One More Week in Metepec?

Hello everyone,

Thanks for all of the emails and updates on life back home...I enjoy hearing how everything is going. Congrats Tyler! You will love BYU...seriously. It is a blast and you will have the time of your life, and it is also the best place you can go to prepare yourself for a mission.

As for the hair...I´m still not sure. I´m getting a haircut later today so well see what I like after the haircut. But I bought a comb this week...I was hoping it came with instructions because I have NEVER used one (Mom knows that). I tried a couple different styles, including the straight part Elder Bednar-style and I felt like a complete geek....so it’s still a work in progress. I´ll have pictures next week probably. 

Mail...I am getting mail...thank you everyone.  How mail works is that it all goes to the office and once a week the secretaries in the office bring our mail here to our zone leaders....so I get mail once a week. I send letters with the same postage I would use in the States because the secretaries take our outgoing mail to the office and they put it all in a pouch which goes to Salt Lake once a week from here...and all that mail just gets sent from Salt Lake as if we all just sent them there. Also, I got a little sick this week...came down with a bit of a fever. It passed in about a day, but I went to find my first aid kit and realized I must have left it in Salt Lake (Sorry Dad)...

[Lisa:  By the way, you can purchase a 1st class stamp for Mexico for $.79 for 1 ounce or less.  I also tried a flat rate package through the USPS with nothing edible or made in China (or orange or furry or …ok, now I’m just being sarcastic).  A little experiment.  I’ll let you know how it turns out!]

Laundry. We drop it off with a Sister on Sunday nights. She has a washing machine so she washes it on Monday and we pick it up at night to hang dry it at our houses. The language is coming along. I can understand close to 100% at this point. Speaking is getting easier and more fluent as well. Still can’t say those dang R´s though. Believe it or not though there are also a number of Mexicans that can’t do it either...so I´ll be alright. Hopefully it will come eventually though cuz it does sound cool haha. 

As for the numbers:  Elder Decker (our zone leader) says my numbers will be a lot higher when I go to DF because you just teach and teach there...apparently more than we do here. We have ¨numbers of excellence¨ every week that we shoot for....1 baptism, 4 with baptismal date, 6 in the church, 10 news, 30 lessons and 140 contacts. They are tough to get...believe me. I haven’t even reached the contacts, lessons or in the church in a week yet.

So this week went pretty well. We had a baptism this week which was very exciting. His name is Brayan and he is 14 years old and he´s great. I can see him serving a mission in a number of years.

I´m reading in Mosiah now in the Book of Mormon in Spanish....hoping to finish it all the way in Spanish. I think it is helping me with the language as well. I also finished Preach My Gospel all the way through this week in Spanish...which I know helped me a bunch with the language and everything. 

I am loving the work here...I really do love being a missionary. This is the last week of the change as well...so next Monday I will definitely be writing you with a new companion and who knows maybe even a new area...but well have to wait and see. I´ll know on Saturday and I´ll of course let you know on Monday. 

Soo, that´s pretty much it for this email.  I know that this church is true and I know that I am here on the Lord´s errand. This is His work and I know that if I put my trust in Him He will help me and He will give me success in this ¨great and marvelous work¨. Love you all and miss you...hope you have a great week.

And this is my joy (Alma 29:9)

Elder Peacock

Hairstyles

Email 2.21.11

Hola familia otra vez,

Its been a good week here in Metepec. Thanks for the emails and the support. Blake Griffin sounds like a stud. Also, I heard Kobe won the MVP for the all-star game, how was that?

This week was pretty normal. We did a little bit more knocking doors and contacting and as a result we found 13 new investigators this week. We also taught 22 lessons which is pretty good for a week and definitely an improvement on how many we taught the last couple of weeks.

On Thursday, President Villarreal came out to Metepec and did interviews with everyone in the zone.  My interview was about 15 minutes long and we talked about the work, about Elder Salazar and just about how everything is going. He informed me that Elder Salazar and I will not be together next transfer. He also talked to me about May, which is going to be a sweet month.

In May, Elder Oaks and Elder Cook from the Quorum of the 12 and also Elder Rasband from the Quorum of the 70 are coming to our mission. He says he wants us all to bring our best so we can invite the spirit. Our nicest suit, shoes, shirt, tie and if we prepare the best we can spiritually we will receive revelation from these leaders. He also told me that he wants me to change my hairstyle haha. My hair isn’t bad, just spiked a little in the front and still relatively short, but he said he wants me to pick an apostle and emulate his hairstyle. I´m thinking Elder Holland just because he´s a baller and is my favorite, but I don´t know. So give me ideas and suggestions for which apostle or member of the first presidency would be best. I think its kind of cool if we all copy hairstyles of the apostles in the whole mission haha. So yeah May is gonna be pretty sweet. The apostles are coming, I turn 20 and I´ll get to call home for Mother´s day! So that will be something to look forward too.

As for the cran, don’t worry I haven’t eaten it again. I didn’t really enjoy it the first time, so I think it was a one and done kind of thing. And this week I don’t really have anything new to add to the list of gross foods I´ve eaten. Pretty normal stuff this week, corn tortillas, beans, rice, chicken.

Today we went to the mall here in Metepec and we ate at a buffet with most of the zone, which was really good...it reminded me of American food haha. I´ll have a few pictures next week.  Unfortunately I don’t have my camera right now, but I didn’t take too many pictures this week anyway so you’re not missing out on too much. 

Oh, also, Bryce, I have to give you props for bringing your friend to church. Members doing things like that can make our lives as missionaries sooooo much easier. So now that you have broken the ice with him about the gospel, I have a challenge for you Bryce...set up an appointment for the missionaries so they can go start teaching his family. Trust me if you walk up to the missionaries and tell them you have a friend who is interested in the Gospel and has already been to church a couple of times they will pee themselves with excitement. Also Bryce, do you remember that little envelope you stuck in my bag with a little letter and wristband in it....well I opened it the other day and it was pretty solid man. Definitely helped me that day. You the man. 

Also Tyler, thanks for the letter, and sorry about Magic Mountain and how horribly unorganized they are. You have to remember, Tanner had an interview for a warehouse in Magic Mountain that apparently didn’t even exist haha.

Well, that was pretty much my week. 2 more weeks to go in this transfer. I am loving the work and loving spreading the gospel to the people here in Metepec. Thank you everyone for all of your love and all of your support.

I know this church is true...as members in the church we say that phrase a lot....when I say that it means that I know that this church is the same church with the same organization that Jesus Christ established when he came to the Earth. We are led by a prophet and by 12 apostles which is how God intends for His church to be run (Ephesians 3:19-20, Amos 3:7) I know that if we follow the teachings of our inspired leaders, we will return to live with our Heavenly Father again someday, because they are led directly be God himself.

I love being a missionary and I love and miss you all

And this is my Joy (Alma 29:9)

Elder Peacock

[click on any of the highlighted names or phrases above for more information]

Happy Valentine’s Day!

[Email dated 2.14.11]

Hola familia,

 

Another week has gone by here in Metepec. This week was a pretty good week. We got our soccer jerseys for the zone early in the week. So we were sporting the all white Spain jerseys today when we played against the Toluca zone missionaries. We won 8-5 and I played defender most of the game...not the greatest soccer player, but it was still fun.  I am also officially sore and sunburned from the game, buts it’s all good it was a lot of fun.

 

 

Also, you will be happy to know that I added another gross food to my list of eaten foods here in Mexico...I´ll give you one guess....I mentioned it in my last email....thats right cran....So now I can say I´ve eaten it. I don’t know how cool that is to say really but I can say it haha. It wasn´t terrible but it wasn´t good either. Elder Salazar talked me into doing it for sure...I really didn´t want to. He even bought my tacos for me...so think what you will...but it has been done haha.

This week we also had a fast as a zone on Thursday. We all fasted for our investigators for 24 hours so that we might be able to help them come unto Christ the best way that we can. We had good success as a zone as a result and I know that the Lord answered our prayers and blessed our investigators and blessed us as missionaries as well. We had 10 baptisms this week as a zone, and Elder Salazar and I were fortunate enough to help our investigator Katalina have a baptism and confirmation of the Holy Ghost on Sunday. I know with all my heart that when we put our faith in the Lord and make sacrifices and do what he asks of us, we can receive the blessings that he is waiting to give us. He blesses us with success and he can help us reach our goals if we put all of our trust in him and do the things that he asks of us. 

Hmm, lets see what else happened this week....not too much else. The weeks seem to all be blending together now. I can’t really remember all that happened this week to be honest haha. Maybe ask me some stuff you´d like to know.

 

But I took a lot of pics so enjoy those. I hope you all have a great week and I hope to hear from you soon. 

 

 

Love you all and miss you. Happy Valentines Day!!

I know this church is true and I love being a missionary.

And this is my joy (Alma 29:9)

Elder Peacock

Group wants Mexico to suspend visas for Mormon missionaries

THIS found in the Deseret News today…

My Bad

This is the email (in part) that I sent to Justin this morning:

Dearest son,

I read with some alarm about the water heating method you described in your email last week.  I just kept thinking....

Hello!

ELECTROCUTION!!!!

Every day I expected the phone to ring:  "Sister Peacock, we regret to inform you..." at which point my heart would break into a thousand million billion little tiny itsy bitsy pieces.

I woke up with a nightmare where you and/or your sweet companion were lying in electrified water, muerte, and no one found you for days.  I couldn't sleep for a couple of hours that night.

I wrestled with whether or not to be THAT kind of missionary mother who calls the Mission President to intervene.  Your dad said I could.  My friends assured me I was completely justified.  I started the email several times but couldn’t finish.

I prayed fervently that you would be safe.

And then, Heavenly Father sent me a tender mercy yesterday in answer to my numerous and somewhat hysterical prayers.  I was in the stake offices and as I was leaving, JD Tengberg asked about you.  Since it is on my mind so strongly I told him about the iron and water and he was appropriately horrified by this idea.  As we were discussing, there was this man on the other couch (I didn't know him) who asked where you were.  When I told him he said that he had served in the Tijuana mission and they almost never had water heaters and that was how they always heated their water.  For 2 years.  It's a Mexico thing.  He's still alive.  I felt hope.  He said that the first time he saw it, he was nervous since he remembered about electricity and water from science but knew about grounding and yada yada.  JD was still skeptical.  I am still skeptical.  But the fact is, this guy lived to tell about it, so I was somewhat reassured.

I still don't think it's the greatest idea--

FOR SURE.

Cold water builds character, just sayin.  Be safe. Don't be dumb.  Use your head.  Whew.  That was a long week.

Bryce wants to know if your drinking the water in Mexico, and if so, are you getting sick?

We love you.  We are proud of you.  Be safe.  Work hard.  Come home alive, please.  I know that the Church is true and that you are on the Lord's errand.  It is for this reason that I was able to sleep at all last week:)

Forever, Mom

*******************************************************************************************************

And, his reply:

Hello everyone.

So I`m sorry for all of the worry I have caused with my showering method. Apparently that was not Mom approved. But, you will be glad to know that I did not get electrocuted or hurt or killed. You will also be glad to know that we did in fact get the water heater fixed this week so from now on I`m taking showers just like normal. So you can sleep well tonight mom haha.

And Bryce, no I do not drink the water, and I haven’t gotten sick yet, but I hear I`m more likely to get sick once I move to DF and start serving there. I drink the water with the filter bottle I have or I buy bottled.  

Anyway, we got all moved into the apartment finally as you can see from the pictures. It really is a lot better than the other house we were living in. I even have a closet and I finally get to unpack my stuff from my suitcase which is nice. And we have a nice big backyard area to hang dry our clothes and stuff like that. It has interesting graffiti on the back wall.

This week was a bit of a struggle. It was a shorter week (since we had P Day on Tuesday) and we didn`t have a lot of success this week. We had a possible 5 people we were hoping to baptize yesterday and they all fell off date for various reasons. So, needless to say it was a bit frustrating and disappointing. My patience is being tried for sure. I know though, that if we just keep working hard with diligence and obedience, the Lord will bless us with èxito (success). Ammon gives us a great example of that in Alma 26:27 when he tells us that the Lord said to bear with patience thy afflictions and I will give you success. I know that if we keep working hard and just push through our trials the Lord will bless us and we will have success in the last 4 weeks of this transfer.

A couple fun things this week. We are going to have our soccer match with the Toluca zone next week so we practiced with our zone today for a couple of hours. I`m not very good but its still fun to play sports with everyone. We played on a big dirt soccer field that was very stereotypical Mexico. Whenever people try to talk crap to me I just tell them we should go play basketball or real football and we`ll see what happens. Also, Elder Salazar ate Kran tacos this week. I`ll let you look up what that is, but lets just say its a part of a bull I never even want to touch let alone put in my mouth and eat. Also I had hamburgers Mexico Style. It was big and actually pretty good (see picture) and only for like 35 pesos! like 3 bucks.

Well I think that’s about it for this week. I`m short on time and not a lot more happened this week. But I have a lot of pictures of the apartment to make up for the shorter email. I love you all and miss you.

But I love being a missionary.

Have a great week and hope to hear from you soon.

Elder Peacock

New Apartment

[Email dated 2/1/11]

Hello Everyone,

I´m emailing a day late because yesterday we had zone conference here in Metepec, but I´ll talk more about that later.

This week was the 1st week of the change here in Metepec. On Tuesday, we had our first zone meeting, and we got to know all the new leaders and new elders in the zone. Elder Decker took the place of Elder Berezay as the new zone leader and Elder Molina is still zone leader. Elder Decker seems like a cool guy. He played football and basketball in high school and played a year of junior college football as quarterback. He hates the Lakers however (from Arizona - Suns fan), but that’s pretty much his only fault haha. He speaks really good Spanish and has been out a year. 

On Thursday night the zone leaders found us a new apartment (I think they wanted us out of theirs) and we moved in on Friday. It´s a lot nicer than the other one. We have a little kitchen, a nice sized backyard, some couches and a lot more space. Plus it’s on the bottom floor. The guy that we got the apartment from hasn’t moved all his stuff out yet so we aren’t completely moved in yet, but by next week we will be and I´ll be sure to include some pictures. And Dad, it sounds like it was a lot more difficult for you to move apartments because you had to find all your own new stuff? the Mission office provided us with beds, ironing board, iron, desks, chairs, microwave, mini fridge and some plastic drawers for our new apartment...all brand new. So, naturally we liked moving apartments. The only problem is that the hot water doesn´t seem to work in our apartment. So, we´ve been taking showers with a bucket where you heat up the water with the iron in the bucket of water and then you use a small bowl to pour that water on yourself to shower. It´s a little different, but it definitely beats taking a cold shower for sure. Hopefully well get the water fixed soon haha. 

[ok, Mother here.  I woke up with nightmares the night I received this, imagining him submerging an iron—plugged in to an electrical outlet—into a bucket of water to heat the water.  I’m thinking that is just electrocution waiting to happen.   Spiritually mature, maybe, but still a 19 year old boy-man.  I’ve been just dreading the call “Sister Peacock, we regret to inform you….”  They have big tags on blow dryers not to use while bathing, I bet no one ever thought irons would need the same tag.  I’ve been praying fervently for their hot water to be fixed.  Not that I care that they have to take cold showers—there are certainly worse things in life—only to stop this madness!  Yikes!  He is not going to like the next email he gets from me.]

Sunday was not my favorite this week. It seemed like everything just fell through. We only had one investigator come to church with us, when we were expecting about 8 or 9. Also we had a baptism planned as well that fell through, because our investigator´s family doesn’t want her to get baptized, so they didn’t let her go to church. So it was a pretty rough day, but next week looks a little more promising. I think we might have anywhere between 1 and 5 baptisms. We´ll have to see how the week plays out and we´ll have to keep working hard so we don´t have a repeat of last Sunday. 

As I said earlier, yesterday, Monday, we had a zone conference. It was with the Metepec and Toluca zones together. The 4 zone leaders spoke, the assistants spoke, the Stake President of Metepec spoke as well as Hermana and President Villarreal. It was really good. I enjoyed it a lot and I learned a lot. It was announced that in May Elder Oaks, Elder Cook  of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles and Elder Rasband of the 70 will be coming to our mission. So that will be pretty sweet and definitely something to look forward too. But yeah, the zone conference was sweet. We learned and talked a lot about the atonement and how it can help you in every aspect of your life. President Villarreal is really great and I´m glad he´ll be my mission president for my whole mission. As you say in Spanish ¨me cae bien¨ which literally means he falls well to me...which is how you say you like a person. Interesting I know haha. 

Anyways, that’s pretty much it for this week. Just going to go do some errands for P-day and then we´re back to work. I love being a missionary and there´s nothing I would rather be doing than serving the Lord for two years. I know that Christ lives and that he atoned for our sins. Through his atoning sacrifice we can overcome challenges and problems and sins in our lives. He is our Savior and Redeemer and only through following His teachings and using His Atonement can we find TRUE happiness. I know with all  my heart that these things are true.

I love you and miss you all.

And this is my joy (Alma 29:9)

Elder Peacock 

PS and no I haven’t worn my Pavo Real tag yet, it really is just for fun. But I tell almost everyone that they can call me Pavo Real since they all have trouble pronouncing my name haha.