09-24-12

September 24, 2012

"Son, you're saying may name wrong. Roll your 'r's!" "Lady, I can't! I don't know how!" "Oh...oh well! Funny americans!"

Hey there everyone :)

Well, what with fall coming and all Marks has been super beautiful. I think I've said that for the past 3 weeks or so, but it's really been pretty. Gotta start taking more pictures. What's also pretty dang awesome is that the stars have begun to be visable while we've been walking, starting at about 8:00 or so. In using that topic to begin talking to people I found out that the Big and little dipper and called, in Russian, the Big and little she-bears. Huh. I think it looks more like a spoon than a she-bear, but hey, I'm no Greek, so I can't argue really. 

We're having a kind of follow up Zone conference this Saturday, so that'll be cool to get some addition training there! It'll be a bit funny because by that time (or maybe at that time, I really don't know) people are going to be finding out about transfers. I, personally, hope that I get to stay in Marks. These past couple of weeks I've really be able to come a lot closer to the members as we've been helping them do missionary work. It's fun to see how that's really been true of every area of my mission where I've been at. No matter how different the areas and the people may be, there's always something to love and to miss once your gone.

We had a pretty darn cool miracle this week happen too. A lesson fell through with an investigator leaving a pretty empty day time schedcule for us, so we decided that we'd visit a less active that we hadn't been able to reach for a while. I think I mentioned her a couple few months ago. She found us one day on the street and said that she'd been looking for the Church building for 10 years or so. She's been going through a lot of troubles lately, having to move from her apartment to a little dorm room kind of thing without much help from friends of family and, a couple of weeks ago out of nowhere her phone stopped working. We went out to her apartment and knocked on the door, finding out that she didn't live there anymore, and that the person who had moved into her place didn't know where she moved. I was pretty depressed about that, because I thought we'd never be able to find her again if her phone didn't work and if she'd moved with no one to tell us where. Well, there was a mom playing with her little kid in the yard of the apartment complex and I thought "well, what the heck, might as well ask her and see if she knows where our investigator is." And sure enough! She knew! As it turned out she had moved down just a couple of entrances over and was living well and comfortably. We visited her, got her new cell phone number and have a lesson with her on Tuesday. Pretty darn cool.

It's been interesting, too, working with members of the Church in getting missionary work done. In trying to figure out how to help members, I had a cool thought come up during district meeting when we were talking about faith and how to cultivate it. So often when it comes to missionary work I think a lot of us say "Of course missionary work is going to happen. God is all powerful, the church is true and God's promised that it's going to get done." All of that is true, and it's always awesome to read Moses 1:39 and think "Man, that really is God's work." I know it happens with me though, and maybe with others too, that we think of the work progressing forward as a given but the possibility of the work going forward through you as being an impossibility, or at least something unlikely. How the heck could God work through me? I'm weak, I don't do this right, I've got this weakness, there's better people out there that'll do it right. I love reading Moses 1:39 with a different perspective though, wherein instead of God saying that His work is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, he says that His work and His glory is to bring to pass your immortality and eternal life. In this same way, just as seeing things life the atonement as not being applicable merely to everyone in general, but specifically to us personally, we grow greatly in our relationship with Heavenly Father and begin to see our personal potential in doing His work, even though maybe in the moment we can't see how we can do it. I've thought about that a lot on my mission, especially lately, how the fact that we feel unqualified is a natural thing, but the fact is we are qualified to do everything God has asked because Jesus Christ has made it all possible. Nothing is too hard for God, and our lives can come to reflect that truth as we go forward with faith.

Anyways, I've gotta jet now. I hope you all have a wonderful week. You're the best, and I love you lots :)

With love, as always

--

Elder Peterson