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
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