Friday P-Day

Dear Family,

Today is Friday and also p-day. that is cool. Also, today we are having a Barbecue. That is because some of the Elders in the Office are leaving. Turns out, after only 3 weeks of training as a Financial Secretary, I am now the man. My companion, Elder Isaacson, is headed for Mindelo as a Zone Leader. I´m getting another American, Elder Shellhammer as my companion. So yay, I not only get to continue to try and remember everything that I´m supposed to do, but I get to train someone while I´m doing that. Yay. Oh, and keep this under wraps, the other Elders won´t know about transfers until Saturday night. We get advanced warning because we have to do payments and buy tickets for Inter-Island travel and such. So we have known about transfers since Wednesday. Working in the office isn´t all bad.

Also, this past week we haven´t had a whole lot of water in our apartment because the one Water/Electric company here has been having problems with their pump. There was a period where all of Praia was without water for several days. It got pretty bad. we didn´t have any real problems, but a few days I ended up bathing and shaving with less than 2 liters of water. It was quite the challenge. One thing is for sure, this mission will make me appreciate so much more living in a country where you don´t have to wonder whether you will have water or power when you wake up.

also I´ve been pretty tired this week. It all kind of started when we played soccer monday morning. We only had the two teams instead of the normal 3, so we played without subs. Also I played pretty hard. We´ve been working in the office a lot this week as well, trying to do all the things that we hadn´t done yet, including many things that would normally have waited until next week, only Elder Isaacson is leaving and he wanted to make sure that I knew how to do everything. Well, I´ve seen just about everything, I´ve just got to try to make sure that I can remember everything. Yea...

So the other day I saw two puppies fighting. It was funny.

Also sometimes we´ll see people sweeping the dirt from their dirt floor, or the sidewalk, or the road. I´m not sure how effective that is.

And the other day I was thinking about how we used to listen to the Saturday Night Program on the radio as a family and how I missed that. that was a loooong time ago. And all of our funny little Family Home Evening games like ´Water in the Face´and ´Beat the beater´ Man, good times.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed General Conference, I certainly did even though our internet connection was a little weak and we missed a lot of the Sunday Afternoon Session. And we missed the Priesthood Session because it was playing at roughly 11 or 12 at night here in Cape Verde. Fortunately they already have it up on the internet, and being in the Office I have constant internet access, so when we´re waiting for a payment to go through or for a fax or a bill or something, I can catch some of that.

So, keep it chill.

Sarah-- I got your package with the spiderman game-lettes. They are funny and cool. Also the pictures of Luke are way tight. Also, your blogs are always a welcome addition.

With regards to the Pictures that I attached--

A few weeks ago (remember last week I forgot my camera cord so I couldn´t attach pictures) we had a baptism in the ocean. I think I may have mentioned this, but if not, IT WAS AWESOME. so I attached a few pictures from that. The picture with me and two guys is me and Frank and John. I didn´t baptise either, because at this point I had already made the emergency transfer so they were no longer my investigators, but I had been teaching them up to that point. So it was cool to be at their baptism even if I wasn´t directly involved. The other picture is of me and one of the Sisters´ investigators who I did baptise because the Sisters couldn´t. But yea, baptism in the ocean, all right.

I also attached several more dog pictures so you can see more examples. I figured i shouldn´t be overly biased and show only the nastiest dogs, so I put some more healthy looking ones as well.

The picture with the orange and yellow house was kind of a funny story. Elder Isaacson and I saw these houses and we thought, man this is a perfect representation of the Kingdoms of Glory. The big, brightly painted, well kept one in the middle is the Celestial Kingdom. The medium, whitewashed, less well kept one on the left is the Terrestrial Kingdom, and the small, unpainted, stone, sheet metal, and board shack on the right is the Telestial Kingdom. think about that.

The one with all of us in shorts and t-shirts is after soccer. The guy under me in the blue shirt is some of the other elders´ investigator but the rest of us in the picture are missionaries.

The one with us and the Sisters is our District, the Assistants (who are technically part of our district), and the Zone Leaders.

The big city view is the view from the top of my apartment building.

Then an old gutted van that we pass every day on the way to lunch. I just thought it was funny.

And Elder Isaacson and the member family that feeds us throughout the week. It´s not a thing where they just feed us out of the goodness of their hearts, we pay them, but we still like to eat there. They´re a great family.

And yea, other dog pictures scattered throughout. Enjoy.

Keep writing. Love you all!

Elder Peterson