September 21, 2015

Hello Everyone!! This week was a week filled with so many miracles and blessings of the Lord. As many of you know last week was very very hard. We started off this week by upping our goals and pushing further than last week and we met all of our goals! We have 4 baptisms set for October 17th and life here is just great!! The food this week was out of this world! I have to start out by telling you all of what great food there was. First off I drank a raw turtle egg and it was awesome!! Just kidding it was the worst thing I have ever eaten and the Ladies at the store gave it to me for free to get a good laugh at how bad I would gag...and I didnt know what it was but my companion did and told me to eat it because it was "dulce." I also ate fresh Mango with Chili sauce and suffered 1st degree burns on my hands...literally the chili is so spicy here that it will burn you if you touch it too much. But no the food is great!! The weirdest part of everything here though is that I firmly believe that 80 percent of the people in my area have never seen a blonde hair blue eyed person before. I have old ladies staring into my eyes and telling me that they have never seen blue eyes before...and kids asking to touch my hair and ask if it is real. It was weird at first but if it makes people happy then all the better, that is what the gospel is supposed to bring is happiness. Here is how the week went. Tuesday- We made our goals and headed out to try to find new people to teach and teach others. All the lessons were there and all of our investigators are progressing and learning so much. We have David, Thomas, Floricelli, and Victor who we taught and prepared them for baptism. Wednesday- We did splits again and this time I stayed in the area. I was terrified because I was the senior companion and my spanish still isnt very good. I said a prayer that morning for Heavenly Father to please help me speak and find people. We found 4 new investigators and 2 of them are getting baptized on Halloween!! It was such a great miracle!! Thursday-We continued to help the 4 people listed above progress and work towards baptism while making street contacts and trying to find new people. Friday-To help all the less active teenagers in the ward we did a ward activity with the whole ward. We played water ballon volleyball and we had 10 less active teens come out and they all loved it. The whole ward was there and it was such a fun time! Saturday-We had zone conference for the first time. It was hard to understand a lot of it but we had lots of good practice and it definitely helped us for that afternoon when we found 5 more people who we are teaching. Our schedules are packed throughout the week to the point where we have 10 minutes each day to eat lunch. It is awesome though and I love it!! Sunday-We had our 4 investigators at church and we found out that David has a hidden talent of playing the piano. Next week we will start hymn piano lessons with him and I will get to teach him so after we leave this area they will have a permanent ward pianist. The work is awesome here!! I love it and God has blessed us so much through our sacrifices. The principle of God taking our weaknesses and turning them into his strengths has really been exemplified this week. He answers prayers and if you have time please go read Romans 8, it is a hidden gem in the bible that helped me so much this week. Thanks for all of your support!! Elder Peterson -- Chad and his companion -- Elder Lee from Pleasant Grove