End of October and beginning of wintery November

Hey y'all! This last week was pretty grand! We had splits like always and also quite a bit of service. Seems like that is all we can do pretty much out here in Creston. I am not complaining because I love it! Splits this time we went and visited a couple of less actives in the ward that we didn't know before. It was nice to meet them and most of them were old people. There are a lot of old people out here in Creston. Creston is getting more beautiful by the moment! The leaves are changing and with the views that you see here it is almost breathtaking. I wish I could remember to take my camera everywhere with me, but I fear I may lose it so I don't take it around me as much. We did go by Kootany Lake again and took more pictures which were swell.

This Friday we had exchanges with the District Leaders. I went to Trail with a "greenie" named Elder Millie from Arizona. Elder Baker who is our district leader came here to Creston with Elder Mackay. I finally got to drive which makes me happy! It actually gets me to do something while we are traveling! But me and Elder Millie drove to Trail which took about an hour and a half to do. Trail is like behind this mountain and right when you go around it, the city of Trail is a beautiful city and the view you get from after you go around it is amazing. Again I wish I would've brought my camera.

We had a pretty set plan in Trail. We had quite a bit of stop-bys with less actives and potential investigators. We met with a few and set appointments with them and left. After we met with this less-active named Brother Pale. He was going through a really hard time. He just got split up with his wife and probably shouldn't have done some stuff that lead to him having to be a certain distance from her. He was breaking down and it was so powerful. We shared a message with him and told him we would be there for him. He appreciated it and offered his thanks. It was pretty powerful!

After we chilled till our dinner appointment. It gave me some time to get to know Elder Millie. He is a pretty swell guy. He likes lacrosse and has a pretty dang big testimony! He is pretty dang intelligent in the gospel as well. I am surprise by how much he knows. 

We got to our dinner appointment and had this delicious choa mang or something like that which is noodles and salad. The dinner was so great! I couldn't stop eating, then again that is normal for a missionary. ;) The family was amazing! We connected with them instantly and we had amazing laughs and jokes. I had my funny laugh come in because I was laughing so hard and that made our laugh attack even worse. I tell you, my laugh is contagious sometimes. :/ But I loved that family and hope that I can see them again sometime!

After we visited this less active and it was just a little short lesson. Nothing much happened. After that we went back to the apartment and rested. I feel so bad. I feel like every companion is going to hate me throughout my mission. Not because of my personality or anything like that, but because of my awful snoring!  Elder Millie woke up in the middle of the night and had to go to another room because I was snoring soooooo bad! I don't blame him! From what they described to me how I sound, I sound horrible. O well, Elder Mackay doesn't mind to much! He is a heavy sleeper.

I have all of a sudden gotten into this love of reading! I used to hate reading and now I just love reading! Well, gospel topic books that is. But I love studying more about the gospel and reading more about it. I am almost done with the Book of Mormon! This will be the second time where I read it through all on my own. I am currently in the Book of Mormon in the Book of Mormon...INCEPTION!!! It is great and I can't wait to read some more when the time comes! 

The weather here in Creston is definitely changing! Last night there was so much wind blowing here in Creston which is rare. It is getting pretty dang cold and I am preparing as much as I can for this cold winter. I can definitely say that I am glad to be here in Creston though. In Alberta, they had 4 inches of snow last night! I am so glad we are out here in B.C. where we haven't gotten snow yet. I think it is 4 degrees Celsius which is pretty dang cold! I don't know when the snow may come, but I shall prepare!

We don't get mail till someone goes to the Calgary Mission office, which is quite a ways away, to pick up our mail and bring it back to us. Usually we have to wait till someone has to go down there for Re-trainers or Trainers or some other thing, then that is when we get mail. I am not sure when I will get my mail from you guys or the birthday packages you said, but don't be surprised if it does come after this week. Still I am grateful for all the mail. email. and packages that you guys are sending. Lets me know that I am loved out here. :) Thank you so much for all your encouraging words! Can't wait to get your mail when it comes time and this week will be pretty dang busy! Love you all! 

-Elder Perucca

Long & Rough Week!

Dearest Family and anyone who reads this,

This week was brutal! A lot of our appointments did not fall through and we didn't have too much to do. We did go on splits though with Paige Boehmer which is awesome!

We went to a couple of houses and most of them were not there. We did visit this one home where a lady lives with her boyfriend. She is a member, but he is not, but Brother Boehmer home teaches them. The week before we went in that house and she had the flu. Paige would not leave unless we gave her a blessing. It shows you how much of a kind heart he has! He wants to help everyone and doesn't want to leave until he does so. She allowed us in and we gave here a blessing and she felt the love from us and we shared a quick scripture before we left. Back to this week, we visited her and her boyfriend and she was well. She thanked us again for giving her a priesthood blessing. We talked and got to know them. Her boyfriend is really nice even though he isn't a member. Turns out that Shelly, the woman, had a test coming up the next day. She was pretty nervous and Paige offered another blessing. I was surprised how still compassionate he was to everyone. She agreed and we gave her a blessing that she would do well on her test. You could also see after the blessing her boyfriend countenance change and he looked very interested after. We are encouraging Shelly and her boyfriend to get married so that Shelly may come back to Church more often. We will see how well she did on the test when we visit her this week.

We have met more of the members here in Creston and I love all of them. They are hilarious too! I think I told you this before, but our ward is really childish. We go to Elder's quorum after our priesthood opening meeting. The Elders crack up little kid and immature jokes from time to time and it is hilarious. Too bad this Church was only 1 hour long. Ya, you heard right! Our well or water has dried up or something so our water things were not working well at all. They decided to do one hour at church. It was weird that we had to go home after that one hour of church.

We haven't gotten any investigators and I don't think we will get one for a bit. At the moment we are working with the families of the ward with their Family Mission Plan which seems to be going quite great! They heard President Monson at General Conference and are taking action. We are just there to help them come up with one. I think this area at the time is more for a practicing teaching and less-active area. When the investigators come I am sure we will be ready. They told us Creston used to be pretty good with investigators and all, but all of a sudden it came to a halt. I wonder if me and companion can get it going sometime. But it has been hard because when we offer service to others like chop wood, they say no. It is weird to say no to service, but we have to just respect it and keep going.

I forgot to bring my camera to the computers today. I was going to show you some beautiful pictures that my companion and I took when we by Kootany Lake. We plan to go to the Kootany Lake branch soon. We can't travel there much because we have so many "clicks" or kilometers we can travel in a month. Hopefully those refferals that we got at Stake Conference will be there at their home.

Well, this week is going to be much busier than this last one and hopefully all the appointments that we set up so far will follow through. Wish me luck!

-Elder Perucca

Thanksgiving!! (in Canada) ;)

Hello Family and whoever reads this,

Today is thanksgiving in Canada! We were planning on going to Cranbrook for a Zone P-day, but a less-active family called us and asked us if we wanted to have Thanksgiving dinner with them. We decided to give it some thought and chose to go to this less-active family because they have been struggling a lot and it seemed like they needed our help. 

Tomorrow is Zone Training and we go up to Cranbrook and have a little meeting up there. I am no longer a "noob" or a greenie anymore! There are two new missionaries that came this last transfer. I haven't met them quite yet, but I cannot wait to meet them perhaps tomorrow. Still, it feels great to know somewhat of what I am doing out here.

This week was pretty interesting. We did service like normal, but we also had an Amish wedding at our church which was very interesting. We went because our bishop was not there and the 1st counselor asked us to come help him. The Amish, or Meta-knights as we call them,  were quite nice people. There are some differences with their faith than ours, but the believe in Christ. What kinda amazed me is that they sing all capella because they believe in being simple meaning they can't really watch tv or paint their houses. They still sounded great and the basses hit those low notes very very well. You could tell that the marriage was slightly less equal meaning the man has more of the final say and the women can't do much about it. It was an interesting experience.

We also participated in a baptism after that wedding of a young one which was pretty cool. It kinda made me look back at my baptism even though I don't remember too much about it. I just remember being baptized, feeling warm inside, then after we went to our house and I just chilled downstairs just playing games and stuff. Still, the baptism was great for socializing and we can't do that too much here cause other than the members, people don't wanna talk to us.

I am getting closer and closer to the members here as we go to church or when we eat with them. One of my favorite people here is this little girl of the Simon's family named Adele! She is adorable and perhaps one day I will get a picture of her with me. We can't do too much around children because we need to be cautious of the law, but it is so hard with this little girl. She takes my little hands with her little hands and leads me around the house or to the dinner table and she is just adorable. She is so innocent! And when we say goodbye, she just comes up and hugs my leg all cute like and all I can do is smile at her. Someday when I have kids, I hope my child will be like her and as innocent looking.

We went out towards Kootany Lake and decided to take some pictures of this beautiful lake! I will send you some of the pictures we took. It is beautiful here and the trees are turning into fall colors and it is amazing wherever you look! I love it! Soon it will probably be white because all the snow.

This week will be pretty dang busy. We have lots of splits planned and meeting new members. Hopefully everything will go well! Here are the pictures and take care!

Transfer, P-day and More

First, I am going to answer the following 10 questions:

1. How long has you companion been out on his mission?

2. How long has he been in Creston?

3. How did your talk go at the Branch in Lake Katoney?

4. How did your contact with the referrals up there go?

5. Is is getting cold up there?

6. Do you eat at members homes?

7. Where are the nearest missionaries?

8. How big is your ward in Creston?

9. Have you been able to teach any one yet?

10. Have you been able to use your piano talent to help your ward out there?

Answers:

1: My companion now has been out on his mission for 7 months.

2. He has been out here for 3 months so far and going on 4 1/2.

3. Our talks went well in Katoney lake. I have more of it in my letter I am sending at the moment. Sooner of later it will get there. But we talked about scripture study and why it is so important and how to get the most out of it. We didn't spend the 20 minutes fully though. I think I talked too fast but I got the point out.

4. We tried to contact all the referrals up there, but none of them were home so hopefully when we go up there again we can see them.

5. Yes.

6. Yes.

7. Well, it is kinda half and half. To the west side we have Trail and Nelson elders and to our East we have the two companionship's in Cranbrook. We see each other every week in our district meetings.

8. It isn't too big. It can be a bit bigger, but like I have said before there have been a lot of less-actives out here so most of them do not come to church. The area is big and spread out though.

9. We taught one young women, but we haven't gotten another appointment and she hasn't been answering her phone so since then not really. We have been giving short messages when we go out and eat with the members. We do plan on each Wednesday to go on splits with members and visit less actives.

10. Meh, not really. I have been teaching my companion to play the piano and it has been going quite well. There is some times where I do get impatient with him, but nothing big. i have told the ward that I do play the piano, but not very well. They haven't told me otherwise.

So there you go! All of those questions answered! This last week was a bit of a hard week since we had all these meetings and appointments planned and they all didn't follow through so we couldn't do too much. We mostly did a bunch of service which is mainly what you do out here. We have been cutting a lot of wood out here for people to get ready for the winter. Every day usually we just chop wood for others. I think I tell more of that in my snail mail letter. I don't know when that will appear at home, but it has more information.

General Conference was amazing! I actually stayed awake all 5 sessions! It was my first time doing that! I was really impressed to hear about the membership of this church! Over 15 million members! The Prophet also said that we are the fastest growing Church out there. I am surprised. He also said that we now have 80,000 missionaries!!! Holy cow! I am deeply impressed by this! The Church is very true!!! I loved the talks in General conference and plan to download them sometime on a USB or CD so that we missionaries can listen to them while we are in the car or eating and such.

Yes, I noticed my birthday was coming up. I am not quite exactly sure what I want in that birthday package. Perhaps maybe some sweaters of jackets out here. It is not getting to cold, but it is cold enough. If you can't or don't wanna send them, that is fine. Other than that, surprise me! 

Well, hopefully this week will be better than the last week. We are getting 2 new boys here in our district and I can't wait to see them. Ha, Noobies!

-Elder Perucca