Feliz Cumpleanos!!

Hello everyone,

As usual thanks for all of the emails and love and support. Good news...I got the shoes—one of the pairs at least, along with the granola bars and what not. They fit and everything...I´m thinking that these two new pairs that I´m getting should be the last new shoes that I need to get.  Also, good to hear that Saugus beat Hart (varsity football). In your face everyone that goes/went to Hart!! *cough* Sarmiento family, Jenny, Cindy, Elliot, Bryan Smith, Kevin Ten Eyck, Jeff Morris *cough*.

Also, that´s cool that you got the letter from the President* [his mission president]. He told us he was gonna send it to our houses. Did it come with that video? We use the Misionero Siempre video to ask members for references...it works sometimes. And I always thought that 140 contacts was a lot. The most contacts that I have had in a day is 35 or 40. A contact is defined as when we present ourselves with somebody. If they say NO they can´t talk and we really don´t even say that we are missionaries and all that stuff...it doesn´t count. And if we contact a family of 10...it counts as 1 contact. We can contact in the street, or knock doors and then contact them in their door. I usually prefer knocking doors to contacting in the street because if they want to hear more, we can just pass into their house in that same moment and teach a lesson.

*Here is an excerpt from President Villareal’s letter:

One of our goals is for the families of our missionaries to have a larger role in the future success of our labors, by knowing certain principles of this mission.  We focus on the importance of the Atonement of Jesus Christ; to “learn” about the Atonement; to “use” the Atonement and to “teach” the Atonement.

Other important points of focus in this mission are:  obedience, diligence, desire.

With the principle of OBEDIENCE, all missionaries are expected to live by the following guidelines—6:30am be out of bed—8:00am—personal study—9:00am companionship study—10:00am begin working—2:00pm lunch with members—3:00pm leave lunch appointment—9:15pm be in your apartment and begin planning for the next day—10:30pm be asleep—30 minutes maximum in members home and teaching a lesson—1 hour maximum teaching investigators.

With the principle of DILIGENCE, we have a weekly standard of excellence which is—140 contacts per companionship—30 lessons—10 new investigators—4 families/individuals with baptismal date—6 families/individuals to go to Church—1 baptismal service per week.

With the principle of DESIRE, we focus on Alma 29, the April 2011 General Conference talk by Elder Oaks and other sources.

AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!! Can you believe it´s your second birthday that you have had since I have been on my mission (and the last one). Hope you have a good one.

It was a good week. A little challenging for sure. We didn´t have a baptism this week, but don´t think that we didn´t try to have one. We tried all week to have a baptismal service...but it just didn´t pan out...and that´s how it goes sometimes. I think we did make a mistake during the week. We were focusing so hard on trying to have a baptism that we really didn´t have anybody that we were going to bring to church on Sunday. We didn´t focus a whole lot on finding like we should have. But on Saturday, we recognized our error and we went to work. I don´t know what happened, but we worked at like a whole new level. We had 8 lessons and found 12 new investigators in one day!! Of those 12 investigators we found a family of 4 that said that they would go to church with us the following day. We passed by for them, and the family went with us on Sunday and stayed the whole time at church. They really seemed to enjoy the time they spent in the church. It just re-enforced what I already knew, the Lord blesses us according to what we desire (as long as the thing we desire is good, see Alma 29). We really really desired investigators to go to the church with us on Sunday...We showed our desire with the way we worked on Saturday...working like our pants were on fire...and as a result the Lord blessed us. It would have been really easy to not knock that door at 8:00 at night, but we did it, searching for the miracles that the Lord always has waiting for us. We found it. A family of 4 going to church for the first time and feeling the Spirit of the Lord.

That is something that I have really learned on my mission. When I got set apart as a missionary, I was told to do things everyday of my mission that qualify me for the blessings of heaven. I´ve seen over and over and over again in my mission that if we work hard, are diligent, the Lord provides us with the miracles, and if we slack off, we have no promise from the Lord (D&C 82:10). It´s so true. If we want the help of the Lord in ANYTHING that we do, we have to qualify ourselves for it, do the things that he asks of us. And as we do that, He will provide the rest.

Today, we had a fun P-day. We played soccer verses another zone. We lost however. But it was still fun. We played on that same field that I played on when we had the Spain jerseys like 8 months ago. This time we had Italy jerseys. I was the goalie haha. So I have a sweet goalie jersey lol.

I love you and miss you all. Hope that you have a good week.

And this is my joy

Elder Peacock