10-15-12

October 15, 2012

"Wait...Santa Claus lives is...Finland?!"

Hey there everyone! :)

It's been a crazy week, and a slightly crazier morning as we were in

the police station talking to the police about my move from Marks to

here. Just me and the bars, folks! Heh...just kidding, they didn't

toss me in prison, but we did spend two hours there getting stuff

worked out so that legally I can be here in Orenburg. Good times! It

was pretty fun because the guy who interviewed me, spent a lot

more time just asking about the Church and what we taught rather than

the legalities of our service here. In the end he thought our Church

was spiffy and we invited him to come on Sunday!

Dang, conference sure was awesome, wasn't it? I think my favorite talk

was Elder Holland's on Sunday morning. That whole session was just

incredible but Elder Holland's talk just blew me away. This is the

first time on my mission that I've been able to legitimately watch all

of conference in English and really enjoy it. What's better is that

all of that is thanks to Elder Treter! The computer for years had been

missing a sound driver and a legitimate connection to the internet and

he fixed it super fast so we didn't have to watch conference in

Russian.

Lots of other cool stuff happened this week too. We bought a new

winter coat, hat and gloves for Elder Treter at the bazaar and it was

a bit of nostalgia to the time when I bought my first coat, only this

time it was me and a member, bargaining for my companion's

coat as opposed to me buying one! Fun times were had.

Oooh, we also had a really awesome meeting with an investigator on

Monday. He has got 3 kids and wife and his main

interest in the Church is that we believe that families can be

together forever and that the way to that is temple sealing. He want

to get his family through the temple, so he's ready to hear our

lessons. And, to add to the coolness of it all, he was found by my MTC

teacher, Brother Milligan! Cool, right? He got lost for awhile in

moving and lost contact but now it's re-established and we have a

tentative baptismal date for the 3rd of November set. We'll see how it

all goes down :)

We also had a mini zone conference this past weekend, and it was

incredible. It's really hard to explain how awesome it was and it's

impact because that takes a lot of explaining the logistics of the

mission and how we've been working, but suffice it to say that I like

our new system of finding, teaching and baptizing people. It's a cool

little principle to really check the revelation that's given to other

people. The system works for conference, like on the announcement that

people can go on missions at ages 18 and 19 now. Sure it's a cool

thing, but you can really get a confirmation that that is the correct

direction for the Church to go, and the same thing works on a mission

and personal level too. I hope that makes sense. We can always check

with God to see if something is correct and get an answer from Him.

Time is about up, and now I know what a shawl is (thanks Mom!) and

I'll get to work on finding one! By the way, Mom if you could tell

my friend that I got her package and absolutely loved it, that'd be great.

She's the best :) I'll be writing her a letter today methinks, so she

can expect something a good letter in a few weeks or so. Thanks Mom!

You're the best :)

Oh, one more side note, Orenburg is 2 hours off of Moscow, so it it's

7:00 in Moscow it's 9:00 in Orenburg (not a fun time change to work

through on trains!)

Alright, for real now, gotta go. Thanks so much, and I love you lots!

Be good now!

With love

--

Elder Peterson