December 14, 2015

Hello Everyone! Well this week has flown by and we continue to get closer and closer to Christmas day. It is still really hard for me to believe that it is the Christmas season. Juchitan is having more parties than ever in the streets. Actually it has lead to our hardest days yet so far in the mission. On Friday and Saturday it was a huge celebration for the Catholic Church. In each street there was a big tent set up with food and drinks and everything for the people. At 11 Friday night there was a massive parade in front of our house with fireworks and singing and everything, it was a struggle because I would rather sleep than have a parade. Saturday we woke up having had very little sleep, my companion got sick and could hardly talk. Saturday we had 10 people planned to talk to as well as 10 others that we could visit if the others couldnt talk. All but 3 were there to talk to us. So we were left to knocking on doors for the rest of the day. We knocked on doors for 2 whole streets and nobody was there in their houses because they were all out partying. We returned home humbled by the experience but it was awesome to see the faith of my companion Sunday as we got to watch the dedication of the Tijuana Temple. We heard President Uchtdorf speak as well as Elder Oaks, and it was a really spiritual experience. After that the Lord blessed us through our afflictions, as we went out with humility and all of our confidence in him. We found 3 people that we hadnt been able to talk to previously because they were always gone. We talked to them and had some of the most spiritual lessons yet. The first lesson we had we taught with a lady named Diane. In this lesson she had a huge desire to learn and find for herself. We talked with her and I felt prompted to tell her "Diane, I know that if you continue with this same desire you will have an answer that all of this is true in 1 month, I know it and I know you will find it for yourself" She accepted baptism and everything! The second was with another lady named Teresa. By the end of this lesson she was in tears saying that she had never felt anything like this before with any religion. She too accepted baptizm. It goes to show that the Lord will always bless you more abundantly through your afflicitions if you can confront them with faith in him rather than faith in the things of the world. I know that this is possible because Christ conquered all for us, he never took the easy way out, he conquered it all with faith in his father, our perfect example. I hope that in this season you all can remember every aspect of the life of Jesus Christ, without him we are nothing. Everyone have an amazing holiday season!

December 7, 2015

Hello Everyone! Well the holidays are here and I didnt even realize it. Actually this week has been kind of rough weather wise. After I thought that you could never find a place windier than Wyoming, well I am here to tell you that I have found that place. It is so windy here that my companion lost one of his shirts this morning to the wind, we dont know where it went. I often feel like I am back on trek trecking through the dirt roads with dust blowing in my eyes, but hey it is awesome here. Last night we had the opportunity to watch the Christmas devotional in the stake center. It was such a spirtitual moment to hear the Tabernacle Choir sing Silent Night for their final song. We were asked to sing along with the choir for the final verse and I was surprised to find that the words were still in English on the screen. There are only two American Elders in our Stake here and the members tried to sing at first but they stopped somewhere in the middle. We had investegators sitting next to us and they had all stopped to listen to us. It was one of the most spritual moments of the mission. I absolutely love this time of year. We have been making a huge effort to spread the message of Christ right now in the work. What we have been doing is asking everyone to ponder Why they personally, need a Savior. We can answer with answers found in the scriptures, but the love of Christ is personal for each of us. And for us this Christmas season our goal is to help each person we come in contact with to find that personal love of Jesus Christ for each one of them. In doing this we have had many spiritual experiences with many people. We had a ward activity this past Friday night. We decided to show the new videos of the Church to start this question going in the lives of our ward. The Ward Mission leader asked me to be in charge of the devotional this week, and it was a huge testimony to me in front of our ward that this message needs to be spread because the Spirit put words into my mouth to share with each person that was there that night. We had less active members that hadnt been to church in a year, we had investegators that we had struggled for months to help them participate in Church activities. The Lord blessed me to share what needed to be said about Jesus Christ as our Savior, for each one of us personally. Saturday and Sunday we had Stake conference here. Our mission president was here for the Saturday night adult session. He came to help the members understand their role in missionary work which was a huge blessing for us. But while I was sitting comfortably in my seat enjoying the talks of the Temple President who was also there, and Sister Madsen, I noticed that President Madsen was smiling to himself up on the stand. His first words in his talk were, "Elder Peterson, can you please come up here on the stand with me and help me to explain what the daily teaching goals of missionaries are and what you are trying to work for" I had to explain to the whole stake all of these things for about 5 to 7 minutes and it was pretty scary. We have had some miracles as well this week. Floricelli that had lost interest in learning made a reappearance yesterday in church. Somehow the Young Womens president found her and invited her to a mutual activity. Floricelli loved it and wants to continue learning now. With the help of the Young Womens president. Also Davids dad, who we just baptized, came to church as well for the first time yesterday. With the opposition that we had with him at first you can know that the spirit is working through David to help his Dad. It is truly a time of miracles, all because of our Savior Jesus Christ. Please take time to find who he is to you personally this Christmas season. Sincerely Elder Peterson

November 30, 2015

Hello Everyone!! Well this week came and went and it was tiring! More so than I have had thus far in the mission. Elder Martinez came into the mission on Tuesday and we immediatly went to work with him. It was weird because he is trying to get used to the mission language of things. We would be contacting a house and they would say something and we would try to reply to it. Afterwards he would ask me "What did that person say?" and I would say "I dont know your the one who speaks Spanish here" haha he is awesome though. It is a huge blessing to have him because he was prepared well before his mission. He came into the field ready to teach and we have taught with power this week. It was definately the most succesful week of the mission thus far. We began the week with trying to find the people that we had given up on a while ago. We found many of them that didnt have the desires to come to church before. We taught them the importance of the Sabbath Day with the lesson that is found in Matthew 26:40. How Jesus Christ in the middle of the performance of the Atonement had to return back to his disciples 3 times and ask if they could simply give him 1 hour. This is the connection to the Sabbath Day. Christ asks us to give him 1 hour each week to stay by him and watch with him through the Sacrament. This lesson proved powerful. We had 6 of these people come to church this past week that we had been teaching for 3 months, and it was all their first time as well. Elder Lee returned to the ward with his parents and so I was translating for his Dad a little and he was translating everything for his mom. It was fun to see him one last time and he finally spoke English with me!! Many people have been asking how was Thanksgiving in Mexico. Sadly enough here the only things that they celebrate are their weddings and birthdays each week. Its not unusual to find big tents in the middle of the streets with boxes of beer stacked 6 high and 6 across. So to be honest, we didnt really celebrate Thanksgiving. It was actually our hardest day that many people didnt accept us. We returned to the apartment and ate some cake that night and went to bed a little early. Yesterday was awesome with celebrations though because Elder Lees parents brought down various Christmas decorations from my family and so we got to "decorate" the apartment today. Elder Martinez thought it was pretty cool the way that Americans celebrate Christmas. It was also weird to walk into the store today from 70 degrees and hear Christmas music. It really doesnt feel like the holiday season without snow. I didnt realize how much I would miss the snow and even the cold (what?!?) but nonetheless Juchitan Oaxaca is beautiful in its own special way for the holiday season. I hope that as this season starts that as everyone feels of the happiness of the season, remember that it is through Christ that this season of happiness and love is only because of him and his love for us. Remember always the happiness in this time and try to connect it with him. Everyone have a safe holiday season. Elder Peterson Thanksgiving dinner -- a cake. Eating a tlayuda They decorated for Christmas with Christmas decorations we sent!

November 16, 2015 - Last Week of Training!

Hello Everyone!! Well this transfer officially flew by and we are in the last week of my training. I dont know where the time went! It is incredible how much stuff I have learned about everything in the past 12 weeks, and it can all be summed up as this, Our Heavenly Father is involved in everything, and because of this if we turn to him then we can experience the greatest parts of life. There will be hard times and troubles, but these are the times that can bring the greatest success and happiness and for this I am thankful for the hard times that came in this first part of my mission. Because right now I couldnt be any happier to be sharing the gospel each day with everyone around us. This past week we have been overjoyed to finally experience the seasons and climate begin to change. I know that Utah recieved snow this week and a change to the seasons and we recieved a change to! It has been great for the average tempature to drop to 78 degrees this week. We have had to break out the long sleeve shirts and hoodies for the first time which is wierd. The life of Christ program that we had this week was a huge success! We spent the whole week visiting every member, less active, and investegator in our area sharing a small message of Jesus Christ with them. On Friday we spent the whole day in the chapel setting up everything with music and sound and supplies. This activity is an activity where people are blindfolded and we have little things to go in their hands. While we have a narrator telling about a certain point in the life of Christ, there is music playing in the background and we pass out these things. (For example during the part where Jesus is born we pass out a bundle of straw, or during the crusifixion we pass out nails) At the end nobody could stand up. They were sitting in their seats for 3 minutes afterwards. The best part was that we had 52 people that were either less active members or investegators. Another great thing that has happened in the past week is that we had a new teenager move into the ward. He has been in the church for about 1 year and his name is Cesar.Elder Lee knows him from another ward that he served in. The second day that he was in his new house he called us and said that he had talked to his neighbor and shared his testimony about the church and she wanted to listen to us! We made the 4 mile walk out to her house to teach her. Her name is Juleslie and she is 17 years old. The next day Cesar brought her to church and she loved being with the young women there! But the greatest example is Cesar. Each night he rides his bike the 4 miles to the church for seminary. He got called as the 1 assistant in the Priests quorum in his first week and he is constantly looking for people to serve. His family isnt members and he lives in a really rough situation but he always has a smile on his face. He really showed me that no matter what you have to do, put a smile on your face and everything will be better in life. Anyways these are a few of my experiences this week. Thank you for all of your love and support! Elder Peterson We found this giant bear in a members house yesterday and thought it was pretty cool. Today is Elder Lees birthday and so to celebrate we decided to go to a fancy resturant...Burger King!! It was the first hamburger I have had in 3 months and it was awesome!!

November 9, 2015

Hello Everyone! Well like I said before, another week has come and gone and here we are again at the start of a new week. The weeks continue to get better and better and it is difficult to explain why. No we may not be baptizing every week and teaching more and more people, but the levels of happiness and gratitude for this opportunity continue to grow and rise. At the beginning of the week we had very few people to teach and we started to try to find ways to invite people to listen to us. We contacted and knocked and did everything we could but had a very hard time trying to find people. We decided to put on a program called The Life of Christ, a program that Elder Lee did for his mutual. We have been inviting people and getting the ward council involved with us and look forward to doing it this week. In fact it has gotten so big that the whole stake is going to be a part of it and we cant wait to see the growth that it is going to bring to the work of our whole zone. One of the bittersweet experiences of the week, we were teaching a new investegator, Belelense, when her neighbor walked up and started talking to us in English. She is from Texas with a deep accent and her husband is Oaxacan. Anyways WE COULD NOT SPEAK IN ENGLISH NO MATTER HOW HARD WE TRIED. It is the weirdest experience ever to think that I have fully converted to Spanish being my number 1 choice of language right now. Its more of a sweet experience but again it was extremely wierd to have this happen. Other than that we have found many more people to begin teaching this week and look forward to finding many more. We have also been happy to have our convert David accompany us to every lesson this week. He doesnt really know how to bear his testimony quite yet and we have had to stop him a few times from giving away pamphlets about different topics to our investegators. (For Example after we taught Karen the Restoration he tried to give her the Law of Chastity pamphlet) But he is awesome and always happy to teach with us. Other than that that has been our week this week. It was greater than ever, happier than ever, and the spirit was strong. I know that God is with us no matter what our trials may be, if we are focused in following his son we will have nothing to worry about with the trials before us. I know this to be true. Thank you for all of your support! Elder Peterson --

November 2, 2015

Hello Everyone! Well this week was awesome because we had our first baptisms!! David and Tomas were both baptized this past Saturday and it was an awesome experience. At first we were getting scared because David showed up at 5:30 to get ready to start at 6, Tomas showed up at 7:30. We were calling him and trying to figure out where he was and started to think that he wasnt going to come to his baptism. But eventually he came and it was as spiritual as ever. I had the chance to baptize Tomas and was studying the Baptism prayer in Spanish for an hour the night before. The hardest part was the names because people here have 4 names that are very long and hard to remember. At the first of the week we didnt think we would be able to baptize David because he was having a hard time remembering all the things we were teaching him. We were ready to push it back a week or 2. Then Elder Lee decided that we needed to fast for David to remember everything. We fasted and David remembered everything for his interview! What is better is yesterday in Sacrament meeting David bore his testimony for the first time and gave testimony perfectly of everything that we had taught him and worked for weeks to help him remember. Ultimatly it was the Lord that helped him through the Holy Ghost. Tomas is more gruff and was a former Pastor in his church. He used to smoke and the first day we met him he all of a sudden decided to stop smoking. He didnt know why and had no clue about the Word of Wisdom. And here we are with him 6 weeks later. Both stated that it was the best feeling for both of them these past two days and to feel of the true love of God and Christ in its fullest extent for the first time in their lives. It gives us more desire to find more people to share these things with. It makes all the challenges worth it to have the experience to share this much happiness with these people. We have found 2 new people, Karen and Julio. Karen has started to attend seminary and has made friends with all the young women and we are looking forward to being able to baptize her in 2 weeks. She is super excited as well for this and cant wait to be a part of this group of girls. Other than this it has rained each day this week hard! The best thing that I have eaten is the peach cobbler that we tried to teach a Sister in the ward how to make. We didnt have measuring cups so we were eyeballing it. It tasted good but didnt look so good. Other than that it is chicken and tortillas almost every day! Its great here, this is where I need to be and I will eat almost anything to be able to share the experience of happiness with these people. They are the best and I love them. Thank you for your love and support!

October 26, 2015

Hello - I don't have very much time to write this email but it has been a week filled with miracles. We are looking forward to our first 2 baptisms this week with David and Tomas. They are awesome and ready to take this step in their lives. As well as this we have recieved support from many outside sources sent from Heavenly Father to our investigators who were struggling. It has been awesome. I had the opportunity to go on splits with a new Elder Guerrero. He was awesome and we led the Zone in lessons taught this day with 11. I know that God directed us with everything that we did this day. We were not affected by the Hurricane in the least bit here which is a huge blessing. My scripture that I would like to share this week with everyone is this. It is 2 Corinthians 8:9. Thank you for all of your support!