May 27, 2013

This week has been both absolutely amazing and really really bad all at once. So, we are going to start with the bad stuff first so that everything will end on a happy note.

To start, my companion crashed the car on Friday. Everyone is okay, and there actually wasn't anyone else involved. She took a turn too sharply and nearly sent my side of the car into a ditch. We didn't go in, luckily. However, we did scrape up the front and passenger side pretty badly and the passenger side doors were jammed until Saturday morning, when we got that fixed. But sometime soon, we are going to have to park the car for two weeks. They are letting us wait until after transfers, because we are supposed to pick some sisters up, but it is going to be a long and exhausting two weeks. We are really going to have to rely on members and walk a whole lot. It's a big area, so I'm going to be really tired. I'm so glad my shoes have good support.

We also still don't have any new investigators, and we don't have any baptismal dates. We keep trying and trying, and everything keeps falling through. And no one will answer their phones when we call them! It is a little ridiculous. What is the point of having a phone if you never answer it? But that is all the bad, at least for this week.

So the good stuff! We have a half new investigator. The only reason she isn't a new investigator is because she doesn't know her schedule for this week and we weren't able to set a return appointment. She does want us to come back though, and she is within walking distance from our apartment, so she will be a new investigator this week! She does live in the elders' area, but because she is a single female, we are going to be teaching her.

Y is progressing well, she just has some really difficult choices to make. She talked to her husband about coming to church, and he said she could either go to church or she could spend time with her family. So now church feels like a choice between herself and her family for her. We are really trying to help her see how even just her coming to church will help her whole family, but it is all up to her. Sometimes, agency really stinks. President T is coming to her lessons as well, and we are going to ask him to give her a blessing to help her. She really does want this. She just has to take a leap of faith first.

We sent around the calendar for the 40-day fast yesterday, and it is almost filled up! There are only five days left to be filled, which is absolutely amazing! We are specifically fasting for three things: strengthen our recent converts, increase church attendance, and find two strong families to teach. With the faith and the full participation that our ward has, there is no way that we won't be able to accomplish these things. It does mean that we will be incredibly busy for the next long while. Which will be hard without a car, but maybe being without a car will allow us to find those that we need to teach. Lots of people on buses to talk to!

We have found a lot of great potentials lately. We just need to set up appointments with them. Lots of great things are starting to happen, we just have to push past the bad things. Transfers are this week, and we find out tonight what happens with that, but President T has already basically told us that both Sister C and I are staying in Surrey. But because I've only been here six weeks, we still go in for transfers. I'm really excited for that, even though it does mean less time teaching and finding.

I love you all!

Sister Peterson

May 20, 2013

This week has been a little crazy, both good and bad. We had so many lessons either set up or had a possibility of setting up, but almost all of them fell through. The two investigator lessons that did go through were complete opposites.

We taught I. again on Wednesday. We planned to get to the church a little early so that we could set everything up and make sure that everything was in place for the church tour. That plan went a little awry. Right before, we were tracting on a random street, and there was a guy walking up and down the street, with a little boy that turns out to be his nephew. Usually, I have a hard time approaching someone just walking on the street, but we had seen him two or three times, so I decided to cross the road to talk to him. Turns out, he is one of our potentials. He lost contact with the elders who used to cover this area, and his information isn't in our area book at all. So finding him was a miracle. He seems to be really interested, we just have to find a time to teach him. He really doesn't know when we can, because he is looking for work and his schedule is never the same., Anyway, it made us late to set up for I.'s lesson. He didn't seem very interested and a little preoccupied, but he did want to see the building, so we took him on the church tour. It was a little distracted, because he kept bringing things up like The Da Vinci Code. At the end, while we were in the chapel, everything started to fall apart. I love the member that we were with dearly, but I think she might have had a bad day or been under a lot of stress. She really started pushing him on church attendance. Even after we sat down to finish the lesson, she wouldn't let it go and basically told him that he was ignoring the Spirit. At the same time, I. had some very specific questions he wanted to ask, but couldn't get out, because the member kept interrupting him and us. He got very frustrated. Eventually we were able to begin to address his questions, specifically about the Godhead. We gave him some chapters to study and told him that we would teach him more about the Godhead next time. Looking back, we can see that this has been a concern for a while now. Apparently, both the lessons that were taught before I came involved the Godhead and the first lesson I taught did as well. My companion and I honestly felt like we nearly lost him with that lesson, and we were very worried about the next one. We shouldn't have been. Thursday, he called us up and told us he didn't want to meet with us anymore. He said that he appreciated us, but that we weren't professional enough and didn't show enough concern towards him. While we take these concerns at face value, Sister C and I believe that while we could have done better, I. was looking for a reason to get out, and this provided an easy one. He just wants a philosophical discussion, and we were trying to help him change for the better. So we probably would have had to place him in a reflective pool pretty soon. He did say that he is still going to read the Book of Mormon, so there is a little bit of hope for him.

Our other lesson was with Y. It also involved a church tour, but it couldn't have turned out any different from I.'s. Last week, we asked her to start reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning, specifically 1 Nephi 1-2. She loved it. She was drawing all the parallels between her life and Lehi and Nephi's experience. She even said her husband was a little like Laman and Lemuel sometimes. We hadn't even taught her about applying the scripture stories to her life. She is honestly amazing. She absolutely loved the church tour. We talked to her a lot about how this is all because God loves her. She loved the Young Women's and Young Men's programs and the Relief Society theme. She really really really wants this, she is still just hesitant in talking to her husband about coming to church! She felt the Spirit so strongly, especially in the chapel. She committed to talk to her husband this week sometime, so she should be coming to church really soon! President T is coming to our next lesson with her, and hopefully, he can help give her the extra assurance that she needs, because his family had a similar situation at one point. He has also agreed to give her a blessing if she wants one. She is so close! She just has to come to church!

We also had some less active/recent convert lessons. We never seem to have a problem getting those lessons done. We hit or exceed our goal every week. But we never seem to get our goal for investigators, even though that is our main focus. We usually have the appointments, but they almost always fall through! It's really frustrating, especially now that we aren't teaching Ifti anymore, we really only teaching Y. But we have some wonderful finding ideas that we are going to be putting into play within the next month or so.

The first one is a 40 day fast. The idea is that every day, a member or family will fast for missionary work and for the opportunity to do their own missionary work. Then either the elders or we will visit with the person or family and share a spiritual thought and see if they have any referrals for us or people that they have had experiences with that we could teach. Sister C has done this in other areas and it has been really successful. It's also a good way to get members involved, especially with the changes we have made to our dinner calendar.

The other one is kind of my brain child. In the front of the planner, there is a list of finding ideas, and one of them is a fireside. So at the end of June, we are going to have a fireside on Faith in Jesus Christ. President and Sister T are going to come speak and we are going to get as many people who live in the Surrey 1st ward boundaries in the chapel as we possibly can. The ward has also decided to do a potluck kind of thing afterwards, so that we can keep people there and talk to them. I really think that this will be good. This has also been incredibly successful in other areas, and we are talking to other missionaries who have done similar things and figuring out how we want to get people there and let them know about it. It is going to be really good.

Some people really have an interesting perspective on us. Last night, we knocked on the door of a man who really doesn't like Mormons. He claims to know all about us, but here's the funny thing. We started off by identifying ourselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We talked a little about prophets and he asked who our current prophet was, so we told him it was Thomas S Monson. It wasn't until we mentioned Joseph Smith that he realized who we were. For someone who know all about the church, he is missing some crucial facts, like our name! He is also of the opinion that Utah lives in the medieval times still and that girls are all but imprisoned. When I told him I was from Utah, he was very shocked, and asked me how I managed to escape. At the same time, it was very sad. He was adamant that God exists, but that you can't know anything through the Spirit and that we are completely deluded. It's sad, but we tried. He just doesn't want to listen.

Hopefully, this week will have a lot more lessons! We really need the investigators.

I love you all,

Sister Peterson

April 23, 2013

Note:  Sorry, this is a little out of order.  I had a bunch of emails to shift through and I'm afraid I got a little mixed up.  Sorry again!

Hello All!

    My flight was very good. It was only two hours, but it took about 3-4 hours to get through customs. Apparently, we were supposed to have our medical and immunization records in case they asked for it. Luckily for me, they didn't ask for it.

   The cookies were very good. I ate most of them while I was packing in the MTC. That was a crazy day. We spent most of it packing, had a little bit of study time and one last class. The progressing investigator that I was teaching as part of my class is actually Sister B! No wonder it seemed so real, it was her actual conversion story. In our last class session, we taught Brother M as Brother M. It was really cool. We went in with a lesson plan about one thing and ended teaching him about something completely different, because that is what he needed.

   The best part of that day was the devotional that night. They never tell you who is coming before, so you just show up and are surprised. Sister W's twin is part of the group in charge of setting up the chairs and we were sitting with them that night so she could spend a little more time with her sister, so we got seats really close to the front. And Elder Richard G Scott was speaking that night! It was absolutely amazing. He talked a lot about prayer. I don't have my study journal with me right now, so I don't remember everything that he said, but it was so good. I'll probably send you the at least some of my notes from it later.

   I met my new companion on Thursday. Her name is Sister C and she is incredibly short. She has two transfers left and I am her first trainee. We are in the Surrey North area, in the Surrey 1st ward. Remember how I said that I knew one of the elders already serving there? Well, Elder L is both in the same ward and he is my zone leader. It is so nice to have a familiar face. Speaking of familiar faces, apparently I know three other elders serving in Vancouver. I know Elder W from Lone Peak, Elder M from JJ and and Elder G from my first semester at BYU. And they were all at the transfer meeting, so that was awesome.

   Missionary work is both what I expected and not what I expected. Sometimes, I feel like we could definitely be using our time a lot better, and sometimes I feel like we just don't have enough time to breathe because we are doing so much. We spend most of our time finding, because we don't have very many investigators right now. Yesterday, we spent almost the whole day on the streets. We found a grand total of three potential investigators and received one referral. I also gave away my first Book of Mormon to a man named B. He seemed very interested and when we drove by him a little later, he was reading the Restoration pamphlet that we also gave him. We have his number and he has ours, so here's hoping!

   We do have one investigator who seems really solid right now. Y is looking for a job and was meeting with the Mandarin speaking sisters in Burnaby, but she wants to take the lessons in English and she lives in the Surrey 1st ward, so we are teaching her now. She believes everything and she really feels the Spirit when she reads and prays. When we talk about Christ, she calls Him "my Jesus." It was a little different at first, but, you know, He is her Jesus, just as He is mine and yours. Her only problem is that her husband doesn't know how involved she is in looking into the church, and she is afraid to ask his permission to come to church. So we are praying that she will get the courage to ask him. She is also considering sharing what she is learning with her 8 year old son and her 6 year old daughter.

    P-day was today because we went to the temple this morning. It was really beautiful, but different. The Vancouver temple is tiny! And it isn't in Vancouver. It's in a little city called Langley. It definitely helped me. and we saw a coyote. That was a little unexpected.

   I love you all!

                 Sister Peterson

May 6, 2013

Hello all!

This last week has been very interesting. So here's the basics of what happened:

Tuesday: Tuesday was a lot of finding. We were supposed to have an appointment with a potential named J, but he wasn't home. So we went and did some potential work instead. We ran into a potential named B, who said he comes to church, at our church, every Sunday at 9:30, which is when our meetings start. So we may have had an investigator there for a while that we don't know about. He wasn't there yesterday, because he was sick, but we are meeting with him this week, so we will see how things go. We also visited the H’s, Brother H is inactive and Sister H is not a member. Brother H had surgery the previous Tuesday to remove a tumor, but they couldn't because it was wrapped around a main vein. So he was open for about 4 days so the swelling could subside. So we went to see how Sister H was doing. She is a very nice woman, but not really religious. She does like visiting with the missionaries though. So there's still hope. We wanted to do a lot of finding, but it didn't really happen, because we had to pick up a sister who was supposed to come to J's lesson and drop her off.

Wednesday: Much more busy. We taught Y that morning, because of some conflicts on Friday. She is so sweet. I absolutely love meeting with her. She has talked a little to her family about what she is learning! Baby steps, but important ones. Hopefully she will be able to come to church soon. She could probably be baptized tomorrow if she were able to come to church. And I. I get the feeling that he doesn't know what he is looking for right now. I think if he would come to church, it would be easier to figure out. But he is beginning to open up more to us and we are learning a lot more about him, which makes it easier to teach him. Funny how that works.

Thursday: Thursday was absolutely amazing. We had our multi-zone conference, and we talked about the one thing that I feel like has really been lacking: time management. We were taught how to plan more effectively and to plan with back up plans. So basically to use the planner the way it was designed. Funny how that works. Definitely a little bit of chastisement there, but it was good for us. I also got to have another interview with President T and received a blessing from him. I learned a lot from that blessing and was promised some marvelous things. I just wish I knew when these things would happen. But I guess that is what patience is about.

Friday: Friday was the first day we applied what we learned. It started out a little rough, but ended well. We tried to get a hold of some less actives the relief society asked us to visit, but none of them were home. We did find a less active named D that we were able to have a good conversation with. Technically, we shouldn't have been teaching him because there was no female present, but we were outside and I couldn't get Sister C to leave, because it would have seemed rude. So that was awkward. He is very interested in family history, so we gave him the info of the family history center, and then let the elders know so they can teach him. We had a mini missionary come that night, named Sister O. She stayed with us until Sunday afternoon and it was really great. She is just waiting for her mission call. It's been assigned and everything. We also visited a less active named R. She very sweet, but I'm not quite sure she is all there. I didn't understand half of what she was telling us, but she refuses to go to a Spanish ward. She's been here since November and no one knew about her until now. She loves coming to church, but she does need constant help, so it's going to be a challenge for now, especially once we have investigators coming. We won't be able to help them and watch R, so she needs visiting teachers. But she is a great woman. Just has had some crazy things happen.

Saturday: Saturday was a good day. We did quite a bit of tracting and we got to meet with I. However, he's not interested in learning, just debating. So that was a bust. But he does have a Book of Mormon now. There was a baptism that afternoon, but we weren't going to go, because we didn't have an investigator to come with us, and we could have used the time to teach or find. But just as the baptism was about to start, the elders called and said they needed someone to play the piano. So we went, and I played. So many things went wrong that day for the elders in connection with the baptism, that they completely forgot about the piano. So we ended up going. We also made a lot of phone calls to potentials. A lot of the people who didn't answer ended up calling us back, which almost never happens. So it was really good.

Sunday: A little bit of a crazy day. I've never been so tired, but I don't care. I'm glad I'm finally working hard enough to be tired. We visited with a couple less actives and did a lot of tracting. We found a potential and we almost taught him the restoration, but he had to leave, so we will try again later. We also set up several appointments. So it was a very good day.

All in all, this week was good and next week is really looking up. If none of the appointments fall through, and this is just counting the ones that we have been able to confirm, we will be teaching 8 different investigators. That's not counting the ones we are going to just drop by. I'm tired and I have a little baby blister, but I've been asking for it, and I am so glad it's finally happening.

I love you all,

Sister Peterson

April 29, 2013

Hello everyone!

       This week has been really up and down. We only taught three lessons to investigators, because a lot of them cancelled on us. One of them was to a man named I. He is writing a book about the Second Coming, and we think that he might be using us as a sounding board, instead of actually being interested in the church. He has committed to read the Book of Mormon, albeit about the Second Coming. We think that if we can get him to come to church, we can figure out what he is really looking for, so that is what we are working on now.

      Y is continuing to do marvelously. She is so excited, she actually asked us for Book of Mormon reading assignments. I get the feeling that she was waiting for us to ask her to read something, even though she has had a Book of Mormon for a while. Woops. But she is very excited. Now we just need her to approach her husband so that she can come to church. She could easily be baptized very soon.

       We also found a new investigator while tracting last Monday. He was actually my first solo door approach, and as part of my training, I lead out on teaching him the Restoration. Surprisingly, it went much better than I thought it would. I have been struggling in all of the role-plays that I have been doing lately, and it has been really hard to get my point across. But with A, it just came naturally. So I guess I just need the Spirit and a real investigator to talk to if I want things to work. He is a Sikh, and he has never read the Bible, even though he is very interested. So we gave him a Book of Mormon and a couple chapters to read, and we are going to bring him a Bible next Sunday when we go back for our next appointment. I really hope that this works out. We really need another solid investigator. So many of the investigators who were solid and progressing before I got here have slipped away. I've never even met most of them. It's like as soon as transfers happened, they decided they didn't want to meet anymore, or everything started to go wrong in their lives and they didn't have time to meet. So it's like starting from scratch, while still trying to keep these investigators. And then the Elders in this ward have so many solid progressing investigators. They even have a baptism this Saturday. I'm so excited for that, but at the same time, ward leaders are noticing the difference in our progress records, and one of them mentioned something about it on Sunday. I feel like I'm trying my best, but nothing is working out, but no one else sees the work, just the results. I don't know how to fix it.

       On the bright side, President and Sister T had some training last week with Elder Holland, and they have called a special multi-zone conference for this Thursday! From this and the little bits in his weekly e-mail, they got taught something really special. I'm super excited for that. And from Friday until Sunday, Sister C and I will have a mini missionary with us. It's going to be a little interesting, because Sister C has never done anything with a mini missionary before, and I obviously haven't either. So it will be an adventure.

       Speaking of adventures, we keep getting lost. I have no mountains to orient myself off of, and the map isn't always accurate, so we've gotten lost a few times because I can't figure out the directions. It's really funny, but at the same time, it wastes a lot of time, so let's hope I can figure out how to fix that problem as soon as possible.

I love you all,

Sister Peterson