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 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?
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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