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!