Christmas Week - Part 2

Happy New Year everyone! (almost)

Christmas was pretty nice, I'm surprised I wasn't homesick being in a new random town the past couple weeks and whatnot. There was no specific instruction given for the morning, so we got to just hang out and open all of our packages. Thanks everyone for the cards and wishes! And yes Mom, the sweater and skirt fit perfectly, it was SO AWESOME to have new clothes! Members took care of us here, we received a ton of stuff from them too. The family we ate Christmas Eve dinner with gave us each a bag that was FULL of Ghiradelli and Toblerone chocolate. We stuck it all in the freezer, so our diet doesn't consist of just chocolate every day, haha. But oh my goodness, if I'm given apple or pumpkin pie one more time, I may die. Never thought I would be burned out on pumpkin pie especially, haha. 

For the rest of Christmas, we were invited to lunch at a non-member family's home who likes the missionaries, and we're going to see if we can teach them in a few weeks. Then we got to Skype home (it was SO nice!!!!!!! So much fun), and ate ANOTHER holiday dinner/meal (the third one in 2 days). The rest of the evening was spent taking treats (we cleaned out most of the cookies in our apartment, haha) to all the less-active families in our area. 

After our all-day mission Christmas devotional/party, P-day, Christmas Eve, then Christmas, it was a little depressing to go back to the regular grind of things! But we met a potential investigator's boyfriend (???), Chris, who took a Book of Mormon and is really interested to read it and find out more. Aside from that, not much has happened in the scheme of missionary work with the holidays and Sister King being sick all week. 

I was a *little* disappointed that there was no White Christmas, but perhaps there will be a White New Year? The temperatures just dropped in the past day or two, so it could totally snow. The sun is actually out though today, which is a miracle. I've never experienced so many dark and gloomy days in my entire life!!!

Have a great week!

Love, 

Sister Petersen]

Pictures: 

#1: All the missionaries that have served in Lewis Center this past year, with the Carter family. This was from last week at the Christmas Devotional.

#2: The cookies I decorated at our district activity last week. And yes, one of those is a Ninja-bread man. It's a real thing.

Christmas Week

The picture was taken by a ward member that loves the sister missionaries -- she has a front table with pictures of all the ones who have passed through her home.  Awesome!

 

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Hey everyone, 

It's finally Christmas this week! The great thing about that is that our mission-wide Christmas Devotional was yesterday in Dublin, and it was SO much fun to see everyone in the mission! We mostly listened to a ton of special musical numbers and performances, had a white elephant gift exchange, and a big fancy lunch that was organized by the Lewis Center ward. It was so awesome to see some of the ward members I left! Unfortunately I forgot my camera today but we took some pictures with the Carters of all the missionaries that have served in Lewis Center this past year, I'll send them next week. For the last hour of the schedule, we put on the musical devotional program and I sung in the choir (imagine that!). It felt awesome to be surrounded by such great "family" out here, since this is my first year not being home for Christmas!

Not too much else to report on in Hilliard- we were on bikes, and we're lucky to get the car on Christmas Eve, so we can visit a lot of people this week. I finally got over being sick, but then a day later Sister King got really sick, so not much has been done the past few days. It got really cold again last week, but now I'm questioning if a White Christmas is even possible- how depressing is that, since this is my one opportunity to experience that! But it's been REALLY dark and gloomy and I've only seen the sun twice in the past 2 weeks. 

Something funny though is that I've met a couple people here who know a lot about San Diego. One of the members we had dinner with, Brother Lewis, served in the Carlsbad Mission, but served in Scripps Ranch, Miramar, and Fallbrook (he knows the MacDonalds!). And I found the Lundberg's son, who is Brother Young in Hilliard. During ward council he was like, what- I lived in the Penasquitos 3rd ward! So that was cool.

Can't wait to Skype home in two days! Be on by 12:10 Pacific time!

Love, 

Sister Petersen

"Hilliard: Real People, Real Possibilities"

Oh hey.

So the big news of the week is that Sister McCarty and I got doubled-out, meaning that we were BOTH transferred out of Lewis Center. I was slightly surprised that I was leaving, but in the few days leading up to it, I knew I needed to go. However, we were disappointed that we wouldn't be in comfortable Lewis Center for Christmas, and that we would miss Laura coming to church on Sunday. We had never had ANYONE at church, until 3 days after we left. But we heard that Laura came with her 9 year old son, Jonathan, and we're hoping they get baptized at some point!

In the final days of Lewis Center, I had two flat tires, two days in a row. A member had patched up my tube the first time it happened, and gave it back to us the next morning. When we were out later that day, we had been out 15 minutes and my tire was flat again. Our ward mission leader and his wife picked us up since he has a truck, and we figured out that there was still the TINIEST splinter in my tire that had re-punctured the tube. The day had a better ending, as we made buckeyes with a less-active family and had a good lesson with Laura (which ended up being the last). 

I've been out for 10 months and I'm already in my fourth area. I was sent to Hilliard, another suburb of Columbus, on the west side. It looks like a mix of Westerville and the lower part of Lewis Center. I was kind of praying that I would be sent to the ghetto after serving in Lewis Center, but it was not meant to be (yet!). It's another car-sharing area and we get on bikes starting tomorrow. We currently have no investigators, which is not new to me, but there have been several baptisms here in the past several months, so there's hope. This ward is full of OSU medical and dental students and their young families, but also older people too (we actually have people to visit and give service to!!!!). My new companion is Sister King, who is the cousin of my trainer, the first Sister King. She's been out only a transfer longer than me, and is from Arizona/Utah. How crazy that I get two Sister Kings as companions....

The past week has been quite a whirlwind. I arrived in Hilliard sick (again) and exhausted, and it just felt like the weirdest transfer of my mission. What was incredible though is when we took a recent convert, Jo Ann (this super sweet old black lady, wonderful!) to the temple for her to do baptisms for the dead, guess who I saw? Steven! The Westerville sisters brought him to do baptisms for the first time as well! It was the coolest experience! After he did baptisms, he was just beaming and the Spirit just radiated from him! It's good to know that he and Tony are being stellar new members. 

Yesterday we had an all-day meeting with Elder Perkins from the 70, which is why P-day was switched to today. It was very inspiring and was everything I needed to hear. Of course it was also great to see half of the mission as well. 

Love, 

Sister Petersen

Pictures: All of our stuff lined up and ready to be transferred! Moving the bike was a pain, especially because our Hilliard member who took us home brought her kids and a recent convert, and no bike rack, so we really had to get creative. Also, I originally left behind the Christmas tree you sent me, BUT, the new Lewis Center sisters brought it to me at the big meeting yesterday, hooray!

Bikes..... adfjkl;jklafh!!!!!!!

Hey!

Mom and Dad, I can tell you actually remembered it was transfer week, hence why my inbox is almost empty today (not to guilt-trip you or anything, haha). HOWEVER, for some strange reason, we were actually told to go email today even though P-day isn't until Wednesday this week. 

Unfortunately, when we pulled our bikes out of the garage today that Tim and Linda are letting us use, my front tire was completely blown out, which makes no sense since it hasn't moved for over a week. We actually had places to go this afternoon so we didn't have time to figure it out, but I'm assuming I'll need to go get a new tire, who knows where. Words can't even describe how ticked off I was, I may have scared Sister McCarty a bit, haha. Luckily we pulled rides together instantly to move us around today for our various activities and appointments. 

Last week had its ups and downs- we had a great lesson with Laura, but most of the time people were pretty rude to us. Laura is so amazing that she committed to go to church this Sunday, when she seemed hesitant at first. She also told the member that we brought with us that she was having a bad day when we first knocked on her door, but she felt the Spirit and so she kept inviting us back. Incredible.

We had a humbling experience this morning. Our Relief Society president took us up to see a recent convert whose family has been struggling with various tragedies and situations. We sat down and filled out a food order for them and the ward leaders are finally seeing how bad their situation is. The ward is really wealthy, but there's that little corner of the area with the trailer park where this family lives. It was a year ago that Taylor, Hayley and I went to work at the bishop's storehouse, and it was cool to see how that is actually implemented in someone's lives that I know. The Church has really got it together.

We've spent more time with the members this week, going around to talk to them about the "He is the Gift" initiative, and committing them to "share the gift" by sharing the video and giving out the pass-along cards. We also went to the ward Christmas party the other night, which was fun. They did something different this year and had a "family dance party" for the last part. It was actually really successful and we met a few non-members as well. But when they played, "I'll be Home for Christmas," Sister McCarty and I looked at each other like, WHYYYYYYYYYYYY?!?

Good news is, we got a ton of emails regarding the Christmas season, and I will get to Skype you on Christmas!! Woohoo!

Love,

Sister Petersen

Thanksgiving Week

Hey everyone, 

Thanksgiving was actually pretty nice as a missionary! The day before we had our dinner appointment that was combined with a pie party with other ward members. On Thursday, it snowed a little in the morning so we headed out later (and what missionary goes tracting on Thanksgiving morning?!). We had our dinner in the afternoon at a member's home, and the food was really good though I'm not a Thanksgiving dinner person at all. Later they dropped us off at a former investigator's house for another get-together, and we didn't eat anything there but were sent home with 3 take-out boxes of food. The former investigator was AWESOME and talked to all her friends about who we are and what we did; we didn't have to do anything but show up! We did her dishes though (because there was a TON), and that amazed everyone there. We also did dishes at the Sorensens (the member family we ate with earlier), so it felt like we did a million dishes that day. But that's ok, it was a great day! Mo, the former investigator, drove us home afterwards in her friend's Mini Cooper. It was my first time riding in one, and I still really want one of those cars some day, haha. 

We did a lot of biking this week, and it wasn't as cold this week but still in the 30s and 40s. The weather is so weird, yesterday it was over 60 degrees and today it's back down to 37. But it's December now so I legitimately want snow, we're actually hoping it comes again this week!!

We had a specialized training this week about the "He is the Gift" Christmas initiative. If you haven't heard of it yet, go to christmas.mormon.org, and watch the video! It's really good! Also, for those who get the Ensign magazine, use those pass-along cards that are attached to this month's issue!! Sister McCarty and I got 250 of those, and the goal is to talk to 10 people every day about it. We hit our goal on Saturday from knocking doors, so that was a good start!

As a mission now, we are also doing 3 hours of family history each week. Sister McCarty and I went on Family Search and we were like, we have NO idea what we're doing..... (and I took two Sunday school family history classes at BYU.... how embarrassing...). So we're winging it. BUT, I found out that I've descended from several King Henry's of England, along with other royalty going back to Denmark, Normandy, Norway, Finland, and even Turkey in the first century (and that was just in one family line). It's cool stuff. 

In other good news, OSU beat Michigan on Saturday (go Bucks!). The bad news is that we had NOTHING to do that afternoon! However, before having nothing to do, we finally taught Lenn's again! Plan of Salvation.... good stuff.... we extended baptism and he said he was thinking of getting baptized soon. We just need to get him directed to being baptized in our church, and not by his current pastor haha. 

Lewis Center is quite the place. In search of things to do, we biked to the township hall as recommended by a member to ask for service opportunities in the community. The lady at the front desk said there were none around. What kind of town is this?!

Have a great week!

Sister Petersen

 

PS: We made gingerbread houses today at a district activity!