Roller Coaster of a Week

Email dated July 25, 2011

Hello family and friends,

Thanks for the emails, the love and the support as usual. I´m glad to hear that everyone had fun at Yellowstone, and I feel honored that you all remembered me while you were there. However, I´m sure you know what I am gonna say already...I want to see pictures haha. But I´m glad to hear that everyone is having a good summer, and Bryce and Zack are gonna have a blast at EFY. Crazy to think that in ONE month....Tyler will be heading off to BYU and Jordan will be entering the MTC. We are growing up!!

Anyways, the week was a roller coaster. Crazy, with tons of ups and downs. It started on Tuesday with zone conference, which is always a lot of fun. We get to be spiritually uplifted by our leaders, learn things to better ourselves as missionaries and as people, and see missionaries from other zones and catch up with them for a little bit. High point. Wednesday and Thursday we were still riding high as well. We had 2 people we were looking to get baptized and on Thursday I hit my ONE year mark. We celebrated with...what else....tacos in the street (pastor, sausage, beef, and TONGUE) and then after we planned at night we had the shirt burning ceremony. I spiced things up a little bit using Axe deodorant spray to give it a little extra power (Bryce would be proud...although I didn´t have my machete to slice it up as it was burning...).

Friday morning is when the roller coaster all started. We were planning to marry a couple on Saturday, and we received notice that the Judge where we always go went on Vacation!!! So Friday we called around to try to figure something out, but we couldn´t find the couple, so we couldn’t get anything set. Our other baptism we had planned told us that she wanted to wait longer and that she wasn´t ready to do it yet (she really is ready though)....AHHHHHH!!!!! Everything was just falling through one after the other. Saturday in our last hope, we went down to the marriage office to try to figure something out. We got an appointment, went and notified the couple, and after the most stressful morning and afternoon of my life, we got them married and Veronica got baptized right after. The wedding of course was much more expensive then  the judge that normally helps us....so the checking account definitely took a blow [looks like it cost him (us!??!) about $120 USD, yikes!]....but you can´t put a price on the happiness we could see on Veronica´s face with her wedding and baptism. What a week.

My companion and I continue to work hard and we are so grateful for the help the Lord gave us this weekend...we definitely wouldn´t have been able to pull it off without His help. It was an amazing, great, stressful, scary experience, all at the same time. (Just got your email Mom...Love you too and I´ll look forward to your email next week ) I´m so grateful for my mission and the experiences it is blessing me with...Crazy that I only have one year left!

And this is my joy (Alma 29:9)

Love you and miss you all. Have a great week.

Elder Peacock