December 22, 2015

Hello Everyone! I am sorry that I wasn't able to send out an email yesterday, we had a big Christmas party with our President and his wife celebrating like one big family. It was fun to eat Roast beef and mashed potatoes, sing songs and play games, it honestly felt like a Family Christmas party. This week has been awesome with the season and the holiday. At the beginning of the week the Young Men/Women decided to do a caroling group and visit each member and less active of the ward to invite them to Ward Conference. They found out after their first practice that it is a little bit hard to stay on key and so they went out and found a keyboard. We received a call that night to help them out and so we went and visited each house while I played the keyboard and my companion sang. We have lots of pictures but....I forgot my camera in my house and so I will send the pictures next week. But it was awesome to visit each person and we had 30 more people there for Ward Conference this week! The chapel was full and less actives that we had been trying to help finally came out and were there in church. We were also excited for this week because we were able to have a ward choir! The bishoprec asked me to arrange 3 songs for the choir to sing. It was amazing to hear them sing. We only had about 10 people singing for this choir but the spirit was so strong and I had goosebumps in the last song of Silent Night while I was playing the piano. After the meeting, the Stake Young Mens president came up to me with tears in his eyes. He told me that I had been an answer to his prayers. I didn't know what was going on in his life but he began to tell me that in the whole stake here, there isn't one single person that can play the piano. There is only one person in the other stake that has been playing for both stakes. This president told me that he recieved the assignment to put on a Christmas program for the stake, but unfortunatly the other guy couldn't play and he had been praying for help to make it happen. He asked if I could quickly learn the songs to put on the program and help him. And I can testify that Heavenly Father is helping me. In songs that I have never been able to play before I am able to play right now in this program as well as learn songs in very little time. I am excited to play the song White Christmas for the program as well, it is my favorite Christmas song and I was so excited when he asked if I could learn the song! We continue to work with many investegators. Floricelli continues to progress and grow and find new desires to learn. She is there at church each sunday and at each mutual activity, she walks to the church alone but she has lots of friends here. We continue to find miracles each day and I know it is because Ha Nacido un Salvador. Because we have a Savior we have no need to worry about anything, because with him he overcame everything for us. So, in this time if you are downtrodden or saddened, remember that A Savior was born to help you through these times, all he asks is for you to keep pushing to the end and he will back you each step of the way. Everyone have a Feliz Navidad! Elder Peterson