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
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
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
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
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
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