June 17, 2013

It's been a very interesting and exhausting week. I don't know why I have been so tired lately. I just don't seem to have much energy, which is no good, because I need to walk everywhere!

 

 We taught M  twice this week and she is doing a little better. The first lesson this week, we invited her to be baptized and she said yes, but when we invited her to set a date, she said that she wouldn't because she smokes. But she is willing to let us help her stop smoking, which she hasn't been willing to let missionaries help her with before, so there is progress there. When we met with her the second time, she had cut back from 10-15 cigarettes to 8 cigarettes a day. It is wonderful progress, but she is trying to do it all on her own willpower, which isn't going to work. She isn't doing anything different when she gets a craving except trying to ignore it. She needs to be more diligent in her scripture reading and praying. The problem is that she doesn't exactly believe in God. She wants to believe in a lot of things, but she isn't willing to act on something to get that belief. It's a little frustrating.

 

We also saw R again on Saturday. That has to have been one of the most crazy lessons I have been in. Not that I have been in a lot, but still. We have slowly been reviewing the Restoration with her, and we talked to her about the Book of Mormon.

 

We've started passing out the invitation/pass along cards for the fireside at the end of the month. We have had some really cool experiences with that. On Thursday, we got a call from a guy named J. Someone had given him one of the cards on the Skytrain and he wants to learn more about how Christ can help him in his life. We haven't been able to get a hold of him since then, but he does want to meet. And people are more willing to take this card then a normal pass along card. Hopefully, this fireside will be a success.

 

We also got a HQ referral this morning. Apparently a woman in this area was looking at mormon.org and has requested missionary visits and she put down her number and address. So we are going to be following up with that this week. Hopefully she will be a really solid investigator. We definitely need some of those right now. Everyone seems to be flaking out lately, which is rather discouraging. I have a really cool foot tan though. I'll send you a picture of it soon, when it has a chance to darken a little more.

 

Love you,

Sister Peterson

June 10, 2013

It has been a very interesting week, trying to get used to the bus schedules. It takes nearly an hour to get anywhere and we aren't allowed to proselyte on the bus (according to transit rules, but there is no rule against friendly conversations about religion!), so we have to plan very carefully. My shoulders are killing me from hauling everything, including food and water around all day long. And sometimes I feel like I am just going in circles. Luckily, the bus system is relatively easy to figure out. We just have to make it to the bus stop on time, or we could be waiting for any where from 30-60 minutes for some buses. Which makes for excellent finding time, but it's not so good if we have an appointment. But we haven't gotten stranded or missed an appointment yet, so everything is working out so far.

There have been a lot of ups and downs. We have had some really solid potentials and formers that we set up appointments with, only for them to fall through. We are still teaching M, but there is only so much that we can teach a five year old that will also help his dad progress. We are honestly not even sure what we are doing, since M is very spiritually connected, but he doesn't seem to remember anything that we teach him. It's a little weird. We also started teaching K and L M, who are the mom and sister of a member who lives just down the hall from us. We really don't know how much they understand, because they are older and speak mostly Tagalog, but Sister M really wants us to teach them, and they are very friendly. They just seem pretty firm in their beliefs, and her other two sisters are not so keen on the idea, so it is going to be interesting. We also got a hold of a former named M. She struggles a lot and it's just a really sad situation, so hopefully we will be able to help her. The best part of the week was R and W. We finally had a real sit down lesson with R, not just a quick visit at work. She committed to be baptized when she knows it's true and when she feels like she can commit herself, but it will probably take a while, because she works almost every day. She does do the schedule, so hopefully she will try to arrange some time so she can come to church. W is a potential that we found while tracting one night. She said we could come back on Sunday, so we did. I don't think she was expecting us to come back. The rest of her family wasn't home, so we just talked to her. We taught her about the nature of God and talked a little about what we believed. She mostly seems interested in the fact that we aren't super serious all the time. Apparently the church they used to go to in Vancouver was full of people who were always stone faced and super serious, even outside of church. Honestly, that sounds a little depressing. She said she is going to talk to her husband and find out when we can come back and teach her whole family. It was really cool, because she didn't really seem interested at first, but as we talked, she really warmed up to us.

At the same time as all of this, we had so many appointments fall through, both with active investigators, former investigators and potentials. These people are really solid, or so we thought, but they just don't want to make the time for us. I guess we are one of the adjustable things in their life, and they figure that we will always be there. They just don't get it and we can't ever teach them, so we can't help them understand! It is beyond frustrating, especially when they don't let us know ahead of time. Now that we use the bus system, it takes a lot of time to get anywhere and we can't just run from one place to another. It takes a lot of careful planning and when they just aren't home or they don't show up, it really stinks. Hopefully, this next week will be better.

Love you,

Sister Peterson

June 3, 2013

This week has had a lot of roller coaster moments. I loved getting to see everyone who came in for transfers. I have missed some of the sisters so much! And transfers was so good. President Tilleman had so much good counsel. I think this is the first time that I have seen him that I haven't had an interview with him. We did have to talk to him about Y for a moment, but that was it. We also started the 40-day fast on Friday, and it has been working wonderfully. We are working with the elders to visit all the people and when we sent around the calendar again yesterday, it filled up completely! There were some definite suprises on some of the people who signed up, including a part-member family. This was a big deal, because it is the dad who is the non-member who signed his family up! The elders have been trying to work with him for a while, so they are really excited about being able to use this as an opportunity to teach him. We also managed to set up an appointment with a former investigator. Her kids are members, but she was never baptized. She comes to church with them and everything, so we don't exactly know what is holding her back. We have been trying to meet with her ever since I got here and we finally just dropped by, and she was home, but leaving soon. So she told us when we could come back to visit her!

 

The best part of the week was on Sunday though. We have been teaching a 5 year old for about three weeks now. His mom is a member, but doesn't want anything to do with the church. The dad has had some contact with the church, but isn't really interested in learning. They do want us to teach M (their son) though, so he can make his own decision when he is older. Yesterday, M and his dad came to church. I'm not exactly sure what Brother T thought of it, but M loved it! He was a little antsy during sacrament, but his primary teacher said he was so well behaved and engaged in the lesson! After church, we got stood up on two appointments we had, so we decided to drop by the Tb's and see how they were doing. The Tb's were former investigators that we put in a reflective pool, because they kept dropping appointments with us. But they were home and we had a good lesson with them. We spent most of the time getting to know them, because Sister C had only met them once and I had never met them before. Brother Tb has an amazing story. He used to be addicted to crystal meth and he fully credits God with saving his life and helping him get clean. He has been clean for 6-7 years now. We also taught them about the Godhead and how they are three seperate beings, which they totally believe. They seem to be one of those families that is not a question of will they be baptized, but when will they be baptized. Brother Tb's parents and brother are all recent converts within the last two years, and that is why they started looking into it.

 

The rest of the week has been absolutely a mess. We had a lesson with Y on Wednesday, and she doesn't want to meet with us for a while. She says that if she were single, she would already be baptized, but it hurts to much to know all this and continue learning and not be able to share it with her family. She also doesn't want to make commitments that she would have to break to keep her family happy. It is so sad! It's her husband who is causing all these problems for her and it makes me so upset! We did give her a family history card and encourage her to check it out with her husband. Hopefully that will help.

 

We have just had such a hard time finding people to teach! We only had four lessons this week, and only one of those was a member present. It is so discouraging! We have two actual investigators right now, and neither one of them are ever really available, so I'm not even sure they count. One of them is T. She is in and out of the hospital all the time, so it is absolutely impossible to ever schedule an appointment with her, and she doesn't want us to teach her girls without her, which makes perfect sense. But at the same time, it is so frustrating. The other one is R. We can only ever meet her when she is at work, because home is not a good place for her to meet. So it just depends on what her work schedule is and how busy things are, and right now, it is always busy. So we just pop in every once in a while and see how she is doing and share a quick scripture. But we never have time to teach.

 

We are getting our bus passes tonight, so away on the bus we will go for the next two or three weeks. We actually are really really lucky. The damage to the car is going to cost of 3000 to repair, and if it weren't for President Tilleman, we would lose all driving priveleges for the rest of Sister C's mission, and mine would be severely limited, meaning basically not allowed. But President Tilleman is incredibly merciful, and we get the car back after it has been fixed, so in two or three weeks. Such a relief. And hopefully spending time on the bus will allow us to find people we wouldn't have found otherwise. Who knows, maybe that will be where we find our next baptism. I really hope so.

 

Love you all,

Sister Peterson