Another One Bites the Dust

Dear Family,

Last week we had transfers. I said farewell to Elder Moreira (he´s going to train in Fogo) and hello to Elder Josephson and Elder Fonseca. I´m going to miss Elder Moreira. He was a really fun companion. It´s a shame that we only had one transfer together. But yea, right now I´m in a trio. I wasn´t sure how well it would work but so far we´re doing fine. It helps that both Elder Josephson and Elder Fonseca are clean. It´s a lot easier when everyone cleans up after themselves and not just one person for everyone. Elder Josephson is from Lehi, Utah and Elder Fonseca is from here on the island of Mindelo. They are both way cool, ready to learn and to do the work that we are here to do. This first week has been pretty crazy simply due to the fact that I haven´t had time to teach them everything and there´s been so much to do. So here´s the weekly breakdown:

Monday-Transfer Day. I started by moving the secretaries out of our house. Last transfer we shared a house with the secretaries. That changed this transfer. I moved them out and I picked up Elder Josephson to ride around with me as I did all the other changes. This was basically AP Taxi day. And since I was the designated driver I got to do all the movement. Not that I don´t enjoy driving, but there is a point when you don´t want to drive back and forth through the city. We ran around until 12 when we stopped by the mission home because President Oliveira had invited us to lunch. That was a tender mercy of the Lord. We showed up, ate a little, talked for a few minutes, then rushed out the door to do more changes. If we hadn´t had that lunch I don´t know if we´d have found time to eat. We kind of pushed our schedule tight by stopping by as it was, with a pre-ready meal. As soon as all the movements were done (around 5-ish) We got ourselves ready to go teach. I went with Elder Ryan (who was a secretary last transfer but got transfered to Mindelo to train) so he could show me all the investigators that we would acquire since the secretaries moved areas. My new companions went with Elder Moreira so he could show them the investigators that I already knew. Good stuff.

Tuesday was a little more calm. We had a lot of office stuff in the morning, but we just taught in the afternoon. Wednesday was the same.

Thursday we had a Trainers´ Training. The Church is starting a new 12 week training program to help integrate new missionaries into the field better. The hope is that after the first 2 transfers (12 weeks) these new missionaries will be ready to train others, or in essence be leaders. That´s definately something this mission needs. I´m training 2 APs not greenies but the training was still helpful. And who knows, maybe I´ll train sometime in the future. The new Elders got in Thursday night.

Friday morning we did the new missionary orientation. Then taught. Saturday we had some baptism interviews, watched a baptism, then went out with the Branch to clean out the membership records, ie find out if people still live in the branch boundaries any more, because there are a ton of members in the branch´s records that aren´t active.

Sunday was a good normal day. Except that our gas for our stove ran out in the middle of lunch. It´s hard to cook without a stove. But I was finally able to catch up in my journal.

Anyways, thanks for your love and support!

Elder Canute

p.s. the picture is of the office staff last transfer. From left to right: Me, Elder Burnett (financial secretary), Elder Moreira (my companion), Elder Ryan (financial secretary), Sister Brooks, and Sister Laimana (general secretaries).

My Routine

Dear Family,

It doesn´t exist. My routine I mean. Last saturday we were going to do missionary type work but we received a call to arms to the office. Our mission president, President Oliveira went to Germany for a Europe Area Mission President training. He received news of misconduct by a missionary so he called us to stay with that missionary until he got back from Germany to make sure that nothing bad could happen before president could talk to this missionary. The problem was that we have 2 missionaries with the same last name. And President wasn´t 100% clear on which one was the one. So we asked. and he said the one here in Praia. So saturday morning we picked this missionary up, dropped his companion off with the Zone Leaders and went back to our house to finish studies. This whole time the missionary we picked up had no idea what was going on. But other missionaries heard what was going down. It´s hard not to with this many missionaries in such close proximity. Then the missionary that had told President Oliveira about the misconduct called us and told us we had the wrong guy. So we then spent most of saturday trying to get a hold of President to see what he wanted us to do. We ended up buying flights and running around the rest of saturday.

Sunday we had a division type deal. I went out and taught in our area with one missionary and Elder Moreira(my comp) taught with that missionary´s comp. But despite 2 groups working in our area that afternoon, that was the worst week as far as number of lessons I´ve had yet in my mission. I think we taught 8 all week. Granted we were not even on our island for 4 days, then we had P-day, then we had Saturday(see above).

Monday we picked up President´s son from the airport. He had just finished his mission in Brazil and was coming home to here. But President Oliveira was still in Germany so Elder Moreira and I picked him up. Then we took him to the beach for our Zone Activity(kind of a half p-day for us). Then in the afternoon we went into the office and Elder Moreira and I worked on Transfer things while President´s son slept in the spare bedroom here. Then at midnight we went to the airport to pick up President and Sister Oliveira.

Tuesday morning we had a meeting with President. In the afternoon we taught. Wednesday we had a meeting with President in the morning where we made transfers. Then we had district meeting. Then we taught. At one of our appointments, an investigator gave us some cake and juice. It didn´t do anything to me, but Elder Moreira got sick as a dog. He woke up several times during the night to throw up. Thursday morning (yesterday) President called us in to the office to make the flight list so the Sister secretaries could buy the flights for transfers. my companion was still way sick so I basically ended up doing everything. In the afternoon I had to take another missionary to the airport and pick another up. And the sisters needed to do flight things as well. Since I was kind of in the thick of everything I ended up helping a lot with that as well. So we didn´t teach yesterday. And we didn´t have power last night. And now that I mention that, we haven´t had power just about every other night for the past month. It´s way obnoxious. But it´s life.

Thanks for the emails and help and stuff.

Elder Peterson

Road trip, in a certain sense of the word

Dear Family,

Last week I sent my email on Saturday. Sunday was kind of crazy. Church was good, but we learned that there would be a fireside for our new mission president at 6:00. So we had from 3 to 6 to contact the majority of our investigators because we would not be in our area until Friday(today). We tried to go on splits to divide and conquer but one of the guys didn´t show. So instead we just went to the investigators we could and taught with a member. It went fairly well. The fireside was good.

Monday we got up at 4 to be at the airport at 4:30 for our flight at 5:30 to Mindelo. That was the 4th of July. Woot! Originally we were supposed to fly in Monday afternoon and have Zone Conference Tuesday the 5th, but July 5th is Cape Verde´s independence day and President Oliveira was invited to some government thing that day. So we flew in early early Monday morning. We had our Zone Conference then Elder Moreira and I did divisions with the Zone Leaders. That night to celebrate the 4th we ate waffles(definitely an American dish) and another American missionary and I sang the National Anthem. Since the missionaries usually have their P-day Monday and we had their zone conference that day, they had their P-day on Tuesday instead. And since Zone Conference was supposed to be on Tuesday, Elder Moreira and I didn´t fly out until Wednesday morning. So we just kind of had P-day with them. We didn´t use internet or anything, but we couldn´t really go out and work or do splits or whatever when none of the other missionaries were actually working. Except at 6 when they started proselyting as normal. Then we went out and worked with them.

Wednesday morning we flew out from Mindelo to Praia where we had a layover of 2 hours before flying to Fogo. We took President and Sister Oliveira around a little bit but in the afternoon we did splits with the missionaries there. Thursday we had Zone Conference in Fogo. It went well and afterwards we had our flight back to Praia. President and Sister Oliveira took Elder Moreira and me out to dinner before we all went back to our respective abodes to retire. It´s been a tiring week. We traveled through a lot of the mission. And I was able to visit some of my old areas. It has been really neat. Especially in Fogo. And President Oliveira is powerful. It´s going to be good working with him. But I feel bad for the way his first couple of weeks here have been going. Just the amount of stuff planned in such a short period of time. He only has a little bit to rest from these past trips because he leaves for a mission president training in Germany tomorrow. Rough.

Anyways, thanks all for everything. The prayers definitely help.

Love,

Elder Peterson

Assistant - noun: a person who assists or gives aid and support; helper.

(As an aside, this is also the 100th post... Woot.)

Dear Family,

On Tuesday I went with President Neves to pick up my new mission president, President Oliveira. According to protocol, the moment the plane touched the ground, President Oliveira became the new president and President Neves became Brother Neves. That was weird. He took his tag off in front of us and everything. We waited at the airport for quite a while as they got luggage and all that jazz. Then we took them to a hotel because the Mission home was being changed. Not necessarily ideal to have the move happen as the new Mission President gets here but whatevs. So the rest of that day we just taught our investigators and were kind of on call for whatever the new president might need.

On Wednesday we started the day really early by taking the former president Neves and his family to the airport at 4:30. No bueno. Elder Moreira and I then had a brief meeting with President Oliveira at around 8:00 before starting the Zone Leader´s Council. I will say right now that I got a spiritual confirmation that morning that President Oliveira is indeed the man called by God to lead this mission. And I´m pretty excited about it. The ZL council went well and after that Elder Moreira and I kind of ran around taking people to the airport and giving rides and such.

Thursday was supposed to be a normal day, but we went into the office to do a few administrative things and ended up staying there all day trying to help President Oliveira get settled in and get everything figured out. There´s a lot of stuff that´s kind of a mess at the moment for a variety of reasons and President Oliveira kind of got dropped right in the middle of it.

Friday (yesterday) we had our Zone Conference here in Praia. It went really well and all the missionaries left with really good thoughts and feelings about President Oliveira and where he wants to take this mission. We were then assigned to plan out the Zone Conferences for Mindelo and Fogo. That took a good bit of time. I went to bed tired and with a headache. I really can´t list all the things that we have been doing this past week but it´s been busy busy busy. And next week we will be out of our area for most of the time due to the Zone Conferences on the other islands. So woot.

Thanks for all of your love and support and prayers and stuff. It really does help.

Elder Peterson

p.s. The one picture is of me and Elder Moreira with our former mission president and his wife and our current mission president and his wife.
The other picture is of my mission "family." My trainer´s trainer (my grandpa), my trainer (dad), my trainers "brother" (my uncle), my "uncles" "son" (my cousin), me, and my 3 "brothers" or the other 3 Elders that my trainer trained. So one big happy family.