Chicken heads and such

Feb 29^th

Hey mom!! :) 

This week has been aaaammaaaazzzinnng  I got a new companion! Her name is Sister Stosich :) she's basically just the best human being. Her coming here is definitely an answered prayer. I'm so excited to start working with her in helping this area and these people :) It was really hard to say goodbye to Elder Borgholthaus and Elder Godfrey because they are both changing zones, so I probably won't see them for a little while,. This week has been full of goodbyes and hellos. We met with a lot of less actives, and saw a LOT of miracles. The biggest one was that Kelly came to all three hours of church this week, AND helped us teach gospel principles :) it was so super amazing. She bore her testimony, and the spirit was so strong. She hasn't been to all three hours of church for about a year. So it was awesome to have her there. :) We went out and contacted less actives for 6 HOURS with the Warrens on Saturday, cause we were out of miles and there were a lot of people we wanted to see:) We only got in 3 solid lessons with people that day, but it was still awesome:) Oh..maybe I should mention.. Tuesday...I chopped off a rooster's head. I'm not joking.  hahahahaa I really did! The Arndt's (members who have a farm) invited us out to help them "bump off" some of their chickens and they had me and Sister Jenson help them! I didn't get any pictures unfortunately, but Sister Jenson got a video. I'll have to show you guys one day. :)  the sad thing was, the head didn't come off with the first cut of the axe, so I had to do it over. like. 5 time, horrible! And you're supposed to jump back right as you chop because the blood squirts everywhere, but I was focused on trying to get it's dumb head off so my nice dress was splattered with blood. It was really fun to try and explain that to the less active member we went out to dinner with right afterwards. :) but yes. It's been a good week. hahaha I'll definitely send pictures next week of me and my new comp and things. :) ah. well. I love you guys! I'm prayin for ya :) Hurrah for Israel! 

-Sister Peterson

March 7th

Mommmy!! :) :) :)

Hey thank you for the long update today:) you know how you said it's been super warm in Utah lately? It's been crazy warm here too..like..right now it's 67 degrees. ..o_0 crazy. But it's been nice, cause everyone is outside where we can talk to them :) haha this week has been amazing:) The biggest miracle we saw this week I think though was that we invited our investigator, Lynn, to be baptized and she accepted! :) She wants us to teach her foster children as well so that they can be baptized. :) We were quite enlightened earlier this week when we went to dinner with some members, and the father of the family asked us how the work is going. We told him that we've been trying to find new people to teach, but that it's been hard. Then he asked us how we felt about tracting, and if we expected any miracles while tracting. We both were pretty honest with him, and told him we didn't really expect any. He told us something that really stuck with me. He said something to the effect of, "If you don't hope to see any miracles while you tract, then you won't. Hope is faith, and if you don't have any faith, then you won't be successful in the work." that kind of helped motivate us in the work I think..so we went tracting a lot this week and had some interesting experiences xD haha our mission has a goal of teaching 4,000 people about the first vision before Easter, so we've been trying diligently to help the mission in this goal. We taught a girl named Vanessa who is a worker at Subway, the first vision while we were paying for our food :) haha it was awesome. Sister Stosich and I hit our 9 month mark this week! :) so of course we celebrated with frozen yogurt ;) it was awesome. :) personal miracle this week was that yesterday, my old ward mission leader from the Manitowoc ward, Brother Kleiber and his wife came to the Fond Du Lac ward for church!! :D His sister and her family are members here, so they were visiting. It was so super cool to see them. I legit had a heart attack when they walked in. Sister Stosich can attest. :)  it's been a really good week. :) I'm so grateful to be serving here in this ward. I love these people, I'm so so blessed. :) Love you all! have an awesome week! Hurrah for Israel! :) 

-Sister Peterson

March 14^th

Hey mom!! :D 

We had a very interesting week this week. I'm not quite sure if I can sum it up into words. We had zone conference this week, and it was really long, but we learned a whole lot:) It's always good to hear from President and Sister Cutler. They have so much love for us missionaries, and they're such good examples for us. We saw a lot of miracles while we were contacting this week, and it was kinda funny cause we literally..no jokes..contacted 6 Angie's in one day. 6. haha I swear everyone and their dog is named Angie.  

Yesterday was really super cool, cause Sister Stosich had the awesome idea to bring brownies to a less active member we've been trying to get into contact with, and so..we finally did:) the Elders came with us and brought them ice cream. I think they were a bit overwhelmed having 4 missionaries just pop in on them and bring them food, but it was awesome:) we had an awesome discussion with them..which was something I was definitely not expecting. I guess I just need to have more faith right? ;) haha okay okay I think that's all the serious miracles we saw this week. Now here's a semi-funny story. For your general amusement ;)

We were going to go see our investigator April right? We had just barely parked in the parking lot of her apartment complex and finished our prayer before getting out of the car, then this hispanic dude came up to my door and started talking to us in spanish! i don't know what he wanted he was talking wayyyy fast. He didn't know any english, but im pretty sure he was drunk so he probably wouldn't have made any sense anyway. I tried to speak in broken spanish to him and it didn't work so well, but I told him we were missionaries and he understood so that's what matters right? It was kinda funny trying to communicate with this random dude who came up to our car. His friend was in this truck near by and said (in spanish), "hey does the jueda (white girl) know spanish? and the dude was like, "yeah she does!" and i was like what no I don't!  haha his name was Jose. but yeah. it was interesting, yeah. It's been an interesting week. :) I love you guys! You're always in my prayers:) Next week's email will be much more detailed and will hopefully make more sense. :)

Hurrah for Israel!

-Sister Peterson :) 

March 21

Hey!! :D 

this week was. Quite the week. :)

We were so busy! We had our ward Easter activty on Saturday, and we spent a majority of the week going around and handing out flyers to less actives and investigators :) haha it was awesome. I think it's safe to say that more non members and less active members were there than actual active members.  Sister Stosich had to dress up and act as Mary the mother of James, and I had to be Mary Magdalene for a part of the activity. It was pretty cool, and I had the opportunity to bear my testimony of the Savior at the end of it, which was super cool:) we were glad it was a success. Yesterday I had to give a talk on the Plan of Salvation. I decided to write it about how the Plan of Salvation was made possible through the Savior. I was so super nervous, and I pulled a Josh and wrote my talk while I was sitting up on the stand. It was cool cause I wanted to read the lyrics to "I Stand All Amazed" during my talk, and right as I was thinking about putting it in the bishop announced that we would be singing "I Stand All Amazed" ..what are the odds?  I have no idea what I said, but I hope that something I said helped someone else. I was grateful for the opportunity I had to speak..after it was over and done with of course ;) haha well. i'm sorry, this update is a bit short. I hope you all have an amazing Easter, and that you take the time to think about the significance of it. It's been a very spiritual experience for me as I prepare for Easter to think about the Savior and his endless and perfect love for all of us. If you haven't already, you should totally watch the new Easter video. :)followhim.mormon.org And if you have some extra time..loook up the Easter video from last year as well. It's definitely my favorite Easter video the church has put out. Here's the link: https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2015-04-1010-he-lives-celebrate-easter-because-jesus-christ-lives?lang=eng   Have a great week you guys! Love you so much:) Hurrah for Israel!

-Sister Peterson

March 28

Hey mom!! :D

Interesting week:) We have eaten so much candy and chocolate this week it's ridiculous. We both woke up this morning with headaches.. withdrawals?  not complaining though. Easter is a good excuse to pig out on junk food ;) 

We had an awesome Easter, we went caroling! yeah you read that right. Caroling. It was fun, people weren't super nice, but it was still fun. :) We saw a lot of miracles this week! The biggest miracles were probably that one of our investigators who moved to Texas about 2ish months ago moved back, and wants us to teach her again! :) ha and we set a baptism date with our investigator Lynn for her to work towards:) Lynn is so cool. She always has the best questions, and she really likes what we've been teaching her. She has a couple of hangups for sure, but we're excited to keep working with her and helping her progress :) Lori, our recent convert, taught the lesson in Gospel Principles this week!! :D and she did an amazing job. It was about the Atonement, and it was so powerful and insightful. I'm so impressed by her and by her spiritual strength. She's amazing. :) those are really the only interesting things I can think of that happened this week. It's been a good week though :) I'm grateful for the opportunity to serve here in Fond Du Lac. I love these people:) Have a great week errybody! Hurrah for Israel!

-Sister Peterson 

April 4

Hey mom :) 

This week has been amazing!! :D there's so much that's happened.. I guess I'll just have to start from the beginning:)

Monday was a good day.. P day..always awesome:) haha 

Tuesday we had district meeting! :) It was a testimony meeting..the spirit in that room was so strong as my fellow missionaries testified. There is little in this world that is more sacred than hearing pure unadulterated testimony. Especially from seemingly inexperienced 19-20 year olds. The spiritual maturity in these missionaries around me is astounding, it really makes me want to work to step up my game a bit :) It was a huge miracle to be present for that meeting:) After district meeting we went to the Arndt's farm and pet their guard llama..yes you heard me right guard llama, and fed one of their brand new baby goats:) haha it was awesome:) then we drove up to Neenah for exchanges!! :)

Wednesday I spent the day with my amazing Sister Training Leader, Sister Quist. We spent almost the entire day doing a religious survey and talking with college students across the street from campus. :) it was awesome. Driving around, we went to contact a less active in Appleton, and we drove past Donald Trump doing a political thing? I guess? Interesting….there were a lot of protesters there. Sister Quist is amazing, we didn't get a pic this week but we'll get one at zone training tomorrow and I'll have to send it next week:) 

Thursday we were out of miles so we set up our appointments for the week, weekly planned, and had an AWESOME comp inventory. Guys, I have the best companion ever. She's so cool:)

Friday was a crazy busy day, but we were able to have awesome discussions with less actives so that was awesome:)

Saturday we said goodbye to the Sabels..they're moving!! :( It was really last minute, they didn't tell us until recently..so that was kinda lame. But...we got to watch conference!! :D I loved conference. Every talk was just. Ah. So great:)

Sunday was great cause of conference as well. :) We got to watch it with a lady named Georgene who just moved back into the ward. She's amazing!! :) ah it was so cool watching conference with her. I don't think I can pick a favorite talk from conference, that's too hard, but I think one of my favorite quotes was from President Monson's, "May we choose the harder right, over the easier wrong." :) I'm so grateful this week especially for inspired leaders who give us council and guidance that we can apply to our lives, to make us better. :) I love this gospel, I love these people that I'm able to serve/serve with and I'm so blessed. I love you guys!! I hope you have an amazing week:) Hurrah for Israel!

-Sister Peterson