July 15, 2013

Family,

My heart is very full as I write this last e-mail. So many thoughts have just been going through my mind this last week. I feel like this time that i have now to e-mail is the only time I have had to relax for the last 2 weeks. The temple trip was just heavenly. It felt so good to be back in the temple. It was neat because it was President and Sister Jensens first time doing an endowment session in that temple. I hope to be able to return to that temple with my family again some day. I've been doing my best to work hard up until the very end. We set 3 baptismal dates in the last 4 days and they have all come to church already as well so they are solid. We had a church open house friday night. A member brought his hot dog cart and gave out free hot dogs and we had different booths set up throughout the church with all of the different auxiliaries. That is how we found Sherrie and picked her up as a new investigator. She pulled in because it looked like some place she could get a drink because she was thirsty. Now she came to church yesterday and we taught her today and she has a baptismal date for August 31. We are teaching her again tomorrow. She was after living waters. Sunday was good. My talk and musical number went well. Yes i played the piano for it. The stake president surprised us by coming to our ward that day and presiding. That is too bad that President McGinn will be out of town. I'm sure we'll hook up later and reminisce. I really don't know what to say so I threw together a chain of scriptures. Here ya go.

I love you so much! See you soon.

Love, Elder Peterson

I had many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen write unto thee: But I trust I shall shortly see thee, and we shall speak face to face.1
Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out2; Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob3, unto the bounds of the everlasting hills4. Let [my] days be few; and let another take [my] office5 and it was said unto [me], that [I] should rest yet for a little season6.

But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter7 and journey from the land of [Des Moines] before I, the Lord, send again the snows upon the earth.8
Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?9 Their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall deliver it.10
Then shalt thou... meet them there, and we will receive them into our bosom, and they shall see us; and we will fall upon their necks, and they shall fall upon our necks, and we will kiss each other.11 Our God, our Father's God;... thou hast led us here in safety where the mountain bulwark stands.12 Rejoice and be exceedingly glad.13

Seek ye diligently and teach one another words or wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.14 Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge.15

If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report of praiseworthy, we seek after these things.16 Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord.17 A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.18

[And] Jesus... saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. And he departed.19

Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink: but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy may be full20 and on the morrow come I into the world.21

1. 3 John 1:13-14
2. Matt. 12:44
3. Isaiah 2:3
4. Gen 49:26
5. Psalms 109:8
6. Revelation 6:11
7. Matt 24:20
8. D&C 117:1
9. Isaiah 60:8
10. Isaiah 5:26
11. Moses 7:63
12. Hymns 35
13. Matt 5:12
14. D&C 88:118
15. Proverbs 23:12
16. AoF 13
17. Prov 18:22
18. Prov 12:4
19. Mark 5:19-20
20. 2 John 1:12
21. 3 Nephi 1:13

July 8, 2013

Greeting from Iowa!

This has been a good week for us. Our fourth was swell. We went over to a barbeque with a couple three families from the ward. Then we were able to see the firework show from our apartment bedroom window so that was nice. Originally Fort Dodge wasn't going to have fireworks, but then a wealthy business owner stepped in and payed for it all i guess so we had a pretty good show on Wednesday night. Nothing compared to the Stadium of Fire firework show though i'm sure. This next week is going to fly by super fast! Tonight we are leaving for Des Moines and then tomorrow it's off to Nauvoo for my departing temple trip with President Jensen and then we are coming back Wednesday morning. Then we have back to back exchanges and district meeting and then it's the weekend again already! We met President and Sister Jensen this last Tuesday. We had a great zone conference. They are wonderful people. They were welcomed into the mission by two elders in a really bad car accident. One of them had to be life flighted to Des Moines hospital. We all fasted for him yesterday and he is on the mend. His family is with him and we just heard that he has been taken out of intensive care and is in his own room now which is awesome! His companion is fine, just a little bruised up and sore. Right away we are able to see the compasion of the Jensens and open our hearts to them. He had each of us bear our testimonies so that he could get to know us at zone conference. Then all of us going home missionaries bore our testimonies again. Then I bore my testimony yesterday thinking that would be my last time in the ward, but bishop called me to speak next week and i also got roped into playing a musical number so i'm not quite done yet in that regard. i guess it will just be practice for my homecoming talk.

Things with Dianna are going good. We did more service for her moving furniture around. We also brought Brother Bair with us and taught her a lesson all about the priesthood. She just needs to keep her commitments and then we will be good :) We are having an open house at the church on Fridayand hopefully she comes to that. We are hoping to have a really good turn out and pick up some new investigators from the event. Plus we are doing a barbeque so if that doesn't attract people, i don't know what will. Tabby is still doing well, but going slow. She kind of blew up on her mom when the bishop's wife and daughter were there to teach Anne one of the new member lessons.

I'm sorry to hear about all of the storms out there. It has just been sunny and hot here for the last week. I guess that's what i've been asking for though. I do like it better than raining all of the time though. We met a fellow by the name of Andy at the hospital yesterday. He had a baptismal date once upon a time and really loves the church, but his wife won't let him go. He also has an 8 year old son who wants to come to church as well. It is super frustrating when you find those people who really do want to come to church and get baptized, but then they don't. It would be really rough though to have to struggle through that. How greatful I am to have a family who is strong in the church! I am greatful that we all support each other. I know that families are eternal.

Love, Elder Peterson

July 1, 2013

Dear Family,

This has been a super good stellar week. Time is definitely flying by on the wings of lightning right now. I can't believe it is July already... just like everybody seems to be telling me at the moment. That is super sweet that you got to go to St George this week. It sounds like it is hotter in Utah than it is here in Iowa, even with the heat index here. It's suprisingly been not too bad here with the heat yet. After all of the rain we got I was expecting really bad humidity. Elder Blackburn still thought it was super humid so maybe i've just grown accustomed to it by now or something.

We had really good lessons with our investigators this week, but sadly none came to church yesterday :(. We had a church tour with Dianna. I always love doing church tours because it is just a really neat way to teach the restoration. I know that she felt the spirit. Dianna also gave us a couple of beds to give to Deanna, another one of our investigators. We dropped those off to her and taught her the plan of salvation. I don't know why she didn't come to church. Our next challenge with her is to help her stop smoking. We are having Anne, our recent convert, fellowship her since she had to recently quit smoking herself. And we had a great lesson with Anne's daughter Tabby. We had a lesson in the Bairs home and it was super sweet! We talked about faith and read from Alma 32. We had Tabby help herself realize that she is not sufficiently nourishing her faith tree. I thought for sure that would bring her to church, but we are going to have to be more patient with her. It's hard to be patient with people progressing when you know you are going to be gone soon though!

That's neat that you are going to the stadium of fire this year. Fort Dodge isn't doing any fireworks this year, not enough money to do them. We are going to a members house to have a barbeque with them on the fourth and am looking forward to that. Elder Blackburn and I are doing well and getting along. We went over to the Bairs and played some Settlers of Catan again this morning. I think that might be becoming a regular thing each week for us now. We just have to make sure to still be on our best behavior because we are playing with the Relief Society President and family haha. Building trust with her is of the upmost importance. She actually has given us a couple of people to go see this week so now we can report to her next week if we play. I haven't met President Jensen yet, but we have a zone conference tomorrow in Ames where we will go to meet him. I'm wondering if/what might be different in this zone conference compared to others. We have a new senior couple in our district who i met this week. They are from near Las Vegas and are really sweet. The Hayworths.

Any update on housing yet? I got your package last week. Thanks for all of the goodies! Snacks are actually very much appreciated! One of the members in our ward had his appendix burst on him this week. We paid him a visit in the hospital after church and he was doing just fine. We also heard that a companionship here in the IDMM was in a bad car accident late Friday night and one of them had to be life flighted to Des Moines. I don't have any updates on that story yet but hopefully by tomorrow we will hear some good news. Needless to say my list of people to pray for has gotten REALLY long and keeps getting longer over the years. I've really come to appreciate the power of prayer and how it really is just talking with a loving Heavenly Father.

I love all of you! Love,

Elder Peterson

June 24, 2012

Hello Family!

I was able to watch the worldwide training broadcast at our church and it was excellent! That is exciting to hear from Whitney that she (you if you are reading this) will be a pilot mission for all of the technology stuff. I loved all of the videos and success stories that they shared. Unfortunately not a lot of our ward was able to watch it live. We had a member family who had a giant tree fall into their driveway so after our ward potluck that we had after church the vast majority of people went to their house with chainsaws and went to work doing service. When we visit our ward members now we are going to make sure that they watch it and maybe even watch some of it with them.

That is too bad to hear that Steven is having health problems. Is it his back again? And since when is Madeline Ashcraft engaged? She will always just seem like a 14 year old to me. Our goodbye zone conference went well. President and Sister Jergensen stood up and did kind of a question and answer type ordeal giving us advice for life and how to raise our families and such. It was really good, and quite humorous at parts which made the whole saying "goodbye" thing easier for all of us. It was still sad to see them go. We also learned that the Peoria zone of our mission will officially become part of the Illinois Chicago West Mission effective July 1st. Nauvoo will still be in our mission though so we still have a temple!

It's still rainy here. Today it has been raining torrentially with loud loud thunder. The power was out for a while and is still out in some areas. That is not why we are late e-mailing though. We were playing Settlers of Catan with some members this morning for our P-Day and then had lunch and then came to the library. We picked up a new investigator this week named Dianna. We have been helping her move into her new house and we were able to teach her the plan of salvation while doing so. She just came here from California and we look forward to working with her. Deanna came to church on Sunday(not to be confused with Dianna. They are 2 different investigators.) It was good to see her again because we have been having trouble contacting her. But we got an appointment set up and we are all ready to set a baptismal date with her and her son.

I love you all!

Love, Elder Peterson

June 17, 2013

Dear Family,

We have not had any tornado damage here in Fort Dodge. We have been on tornado watch a couple of times, but it has never really been all that bad. The real problem is the flooding that we have had from all of the rain. A lot of the corn fields are flooded and even more have not yet even been planted yet because the ground is too muddy for the tractors to go on and such, so as soon as it dries up there is going to be a mad dash to get all of the crops planted and replanted for what was lost in the floods. We have had some damge in our district boundaries from tornadoes, but that is like over an hour away from where we live.

Camping sounds like a good time! We heard some great news from the girls camp here! One of our beehives took a friend to girls camp and by the end of the camp she was asking how she could join the church because she loved it so much. Her mom works here at the library and we are already friends with her so it is going to be fun to have this member family work with this other family. Now we just need to get the mom on board... hopefully more updates on that story later.

We had a good fathers day here. And happy fathers day to all you fathers out there! Anne gave a talk in church on the Book of Mormon and did a great job, especially since she was baptized only 2 short months ago. Unfortunately Tabby didn't come to church to hear her talk. We might be going bowling with there family and the Bair family and then having an FHE lesson afterwards with them today. The primary baked cookies for all of the dads in our ward and then presented them to them during the final hour, and we got all of the leftovers :) I wore my orange tie that always reminds me of you dad to church on sunday. I guess i'll just have to show you the tie when i get home. I'm also glad that you got my letter.

That's too bad to hear that Zach chose an expensive place... oh well. Is it too late to maybe try and room with Steven then? If it is, just choose a place mom now and then i'll adjust if I don't like it for that second semester. I don't register for classes until Wednesday of this week and i already got permission from President and am good to go for that morning. President Jensen comes in just 2 weeks! And we heard that the group that Dex McKell is coming in has 30+ missionaries coming to the mission that transfer. My departing temple trip is going to be on July 9th. It's going to be an all day thing for me since we are about a 5 hour drive away from Nauvoo here. We have a zone conference this Tuesday as a final goodbye to President Jergensen and then we have another zone conference the week afterward for President Jensens first. Lots of traveling these last few weeks, and then you throw district meetings in there too and we are happily busy all of the time!

One of my favorite scriptures that I have been thinking about lately is in Mosiah 5:13. The verses leading up to it are great too, but 13 says For how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from the thoughts and intents of his heart? I have truly come to know the master as I have served. I have come to know Jesus Christ as my friend. Another favorite verse of mine is Doctrine and Covenants 93:45 Verily, I say unto my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., or in other words, I will call you friends, for you are my friends, and ye shall have an inheritance with me— 46 I called you servants for the world’s sake, and ye are their servants for my sake— (just substitute your own name and you're good). I am forever thankful for the friendship that i have gained with my savior and with my Heavenly Father. I know that this church is true. Until next time,

Love Always,

Elder Peterson

June 10, 2013

Dear Family,

It still doesn't quite feel like summer here in Fort Dodge. It's still been in the 60's mostly with it getting up into the low 70's and rainy. It actually feels great to be walking around in. I am ready for some sunshine though. This has been a good week. Our stake did mini missions so we had a priest from the Newton branch with us for Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It was a good experience for him and for us. My new companion is Elder Blackburn. He is from Layton, UT. He went to culinary arts school for cooking so maybe he will chef something up for me sometime. Also Elder Brown arrived in the mission from Chico. And an elder Parry from Tremonton is here i don't know if Casey might know him.

At church we had an investigator family show up with a less active man who we are actively trying to reactivate. Deanna is the moms name and they have 3 kids. One of the kids, Jesus, is 8 years old so he is eligible for baptism. It would be sweet to be able to say we baptized Jesus in Iowa. We taught them after church and the mom really wants to get baptized. The dad is happily catholic so we will just let him come in his own time. They live in Webster City which is about 45 minutes away so we are really going to have to 1. budget miles and 2. get help from the members for rides and such. The sisters in our ward are in a tripanionship so we have one more missionary in the ward as well. We had a great turn out this last week at church which was great!

We are still having trouble teaching our other investigators. We are able to talk to them on the phone quite often so we are still in contact (with the exception of Breon) but sitting down and actually teaching seems to be a problem for the last 2 weeks. We had our get to know you district meeting on Saturday. Most of the district is new plus we had our mini missionaries there so it was fun! At lunch afterwards we went to an authentic mexican restaurant again since we were in Hampton and i got a cabeza taco and a tripa taco. Now when people ask me what is something weird that i ate on my mission, i can have a good answer. Cabeza is cow head. I learned how they cooked it after i ate the taco. They take the entire head, like fur and everything, and boil it for 10 hours and then pick it up by the horns and shake the skull until all the meat and brains fall off. That one wasn't my favorite. The tripa was good... it is the inner lining pretty much of the utter of the cow.

Girls camp is this week for our ward and scout camp is the following week. then things slow down for the rest of the summer, but hopefully not for us! I attached a file of Elder Blackburn and I in front of the mystery machine that we found. I love all of you and have a great week!

Love, Elder Peterson

June 3, 2013

Dear Family,

Hello family! I do love testimony meetings! They are great and our ward has had great testimony meetings these last 2 months. That is exciting to hear about all of the missionary work that has been going on in the ward. Both the convert baptisms and all of the missionaries who are serving. Does Dex really go into the MTC before testimony meeting next month? 2 suits will be fine while on the mission. I've been pretty lucky and have had both of my suit coats hold up pretty good. Most missionaries tend to buy at least one other suit at a Goodwill type place (like a DI). I bought a black suit coat for a couple of bucks to have three suits total. Also it's not uncommon for suits to be left in apartments so he might get lucky and find one that fits him for free :)

This has been a pretty slow week for us. We have still been able to do good though. We got our calls for transfers this week and it turns out that Elder Horkley is being transferred so I will have a new companion for my last transfer. We are headed down to Iowa City on Thursday to pick him up and bring him back. This will be President Jergensens last transfer meeting so i'm kind of glad that I get the opportunity to go. It seems like i've been going to a lot of transfer meetings lately, and i know for sure i'll be going to the next one too haha. We had a new member come into the ward last week. He will be staying as long as his job interview goes well today. We actually had dinner with him over at a members house. He is a return missionary and pretty young (still in his young 20's). He will be a great addition to the ward. Most of the ward members are just plain spread out. There is a pretty good community of them here in Fort Dodge, and that is where the church building is. They really do live in a lot of outlying towns and such though. It is beautiful here in Fort Dodge and it is also small. With all of the trees my allergies have been picking up a little lately, but i've been taking my allergy pills and that is helping.

There is a pretty good chance we will be getting some "mini missionaries" on friday this week. They would be priests doing a stake activity where they spend 2 1/2 days with the full time missionaries. If they do come it will be fun for my new companion who won't know the area but going out on splits with this priest. It will just take some solid planning. That will be a problem for our whole zone seeing as how every single companionship in my district is changing. It will be a fun 'get to know you' district meeting on Saturday though with all of the priests and laurels being there too. I wish we would have had more chances like this in Orem. I remember doing the mission week little thing in mutual and being assigned to our respective missions and going over to members houses to eat authentic food from that area, but it's nothing like the mini missions they do out here. It is so cool and so good for the priests who are preparing to serve missions!

I pray for you all every day. I've been studying about some super heroes lately in my studies! People that define the qualities that we want to obtain ourselves. The super heroes i'm referring to are of course not wearing tights, but are in fact the strippling warriors. Their willingness to obey every command with exactness, unity, virtue, and exceeding faith are all examples to me. Not to mention that they did not doubt because their mothers taught them ;) As a mission we are all under President Jergensen as our Helaman and are being as unified as possible. With exact obedience, miracles are performed and great things are wrought in the land. We are all also unified under God as His children watching out for each other and helping lift hands that hang helplessly down. I'm thankful that our family is unified! I love you all so much. I treasure the fact that I can say that in this family, we serve missions!

Love, Elder Peterson

May 27, 2013

Hey there family,

I sure do remember the Bradley's! That is way cool that you were able to see them again. We have had a busy week here. We have had a lot of rain this last week. Cold rain too, but anyway it has caused quite a bit of flooding. We have spent a lot of time doing service. In fact we got a forwarded message from our mission president that we could take as much time as we wanted to do service this week because of all of the flooding. We have one river running through town, the Des Moines river, and it is very full. Up past it's banks. Our little duplex did not flood at all though so we don't have to worry about our house we can just help with other peoples. it's pretty warm and sunny today though so that is nice. For memorial day yesterday we did have one barbeque over at the church with several families in the ward. Since it was our p-day we got to stay longer and play games with them as well. We tossed the football around for a while and played some settlers of Catan. Then we grilled up some burgers and brats.

Whenever i hear about who is graduating this year or who is on missions it just blows my mind. They don't seem old enough to be doing those things! I guess i just forget that i'm 21 years old now. I heard from Cody Buxton last week and he is doing well. He was telling me about all of the little buddies we used to hang out with and how they are all on missions now too. Now it is just weird that all of us are coming home soon... or are already home.

We met a less active man miraculously this week. His name is Jim. He is off of our records, but ever since we first saw him he has wanted to become active again in the church now. He too has Chron's and it has been bugging him. He is refusing to go to the hospital though... stubborn Iowans. We've met with him a couple of times and since then he has gotten his job back and has almost quit drinking entirely now. We still have to get him to completely quit drinking and to quit smoking, but one step at a time. He has met the bishop and they are meeting fairly regularly. I see so much potential in this man. He was baptized when he was 8 years old (he's 50 now) but he never made it through the aaronic priesthood or anything. His aunt and uncle are members of the church and he is back in contact with them now and he suprisingly has retained a lot of the knowledge over the years. He already wants to start paying tithing and we weren't even the ones to bring it up to him. He just knew that that is what you are supposed to do with your money and he credits God for helping him get his job back so he wants to pay his tithing.

Oh! We also had a zone conference this last week on Wednesday in Ames. I almost forgot to write about this. The musical number went really good as far as I can tell. President Jergensen told us the good news that they are going to do one more zone conference round next transfer before they leave. It was good to see President Danielson again who lives in Story City and is the stake president. It was kind of full cirlce for me. My first and last zone conferences were in Ames.

Tabby is still doing well and is set to be baptized on the 22nd of June. We get transfer calls this Saturday and we'll find out if Elder Horkley is leaving or not. I guess there is always the possibility that i will be transferred again, but that is highly unlikely. Honestly I could see it going either way of EH leaving or staying. Well all I can think of recently is that when you are in the service of your fellow beings you are only in the service of your God. We helped this one lady clear out her basement and really left an impression on her. She told us that she will never forget us and she tried to pay us money but of course we declined. She firmly believed that you couldn't find any decent people left in the world, so we really made her happy. We have also been able to grow closer to ward members through service, especially helping the Whitehills after their house burned down. Service is great and i'm thankful for the good health and spiritual sustanance from God to be able to help His children.

Love, Elder Peterson

May 20, 2013

Hola familia,

Well as of today i've been out on my mission for 22 months. Time is flying by way too fast. It has been a great week this last week. The weather has been crazy! We had one day that was over 100 degrees. We've also had some rainy colder days. All that mixed together made for some good ole tornado watch weather. Yesterday as we were driving to an appointment we got a text from the weather alert people or whatever telling us to take take shelter now and that we were in a tornado watch. It was still partly sunny outside, but we could see some dark clouds in the distance so we turned around and went home. We were watching the sky and the clouds were moving very quickly, but they just blew right over us. The sirens did go off a couple of times though (once from a malfunction). It was kind of eerie, but it didn't even get that windy. We heard that the tornado touched down 4 miles away from Fort Dodge, but we don't actually get to watch the news or anything so i don't know if that is correct. The zone leaders ended up grounding us at around 7 30 that night though because of it.

We had 2 investigators at church on Sunday! Wahoo! Tabby was there with her family... thus making her officially on date to be baptized June 22nd now. Also a man named Breon came. We taught him at the library and I guess he came to general conference in October of last year. Well as the sacrament was being passed he leaned over to me on the pew and told me he had been thinking about being baptized since we invited him to be earlier that week. Well he leaned over and told me that it was a yes and that he wants to be. That was just a delight to hear. We will be setting a date with him this coming Thursday. They both only stayed for sacrament meeting this week, but that is a great start! We also picked up a new investigator this week named Taylor. She was a former investigator who stopped being taught because she spent too much time in the hospital? Well we went back to check up on her and were able to teach her the restoration right there on the spot and she wasn't able to make it to church this week because she was out of town, but she really wants to come this upcoming week. We have really been blessed this week and I am very grateful to God because of it.

This upcoming week we have a zone conference in Ames. The four missionaries who are serving right now in Fort Dodge are doing the musical number for it. We are singing 'How Great Thou Art!' It is actually pretty lucky that between the two sisters, Elder Horkley, and I we have all 4 parts so we can sing SATB for some of the versus. We practiced yesterday and actually sound pretty good. Welp, I hope everyone has a good week. I'm not sure if the library will be closed on Monday because of Memorial day or not, so you might be looking for my e-mail come Tuesday. I sure love all of you and know this that I know the church is true and that Joseph Smith really is a prophet of God and the prophet of the Restoration.

Love, Elder Peterson

May 13, 2013

Hello Family!

Man i am so happy right now! Mom and dad it was so great to talk with you last night! What a miracle that our chat was relatively problem free. This was a good week, but a slow week. We actually received an update text from our zone because we have set some specific goals, and as a whole zone not one new investigator was found last week. That is just a set up to see many great miracles this week from all of our new found determination... so look forward to some great stories next week about finding new investigators! We had a baptism in our ward on Friday which was sweet! I sent a picture of us with the main man, Dragon. Or Dynastasias if you want to call him by his real name. He was taught by the sisters in our ward, but we were able to fellowship him at church and help confirm him yesterday and he wants to come out and start teaching with us now as well.

We do visit our recent converts a lot. A couple of times a week usually. It is good for them and they always love having us over! We were invited to a single adults picnic that they had this week to thank us for the good work we've been doing in the ward. They had a LOT of food and we got to take a lot of it home as well. We have a whole pie and a half in our fridge at home. Banana cream... yummy. Also a whole bag of fried chicken and meatballs and what not... it is great to see a fridge full of food again instead of living off of balogna sandwiches like i've been doing. Also on Sunday the young women were selling giant pizza sized cookies for a camp fundraiser and a member bought us one of those so we also have a now half eaten giant cookie at home. All these sweets are going to fatten me up! But I hear that tomorrow it is supposed to be up to 94 degrees so i'll just sweat it all off. It's not too hot today though, still suit coat weather because it's not even over 70. Looks like summer is coming with no spring for us.

I know of Enzio Busche. He has a speech called "Unleashing the Dormant Spirit" which is excellent. I'll leave you with some of my favorite quotes from that talk. I don't remember the quotes exactly, but the gist is the same. He said that the pain of sacrifice is only an instant. It is the fear of sacrifice that is lasting or painful. My own comment to that would be that we need to live the commandment to be of good cheer. For Christ has overcome the world. When we fear the sacrifice, that is what makes it painful. Enzio Busche also said the spirit will give you clarity, but never doubt. If you are ever receiving doubt, it is not from the spirit. Clarity will come from the spirit.

I know that this is God's true and living church on the earth today. I am so grateful to be a missionary at this time! i love you all. God be with you til me meet again!

May 6, 2013

Dear Family,

I believe the saying here in Fort Dodge goes like this: April showers bring May snowstorms? We had a really nice day this last week. It was above 70 degrees so I was able to walk around in a short sleeve shirt and it felt great. But then that night a rain storm came quite quickly and drenched us as we walked the rest of the way home. It was cold. Also the next day we walked to the church which was about a good hour walk in the rain and it was really windy that day too. My forehead was numb by the time we got there. But we had an awesome lesson at the church. We taught Tabby and her Mom and the Jensens were there. Sis Jensen is the young women's president so it was good for her to meet Tabby and be able to be there for her. We set the date of May 25th for her baptism... but she ended up not coming to church this week so it is not officially her date yet. Then on Thursday we woke up to the sight you see in the picture I attached. SNOW! Man, in May too of all things. I think the official recording was 6 1/2 inches, but it was more than that in some places. We stayed in and weekly planned for a good chunk of the day. District meeting got cancelled and moved to Friday because of the storm.

We had a pretty crazy scene happen on Thursday. Elder Horkley and I were in our apartment weekly planning when all of a sudden we hear a bunch of screaming going on outside of our duplex. There was a lot of obscenities in the language so we knew it wasn't anything good that was happening. We looked out our window and saw these 2 guys in their cars yelling at this one guy on the other side of the street. Apparently he had cut them off while driving or something and they had almost gotten in an accident. I saw one of the 2 talking on the phone so I thought he was calling the police to come and get a report or something. The yelling was going on for about 15 minutes or so with just the three of them when it escalated to threatenings and they were trying to start a fight. That is when we locked our doors and started watching from the upstairs window through a small crack in our blinds so they couldn't see us watching them. Well long story short, they 2 guys had called in back up or something because all of a sudden like 5 cars pull up out of nowhere and a mob of like 30 people are then standing outside of our house on the other side of the street and the other guy runs into his house and his mom comes out and starts yelling at the mob. Then our other neighbor and her son come out and start yelling at them and I called the cops and reported the scene and they all scrambled when three units pulled up. They talked to some people and got statements and that was the end of that. Haven't had any trouble since then. It was pretty interesting to watch though.

How crazy that JD gets home this weekend. We set up our skype time. I will be able to skype at 5 o'clock PM Iowa time at a members house. So i'll call you then! I am looking forward to it. It will be really fun! We logged a lot of driving time this weekend. On Friday we drove to Hampton (about an hour away) for district meeting back and forth on Friday. Then on Friday night we drove down to Boone (about an hour away again) to spend the night with our zone leaders. On Saturday morning we got up at 4 in the morning to drive to Iowa City (about 3 30 hours away) to hear Elder Neil L. Andersen speak to us. It was a really great meeting. All 235 IDMM missionaries were seated in the same building. Elder L. Whitney Clayton of the Presidency of the 70 and Elder Dube from the first quorum of the 70 were also there. Elder Andersen talked mostly on the atonement. About strengthening our testimonies of it and inviting people to repent. He emphasized that God knows the end from the beginning. When he testified of the savior, there was no doubting he knew it was true. The only way to describe it is that it looked like he had actually physically seen Christ Himself. We all got to shake his hand at the beginning of the meeting and it was great. We got there early enough that we were able to snag third row seats which was pretty great. Then we drove back which was another 3 30 hour drive. More good news is that the sisters got a new car so we are no longer sharing. Wade- there weren't any jokes that i know of about us sharing. They did try to name the truck Mr. Thornton though. That was a fail on their part.

Today is a bright shiny day though and about 65 degrees already. Most of the snow is now melted. I didn't need my winter coat... i got by with sweaters and ear muffs. The church is true! Grandma and Grandpa Bob, Grandma and Grandpa Pete, Mark and Mindy, Lori, Steve Wright and fam I got your letters this week! Thank you so much for the birthday wishes! The other picture is Elder Horkley and I on a rail road track bridge that goes across a big chasm.

Love, Elder Peterson


April 29, 2013

Dear Family,

Hola. It has indeed been an eventful week. And a good week as well. My new area that I am serving in is Fort Dodge, IA. It is in the north west corner of the mission essentially. My new companion is Elder Horkley. He is from Washington. He has been out for 3 months and he is a great elder. We are already having fun together. We also have 2 sister missionaries in our ward who we share the car with. Church on Sunday was really nice. We do have a smaller ward... about 100 people on average is what I hear. That means that everyone is really close to each other. They are pretty spread out through the area though and not a whole lot of them live in Fort Dodge itself. Every 4th Sunday they do a pot luck after church though so that was really nice to be able to meet and greet the members and eat with them as well. They are all really good cooks! It was nice too because we don't really have any food at the apartment. I've been living off a Little Caesers pizza for the weekend and some macaroni and cheese so i'm excited to go grocery shopping today. The choir sang in sacrament meeting and I sang with them. It was a really easy arrangement so it was no big deal. they sang Joseph Smith's first prayer to the tune of Jesus lover of my soul. Elder Horkley is also musical and has a really great tenor voice.

My Birthday was just another day. We had district meeting that day out in Mason City. It is a 2 hour drive to get there and another 2 to come back so our whole day was pretty much district meeting. We did still manage to pick up a new investigator that day and visit a less active though. The less active had some leftover cake from his birthday which was on thursday so i had that as my celebration. I'm really excited to be able to Skype on Mother's Day!!! We are locking down where we are going to go so i'll let you know the details next week. We have church from 10 to 1 and meetings in the morning so it will most likely be in the mid afternoon sometime. The e-mail time hasn't changed. We are still allotted the one hour and fifteen minutes. What has changed is that we are now allowed to e-mail more than our family. We can e-mail our friends and recent converts and such.

That is good news to hear back from BYU-I about the track schedule. I'll be doing some thinking about the winter semester of school as well. Right now it sounds like something I would want to do. i'll also contact President Jergensen so I can get permission to take time to do what i need to to sign up for classes and what not. All i've heard about housing from everyone is NOT to stay in the dorms. Is there a deadline as to when i would have to make the final decision on who to live with? I haven't heard from Zach in a couple of weeks, but as of right now i would like to stay with him at least for my first Fall semester there. If it's not really working out after that then i'll reconsider. I'm bound and determined to get good grades though.

I got Rachael's video and i really liked it! It makes me miss all of my nieces and nephews even more! This Saturday is our mission conference in Iowa City. It will be an early morning for us. We need to be there by around 8 30 in the morning and it's about a 3 1/2 hour drive to get there from here. Plus we have to go to Boone to pick up another set of elders which isn't exactly on the way there. I just hope i'm not the one driving back. I'm really excited to be able to sit down and hear personally from an apostle of the Lord though. We were out doing some finding yesterday and we saw a couple sitting on their porch with a baby. I turned to E Horkley and said lets go talk to them. As we were crossing the street he said hello brother brower. It turns out they were members. They invited us to dinner and we made a trade that i would grill the hotdogs so he could drive us home afterwards.

We just had 2 baptisms in the ward in the last part of April. This ward hadn't had any baptisms prior to those 2 in over a year. We are also having one more on May 10th in our ward. A man named Dinastasias... but he goes by Dragon. He is 6'8" and 19 years old. He is a really cool guy. I got to meet him at church on Sunday. I know that this church is true and it can bless the lives of everyone. We need to not look upon people's stature or physical appearance, but on their hearts. When we do this we will see them as God sees them... in white clothing. When they feel of your love, they will want to learn more. That is one thing I have learned on my mission. thank you for all that you do! Especially you mom and dad! Wade and Brittany I got your package.. thank you! That is a stellar tie. I wore it to transfer meetings. Until next week

Love, Elder Peterson

April 22, 2013

Dear Family!

WOOHOO indeed! I'm stoked that I got accepted! Thank you so so so much for all the work you have done on my behalf mother and father! What a great week this has truly been. Lots of good news all around. We had our baptism on Saturday. I attached a picture of it. It was amazing! The spirit was so strong and the confirmation the next day was just as good! Sarah has such a special spirit about her.

So the news is that i'm being transferred! I'm getting a new companion who has only been out for 3 months so i'll be his second companion. I don't know where i'm going yet, i just know that i'm going. So that means if you send a package directly to my west des moines address we better hope that it gets here by wednesday or else i'm not going to get it for a while. We are going to get 10 visa waiters in the mission and that brings our total number of missionaries received this transfer to 41! Holy Cow! I don't know where we are going to fit all of them. Here in west des moines both sets are getting visa waiters so there will be 6 missionaries in the ward. they also split the zone because we were too big so we are in a whole new zone now.

If I get transferred to Illinois again i'm sure that i will have lots of service opportunities available to me from all the flooding that has been going on there. They have received 85 percent of the annual rainfall of last year in the month of April of this year alone. We had a family drive to Chicago recently and they said the river was flooded right up to the road. It kind of looked and felt like they were driving on top of the water is what they said. I've been getting in with a lot of the families here in west des moines to say my goodbyes and leave one last encouraging thought to do missionary work with them. I have been here for 6 months now total.

Thank you for all of the birthday wishes! Parents I got your packages and loved the birthday hats. I had to open it early so that I could pack the stuff into my suitcases to take to my next area. I don't have any big plans for my birthday because i don't even know where i'm going to be. I'll find a fun way to celebrate though. i know we are having a district meeting that day so maybe i'll bake a cake for the whole district.

I am so grateful for this gospel. I recently started the BofM over again this last week. What stood out to me is when Nephi and his brothers went to get the brass plates. I like to think of the brass plates as a new investigator. We are trying to get the new investigators. Nephi and his brothers did what they knew how to do first. They cast lots and Laman went and just asked for the plates. That didn't work. So they did something else they knew how to do on their own. They tried to trade for the plates by giving all of their silver and gold and vast wealth. That didn't work either. We do what we know how to do. We tract or seek referrals or work with part member families etc. and sometimes it just seems like nothing is working. But we know that it is a commandment and promise from the Lord that there are people prepared for us to find. So we keep on doing what we know how to do until we are directed by the spirit and can accomplish what we need to. Nephi wasn't sure what he was going to do that last attempt that he went and found Laban drunk. Sometimes i feel like i don't know what to do, but that doesn't mean we sit around and do nothing. We get ourselves out there and we let the Lord do the rest.

Thanks again for everything!

April 15, 2013

Greetings family!

Another great week has flown by! We are excited to have Sarah's baptism coming up this next Saturday. It was announced in sacrament meeting so hopefully we have a good turnout. I know she has been making a lot of friends so i'm sure the ward will do great in supporting her. Also in sacrament meeting I gave a talk along with Elders Olson and Lewis. I spoke on the blessings that come from following the prophet and apostles. A good follow up topic with conference being last week. We had our fast sunday the week before conference here. Also Lindsay and her family were there for church and stayed for the whole block which was great. Sister Esser who has been helping us teach and is her mother-in-law has gone back home to Kansas now but will be back up for the baptism in May. I don't know if I'll still be around for that or not. We have transfer calls this Saturday so next Monday i'll be able to tell you what i'll be doing for my last 2 transfers.

The weather this week has been rainy. It was great weather on Monday for our outdoor zone p-day which was nice, but the rest of the week has been rainy and windy. Not too too cold though so that is good. We also had the car this week. Josh Ledbetter is back in town from BYU-I now and he will be spending a lot of time with us since he is still a pre-missionary. He has his meeting with the stake president today to submit his mission papers into SLC. At zone p-day i caught a shoulder to the lip and my lower lip was bruised up and bleeding. I didn't need to get stitches or anything so that is good and i'm almost fully healed up now.

This week we found a super cool family originally from Nepal. They moved to America 4 years ago and converted to Christianity. The father is still Hindu, but the wife and 3 children and 1 cousin consider themselves Christians. We taught them the restoration and invited them to be baptized and they said yes. At the church they currently go to I guess they won't baptize you until you are 13. When we told them that they could be baptized at age 8 the 9 year olds face lit up and he was really excited. The oldest sibling is 18 and the youngest is 9. We are going back on Wednesday to teach them again and I just hope that there current pastor doesn't anti them or anything.

I know that this church is true. i see it every day when I go out and talk to people. They are attracted to the light that we who have the gospel emit. The hard part for them is that they have been in the great and spacious building for too long and once they leave they feel the mocking and the pointing fingers. it is our job to find the elect who will grab hold of the light and hold on steadfastly and endure to the end regardless of what the darkness may throw at them. I am grateful for the light that i have and for the light that I and we will continue to receive throughout the rest of our lives as we shun the darkness.

Love, Elder Peterson

April 8, 2013

Dear Family,

I really super enjoyed this conference weekend! We only watched two sessions of conference at the church this go around. We watched one session over at Lindsay's house with her family who are now on date to be baptized on May 11th. That is the soonest they could do it where everyone could be there who would need to be. We also watched two sessions over at a members house and Sarah was there as well. She is really stoked for getting baptized on April 20th and it is for sure going to happen. We've reserved the building and everything for that morning. We also talked with her about the Holy Ghost after the Sunday Afternoon session of conference and it really answered a question that she had had so that was good. One of my favorite talks was M. Russel Ballard's talk. The analogy about the tomato plants really struck a chord with me and i'm excited to see what harvest will come in the future from the seeds that are being planted today.

We got some exciting news from our mission president this week. Here is an excerpt of his weekly letter: Sister Jergensen and I have some exciting news to share with you. On May 4th the seven stakes that are part of this mission will have a Priesthood Leadership Conference (PLC) at the Iowa City Stake Center from 1-5 PM in the afternoon. All of the stake presidencies, the bishops and branch presidents will be in attendance to be trained and taught by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as well as a member of the Presidency of the Seven Presidents of Seventy. Sister Jergensen and I are not exactly sure who will be in attendance for the PLC; but Elder Reall, our Area Seventy has informed us that the member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who will be here would like to have an IDM Mission Conference earlier in the day. All of the missionaries throughout our mission will be invited including all elders, sisters and senior couples.

So we get to meet with a member of the quorum of the twelve apostles in a month. I'm stoked! We don't know who it will be yet, but i'm guessing M. Russel Ballard. Feel free to add your guesses to the pot. That is cool that Dex McKell is coming the IDMM. I will see him at his first transfer meeting which will be my last transfer meeting so that will be fun. President McGinn will be able to have a new favorite missionary now as well. We are having our zone P-day today. Our zone has been doing really good at reaching our baptismal goals and we have seen a lot of miracles lately for which I am very grateful to God for.

I don't really have any specific birthday requests except for having some fresh garments waiting for me at home. That would be nice. Other than that i can't really think of anything.

One of the most overlying themes of conference that I gathered was being obedient. And i'll take it one step further and relate it to being exactly obedient. I have personally seen that obedience brings blessings, and exact obedience invites miracles. It truly is true that when we receive any blessing it is because we obeyed some law that the blessing was connected to. I know that God lives and that He is ready and waiting to bless us when we are obedient to His commandments!

I also attached some pictures. I finally tracked down and had the picture of Saliboko and fams baptism e-mailed to me. It is a lot of white! And the other is Elder Olson and myself. Sorry it's kind of blurry.

And one other thing. Sister Gardner in the mission office just wanted to double check and confirm that i will be flying into the SLC airport. she is already having to make travel arrangements. If you could let me know in next e-mail that would be great. Thanks!

Love, Elder Peterson

April 1, 2013

Hello hello family dearest
 
We had a great Easter Sunday here in West Des Moines. We had a great sacrament meeting. It was our fast and testimony meeting because of conference next week. We had a lot of good testimonies born about our Savior Jesus Christ. We also had a lot of less active members and such come out of the woodwork to come to church. Ironically, none of the less active members we specifically invited to come and said they would didn't show, but ones that we didn't ask were there. It was good to see a full chapel though. We also had quite a few investigators at church as well from both of us sets of missionaries. Sarah was at church again and just loves it. She is really happy now. She announced in the combined RS, HP, and elders meeting (because of the 5th sunday) that she was being baptized on the 20th so that's pretty much going to happen. Also Lindsay and the rest of her family were there for sacrament meeting as well. We were really stuffed with the spirit... and food! After church we went to the Gales and had a turkey Easter feast. Then we went straight from there to a less actives family get together and had crescent sandwiches. Then we had like an hour break so we went and visited Amber and her boyfriend who was in town for the weekend. Then we went to Lindsay's and had a ham dinner with her family. Lots of good food and fellowship. We also dropped by the Churchill's at night because they had some extra dessert for us to pick up. A very delicious day.

We reached our zone baptismal goal of 10 for the month of March so we will be getting another zone p-day again. That will be fun. This man named Nelson was baptized by our zone leaders and we brought Sarah to come watch. She was going to be out of town this weekend but she called us on Friday and told us that it turns out she wasn't leaving so we invited her to the baptism that next day and she came. She said she was very glad to be able to see what would be happening to her. The spirit was really strong and what impressed me was that after Nelson was baptized, immediately he clasped his hands together and said a short silent prayer of gratitude in the baptismal font. What a wonderful gift we have all been given to be baptized and be born again. And every week we have that same privilege when we partake of the sacrament worthily.

I got a package from the Easter bunny. That was very nice of him and the candy is delicious. We were chosen to hide the eggs for the Easter egg hunt that the less active family, the Robinsons, was putting on. They had a lot of eggs and it was fun to watch all of the little kids go and kill each other over them. Ha. There were plenty for each of them so the fighting was minimal. It's getting cold again here for this week. I think it just likes to be cold for the weeks that we don't have the car. I have been able to go and look at my application for BYUI. I filled out the essays and President Jergensen did the ecclesiastical endorsement with me Sunday night so we should be good to go when we get the Seminary and Institute thing figured out. Also there were some questions at the bottom of step 7 about parents education levels and families estimated income for the year and I wasn't sure what to put so you might want to fill those in for me.

One study technique that I have been doing lately with the scriptures is going through and writing down all of the questions that I can find. In Luke chapter 23 it talks about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and asks a very good question. The angel asks Mary: "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" Are we seeking the living Christ who is alive and well and wants to help us? Or our we just saying wrote prayers and not looking for His hand in our lives... essentially seeking a dead Christ? And on the flip side our we spiritually alive that we can feel promptings and be sought out as tools in the hands of our Heavenly Father or are we spiritually dead? I know that Christ lives and because He lives we too will live again.

Love, Elder Peterson

March 25, 2013

Dear Family,

This has been another great week. We are continuing to be blessed and able to find new investigators. It's been a cold week. We didn't have the car and it snowed a couple of times, but we were still able to get to where we needed to be. We met this woman named Sarah this week. She looked up the church online and came to church last Sunday, we went and taught her the restoration, and she came to church again yesterday. I was talking to her after RS on Sunday and she told me I've been thinking more about it, and I really do want to be baptized. It was sweet! We are teaching her in a members home on Wednesday and will be setting a baptismal date for April 20th. Matthew who was scheduled to be baptized on the 20th is having parental issues again so we had to back off. They have great home teachers though who have an inspired plan to activate the parents and have Matthew get baptized. It is just going to take some time.

We went back to check up on Tryston and Corey (the HORSE guys) this week. Corey was back in Bonderant where he lives, but Tryston was there. He also had more step siblings there who were 13 and 11 and we invited them to participate in the discussion which they did. We were teaching them the Plan of Salvation and things were going great. We had just finished talking about the Atonement of Jesus Christ when Tryston received a phone call from his step mom. She said that we had to leave. We tried asking if we could come visit when she was there. We set up an appointment for this week. We called him on Saturday to invite him to come to church, but his step mom wouldn't let him come and cancelled our appointment for next week as well. We are going to try and stop by when the parents are there so we can explain more and clarify what we are doing.

That is cool news about your callings parentals. We do have a place to eat for Easter next week. With the second set of missionaries our meals have slowed down, but the ward is stepping up and we are eating with families more often now. We've worked it out to where they will alternate which set of missionaries they will feed unless they are specifically working with one set or an investigator will be there so that we can get to know all the members of the ward instead of just the ones on our side of the "boundary line." We had a great Easter fireside at the stake center last night. it was really beautiful and we had an investigator there as well which was good. After the devotional the night took a twist though and this investigator told us that she had gotten kicked out of her apartment that night. Luckily for us, and in answer to a very heartfelt prayer, there was a sister in another ward who came up and asked her if everything was all right. She said no and we went into another room to talk. To make a long story short we ended up having to find a shelter for her to stay at last night and for the foreseeable future. This sister was able to relate to her in a way that neither I nor Elder Olson could have and had gone through some of the same experiences to a lesser degree and was just able to help her out. She wouldn't have been able to do so if she had brought her 4 kids along with her to the devotional, but her and her husband kept feeling promptings from the Holy Ghost to leave the kids at home. I'm so grateful that she listened to the spirit and followed it's promptings.

One comment that was made in Elders Quorum that I really liked was we were talking about President Monson and things we admire about him. The subject of following promptings was brought up. Sometimes it's hard to tell if you are really getting a prompting or if it is your own mind telling you to do something. Any time you think of something good to do, that is the Holy Ghost. The spirit is always speaking to us. It may not be big things, but they can make a world of difference to someone. And it may not be a prompting from the Holy Ghost, but if we do the whims that may come into our minds, we will never regret it if it is something good. We might use up a little of our time doing it, but at least we know we have helped somebody in some way.

Love, Elder Peterson

March 18, 2013

Dear Family,

My ankle is doing great. I can't really tell at all that it got hurt at this point... except for the fact that I can't jump as high anymore. That is way cool that Sister Wright and elder Fullmer are in the same mission. I don't know who the other elder from our stake is serving here. I have probably run into him at some point in time. Do you remember what his name is and how long he has been serving? It is always fun to see old friends. I got an e-mail from Everett today. He is home now! Visa waiters in the mission is not an irregular thing. I think maybe they send them to this mission just because we are so awesome! My new companion is Elder Mark Olson. He is from Orland, CA. About 30 minutes from chico. Kevin Atkin and Fred Olson are his uncle and grandpa... don't know if you know them or not Greg but he says you might. He has been out serving in the mission field for 4 months and this is his second area. He just came from Iowa City. The other elders in our ward are Elders Wright and Lewis. EW has been out for 6 months and he is training EL, who is an 18 year old missionary. We have a really young district now. I am the oldest missionary in it. We have one other missionary who has been out for 18 months and he is training and then another 6 month old missionary training. It's really different to me. I'm the "veteran" of the bunch i guess you could say. It just freaks me out.

I did indeed wear a green tie to church yesterday. I had forgotten that it was St Patricks day, but on Saturday night Elder Olson and I got invited to an irish drinking party for the holiday to which we had to decline. But we did give the host of the party mormon.org cards to hand out to all of his friends who were coming. We need to go check up on that. Check out this story. Elder Olson and I were checking up on potentials in an apartment complex and we saw these 2 guys standing around in the little outdoor basketball court they have there. We struck up a conversation with them and they asked us if we went to college and we told them no, we are missionaries. We invited them to learn more about our church and you could tell they were going to say no, but trying to be polite about it. So I invited them to a game of H-O-R-S-E and if they lost then they would have to listen to our message. They accepted and we smoked them. We had an H and they lost. So we sat down on the court right there and taught them. There named are Corey and Tryston. They are step brothers and seniors in high school. They were actually really sincere when we got going and we invited them to be baptized and they said yes. We are going back on Thursday to teach them the plan of salvation. The coolest part was that we kneeled down on the basketball court and they offered up a prayer and the spirit was really strong. I attribute our winning that game of horse to Romans 8:31 (with the JST). The weather has been pretty nice this last week. It actually got up into the 50's for a couple of days. But then it snowed last night and this morning.

We also found 2 other sweet investigators. They live with someone who apparently is already a member of the church and lived in Lenox for a little while. I didn't know him. But he introduced them to the church and we just found them in that same apartment complex as the basketball guys. We taught them the restoration and they also fed us dinner. A chicken stuffed with steak and shrimp. Topped with portabello mushrooms and some delicious sauce. (he went to culinary school for several years.) He also made this super huge and delicious chocolate cake with bananas for dessert. Tiffany and Kitara accepted the invitation to be baptized and they even came to church yesterday and stayed for the whole 3 hours! The only foreseeable problem with them is that they all live in the same apartment. 2 guys and 2 girls. but we will make sure they see that true happiness comes from keeping the commandments of God. Just like in Mosiah 2:41.

We only had one transfer get shortened to a 5 weeker. That was this last transfer. The rest will be 6 weeks from here on out. i was in charge of splitting the ward. I just made it a straight line (easier for the mission office people). I made a second area book for the other elders and we weekly planned together so i could tell them about the investigators that are now in there area and a little about the members and such too. We are looking forward to another good week this week. We won't have the car this week and it's supposed to be cold, but we will make it work. Or rather we will do all we can and the Lord will make up all the rest. I love you all!

Until next week,

Elder Peterson

March 11, 2013

Dear Family,

This has been a good week for us.  We got our transfer doctrine.  I will be staying here in West Des Moines for this next transfer.  We are also getting 2 new missionaries to the ward as well... i can't remember if I have already told you this or not.  I know more about splitting a ward now then I did when I did it in Rock Island so i'm hoping it will be a smoother transition this time.  Elder Clarke is currently driving to or waiting in the airport to go to Brazil right now.  He got his visa (along with everyone else who was waiting for one) and is shipping off.  Elder Dyer is also being transferred.  We are getting 30 new missionaries coming here on Thursday.  Another 4 visa waiters and 26 who will be staying for the whole 2 years.  The Lord really is hastening his work and people are faithfully answering to His call.

I'm glad to hear about all the fun you are having.  I can't wait to hear what callings you have received in the ward now!  I'm getting over my cold alright.  I still cough occasionally but that is about it.  We got hit by another snow storm yesterday.  It started as rain and then worked it's way to hail, sleet, and then snow.  The cars got grounded and it was fun scraping about the inch thick layer of ice off all the windows this morning.  I hear it is supposed to get up into the high 40's and even 50 by the end of this week and beginning of next week though so i'm excited about that.

We had a good week this week. We picked up 6 new investigators.  One is a part member family that is sweet.  Another 2 are Luis and Luis... father and son.  We followed the spirit right up to their door and they let us in and we talked with them and taught them the restoration and it was a really great lesson.  The son's wife is a Pentecostal so that might get in the way later, but for now they are doing sweet.  The other 3 are the ones that amaze me most.  They are 3 high school students who go to Dowling Catholic High School. One of them, Chris, went and saw the book of mormon play that has been in des moines for some time now.  He then referred himself to us on mormon.org because the play had made him think that there had to be more to us mormons than the play depicted.  We set up a time to meet with him and he had two of his friends there as well, Steven and Andre.  We had a really amazing lesson with them.  Probably the most intellectual lesson i've ever had with a high schooler.  They chose to meet up on a Saturday night and talk about the gospel rather than going out and partying with their other friends.  They have spring break starting next friday and want to meet up again over spring break.  Poor guy is going to be a missionary and he doesn't even know it yet.

I too have been thinking about the verse in Alma where it talks about feeling inclined to sing the song of redeeming love.  I had pondered on what that phrase meant.  To sing the song of redeeming love.  I have done a lot of study in Alma Chapter 5 but just one reference that I have to the phrase that i found is later in Alma 26.  Ammon talks about why thousands of his brethren have been brought to this point.  He says in verse 13 it is because of the power of His word which is in us, therefor have we not great reason to rejoice?  A big focus of our mission has been to internalize the doctrine of Christ.  To inculcate it if you will.  His word is the doctrine.  When we truly move the doctrine of christ from our heads to our hearts, that is when we feel to sing the song of redeeming love.  I love to sing praises to my Father in Heaven and my Savior.  I know that they live and they watch over us and care for us and have the best intentions for us. 

Love, Elder Peterson  

The pictures are of this random blue pig we found in this ladies yard.  We knocked on her door and she told us she wasn't interested and that she was a "godless heathen" but she did give us permission to take pictures with the pig.  Also shots of the district and my companions. 



 This man, Jacob, has an albino Python named Peaches.  She is over 10 feet long (that's what i was trying to show by laying next to her). She is really cool. He also has a regular python.  Do you like my snake skin boot?








March 4, 2013

Dear Family,

It has been a wonderful week. Although it was quite slow missionary wise we still got a lot of good done. I came down with the latest and greatest illness that's been going around the mission. My right ear has been plugged, along with a small sore throat and miner cough, for about the last 3 days and it's kind of annoying but now that it's p-day I can go get medicine to help with that. Yesterday we had stake conference. It was a surprise that we had a broadcast from salt lake city that was going out to stakes in 9 states in the mid west. The speakers were Craig C. Christensen from the presidency of the seventy, Linda S. Reeves from the RS, Larry Echo Hawk, and Dallin H. Oaks. It was super neat to here from an apostle of the Lord specifically speaking to the people just of the midwest. He talked about the increase of missionaries and the need it is going to place on member missionary work. He talked about four steps that will help members help the missionaries. 1. Pray for missionary opportunities and to be instruments in the Lord's hands. 2. Talk with your friends about religion. 3. Offer reading material. and 4. invite your friends to come to church. We have been working with members a lot already about these things and now to have it reaffirmed to them by an apostle will hopefully hasten their urgency in getting their friends interested in the true gospel of Jesus Christ. I also got to see some of my friends from the Lenox Branch at stake conference and that was fun as well. They actually broadcast it now down to the lenox church building house, but Brother Lambson was at the stake center so I got to talk with him for a little while and catch up on how the branch is doing.

83 degrees sounds like a dream. It has been snowy here and we are supposed to get another snow storm tonight into tomorrow morning. Just more shoveling opportunities for us! What kind of activities is the mutual doing for missionary month? It is hard to narrow the top three things of a missionary but I think my top three things would have been finishers, accountable, and grateful/prayerful. I guess that's more like 4 things. There was a great talk given by President Thomas S. Monson in the June 1989 Ensign first Presidency message entitled "Finisher's Wanted" which is where i get the finisher from. It is a great talk and i encourage you to look it up on lds.org. It talks about the 6 marks of a finisher. Vision, Effort, Faith, Virtue, Courage, Prayer.

We got in contact with Kirk again recently. We actually went out to eat lunch with him this week at a place called Hu Hot. It's a really good mongolian grill. We mostly just went as friends because he is still not interested in accepting the gospel at this time in his life but it was good to keep a good relationship going with him. He is trying to sub lease out his apartment and we told him that whoever takes it it should be a requirement that they have to meet with us at least 3 times. He just laughed about it but some of the people had asked about the people that live there and he mentioned that "awesome mormon missionaries live here."

Charles is lost to us right now. He moved out of his apartment because his lease was up and now he is in a motel looking for an apartment. We gave him some applications to apartments in West Des Moines but we have yet to hear from him. Hopefully this week we can get back in contact with him and learn just where he is and where either we can visit him or where we can send more missionaries to go visit him. We heard that a Chicago West mission is being opened and that may or may not take some of our mission boundaries, but that is just rumor i have heard. The church is true, the book is blue, and i love all of you!

Love, Elder Peterson

February 25, 2013

Hello hello family!

This has been another great week in the life of a missionary. We did have one snow storm over the weekend, but it's actually been quite warm lately. The snow has been melting, but they say there might be another storm again today. We'll see. Church was good this week. We had a sister give her "farewell" talk. She is going to Arizona on her mission. With stake conference next week and fast sunday after that she gave her talk today, but will still be around for another couple of weeks. We had 2 investigators to church. Charles and his daughter came along with Matthew. Charles and family are moving this week and we are helping them on Thursday. We are trying to convince them to stay in West Des Moines so we can continue to teach them and baptize them. They don't have an apartment lined up yet so we are helping them look. We already looked at apartments for the second set that will be coming into the ward at the end of this transfer anyway. They might end up moving into the same complex that we live in already. For now they just have to rent a storage unit and live in a motel until they can find a more permanent place. We've been helping a lot of people move lately. On Wednesday night we helped a lady move out and then Thursday morning we helped her move in to her new place. We also helped a member of our bishopbric move on Thursday as well and had an impropmtu service opportunity come up while we were out that night and helped a man move some boxes into his new apartment. He had met with missionaries before and had even come to church, so we are going to start teaching him again. We are also helping a senior couple move tomorrow when they go back home to Utah. We have a zone p-day today. We earned it from reaching our 3 month baptismal goal as a zone.

I found this quote by Harold B. Lee that I liked. Talking about the armour of God found in Ephesians "The Apostle Paul took it one step further. He didn't leave the man just with the armour on and expect him to cope against an army, seen or unseen. He had his armoured man holding in his hand a shield and in his other hand a sword, which were the weapons of those days. That shield was the shield of faith and the sword was the sword of the spirit which is the Word of God. I can't think of any more powerful weapons than faith and a knowledge of the scriptures in the which are contained the Word of God." I like it because i never think of the shield as a weapon per se but always just as more defense. But faith is not just to help protect us against the attacks of the wiley one, but it is also a weapon. It leads to action and our shield keeps getting layers added on to it as we go out and act on our faith.

Love, Elder Peterson

February 20, 2013

Hello Family!

With Monday being a holiday the libraries were closed and yesterday we had a zone conference so we weren't able to e-mail that day either. But today we now have the time to e-mail. It has been a good week here. We hear that we are supposed to get between 7-10 inches of snow tomorrow so i'm not too excited about that. We have an appointment kind of far away that night so we have been prepping ourselves to be able to trek there through the snow. The original forecast was 12-20 inches though so it has gone down some in terms of quantity. Zone conference went really well. I'll talk about that a little later towards the end of my e-mail when i leave a spiritual aspect though. I got your Valentine's day package madre and padre. Thank you very much! Those cookies were very delicious and the Russian candy is good too.

We were able to get in contact with quite a few of our investigators this week that previously we had trouble contacting. We also had 2 investigators at church on Sunday! it felt so great after going a while without anyone showing up which was frustrating. The liberian family that we are teaching, the Bowah's, are now officially on date to be baptized on March 30th now that they have come to church. We also had a 13 year old boy named Matthew who is not a member, but his parents are, come to church. We will be setting a baptismal date with him as soon as we meet with him next. I know what Braden means when he talks about Africans being really receptive to the gospel and also hard to get a hold of. In the Des Moines area most of the baptisms are people from Africa. Not so much in our ward... yet... but in the Des Moines ward they are having way good success with Liberians. That is neat that you (mom and dad) are doing so much volunteer work at the MTC now. I'm sure you are such a great help to all of those that you come in contact with. I remember what really made me excited about missionary work more than anything else was teaching in the TRC. Specifically a man named Ciccio, i don't know if he is still there or not.

One of the things that I really liked about zone conference this past week was a saying that went something like this: The good that you do will do you no good unless your heart is in the right place... unless you have charity. It talks about this in 1 Corinthians 13. The whole chapter is great but one of my favorite verses is 3 "And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." If we don't have charity when we perform service, people will stell be fed and the poor benefit from it, but we do not. Love is what makes all the difference. I can say that I have truly come to love the people here in Iowa and I have a desire to serve them. I know that this church is true and that Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father have a perfect love for us and want to serve us.

Love, Elder Peterson

February 11, 2013


Hello Family!
 
This has been a good week for us.  We started up the new transfer by getting Elder Clarke to join our companionship.  He is from Rigby Idaho.  He is a really good Elder and is bold as a new missionary which i absolutely love.  New missionaries now are definitely more prepared than ever before.  We had 26 new missionaries come into the field which is our highest total yet.  The transfer meeting was HUGE!   We are not sure how long it will take to have Elder Clarke get his visa, but we are excited to have him for however long we can.  I speak spanish with him sometimes and he'll speak back in portuguese.  It kind of works.  He teaches me some words in portuguese as well.  He still gets an hour of language study each day so basically i get another hour of personally study which is nice somedays.  But on the flip side we don't get out of the apartment to do work until 1:00 now.  This is my third transfer staying in West Des Moines and after this one i'll have 3 left.  I'm not sure what they will end up doing with me.  It is just weird to think that I only have so much time left.  It goes by too fast!  I'm sure you know all about that mom and dad.
 
It has been really windy here the last couple of days.  When we are out walking around you can't make phone calls because the people are guaranteed pretty much not to be able to hear a word you say... learned that from personal experience.  We've been adjusting pretty well to having three people living in our apartment now instead of 2.  We have a small kitchen is probably the hardest thing.  During lunch and dinner we just have to take turns.  Surprisingly we all still get to studies on time in the mornings. 
 
We had a pretty sweet lesson with Kim this week.  We actually taught her twice.  The first time we gave her the Family proclamation to the world to read.  Then when we went back 2 days later she had it all marked up and we answered her questions about it.  It was such a good lesson and she is so sincere in investigating.  The only sad part is that she left for South Dakota on Friday and then directly from there she is going to Colorado for a couple of weeks.  We will be keeping in contact with her over the phone, but i wish she wasn't going to be gone for so long.  That was way swell to hear about the Berg girls getting baptized!
 
One of my favorite scriptures that i've been thinking about lately is Omni 1:26
 
26 And now, my beloved brethren, I would that ye should come unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him, and continue in fasting and praying, and endure to the end; and as the Lord liveth ye will be saved. 
 
I like to switch the last 2 words of be saved to "find new investigators" or "have progressing investigators" or something to that effect.  Really as we offer our WHOLE souls as an offering, the Lord helps us in this work.  And in our lives.  I know these things to be true!  I love you all! 
 
Until next week.  Love,
 
Elder Peterson

February 3, 2013

Dear Family,
 
It has been a week of ups and downs this week.  The mission has taught me well just to focus on the ups though and looking back that's really all i can remember from the past year and a half.  Most of our investigators were dogging us this week.  Sunday morning we went and personally visited all of them before church to tell them they needed to come and hold the ones who said they would come accountable.  Unfortunately, none came.  We also had to drop Kirk this week.  He just isn't progressing and he says the church just isn't for him right now.  On the bright side though, we definitely influenced him and he acknowledges that.  He prays now and he never used to.  He believes in Christianity once again.  As our purpose of "inviting others to come unto Christ" we have succeeded with him.  Just no baptism.  I'm sure eventually in the future he will be baptized though.  We are still good friends and see him pretty often since he just lives down the hall from us.
 
The best up of this week is that we had a baptism this Saturday of Hope.  That is Amber's (recent convert) daughter.  Elder Dyer baptized her and I confirmed her.  There was a sweet spirit at her baptism.  A lot of ward members showed up to support her which is great.  My favorite thing she said was the person who was talking to her about baptism and the holy ghost asked her what would happen to her after she was baptized and Hope said "I'll be wet."  Haha he was looking for confirmed.  The other picture is that we also had a pretty good sized snow storm this week.  It was really cold walking around (had to walk because cars were grounded).  With the wind chill it got down to -20... enough to make your face go numb after just a minute or two.  The good thing about it is that people were more willing to let us in... when they opened the door.  Some would just look outside and tell us it was too cold.
 
This week we got our transfer calls.  Elder Dyer and I are actually going to be staying together for another transfer!  We were really suprised when we got the call.  We are also getting a third missionary.  A visa waiter who is going to go to Brazil once he gets his visa.  He will probably be with us for the whole transfer though.  This next transfer is only 5 weeks instead of 6.  I am technically called to be his trainer, but it is a joint effort by both Elder Dyer and myself to train him until he gets to Brazil.  No one in our district is getting transfered, but another 2 companionships are getting visa waiters.  That will put our district at 13 missionaries.  It is going to be fun.  One of the missionary companionships who is getting a visa waiter is our car share, so now when we pick each other up to go to district meetings and such we will be squishing 6 missionaries into the car.  President just told us to be careful and not to kill ourselves.
 
Another investigator we had, Dylan, we had to drop.  We had high hopes for him.  He definitely had a LOT to overcome, but we thought we could help him out.  He also attended a baptism that some missionaries had.  But he stole some stuff again and got in trouble with the law and skipped town so we aren't meeting with him anymore.  My ankle is doing good and i'm doing my stretches and exercises every day to get it stronger and looser again.
 
My scripture highlights of the week come from:
 
Psalms 118: 24 This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
and
Alma 26: 35 Now have we not reason to rejoice? Yea, I say unto you, there never were men that had so great reason to rejoice as we, since the world began; yea, and my joy is carried away, even unto boasting in my God; for he has all power, all wisdom, and all understanding; he comprehendeth all things, and he is a merciful Being, even unto salvation, to those who will repent and believe on his name.
 
bolded for emphasis.  But it is true that we have great reason to rejoice and be happy every day.  We determine ourselves whether we will be happy or not, not our external circumstances.  I can honestly say that I am happy every single day.  I know that this gospel is truth.  It is the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It brings lasting happiness that can linger and grow for eternity.  I love you all!
 
Love, Elder Peterson