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
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
