts buckled when we gave them our keys we lost! so that was pretty lame. That night after zone conference we ate at the Hathaways and their daughter had a non-member friend over and we ended up teaching the first lesson, and she said it was inspiring and asked for a Book of Mormon, we are hoping to meet with her again this week.

We taught Kyle again this week and it went awesome, I asked him to be baptized and he said yes, we asked him to say the prayer at the end of the lesson and he did, his prayer was amazing, he thanked Heavenly Father for sending the missionaries his way, He came to church this last week and had an awesome experience, our ward does such a good job and fellow shipping those we bring to church. Because next week is Mothers day the Elders Quorum is in charge of primary and some how a member and I got in charge of music, so hopefully that goes well.

So one day we went to help the Hathaways and Sister Hathaway had gone to Costco and had bought me some sushi, she said that she was Emailing my Mom and she found out that I am a fan of Sushi and Mangoes, she is so awesome! There were some crazy lightning storms this week as well, they are nothing like the storms in Utah, It has been pouring the last couple of days. I guess I will end with a cool story; so one day we were walking down the road in this neighborhood to go and see one of our investigators we hadn't talked to for awhile. He ended up not being home, so we just walked around the neighborhood a bit more to return to our truck. When some random scruffy looking guy came up to us and said that dinner was on him and he gave us some money to get food and then he left it was pretty random, we have no Idea who they guy is, He did call us elder though.

Elder Pedro
Img-0002 - Cleaning the truck!
Img - 0019 - taking a break at service.

5/1/12 - Grass, Prom & Reese Pieces

Hey Another good week in the state of Colorado. We ended up doing a lot of service this week. There are quite a few lawns in Erie and Louisville that look pretty good now because of us. We also helped set up the Broomfield High schools prom, I don't know how we got invited to this but about 10 missionaries helped set up their prom which was quite a bit of work. Some other exciting news is that we have a personal trainer now, We wake up an hour early each morning and we head up to a park in our area and we work out, They are really intense so Elder Holliday and I spent the last week pretty sore, but the trainer is a member so he isn't charging us which is sweet. We couldn't get a lot done the last couple of days, because there was an epidemic at a local elemantary school where most of our members kids go. We were eating at a members house and some of her kids were sick, she then got a call from the school saying that the school was shut down for a couple of days because of this stomach flu that was highly contagious and was spreading like wildfire, they had hundreds of kids who were sick. So at sacrament meeting there was almost nobody there, none of the speakers showed up and the bishop wasn't there either. I am pretty suprised they didn't call on us to speak, they just had the bishopric give last minute talks. We have been able to teach kelly a couple of times this week, she has recieved all of the lessons, and is reading the book of mormon, She told us at our last lesson that she knew that it was true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but she just doesn't see the need of going to church, so We are going to focus on the importance of going to church this week. We both ran out of money this week so we had to rely on the grace of the members alot (mostly the Hathaway family.), we were supposed to get our monthly money today, but we just barely got an email saying that there is a glitch in the system and we won't be able to get our money for a couple more days so I don't know what wer are going to do, hopefully we don't starve haha.

-Elder Pedro
Img_0066 - Me trying to Slack line, this is pretty big in Colorado
Img_0054 - holliday and I
Img_0059 - So I was helping Jay do math and he made me take a test to see what kind of candy I am, by the way I am a reese pieces which means I have a suprise inside.
Img_0050 - Doing some more hiking.

April 23 2012 - Stomachache, Haircut and Chip

Herro,

So another good week, well kind of. So last Tuesday Elder Holliday decided to make me lunch. Bad decision because I got pretty sick. My stomach started to really hurt and we had an appointment that afternoon. We decided to go anyways and we prayed that I would get feeling better, we ended up having one of the best lesson either of us had taught, the spirit was so strong and we led by the spirit on what we should teach. I didn't feel sick at all during the lesson but the moment I stepped out of the door I started feeling sick again so I spent the rest of the day in bed, and the night in the bathroom it wasn't that fun, Last time I ever eat any of Holliday’s attempts at lunch ha-ha.

Elder Holliday also persuaded me to buzz my hair so I let him do it, and it is shortest my hair has ever been, for some reason I feel really Apache now and my head is really cold. I don't know if I have told you all about Heaven Dragon yet, but it is a China's restaurant in Broomfield. We go there every week sometimes twice it is so good, the workers there love us and always have questions for us about rules we have to follow. We went there last Thursday and we had almost 16 missionaries with us I wonder what all the other customers thought of all these Mormons.

On Friday we somehow found ourselves in Boulder, home of the Notorious CU, and lets just say that the date was 4/20. We were at the institute across from the campus during the afternoon, we couldn't go on campus because anyone who wasn't a student was getting ticketed. There were cops on every corner and they shut down all the High schools and elementary that day as well but still the city somehow managed to smell pretty funny. It is so funny how similar Santa Cruz and boulder are, there are a lot of dreads. On Saturday night we hung out at the Hathaway’s and they had a fire going so we got to make smores it was pretty sweet. Sunday night was pretty awesome as well we spent the whole afternoon and night with one of our investigators named Chip he cooked us food and we talked about our church the whole time. After eating he took us and his daughter to a church in Fredrick, Where we watched some Christian movie about persecution which was pretty good. It was definitely a different experience we got a lot of weird looks from all the members of the church, but afterwards Chips daughters friends came up to us and started asking us a lot of questions about what we do and what we believe in it was pretty cool. I can't wait till mother’s day to call home! I'm pretty excited.

-Elder Samuel M. Pedro

IMG_0026 - Good ol Boulder
IMG_0045 - I don't know why I always have pictures of me playing the guitar, but check out the short hair!
IMG_0048 - where the magic of these emails happen!

Hey

So I am going to start off by just saying that I love Elder Holliday he is a sweet missionary. We get a long very well and have a pretty fun time. We worked really hard this week too we decided to start visiting all the potentials from the last 3 years so we knocked on a lot of doors. One guy opened the door and we found out he was a member but he goes to the Lafayette ward, he told us he has told quite a few missionaries that his girlfriend is interested so we set up an appointment this week to start teaching her. The weather got pretty intense this week too it rained a lot and there were a lot of thunder storms. One day we were heading to an appointment and the sky turned black, when we got to the appointment the news was on and there was a tornado warning for our area and there was a supposed tornado about 20 miles southeast of us, pretty cool not gonna lie! We started teaching chip again this week he is so funny and he loves to talk to us, he always ask us questions about Mormons such as; are there black Mormons? are you all vegetarians? he thought our sabbath was Saturday for awhile too. Our two main investigators were both out of town this week so we weren't able to teach them so that was a bummer, but one of them is in Missouri and she is going to go to the Kansas City open house so that will be awesome. Well I only took one picture this week so next week i will take more! Well I'm off to go play basketball all day, I am way excited there are 3 missionaries in our district that can dunk so We finally have some competition.

Elder Pedro

Img_0020 Chilling with our members!

S

April 10 2012 - Coal Creek, Pinewood Derby and new Companion!

I am a offically trained missionary after today. This last week has been pretty crazy we had hardly no time to work in our area. Last Tuesday we had interviews with our mission president so that took quite a while. On Wednesday we went on exchanges so Elder Stanger came over to coal creek that day. Our ward did a pinewood derby for the Activity days girls, and we helped out it was pretty fun. On Thursday we had our district meeting then Elder Gnehm and I had to plan out our week next week. Friday was a pretty cool day we got to head down to Littleton (out of our mission) and go to the temple. There were over 50 missionaries there that day. On Easter Elder Gnhem had to pack and then he went and said goodbye to members. That night I got to go to Thornton with the Assistants a family there made us dessert. Sorry I wasn´t able to write yesterday. My new companion Elder Holliday was two hours late to the mission office So we didn´t have time to do anything. I´m excited to be serving with him he´s an awesome guy. He is from Blanding,Utah and played football at Dixie. There is a new Elder from California in our area so today we are driving him and his companion around so they go get their shopping and emailing done. We just had a cool experience we were walking into the library and a black guy motioned for us to come over, we had a 30 minute conversation with him about what we do. And he talked to us about what he believes. It must have been a pretty crazy experience for the New Elder. Elder Gnehm got transferred to Longmont (about 10 minutes away) his companion is Elder metcalfe who was in my MTC District. Well I hope this week is good for you! all is well in Colorado.

-Elder Pedro

Img_0003 - This is me with the Hathaways
Img_0010 - Saying goodbye with elder Gnehm
IMG_1177 - I was in charge at the Pine Wood Derby
img- 1173 - I have a goofy zone