Hey family,
We haven't done any planned service yet, but I think we're supposed to do a couple hours a week, and then find unplanned opportunities. Not sure what's going on with that. On Tuesday, the only thing we did that day was go to our dinner appointment because Sister King still didn't feel well (!!) that day. The Edwards had the nicest house I've been in since coming out here. We had some fun discussions with their family, and got into really deep doctrinal stuff, and theories about the Book of Mormon. When we got to the question of if there are 2 Hill Cumorahs or not, I thought that was just going too far, haha.
You probably saw some pictures of me posted on the Great OCM page, from Zone Conference on Wednesday. It was really awesome! Even though we've been having to get up at 5:30 for these trainings, since we're the furthest out and have to allow travel time, I've been absolutely loving them. It's a really nice change to be with a lot of missionaries and just other people in general. When you're with one companion and there isn't a lot going on, it can be lonely sometimes. We received some awesome counsel from our mission leaders and President and Sister Nilsen. I was super pumped up again to go to work. Our zone conference consisted roughly of half of the mission, and it was a blast.
We had exchanges starting that night with our Sister Training Leaders, Sister Pollock and Sister Burton (note to Evan Magnusson at BYU: I FOUND SISTER BURTON! We were instant best friends when we figured out we knew the same people). Because of zone conference and a meeting we had at the ward mission leader's home, we didn't actually do anything that night for exchanges specifically, but it was fun with the other sisters staying the night at our apartment. Also great fun to exercise with them the next morning.
On Thursday for exchanges, I went out with Sister Burton. This girl and I really hit it off, it was awesome spending time with her and I learned a lot from working with her. (The one picture I attached is of me and her, it's kind of far away, but hey you can see some of our apartment!) We went to an apartment complex with some potential investigators, but none of them were home, so I was like, let's knock on the doors of their neighbors! I noticed this guy leaving an apartment that had a woman and baby inside, and knew we should go there. We found this woman in her 20s named Shaylee, who said she was actually looking for a new church, and had recently started praying. Basically, it was no accident we arrived there. We planned to return that afternoon and teach her more. I called her later though, and she said she had been talking with her mom and they were just going to go back to their old church. We had warned her before leaving that Satan would work on her, and there it was! We plan to get back in contact with her this week and remind her of that. As soon as I met her, I had this huge desire to help her and I know the gospel could bless her immensely. So we'll see.
That afternoon, all four of us went to see Mike Smith, who I told Sister King we HAD to go visit this week. He's been investigating the church and attending for almost 2 years now, and has progressed but there's no baptism date. I felt like Nacho Libre, wondering, "Why have you not been bap-TIZED?!" Since no one seemed to be encouraging him to actually commit, I felt like he needed to become a priority again. Sister Pollock was actually one of his favorite missionaries, so it was really powerful to have her there, and at the end of our visit, she was like, you know what you need to do, it's WHEN you do it, and left him with the commitment of finding the answer of when. We need to follow-up with him.
The exchanges was a good experience, and in evaluations, I was told that I'm the kind of person that energizes others, and was really gung-ho and fearless about talking to people and going to knock doors. I do want to do more finding and tracting, but Sister King and I haven't. After pouring through our area book and teaching records, I've realized that for the most part, we really need new people and we're wasting a ton of time. Any ideas for finding people that aren't straight out of Preach My Gospel?
Sunday was Stake Conference, which was an hour away in New Albany. That was weird to have to drive so far. It was good though, and actually all the missionaries in the stake had to sing Redeemer of Israel. That was actually kind of fun, though I'm not the choir type, and towards the end of the program, the presiding 70 called us up to do it again, haha.
Yesterday we visited Charlotte Lavendar, a less-active. She's this old black lady who I instantly loved, and she cracks me up!! In her opening prayer she was like, "Bless these little ladies that come to see me!" in her accent and I just loved it. We read the Book of Mormon with her and visited. Last night after our dinner appointment we visited a woman named Roberta in a nursing home. She reminds me so much of Betty, like an adopted grandmother!! She's wonderful and she looks forward to us coming.
I'm almost out of time, so I'll end here.
Love,
Sister Petersen
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