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.