Hey there family,
Alrighty so my new area is in West Des Moines. I actually live
just like right down the street from the mission home. President and
sister Jergensen are always gone though so he assures me that i'm not
here just so he can keep an eye on me, but we joke around about it
still. The reason for the e-mail on Tuesday this week is because we had
our mission tour yesterday and so our p-day got pushed back to today.
Elder Clarke from the seventy came and instructed us. It was really
neat. I'll share some thoughts later in the message. My new companion
is Elder Dyer. He is from Alabama. Interestingly enough he was
actually Elder Taylor's MTC companion. So i'm his breaker, which just
means i'm his second companion in the mission field and break some
of the habits that he and his trainer had and show him other styles of
missionary work and such. He's a cool dude and we'll be getting along
great. I've seen some of the area but haven't had a chance to meet too
much of the ward yet. It was actually stake conference on Sunday. This
time last year i attended the same stake conference in Des Moines. I
even saw some people I knew from the Lenox branch so it was fun to see
them again. When i was there last year the stake presidency got
reorganized and now it's crazy to think the President Pence has been in
for a year now. It was good to see him again as well and the meeting
was great.
We had one investigator there. Her name is Amber. We
are going to be baptizing her on December 1st. She also has a 7 year
old daughter named Hope that came as well. We got a chance to teach her
the first night I was in town. She has to be interviewed by President
Jergensen in order to be baptized and that is going to be taking place
next Sunday. So assuming that that goes well we will have a baptism
here pretty soon. We also have 2 investigators on date for the 15th of
December but i haven't met them yet and they weren't able to make it to
the stake conference. I guess recently Gladys Night did a fireside
concert type thing in Des Moines about the church and they are referalls
from that. I heard it was really good, but i wasn't here to go to it.
We have also found 3 new investigators in the short time i've been
here. One just lives down the hall from us and is a drummer in a band
and the other 2 are teenagers of a part member family. There dad is
fairly active and they both want to be baptized from what i could gather
in our lesson with them. They already consider themselves mormons so
we just have to teach them all the true doctrine they need to know.
Look for a baptismal date with them for december as well. It was
actually a miracle that we got in to set up an appointment with them
because we biked to their house and knocked on the door and nobody
answered. We were going to bike away and Elder Dyer got a little ahead
of me but the visor thing fell off of my helmet so i stopped in the
driveway to put it back on and I yelled at him to stop and he saw the
dad working on their fence in the backyard and started talking to him
and he let us in and we saw the two boys and were able to set up a time
to go teach them and our teaching appointment worked great. By small
and simple things are great things brought to pass. it was not a
coincidence that my visor fell off.
I am in a car share again so we got to do a lot of
biking the first week i was here. It's actually pretty fun because in
West Des Moines here the biking trails pretty much just honeycomb the
city and you can really get anywhere. The bike I have is pretty
interesting and only has a front wheel brake... but i haven't flipped
over yet so that's good. The ward from what i've heard is really good.
I did meet the bishop at stake conference and he seems like a great
guy. I think we have 2 or 3 Thanksgiving dinners lined up for this week
so we definitely won't be lacking in the food area. On Friday, the day
after I got here, we went to Ames to the Iowa State University campus
and did service for the Iowa games. It was basically a big basketball
tournament for all ages and boys and girls. What we did, along with our
whole zone of missionaries and the Ames zone of missionaries, is sit
behind a table and keep score for the games. It was pretty fun, but by
the 11th game that we did it for we were done. It was a long time to be
sitting behind a table. We were over the 8th grade boys, so they were
pretty entertaining to watch. Our mission helps with it every year and
we got a free shirt and on the back it lists our church as one of the
sponsors so that is pretty cool. They also brought around free waters
and powerades a lot more frequently than last year i guess so that was
good too.
Well I love you all! I hope everything continues to go well and that God continues to bless you.
Love, Elder Peterson
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