Slow Week and Upcoming Baptisms!

Hello Everybody,

It was a slow week for us because a lot of people were gone or were busy with family. I went on exchanges with the Thornton Elders on Tuesday we worked in their area as well as mine. We are teaching a lady named Dianne now who was excommunicated and wants to come back so that's been fun. We played football all Thursday Morning and called Bingo. Then we ate with the Bigelow family they are super legit! we also ate with our investigators Greg and Jennifer a couple of hours later. Friday I was on exchanges with Elder Collette who is a Zone Leader we had a sucessful day and found a lot of new people. Jose and Elexis are doing very well and will be getting baptized in two weeks. They didn't make it to church on Sunday because there Mom who was going to take them crashed on the way to pick them up so that was pretty stressful. They are getting married today and are really excited to get baptized. So yesterday we got some referrals to teach people in an extended stay hotel which is on the very south east corner of our area, I took a wrong turn and ended up driving into the Denver-south Mission I couldn't turn around for a couple of miles so that was fun. There is a member that is staying in the hotel and she is spreading the gospel like crazy to other people staying in the hotel so we are going to start teaching them.

The Joy of Being a Missionary

Yo

This last week went by so fast. There were a lot of meetings. On Tuesday I was at a Leadership meeting all day. Friday we drove up to Loveland for a trainers meeting, it was a pretty goofy day because I hung out with 2 spanish Elders that came out with me who go home a transfer before me because they spent 6 weeks longer in the MTC, they hit there year mark on Friday which means that mine is creeping up. Saturday and Sunday morning was so stressful we called so many people to get rides four investigators it worked out though we got 5 investigators at church. The family we started teaching last week are set on baptism and they had a good experience at church. The person who finally was able to pick them up for church has a tie to there family so it worked out very well. I have taught more lessons in the last month and a half then I have taught my whole mission so I am truly being blessed. I have no idea what we are going to do for Thanksgiving I am going on some exchanges this week too so they should be pretty fun. We are still teaching that Apache Geronimo we had a really good lesson with him he is very smart and knows quite a lot about everything, he explained to me some of the Apache beliefs. We are teaching a lady named Gayle who lives in Denver and over the past 2 weeks we have started teaching all of her kids and there friends. They all really like us too.

Geronimo, Blackfoot and Scheduling Baptisms!

So the libraries were all closed on Monday and there was a leadership meeting that I was at all day yesterday, so I am just barely getting to emailing. So the highlight of last week was probably when I met an Apache named Geronimo we have an appointment with him this Saturday. We are teaching a man named Jose and his family he is half Blackfoot, We set them for a date to get baptized so they should be getting baptized on December 8th! We are at the point where we teach a lesson or two everyday so that's pretty sweet. It got pretty cold last week and it snowed a couple of inches. They took away the truck so now we are in a Corolla so we slide all over now ha ha. We have invited something like 8 people now to get baptized and they have all said yes so the next couple of weeks we are going to focus on them getting baptismal dates hopefully they all pull through. We had breakfast with the Stake President and he told me that he heard we we're doing good and that he wants us to start focusing on Commerce City more. Its hard to get down there because it uses a lot of miles and we don't have that many but we are going to do what we can. Commerce City has over 100,000 people and only about 20 active members of the church. There is a lot of potential down there because we cover the whole city. The hard part is getting people to church because the church building is about 10-15 miles north of the city. I am pretty sure that I am going to be transferred in a month or so. So I am working really hard because I probably won't be in another area that has so much potential for work.

Hello Everyone,

So today is the beginning of a new transfer. I am a little disappointed because they took our truck away and gave us a corolla (the truck is going to Strasburg). Two new Elders came into our district, Elder Leach who will be with Elder Quigg and Elder Tenorio who will be with Elder Beebe. Both of them came out with me, James (my cousin) somehow knows Elder Tenorio's sister and he told me about him before I even came out on my mission he is super funny too. We met with a new investigator named Briseida her husband is a member and she had the lessons about 2 years ago, I think is she is truly ready to join the church now so we are helping out with her. We also had a man named Paul who called us and said he wasn't a member and he was coming to church, he also asked how he could meet with the bishop so we set all that up. He did come to church and we are going to be meeting with him this week. We had to be home at 6 P.M on Halloween so we just passed out candy for our family we live with, it was pretty fun. Friday we went to Buffalo Wild Wings as a district and Elder Broderick did the blazing challenge, where he had to eat 12 of their hottest wings in 6 minutes, he had to sign a waiver that if he got injured he couldn't sue Buffalo Wild Wings it took ihm 12 minutes and he just about passed out but they still gave it to him haha. On Saturday we had a bonfire with other missionaries as we found out about transfers that was really fun. On Sunday we met with a less active family who we have been trying to see forever and we finally got to meet and talk to them, they are both return missionaries and have a lot of cultural issues with the church, One of them served in the San Jose mission and he served in the other ward up in the mountains and I think he covered the Alma branch! Well I am excited for this next transfer when I hit the end of it I will be at my year mark, pretty crazy how fast it is going.

Img_003 - Elder Broderick reviewing the waiver.
IMG_0011 - this is Elder Broderick, Beebe and myself at the border of our mission you can kinda see downtown in the background, the other side of the overpass is the Colorado Denver South mission.
IMG_0012 -Elder Holben pointing at our transfer predictions.
IMG_0015 - the district photo

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