6 Weeks Left!

Hey everyone, 

So it's down to the final transfer of my mission, and Sister Fox and I are staying in Beavercreek for a third transfer! The hard thing about that is that we both go home in 6 weeks, so motivation is wayyyy down, but we'll make it good as we finish out our time.

Several good things have been happening. We've done a few more service projects, one of which included gardening work and we got to drive a riding lawn mower for the first time ever! We are now true Ohio-ans. Think our front yard at home is big? That's nothing compared to people's lawns in Ohio, I've never seen so many riding lawn mowers in my life. 

Between teaching a couple of lessons, we have done some other fun things as well. We spent the end of our evening one night at this park with the coolest slide ever. And today, we went to the National US Air Force museum with a couple of members and the Fairborn sisters. You guys would really dig this place, I think it's the biggest air and space museum in the country, and we will have to go through it when we come back to Ohio. 

Last week was our mission-wide conference in preparation for getting iPads. It was different than what we expected, and very principle-based, especially about the Atonement. It was really good and I got a lot of things out of it that had nothing to do with technology. However, we still have not been given the iPads yet- we will receive them in a week at zone meeting and be trained further on setting things up. Sister Fox and I will literally get a month with them before our missions are over, haha.

Also, there was a tornado that touched down just outside of our area yesterday, which ripped off the building of a gym and flipped a few cars. What's funny is that we were less than a 20 minute drive away, and we had no idea that there was even a tornado watch, but we got some good rainstorms out of it, haha. 

Have a great week!

Love, 

Sister Petersen

Pictures:

There was this plane called "The Fiery Ginger IV"- obviously needed a picture of that one. 

And the Air Force is spot-on, "return with honor?" "self before service?" Their slogans were totally ideas from a Mormon 

 #6: Me in front of a Beavercreek sign/painting. It was slightly awkward as this was outside of an alcohol carry-out place. But we needed a picture of it!  

#7 and #8: Evening at the park! (these are only 2 of the many that we took, haha)

 

Brief Review of the Week

As you can imagine with 8 1/2 weeks to go, most of our Skype session was spent talking with Whitney about plans for returning to college and her return home.  We had some fun questions such as "What's the worst/best thing you've been served to eat?" and "What was your worst/best door knock experience?" She reminded us of the man who fainted face first right in front of them after opening the door -- that was right at the start of her mission!  She looked and sounded great!

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Hey everyone, 

Since I got to Skype home yesterday for a good amount of time, I'm just going to be brief in listing off what happened the past week. We've been out working and trying to find people to teach obviously, but in other news it's been a really good week. We me this lady named Barbara on the street, and though she wasn't interested in learning, she called us right away for us to do some free manual labor, haha. So on Wednesday on Saturday we went over and did some of the most random yard work I've done on my mission. But we think it's softening her heart towards us a lot and so we'll see. Missionary work tends to be a very slow process, we also taught two less-actives this week, one's a single mom and the other is a 22 year old guy. We've been making some progress with Amy though, the single mom. 

Zone conference was this week and it was awesome. I actually had fun for once doing some role-plays with other missionaries, haha! But what was really good is that President Daines discussed with us the importance of understanding the Atonement more and digging deep through all the layers of it. There's a lot of different powers of the Atonement, like cleansing, healing, redeeming, sanctifying, etc. What I liked the most is how we talked about the ENNOBLING power of the Atonement. Of course there's the enabling power that helps us move past our own abilities and strengths, but the ennobling power is what helps us to eventually become NOBLE. We were sent to Earth to do something great and to become something great. My biggest takeaway from zone conference is to remember to look UPWARD and FORWARD to what we can become. Because we all have so much potential. 

Love you! Have a great week!

Sister Petersen

 

 

What would you know....Ipads!

Hey everyone,

Not too much to report this week. But at our zone meeting on Wednesday, we were told that we will be getting iPads at the end of this month in the mission. They're finally going to start testing it out in our mission! I wasn't sure whether to be mad or laugh at the fact that I only get to use one for the last month of my mission, haha!! Oh well, I'm still pretty excited, maybe it will help me stay interested in things my last transfer! 

Speaking of which, we also had interviews with President this week and I was able to get the adjustment made for my release date. So I am officially coming home on July 10th!!! Woohoo!! Now that it's May, going home seems more and more real! Weird!

Anyways, here's a picture of Sister Fox and I at the Astin's house for dinner last night. Their son is currently serving in Taylor's mission in Argentina, and he sent his mom a picture of him and Taylor at a zone conference (which I forwarded from her to you guys). That was really fun. 

Oh, and missionary moment highlight of the week was that Isaiah blessed the sacrament yesterday! Unfortunately though he has also moved to a new apartment that is just outside of our ward, and the mission... we're getting him to stay in this ward for a while since he's a new convert (and we want to teach him the new member lessons, haha). 

Love, 

Sister Petersen