Hello hello Family!
It has been another good week as a missionary. We started off the new year by having interviews with President Jergensen. It went great and I always love having interviews with him. We were asked before we came to have set goals for ourselves. As I was praying about them, I felt the need to set the goal to get 12 baptisms before I come home. I will have to work very hard to get this goal, but it is now a commandment because it came from the Lord. We've had some cool stories happen this week. We saw this man and his friend stuck on the side of the road so we stopped to help him. His name is Damion and he had I guess been sitting on the side of the road for 5 hours and nobody had stopped to help. We called a member who had some jumper cables and he came to help. Also while he was there, some other members drove by and stopped to help. We got his car started and he only made it a couple three blocks before it died again. We were following him though so we just had to push his car onto a less busy road and while we were doing that another member drove by and offered to help so he now really thinks highly of the members of our church. We gave him a BoM and told him to read it and pray about it. He lives out of our area, so we gave him the other missionaries phone number. A cop also drove by and stopped to take over the situation so we left.
Things with Kirk this week have been interesting. We taught him the Word of Wisdom on Wednesday and it went swell. He committed to live it, and he is a party-er so we were really impressed with his faith. I wish he could look back and see where he started when we first met him to where he is now. He has changed so much. We had scheduled with him to take us to church again, even though we had the car, so we could make sure that he went. On Sunday we knocked on his door and he told us that he had some good news and that he had some bad news. The good news was that he could still take us to church but the bad news was that he wasn't going to stay. We asked him why not and he said because he had been praying about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and had gotten some weird feelings that didn't really sit right with him. He couldn't really describe the feelings when we asked him about them though. They weren't the feelings he had experienced before when he had been praying. On our ride over to church we helped him convince himself that he needed to stay for at least sacrament meeting, and he did! We told him to come listen to the testimonies of those who had come to know that the book of mormon was true and that Joseph Smith really was a prophet. The ward really delivered too. There were a lot of testimonies born on Joseph Smith and we know Kirk felt the spirit. He told us that he still wanted to meet with us that night. We actually had other plans, but we set up for Tuesday night.
Sunday all of our appointments fell through. It was stacked up to be a sweet day too. We had lessons planned with 2 new investigators and we had a member family coming with us to teach Layton and we were going to set a baptismal date with her for Feb 16th. But none of these people were home or met us where they were supposed to. However since our plans opened up we decided to go see Kirk and we watched Joseph Smith:Prophet of the Restoration with him. I think it really helped him and we are still going to teach him on Tuesday in a members home, the Bruins (who we spent Christmas Eve with). New Year's Eve was fun. We went to a members home around 6 and had dinner and drank some Martinelli's before coming in at 9 and being asleep by 10:30. I think I woke up at 12 to some pot banging, but i didn't check the clock before rolling over and just falling back asleep. That is super sweet to hear about Rachael's baby! Some pictures would also be super sweet ;)
It's been getting warmer lately and the snow is starting to melt. We still have a lot though. I've been reading through Our Heritage again and I came across this quote that I really liked. James S. Brown, who was a member of the mormon battallion said this when he was in California right before the gold rush and right after they got honorably discharged. "I have never seen that rich spot of earth since; nor do I regret it, for there always has been a higher object before me than gold. ... Some may think we were blind to our own interests; but after more than forty years we look back without regrets, although we did see fortunes in the land, and had many inducements to stay. People said, 'Here is gold on the bedrock, gold on the hills, gold in the rills, gold everywhere,... and soon you can make an independent fortune.' We could realize all that. Still duty called, our honor was at stake, we had covenanted with each other, there was a principle involved; for with us it was God and His kingdom first. We had friends and relatives in the wilderness, yea, in an untried, desert land, and who knew their condition? We did not. So it was duty before pleasure, before wealth, and with this prompting we rolled out." I was thinking about what the "gold" of life can be and what we all give up in order to build up the kingdom of God. Right now I feel like there has been a lot that I have given up to come out on a mission, but what we receive in return to being obedient to our duty as members of this church is by far greater than anything we may have to give up. There are people in this world who are wandering around not being able to find the truth because they know not where to find it. And I am here to help them find it. So it is duty before school, work, girls, music, etc etc. I love this church with all my heart and i know that it is true. So let's all live it!
Love, Elder Peterson
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