Week 74 - I have never felt this great.

First off tell Samantha congratulations on her mission call. Guadalajara Mexico, that is so cool she is going to love it there.  Plus she gets to speak Spanish, that's even better.

I am going to print your other email and read it when I have more time. It sounds like a great idea to carry a Book of Mormon in our hand at all times.  That would help distinguish us from missionaries of other churches.

The families that we are working to reactivate. Well we have two families we are working with.  One of them, the wife is a member. The three children are members. The husband is not a member but he has a good testimony of the church. We are working on helping them to get married. It shouldn't be too hard to help them get married. The hard part is working with them to come to church on Sunday. We just need to be patient and find ways to help them have the desire come each Sunday.

The other family is great. The 14 year old in the family, he is really strong. He has a strong testimony of the Gospel. Every time he speaks and shares his testimony, we cry.  His little sister and mom have strong testimonies as well. We are working with the father so that he can gain a stronger testimony of the gospel.   We are really giving it our best. We have been through so many emotions this past week.

I have never felt this great in my mission. I have felt the spirit constantly every day. My companion is really great at calling on the spirit.  We have had these great lessons and we focus on the needs of the individuals. We are working on getting them to commit to do the things that will help them.

We are beginning to see more progress in the branch. This week we have been chatting with members and helping them have spiritual experiences. We are beginning to get more and more references from them. It is so great, without asking they just come up to us and say here are some people we know that you could visit.  We are very happy about that.

I am loving this branch.  Or branch president is really doing great. He knows what he's doing and he wants us to do a lot of good things. He wants us to do a lot of activities as well, to help the branch out. So we are putting forth a lot of effort to do that and help the branch progress.

Well, that's about it.  I am really happy.

Love you all Super Duper much.

Elder Pead

Week 73 - More diligent in our diligence

Hey,  it's me again.

This week has been good. We didn't have anyone come to church, but that's how it is sometimes. What we did do was we found a lot of inactive families to reactivate, and work with members of their families who are not members of the church. We have three individuals who are coming along. We are really excited about it. We found these families, and they really want to turn their lives around. The fathers want to be better husbands.  So we are going to focus on the priesthood and priesthood responsibilities. That is why we are very excited.

I really love this area. Palmira is a really cool place. It's laid out by calles (streets) y carreras (avenues). It is really well organized. Finding directions is very easy. I've got like half the area already memorized.

To answer some your questions, The branch I am working in is called Bizerta. Our house is actually really nice, I really like it, it's actually one of the cleaner apartments I've been in.

My companion, Elder Berreo is Colombian. He is from I believe Barranquilla. He has lived for quite a while in Bogotá. He is a convert to the church and is so cool. I love him, I love my son.

The branch is really cool. I love being in a branch. They are really organized and have great goals set. For that reason they are working hard. This week we are meeting with the branch president to see what goals we can personally make to help him and how he can help us. He loves to help, and the members, they also love to help. We are really animated to get the work done because well, it has to get done. That is why we are here.

You ask about cooking, I love to cook. We bought a lot of food this week, well I enjoy it because I get hungry.

The youth in the branch really help a lot. We have two young women who are branch missionaries. They're always finding investigators for us to teach. We will be out tracting and we will run across them and they will say, hey we have two more references for you.  It's great. We are so excited to work with the members here.

It's a little different to be back in an apartment with four missionaries. We always seem to digress a little bit after study time. We are trying to be more diligent with our time.

I have been reading in Doctrine and Covenants Section 3. It is where Joseph lost the 116 pages with Martin Harris and Christ is rebuking Joseph for what he had done.  I was impressed by the fact that all of us can make mistakes. Similar to mistakes it Joseph made. Even Joseph felt that God had abandoned him. We are able to realize that Joseph humbled himself and repented of the things he had done. We all need to be more humble.

Verse 4 For although a man may have many revelations, and have power to do many mighty works, yet if he boasts in his own strength, and sets at naught the counsels of God, and follows after the dictates of his own will and carnal desires, he must fall and incur the vengeance of a just God upon him.

We need to remember that if we forget about God's counsel, we will fall.  We need to be more diligent in our diligence. We need to be ready for whatever comes our way.

Verse 9 Behold, thou art Joseph, and thou wast chosen to do the work of the Lord, but because of transgression, if thou art not aware thou wilt fall.

We need to remember that we make mistakes and that repentance is not just for the big things it's for the little things as well. Like in Joseph Smith history when Joseph prayed and ask God for a sign of how his status was before him. Joseph humbled himself and asked for forgiveness. That's how we need to be, constantly and diligently striving to be better. If we fall we need to remember that God is full of compassion. We can repent and get back up.

That is what I wanted to share with you. The work is great.  I am really happy.

Love you all.

Elder Pead

Week 72 - Transfered

Hey mom and dad,

It's your son here, Elder Dallin Travis Pead.

First of all let me tell you what happened today. I got transferred to Palmira. It is about an hour outside of Cali. I am in a district of four or six elders. I don't know exactly how many until I see what happened with all the other transfers. I got here today and well it is way different. I'm just a little confused.  I will be finishing the new missionary training of my New son, Elder Berreo. I am also in the same apartment as Elder  Parvina who was in my old  district of Ceibas, and my other son, Elder Tantachuco. So yeah, we're all together. We will be baptizing the crap out of the people here.  I am also serving in a branch. The first time I've been in the branch during the mission. I just got here today so I don't know a lot about things yet.

This past week was really good. It was a change from our previous weeks. I left my old area with two investigators who have baptismal dates for the 30th and the 5th. We were really working hard. It was a special week.

To answer your questions, if you want to send a camera that would be fine.  I was trying to decide what to do. I was thinking of buying one here.  Go ahead and send one, that would be Chévere. I do not need anything else. I am fine with everything. I have gotten some new clothes here, that fit me better. I have actually given away a lot of my clothes that didn't fit me to Elder Riquelme.

Thanks for sending the excerpt from Doug's mission blog.  I will certainly use that in my district meeting.

So yeah, I am here in Palmira, in Bizerta 1. I am the district leader of four or six missionaries. I still don't know exactly who is in my district. Hopefully I will have six, the more the better. We should all get along great in our apartment, I am really excited. We will see how this next week goes, it should be good.

Man I feel really tired today.  I haven't slept at all since transfers came in. I do miss my old companion. It was hard to say goodbye to Elder Riquelme.  It was a heartfelt goodbye. I really wanted to stay little bit longer.  There must be a reason I was transferred, so I will work to find out what it is.

Love you guys,

Elder Pead

Making Breaded Chicken with a few ingredients from home

Week 71 - New Years

Hey Mom and Dad,

First off let me tell you a couple of things. My camera broke after all this time. We are going to a service project, And I really don't know what happened but it's broken. Also my voice recorder died, but I put it in a lot of rice and what can I say it works now.  That was the first part of the week.

The second part of the week is well, Sister Limachi is finishing her mission this week. We have a lot of things planned to send her off in style. It doesn't really feel like she is going to be leaving. to be honest, she is one of the greatest missionaries I have ever met. Of all the sister missionaries I've been able to work with, she is the one that has taught me the most about how to be a better missionary. It will be sad to see her leave.

News item number three, we have two new sister missionaries in our district for the next couple of weeks. All the missionaries that are serving in Pasto are in Cali for a couple of weeks.  There are so many festivals and parties going on in Pasto this time of the year that no missionary work will get done. The two sisters are Sister Gonzalez and Sister Venas. One is from Peru and the other from Argentina. Sister Gonzalez knows a lot of English. She lived in Utah for a time. She lived in Ogden. It was really cool to talk a little bit about that.

Found really great investigators this week.  We found a guy that had met with the missionaries a long time ago. He has a book of Mormon that is the blue one with the statue of Moroni on the cover. We have been visiting him and he really wants to change his life. We are working with another investigator named Mabel. Hopefully we can continue along with her.  We are just trying to find find find people to teach. It's been a little difficult in these last few weeks. We have had no investigators attend church. It's been really hard but we know that if we put in our part God will send us some good investigators. We have been working a lot with Gladys and Clara find investigators. They are the two sisters that were baptized a few weeks back.

They are also planning to go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead next month. It is really great to see your converts or the people that you were able to work with to be converted, to see their progress. They are so excited to go to the temple.

New Year's, it was normal. We worked like normal but we were able to stay up late and watch the fireworks from our apartment. We went up to the third-floor of our apartment building and watched the fireworks for 30 minutes. We had some good food.  I had a passion fruit cake. We played Uno a lot.  That was about it. It was great.

My studying is going good. We were able to get some good language studying. My companion is really helping me find tune a lot of things in Spanish.

It's still hot here, but it has been raining the past few days. Today we went and ate with all of the zone at a restaurant that I had been to while I was serving in Jamundí. It is called Brasileros.  It is a Brazilian Grill, lots of steak! It was grand.

This week has been good. I am really focusing on how to feel the spirit better and what I've learned is that we need to pray, listen to good music and keep the Commandments. That includes the schedule of the mission. I've been really happy about that and it has been great.

This week is the final week of this transfer. I really don't think I'll be going anywhere soon. I really believe this area is the first that I will spend six months in. I feel like that will happen, don't know why. I have learned something in each area and possibly there is something God has for me to learn here.

Well guys I love you, have a great week.

Elder Pead

Zona Villa Colombia