E-Mail August 20, 2012

Hey Familia!

This week was a better week than the last couple have been. We are slowly starting to teach more and more. One of our wards, unfrotunately, only wants us to work with Less-Actives which means that they dont really try to help us out with the non-member side of missionary work. Kind of frustrating but, we will do what the Bishop asks of us. Anyway, a couple of things have happened this week.

Monday, not too much happened. We did the whole morning routine (shower, breakfast, study, e-mail, shop) and then we went up to ASU and I got a couple of things. So Pa, if you notice in my account that 45 bones were just blown, it's because of that. I got a wicked-sweet hat and some shorts that are almost too small =P Hahaha, but it was kewl! Now I have a hat I can wear around on P-days! But, because we didnt have a car we rode the Orbit Bus the whole time and that kind of wasted an hour or two of our play time. But, you always see a bunch of interesting people on those busses, that's for sure! Well after our trip back and forth and jumping busses to get from place to place we went to go play volleyball with some other elders. Lot's of fun, especially since it has been so dang long since I have played! Then we went home and had dinner. Had a lesson that fell through but we went to FHE in our singles ward, like we do every monday night, which is always fun. Dont worry about it though, President Howes has told those of us with YSA wards to become a part of the ward. Be their friends and let them all know that you are still human. Obviously no dating or anything like that (; JK!  But yeah, that was our Monday!

Tuesday was District Meeting. It was a fun one. Our District Leader is Elder Harrison and his first name is Dylan so he came up with a bunch of "A.K.A." names for himself on the training and he announced them before we started. He walks up to the podium and says, "Thanks for coming to District meeting today. The training is on ______. The training will be given by Me, Elder Harrison a.k.a. Big Dill, a.k.a. Lil' Dill, a.k.a. Harry Dill, a.k.a. Dill Pickle." It was hilarious the way he was saying it too, LOL. But after that was over we had another lesson fall through but! we had a lesson with a girl named Jodi Wilson. Now, I dont know if I had ever talked about her when I was down in Ahwatukee but, I have taught her before. When I was first out we started to teach her and then she decided she wanted to go to the Singles Ward so we handed her off to the Elders that cover that ward. Well, during one of our lessons back then she would ask all these deep doctrine questions as she would read the Book Of Mormon. One of them was, "If the Atonement of Christ was infinite, covering from the beginning of time to the end of time, why was the Law of Moses ever implemented?" I had NO idea how to answer that. Anyway, we handed her off to the other missionaries and she ended up stopping to the discussions. Her dad had anti-ed her and so she stopped. But, 3 weeks into my being her she wants to take back up with us. She wants to do it with the same missionaries the entire time too. It is super kewl, all the timing and everything. I think... I THINK that she might be that one person I'm down here for. Who knows though. Anyway, that was really all that was exciting and worth talking about for Tuesday.

Wednesday come along and nothing happened until the end of the day. We had dinner cancel on us so we did that on our own which worked out perfect! We had dinner at the church building where we were going to be having a baptismal interview later. We had the interview at 6 with one of our investigators named Jeff Seiger. If I hadnt told you guys about him, he is awesome! I didnt start to teach him but when he did first start meeting with missionaries his very first question was, "Do you have to be ordained to pass the Sacrament?" He is super-solid. We had his interview and he passed, Woot!! After that he took us to a Mission President's Devotional that we had invited him to. Elder Aidukaitus was speaking. He is awesome! I love that guy! He is an area 70 from Brazil. He started out his talk, with this super thick accent that sounds like the dad off of "How To Train A Dragon", by saying, "Hello everybody. I am so glad you could be here. If you happen to notice an accent, it's because I'm from Oklahoma!" It was hilarious! He was there to talk to all of the investigators and Recent Converts of the church. It was great. He said a lot of good things for all of them to hear. Then comes Thursday!

Thursday morning we had to be at a church building I had never been to before at 7:30am. Why?? Because Elder Aidukaitus was going to speak to all of us missionaries directly! We talked about alot. We all had taken this survery a while back about our mission. What we think we were doing well and what we think we were doing poorly so that he would have an idea of what to speak on. Well planning was something we all though we did well and he tore us apart on it! Haha, it was really good though. He started to talk about what an effective planning session will be like and how it should go and all that kind of stuff. Well, if you were to look over at Pres. Howes face at that time, his jaw was dropped and his eyes were wide with disbelief that he was telling us that we should take so long to plan effectively! In Preach My Gospel there is a chapter in there, chapter 8 that is entitled "Use Time Wisely." In there it describes the steps for a Weekly Planning session and what all it should entail and about how long it should take. The longest it says it should take is 3 hours. That's about right! Well with everything Elder Aidukaitus was telling us he told us it should take us 5 hours. Sometimes even 6 if we are new to the whole thing! It was ridiculous! Then he talked about our Finding efforts. Our mission averages 1.1 new investigators per week. That's nothing!! So he gave us some ideas on how to increase that number. We are currently all trying it out. I will let you know what it is and how well it goes later on =P

Friday we took Weekly Planning! We had a few other things to do that interrupted our planning but, even up to now, we havent been able to have the time to accomplish everything that we had been asked to do. Nothing else really happened on Friday except for a couple of lessons and things.

Saturday came around and we tried to finish planning, like I said, we still arent entirely done. But, nothing really happened until that night... Jeff's Baptism!! It was ridiculously awesome! He was baptized into the YSA ward and he had enough people there to fill up 2/3 of the chapel! His entire Catholic family and a whole bunch of other friends. Tony Tillman, our old Ward Mission Leader, was going to make the programs and everything and print them out. That never happened so had got a note card and wrote it our for the person that was conducting. Everything that we had originally planned didnt happen. We had a couple of speakers that didnt get notified so we had some RM's give talks and a couple other things. It was perfect though! The Spirit was SO strong there it was incredible. The Lord provided a way for the baptism to go as He wanted it to go. I'm still stoked about it! Hahaha!

Sunday rolled around and we had church all day. Nothing special.

Now we are here and typing! Still! But, it is all about to end because that is really everything that went down this week! Haha, I love you all and hope everything is going well! I miss you!


~Elder Daniel Peterson

2155 S. 55th st. #1048
Tempe AZ 85282