Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the Lord JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation. Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.
-Isaiah 12 2-3

Monday, May 20, 2013

05-20-13


May 20, 2013
"Well, we sure do love to drink though!" *pats my belly* "Uh..." "Well boys, you have a great day!" *while walking away* "Was that...was that a fat joke?"

Hey there everyone :)

Today was a pretty quiet week, actually. The first in awhile. We still had our run-ins with fun people on the street. We got hugged a couple of times and helped a man from Egypt find an internet cafe, but no real crazy experiences. Nice for a change I think :)

The zone leaders came down this week and went on exchanges with us. It was pretty crazy to think that this'd be the last exchanges in Balakova that'll happen before I go home. Elder Owen and I had some fun times reminicing the plane ride over here to Russia. We didn't know each other in the MTC but sat next to each other on the flight from New York to Moscow. As he sat down he brought out his giant stack of vocab words and I took out my book of advanced Russian grammar. He quizzed me on words I didn't know and I taught him grammar principles. Fun times! Lots has changed since then, and also very little at the same time. 

I had one little story that I wanted to share from this week. Elder Lundberg and I were contacting yesterday evening before going over to an investigator’s for a lesson when we stopped and began talking to this lady who spoke very slowly. She had a really sad story: she'd worked in an orphanage for 20 years when she found out that she had a malignant brain tumor. She got an operation in which they took out about half of her brain. She cannot speak quickly now and she can't read and remember what she's read. Things are hard at home and to get away from it all she walks around the city and enjoys the weather. There's so much that we wanted to talk about...what's not to talk about with a woman who's had such a life like that one, but she didn't want to talk about God. After we heard out the story of the woman, and did what we could we went to the investigator’s house and taught her about the ministry on the Savior while he was on the Earth.While teaching I felt so grateful that I have the knowledge that I do about the Plan of Salvation and the wonderful blessings every single person is promised because of the Savior, His ministry and His resurrection. I know that our sufferings really are temporal, and that in the end we will receive a glorified, resurrected body that cannnot be sick and will not feel physical pain. God really does love us that much. I'm so lucky to be able to tell people about all of this and to testify of it's truth. I have a pretty sweet job :)

Ah, before I forget! Mom, I finally got the box! Well, kind of. It's in Samara right now! If anyone gets tranferred then I'll be wearing new socks next week! If no one gets transferred then it'll still be a couple of weeks before I get the box. But rest assured that it did come! :)

It's good to hear too, by the way, that you're feeling better Mom! We'll have to trade stories when I come back :)

Well, It's a short one, but that's really all I've got this week. Thanks for being so good! I love you lots :)

With love
--
Elder Peterson

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