06-17-13

June 17, 2013

"Man, how did you get so good at soccer?! I bet you play FIFA 2014 all the time at home!" "Nope, never played it!" "WOAH!!!!"

Hey there everyone!

Woah, it's that time of year again. Father's day was yesterday (HAPPY FATHER'S DAY DAD!!!!!) and my birthday is coming up this Thursday! Weird! I'll need to buy myself a cane for my birthday! 

This was a pretty good week, not gonna lie (really, I won't!). I got a free icon from some potential investigators, we had about 13 people at our last sports night (which is a TON more than usual! We've found a great place) and we got to go to district conference on Sunday (essentially Stake conference just a bit smaller). We had a couple of cool stories from this week too!

First off, Elder Lundberg and I were contacting along a pretty quiet street when, out of the blue, we smell delicious baked goods. We looked around to see from whence came the scumpcious smell and we deteremined that it had to be coming from this one yellow building. Like any logical person would expect, we started looking for a door a the front of the building, but didn't find one, so we began to circumspect the building to see where we could find an entrance to the treasure trove of baked goodness. To our surprise, we found a lady feeding some cats and smiling. As it turns out, we'd just bumped into the most famous school teacher in all of Balakova! Her name is [  ] and she'd taught Russian, World History and math at the local school for 50 years and, now that she is retired, has been tutoring high school students to take the Russian equivalent of the SAT/ACT. She introduced us to some of her friends and told everyone about how nice we looked and  about how well we spoke Russian and she became really curious as to why we're here! In the end, she took a Book of Mormon and we have another meeting set up with her on Wednesday! The sad part of the story is that we never did find the entrance to the baked goods store, but I'd say that's alright based on what happened anyways! Sometimes the Lord brings people who are ready to us, and, at other times, the Lord attracts His servants by means of pastries to find those who may, at this time, be ready to hear the Gospel!

Story number 2: the night before district conference I had a pretty bad dream. They don't happen often, but sometimes Satan is a real jerk, so that night I'd had a bad dream. The point of the dream was this: that'd I'd failed as a missionary and that none of the fruits of my labor had remained, it'd all already withered away. That's total balogne, for one, but when I woke up in the morning I just felt awful. I though about the first investigator I knew who was baptized, and about 6 months ago the last thing I'd heard was that she'd gotten super offended by a member and had gone less active. After the first session of district conference (and by this time I'd completely forgotten about the dream) I was going around talking to all my Saratov friends when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her. I just about died, it was so awesome! I ran over to her and found out that everything is ok, that she's active and doing well now. That really was a pretty huge tender mercy from the Lord to see her and to find out that everything is alright :) Man, that was just a pretty emotion experience overall being that at District Conference. I saw almost all of my friends from Russia there (save for the members in Ulianovsk and Orenburg) and it was also the last time I'd be seeing President and Sister Sartori on this side of world. Thank goodness for Facebook, right? :)

So, I need a couple more classes, huh? Thanks for getting that all set up for me, by the way Mom, you're the best :) I hgad a thought this past week that I'd really love to take some variety of dance class (latin dance would be spiffy! By ballroom or social dance would be great too, maybe even better, I haven't taken a dance class since high school). Also, at some point I need to take a Church history class, but that doesn't necessarily need to be this upcoming semester. Thanks for getting stuff worked out with my Russian classes too! What should I be doing about scholarships? I think I've got one for BYU-I, but is there any other way to apply/get scholarships from other places/organizations too, or is that a bit late? In any event, I'll be needing to find myself a job and stop being poor at some point! :D

There's a couple of questions I had that I'll need your help, Mom and Dad, in determining what to do about it. If you can get a hold of the Wings and say hi to them for me and ask them at what point they were thinking of going with Michael to the Grand Canyon, that'd be great (they'll know what I'm talking about). I'd write them myself, but I always end up running out of time, and you're a lot more accessible right now than I am. Thanks! Also, I got a wedding announcement from Sister Alex Simons for the August 2nd that'll take place in the Sacramento temple.  But I figure it's worth asking and investigating from you all to know what our summer plans are and how stuff is going to work out. When do I start school, anyways?

That'll do for now, I think. Thanks for the birthday wishes, and once more, happy belated father's day, Dad! I love you all lots! Be good now :)

Love

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Elder Peterson