Impending Holiday Season

Hey,

This week was rather uneventful. It was freezing until Saturday, staying in the 20s and low 30s. And that windchill- dang!! But it didn't snow any more and now it's just really rainy. Today we actually went to the Columbus Zoo, since it's in Powell only 15 minutes away, and that was pretty fun. It was like a ghost town on a Monday in November! But we figured that it would be our best opportunity to go to the zoo at this point, since today it got into the 50s. It may be one of the best zoos in the nation, but still doesn't even compare to the world-famous San Diego Zoo! Every other one I go to seems super small in comparison! And it's weird for parts of the zoo to close during off-season, imagine that!

The bar is set pretty low for us in Lewis Center, it was the biggest deal that we had a member at a lesson with us, to teach Dan and Wes about prayer. That was the first member present lesson I've had in Lewis Center. We also taught Laura twice as well, which was a big deal because we've made it to the third lesson with her and I've never done that with someone I've found. I've only taught the Plan of Salvation about 3 times on my mission, so that lesson was kind of rough, haha. But Laura is incredible and is really serious about her gospel studying! She actually filled out all the questions at the back of the pamphlet and looked up the scriptures! I have never known an investigator who actually does that!! It will be a challenge to get her to church though, since she works at a flea market in west Columbus every weekend. But we really feel that if we get her to church she will be baptized, she said yes to our baptism extension this week. She is honestly such a miracle.

Our ridiculous story for the week is that we got locked out of our apartment. Our lock has been difficult to work with for a long time, but on Friday night we couldn't even get our key in all the way. Tim, the recent convert who lives by us, lubricated the door lock for us, but nothing worked. We found out the number for after-hours maintenance from him and his wife Linda, and waited in their apartment since it was 20 degrees outside. The maintenance guy showed up with a blowtorch, said our lock was frozen (even though it's been sticky for a long time), and started torching the door. It worked, and we got in our apartment close to 11 pm. That's officially the latest I have been out on my mission, haha. 

We had a cool moment on Saturday night. We were sitting in our car, hating life because we had nothing to do (I mean NOTHING, you can't/shouldn't even go tracting when it's later than 7 pm and dark), and Sister McCarty suggested we try seeing a family where the wife is less-active and struggling, because we hadn't seen them in a few weeks. It was our last hope before going in early. We got there exactly when the wife got home, and they welcomed us in and fed us dinner. Then they offered to take us with them to see "Fantasy of Lights," this Christmas light display up at Alum Creek that you drive through. They kept saying how glad they were that we came over, and the wife warmed up to us a lot more. The next day the husband left us a voicemail saying that he didn't know what prompting we had that caused us to drop by, but he was so glad that we followed it and told us to keep following those promptings. He said that we could come by anytime we felt like we should. That was really cool for us, and we knew that Heavenly Father was looking out for us as missionaries and also looking out for this family. 

This week isn't supposed to be too bad on our bikes, temperatures will be in the 40s and 50s, so I don't think we'll die (yet). We're also having Thanksgiving with a member family and were invited to a couple other parties/gatherings. So it should be good. It's a good thing we'll be biking that day, haha. 

Love you all!

Sister Petersen

Pictures from the zoo: The gorilla exhibit was definitely the best. They ran up against the glass and we got some great pictures. Had to take this one "Hear No Evil" haha. Also had lots of statue photo-ops.