After 4 months of being in Westerville, I'm finally seeing things happen in the past 2 weeks. After being a missionary for over 6 months, I also finally get to see someone be baptized that I taught. Tony, the investigator who is literally a blessing to us, is dead set on being baptized September 13. We had another lesson with him and he came to church with his girlfriend Kali (recent convert who's 22 and now one of my friends!!) yesterday. He felt like a million bucks, and knows that this is what he wants. While everyone is a child of God, it's humbling for me to see that we as missionaries are here to find the people that are PREPARED. Even though I get to be involved in teaching him from the beginning to the end, I feel like I haven't even done anything for this, because he's just so ready.
We went back last Monday night to teach our "African group" but only found Nancy at home. But we had a great first lesson with her, and then came back on Wednesday with the same member, Sis. Huffman, to teach the Plan of Salvation as well. She started reading the Book of Mormon and finds it all very interesting. She's 28, pregnant, and is currently just staying at home but is bored out of her mind, and misses being in Africa (Liberia). Yesterday Sis. Huffman had us, Nancy, and a member from the other ward who is from Ghana over for dinner. We watched the Restoration with them and set up another teaching appointment. I can't tell you what a relief it is to actually teach progressing investigators, I feel like I'm doing real missionary work for once. And I love Nancy, she's awesome.
We've done a lot of tracting this week though, it's been like our fall-back plan. We met a couple of interesting people who we're going to come back and talk to. When we're not tracting or teaching, I feel like I'm dying from the heat. Summer was mild until this past week or so, and now it's really hot and humid. Bugs also appeared out of nowhere, when walking around a neighborhood we were constantly smacking ourselves all over because we were literally being eaten alive. After riding our bikes to a less-actives house in the heat and then sitting down in air conditioning, my body shut down and I fell asleep instantly, no matter how hard I tried to stay awake. How embarassing, haha. It's supposed to be even hotter this week and drowning in sweat is really losing its appeal by this point in being on bikes. Those car repair guys are a bunch of liars!
Sister Malloy and I are chugging along, and I'm amazed at what a great missionary she is, she's very dedicated and wayyyyy more spiritual than I am! If I want to be a consecrated missionary, as our mission president stressed this week at zone conference, I have a long way to go, haha.
Random story. We were visiting a less-active's home on Saturday, the Finks. The wife is a member, and the husband, Joe, was baptized a long time ago but there's no record of it. Since he didn't stay involved with the Church, he felt like he was free to read even more additional "scripture" (aka false writings), and read to us for HALF AN HOUR from this book of Enoch that was apparently "revealed" to some guy in 1971 (we literally couldn't get out of there). Then he told us how the silver clouds in the sky were ships, and the star of Bethlehem was a mother-ship.... weird. Then he read us the name of our Heavenly Mother from that book of Enoch, and we KNEW it was false doctrine because that name will never be revealed to us on earth. It just goes to show that when you don't go to church, you start mixing with the philosophies of men. Stick with the true prophets and canonized scriptures!!!
Also, here's pictures of my district going to the Hoover Dam reservoir that's in between Westerville and New Albany. Very green, but also looks pretty flat in this area.
Love,
Sister Petersen
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