Viva Juchitan!! January 4, 2016

Hello Everyone! I hope that you all had a safe, fun, and exciting holiday season with everyone. Mine was definately awesome here as well. For sure the hottest Christmas season that I have ever had. The New Years here is actually bigger than Christmas and so this week everyone pulled out their tents and put them in the streets to have their big New Years Celebration. One thing that they do here is they make scarecrows and fill them with explosives to burn off at Midnight of New Years. We had a fun time seeing all of the scarecrows that everyone made as well as a few missionary scarecrows by the members. I dont know if it is a good thing or bad thing if you are getting your likeness burned up and blown up haha. But this night we did not sleep one bit. We heard all of the explosions at midnight, the fireworks at 1 in the morning up until 4 in the morning. It was a bit rough as well because the whole city was sleeping the next day including the members. It was for sure the hardest day of the mission so far to find people to teach. Anyways I know that some of you are wondering about the transfers. I am going to be staying here for one more transfer with Elder Martinez to finish out his training. I am super excited because we hope that with all the potential that we have built up this transfer that we can cap it all off with the waters of baptism. This week we had an unusual experience that lead us to find a new family to teach. In our area there is some train tracks that I know a few of you have seen in some pictures. On one side of the train tracks there is a giant wall, but on this wall people have started to build houses made of pallets and cardboard, very very humble. We have one family that is out there that we have been trying to help but they have not been progressing. We went out there yesterday and me and my companion had been asking for 2 or 3 weeks why we have been continuing to head out there to teach this family. We went out yesterday and the family wasnt home, but there was a new "house" next to them. We felt the spirit really strong in that we needed to head over to this house to try to teach them. When we were walking along the tracks we heard the guy saying "The brothers are coming the brothers are coming" we stopped in front of his house and he told us to enter immediately. We sat down and he started speaking to us in English. My companion didnt know what was going on and I didnt either because it has been so long since I have talked face to face in English. He started explaining that he used to live in Los Angeles and owned a trucking company. While he was there the missionaries found him and began to teach him. He read the whole Book of Mormon, knew that Joseph Smith was a true prophet and that everything that these missionaries were saying was true. Unfortunaly his company went under and he moved to Colombia to try something different, things didnt work out there for him as well so he started traveling through Mexico making statues (Like my Ralph Moody books) and last night we found him. He told us that he had been hoping that he would be able to find the Book of Mormon again to be able to read it. He felt so comfortable with me because he doesnt have confidence in spanish or english, and so he could talk freely with me. I was able to bear him my testimony in English. It was so awesome to see the way that the Lord prepares people for us to teach. This was the highlight of my week. We hope to be able to baptize Karen in 2 weeks after many obstacles with work and with her family. The other awesome thing is that Tomas, our recent convert, had his son move in with him. The first night he was there Tomas came and found us and told us that we had to come and teach his son right then and there about the church that has all of the authority and truthfullness of Jesus Christ and can help his son to find where his life really is. The Lord is preparing so many people for us I wish I had time to explain all of them. I hope that you all have a great week returning to work and school. Thank you all for all that you do! Elder Peterson

My own personal explosive scarecrow.