Transfer 1, Week 4, May 5, 2014

Wow, this past week was a great week. On Wednesday, I was able to go
on exchanges with my district leader Elder Byam. Apparently his
sister and Mary were companions in Vancouver. It was a great day.

B is an investigator that we have been working with for the
past couple months. I think I told you about him a little bit in some
of m previous emails. He will call us randomly, and want to go on
walks with us. He recently had hip surgery, and it helps with his
rehab. Plus, we get to talk to him about the gospel. So it works out
for both of us. But anyways. This week he called us to go on a walk,
and while we were talking, he started to talk about how he felt
hopeless. He feels like he has no chance for repentance. He said
that he has done too many bad things for repentance, and that the
things that we were telling made sense intellectually, but he was
having a hard time with them spiritually. He felt like God was done
giving him second chances, and there was no more hope for him. We
listened and then testified of the atonement and how we have felt the
love of the Savior in our lives. The spirit was really strong, but I
am not sure B felt it. It is really hard to feel the spirit while
you are drunk, or on lots of medication, and he was on both. He
doesn't feel like he can live the Word of Wisdom yet because of his
social anxiety. He drinks to calm himself down. He was able to come
to church this week, but we think he may have messed up his hip really
bad. He was telling us that he tried to do a cartwheel, and landed on
it wrong. He said that there is bruising all up and down his leg, and
it is super swollen. Don't worry, I am being careful not to do
anything to my leg.

Every week, we go over to a less active's house to do service. I
think I told you a little about him. His name is X. He is
Ukrainian, a convert, and the first Ukrainian to go on a mission. So
we do service every week with him. This week we were helping him put
flooring down. He said it was only a two person job, so he told me to
go outside and teach his son how to play baseball. While I was doing
that, the two girls were upstairs teasing R while he was trying
to hit a ball, so I told them to come down, and we could all play
baseball together. I taught them how to play pickle, and we had a
fun time playing that. It slowly changed to soccer, but don't worry,
I was not running or kicking a ball. I sat down and played goalie.
It was really good to be able to play with them. We had only
interacted with X, the dad, and I don't think his kids were ever
baptized. So when we go over this next week, we are going to ask X
if we can teach his kids.

Church this week was amazing. B came to church this week, along
with a couple other investigators. But the highlight of the week was
at the every end of sacrament meeting. Background story. So one of
the members of the ward had been excommunicated a while ago, and he
was dating a nonmember. He has been dating her for 6 years, and the
entire time he has been telling her about what a blessing the church
is. The only problem is that she is atheist. But he kept telling her
about the church and his experiences with it and how wonderful it is.
She had been living in Orange County California, but she moved up here
recently. She has been coming to church for about a month now, and
she decided to go up to the podium during sacrament meeting. When she
got up there, she proceeded to give a wonderful testimony about the
church community, about how giving they all are, about how she has
seen a change in her life while she has been going to church, about
how all of the things that her boyfriend said about the church was
true, and she could see them. She talked about how she wants get
married to her boyfriend and have her kids raised in the church. She
wants to have the blessings that come from living the gospel. It was
an amazing testimony. We could all tell that it came right from the
heart. Every was talking about her testimony after church and about
how it was the strongest testimony born that day. It was truly
amazing.

We had heard about this person before, but we were told to wait to
contact her until the members made the invite to her to take the
missionary discussions. So unfortunately we haven't been able to
teach her yet. But right after church, we called the boyfriend's mom,
who is an active member. We talked with her and she said that she
would see N (the woman who bore her testimony) Monday morning and
ask her to take the missionary lessons. The mom said that the
excommunicated boyfriend is going to sit in on the discussions, and
one of her less active sons from Oregon city is also going to sit in
on the discussions as well. So we are going to be making a lot of
phone calls to different people, like bishops and missionaries to let
them know what is going on am make sure that it is okay to be teaching
certain people.

THIS PAST WEEK WAS AWESOME!

Love
Elder Peterson