June 26, 2012

Dear Family,
Sorry about yesterday.  The mission president was in our area because we have interviews later today and he wanted to spend some extra time with my companion because he had an anxiety attack pretty much the other day.  He is doing good now though and we talked it out and gave him a blessing.  And then we were still able to make our tee time.  It was really fun being out on a golf course again.  It was elder Farbs first time ever playing real golf so it took a long time to play all 18 holes but no one was ever behind us so the only thing rushing us was the sun going down.  We went with our WML and one of his friends.  We also played basketball in the morning and so i slept really good last night.  I was tired.  I do carry a water bottle around with me so i don't get dehydrated.  That has been a big focus that Sister Jergensen tells us to do.

That is so cool to hear about Braden!  Germany that's way sweet.  So he goes into the MTC on Halloween.  That's interesting.  Good thing he has a lot of family in the area he could stay with the night before or whatnot.  Also congrats on winning mom.  Well our baptism that was scheduled for this weekend is being pushed back because we are still trying to get permission from their mom so that they can be baptized.  We have a big meeting with all of their family on Wednesday night which is exciting.  We've been teaching them at the church so it'll be good to get into their house.  Also the ward council is getting a lot more involved now and trying to get a good support group going for them.  We were able to set a baptismal date with another fellow by the name of Nathan this past week.  It's not until August 11th, but it's always good to have a goal to go for. 

The district is doing well.  We had a baptism this last saturday which Chase and Cameron were able to attend.  It was over in Davenport.  Also i'm doing another baptismal interview on Thursday for the zone leaders over in Davenport.  Something cool that is happening this week is Thursday night through Sunday night the stake is doing a program that is called Called to Serve.  Young men from the stake go out with the missionaries and basically just go on splits for 3 days.  They don't stay the night with us, but we drop them off at where they are staying at night and then they meet up with us in the morning for studies.  We are getting 2 young men from Dubuque which is a couple of hours north and west.  It is a cool program and should be pretty fun.  Hopefully we can stay pretty busy for those couple of days and allow them to have good experiences and get excited about serving missions.

Well like i said we have interviews with President Jergensen later today which will be nice.  We are also going for a training for our district and one other district in the zone like an hour earlier.  I'm not exactly sure what that all entails.  It is also crazy that it's almost July.  Our ward is having a Fourth of July picnic type thing which should be fun.  Unfortunately we'll probably have to be back in our apartment before all of the fireworks start going off.  I hope all goes well for all of you this next week.  Also congrats Rachael on the big news!  That's exciting.

Love, Elder Peterson

June 18, 2012

Hey Family!

This week has been a really good week.  The temperatures are indeed rising again here.  On saturday we were out doing some finding and it started raining really hard just out of nowhere so we got pretty wet.  It was hot rain too which wasn't very comfortable.  We were able to find a couple of potential investigators though.  We had a sweet experience this last week with going tracting.  E Farb and I prayed over where we should go and we prayed that we could find a family to teach.  This one little square on the map stood out to both of us so we decided to go there.  When we pulled up and parked the car, we said another prayer and felt inspired to pray that we could give out 6 books of mormon during the hour and a half we had to knock doors.  So we knock the first street on both sides and give out 1 book of mormon. Then we knock the second street and are able to give out another book.  So we come to the last street and still have 4 to give out.  We make it halfway down the street and give out one.  When we get to the last house we knock on the door and the guy signals to us out the window to come to the back.  So we went back there and were able to meet with Chris and his wife Christy while they were taking a smoke and they have a little son named nathan as well.  We gave them 3 books of mormon because Chris said he wanted to give some to his siblings.  Our prayers truely were answered that day.

We are still teaching Chase and Cameron and they are still set to get baptized on the 30th of this month.  It is going to be tricky to get them to church once their uncle who brings them every week goes back to Texas.  We are working on that though.  Also we have been seeking a lot more referrals from the members, but haven't had much success with that.  They sure do feed us good though.  For Father's day we went over to Brother Apo's house and he made us loco moco.  It's a hawaiin dish that is rice, gravy, hamburger patties, gravy, fried eggs, and more gravy.  He gave us each a huge bowl and it was very good.  His family lives out in Oregon and he spent the last weekend with his boys so we kept him company on Sunday.  Our ward mission leader called on Saturday night and said that he was sick so I got to prepare and teach the gospel principles lesson on Sunday as well.  It went pretty good.  E Farb was already in charge of teaching elders quorom that week so i took on the lesson by myself and we had a really good discussion.  It was about how we are the Lord's covenant people and went into the Abrahamic covenant and such.

The district is doing good.  We had a zone conference last wednesday.  It was fun to be able to see some missionaries that i haven't seen for a while.  It's always good to hear from President Jergensen as well.  He talked about Elder Hallstrom's talk from general conference about how the church of Jesus Christ and the gospel of Jesus Christ are not the same thing.  How it is possible to be active in the church, but not the gospel.  Also he talked about the doctrine of Christ in relation to those as well.  Elder Hallstrom gives three things we can do to make the gospel of Jesus Christ our foundation.  1) Deepen our understanding of Deity 2) Focus on the ordinances and covenants and 3) Unite the gospel with the church.  It is important that we not only just go to church, but understand why we are going and the doctrine of the church.  Once we do this, that's when we really become active followers of Jesus Christ.

Love, Elder Peterson

So we met this guy named Bro Glendon who is going through some health issues and that is why he hasn't been coming to church lately.  But he is pretty much filthy rich and has been helping out families who are going through rough times and lets them live in his house and gives them cars to drive and stuff so he is super nice.  But he had this motorcycle that Harly Davidson came out with that they only sent one to each dealership and he has one out of the 2000 created and it only has the original one mile on it. I thought wade and dad might enjoy the picture. Also he owns two golf courses both in our area so he gave me an owners card which is good for one free round of golf and a cart for me and a friend.  so we get to go golfing next p-day which will be sweet.  Our ward mission leader is coming with us.

Then the next is us parking in the clergy spot at the hospital to go administer to the sick and afflicted.  Then E Farb and I when we went to Nauvoo for the temple cleaning.


June 11, 2012

Hello Family.

This has been a really good week for us here in Rock Island.  We had 3 investigators at church this last week.  For D it was his first time.  He is the "baby daddy" of one of our returning members who is coming every week and consistently attending and actively participating in gospel principles class.  D plays soccer on the weekends and often travels out of state to play in tournaments and such so it was sweet that he was able to come on Sunday.  Over the summer we are setting up a sports night of sorts as well where the young men and whoever really can come play sports and have a good time and make friends.  We also have about 10 RM's here who are selling satellites for the summer and they come to church and offer to go on splits with us and reactivate a bunch of youth and such as well so that is really cool.  The other 2 investigators we had there are a members great nephews.  Chase and Cameron are their names.  We taught them twice this last week and they are scheduled to be baptized on June 30.  They will count as July baptisms though since they are confirmed on the 1st of July.

Also this last week on Friday night we got to go for a ward assignment to help clean the Nauvoo temple, which was fantastic!  We didn't end up getting back to our apartment until about 1 in the morning, but it was approved by the mission president.  We left and drove down there with 5 other ward members and then another branch was there to help too and there were 4 of them.  Elder Farb and I were vacuuming.  We started up on the 5th floor and basically just got to explore the whole temple.  They told us to open every door and if it had carpet then to vacuum it.  We got to look down the spiral staircase that goes all the way up the temple and it was a long way down from 5 stories up.  We vacuumed sealing rooms mostly on the upper floors.  Then we got to do the third floor as well which had all of the endowment rooms and such.  It really is such a beautiful temple and it was neat to pretty much be alone in it at times and just feel of the spirit.  They had 2 people start at the bottom and we met up on the 3rd floor so we didn't do the baptistry or anything.  But then afterwards the lady that worked there let us go up into the tower.  And the tower is another 6 stories up from the 5th floor so 11 in total.  And we got to look out the windows and look over the Mississippi river and the valley and such and it was neat.  The members that we drove with have a daughter who is coming home from her mission in Arizona this month.  Right now she is serving in Yuma.

We've also just been going down the ward list and checking up on the families that we don't know about.  Our ward list is 22 pages long!  Most of the people on the list are less-actives though which is a bummer.  I recently came across a quote I really liked from Elder Wirthlin.  I don't remember how it goes but it's on the principle of compensation.  He says something to the effect of every tear that we have now will eventually be compensated an hundredfold with tears of rejoicing and gladness in the eternities.  It's from his talk "come what may and love it."  But it just really got me thinking about how no matter what may come our way in this life, if we endure it well we do get compensated in the next life.  That has also been a comfort for those we are teaching as well.  I know that this church is true!

Elder, Peterson

June 4, 2012

Dear Family,

I have been pretty busy lately with transfers week this last week.  We have even been pretty swamped today which is why i'm e-mailing later than usual.  But i guess by swamped I mean we went and played basketball for a couple of hours.  We met up with 5 returned missionaries who are here selling satelite dishes for the summer and also the rest of our district was there to play with us as well.  It was fun.  My new companion is 6'5'' and was getting rebounds and such like crazy.  My new comps name is Elder Farb.  He is from Seattle, Washington.  Well he's actually from Camano Island but it's close to Seattle.  He already has his 2 year degree and is smart.  But when we role play during companionship study and such, it's easy to tell he is a new missionary.  We get along well and i'm excited to be training him.

When we went to go pick him up in Iowa City we were driving with a member by the name of Bro Stowe.  We stopped for lunch on our way back and he was telling us about his great nephews that he is currently living with.  They are 9 and 10.  We had Bro Stowe ask them before Sunday on if they wanted to take the missionary discussions and come with him to church, and then we would follow up with him on Sunday.  So Sunday comes around and Bro Stowe said that they do want to take the missionary lessons and start coming to church.  They had already come to a few of the ward activities and had made some friends who are their same age so they already know some of the kids in primary.  So we have an appointment to start teaching them on Tuesday which i'm excited about.  Also today we had an appointment set up with Sis Spevak.  She is an inactive member who recently went through a lot of troubles and decided she wants to start coming back to the church.  However she has been inactive for over 10 years and when she was active she really jumped into the service aspect of the church so she didn't get as much of the doctrine down as she would have liked.  I think I already told you that part.  Anyway we are teaching her the lessons again.  Before we went over to the appointment we had set up for today she called us and said that she had her 2 sons with her, and that they were picking up some food and asked if we wanted any.  so we got a free lunch, but the important thing is that i didn't even know she had 2 sons.  She actually has 3, but the oldest is moved out.  So we went to the park to teach her and her 2 sons are 16 and 13.  The 16 year old has already been baptized, but the 13 year old has not so we invited him to be baptized and were talking about it and he just asked us "so when do I get baptized?" because he felt left out I guess.  But that never happens of people just asking you when they get baptized so that was a miracle and we will probably be having that baptism sometime in the next couple three weeks.  So great things have been happening to us lately and Elder Farb is getting to practice teaching the lessons.  I remember I didn't even get to teach the first lesson to an investigator for like the first 4 1/2 months of my mission or so and he gets to 4 days in.

That is crazy that the sister came to Russia after 9 weeks in the MTC.  Best of luck to her.  Oh also Elder Farb speaks japanese.  He took 4 years of it through school.  The weather has been decent this last week.  It's actually been quite rainy these last couple of days.  Elder Farb must have brought it with him from Seattle.  It's warming up again though.  It's been one shirt days lately though.  As for my guess where Braden is going.  I'll just say the Iowa Des Moines Mission!  Then i can train him and it'll be a grand ole time.  Well I know that this church is true!  I've been studying in Moses recently in chapters 2 and 3.  Learning how all things are created spiritually before they are created physically so i've been trying to incorporate that in with planning and teaching and just really trying to do the Lord's will.

Love, Elder Peterson