Thursday, February 26, 2015

February

We are desperate to find people right now. It has been difficult since arriving here. One of the counselors of the mission came to Tena this week which was nice. The mission needs to know the situation here in Tena. Not sure what Tena´s future is.

This week we had a cool experience. One day we were contacting for a good two hours. We stopped and decided to say a prayer. It was a prayer with a lot of faith. Turns out God definitely answers prayers. About a half hour later we were walking and two girls called us over. They were both from the US. One of them has four friends on missions around the world and has always wanted to know more about the church. Pretty cool. Hopefully this week we will be able to teach her. Other than that it was a rough week.
 
Scriptures that have run through my mind this week : Jacob 2:18,19

Love you,
Elder Peterson

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Faith of February...Miracle of March

This week was alright. There were changes last Monday, so there are two new missionaries here in Tena. One from Mexico and one from Argentina. One finishes his mission this change and the other the next change. In total there are three missionaries in our district of 6 that are finishing their missions in the next month or two. So, there is always a lot of talk about home and stuff going on here. 

This week in Tena there have been a lot of parades and things like that because everyone has vacations, so the work has been going kind of slow this week. Carnival is a holiday they have here. It started Friday and ends Tuesday. It's basically a week of throwing water balloons and spraying foam at each other. People have tried to get us wet, most have failed. Also they do celebrate Valentines Day does exist here, so it was a week full of holiday. Which means people didn't have a whole lot of time to listen to missionaries, but we were able to find a little of success. 

We have been teaching a single mom that came to church last week. She is really good and asks a ton of questions always so our lessons with her are always really long. She has a lot of potential. We have really been looking for families to teach though. I want to find a family in this sector that has a lot of potential to be able to help this tiny branch. The branch lacks priesthood and converted families. I don't want to leave this sector until we can find and convert a family like that. We have also been working a lot with less active families and a few are progressing. We are teaching a less active family right now. They aren't married and the sister has a lot of fear of getting married because of problems they have. It was an interesting lesson because usually as missionaries we push people to get married no matter what. I realized that we have an influence in things that are eternal. The things we do in the mission will have eternal blessings or eternal consequences, not just for us but for the people we teach and counsel. 

As a mission we fasted this week. We are doing a small program as a mission that is called faith of February - miracle of March. As a mission we are going to read the Book of Mormon, do a service every week, study an attribute of Christ every week, and do a personal sacrifice. My personal sacrifice is going to be to fast every week. Hopefully, we will see the fruits this coming month. 
 
Love you so much! I hope you have a great week! This week I have gained a testimony of hope! We must have hope so the we do not get discouraged during the trials of life! I love and miss you.

Elder Peterson

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Cool story

Not a ton of exciting stuff happened this week. I don't have a lot of time but I wanted to share something cool that happened this week. I think it was Friday. We were contacting and we contacted all morning and on the way to lunch, someone stopped us and asked if we studied the bible.  We stopped and talked to him and made an appointment to visit him the next day. The next day we met him and went to a members house where we had a small lesson with him. He has made some mistakes in his life and is super, super humble and not sure where to go. After we finished the lesson he told us how he got kicked out of his house and then came here to live with his aunt. That day when we contacted him, he had been walking around all morning trying to talk to God and ask for guidance. When he saw us, he said that coincidences don't exist and that God must have sent us. Then he told us that it was like we read his mind. All the things we had taught were like we had spoke to his heart and knew exactly what he needed. He came to church with us the next day, but this week he leaves for Ambato, so he won't be staying here. It stinks for us, but we are happy that we had that experience. We also worked a lot this week with less active members and we had 11 come to church, which was awesome! 
 
We have had quite a few difficulties in this sector, all the missionaries of Tena have struggled. But we are working hard and little by little the branch is growing stronger. Also in our mission only the leaders have phones. But this week I became the first to have a phone that isn't a leader. Love you all. Have a great week!
 
Elder Peterson

Blessings

Well, I've completed nine months this week. The time has passed super fast. It was an interesting week and a successful week, so that was good. Starting from Monday...we got back to the house and changed and left to go pick up a family (we were going to do a family home evening with them). We were walking down the road and there was a car pulled over and they waived us down. By the way, people don't usually wave us down. We went over and they asked us to give a blessing to their son who was convulsing inside of the car. They aren't members of the church but they knew some missionaries about 20 years ago. So, we both leaned into one end of the car and I gave a small blessing. As soon as we finished, the boy calmed down and stopped convulsing. We talked to the family for a second. They live in Quito. Obviously, they have a lot of faith because the blessing worked. It was a cool experience. Then, we went with that family that we are teaching and did a family home evening. It was good. They came to church this week. It's a family of four. Tuesday morning I cut myself in the kitchen and it bled for a second, but it's healed now. Wednesday, we went to teach a family we have been working with but the appointment fell through. While we were walking out there, there was a tiny dirt road with one house and I felt that we should contact the house. We had walked by it plenty of times before, but this time I felt something. So, we went and knocked and a 19 year old kid answered the door. He's a less active member that just came from Guyaquil. The rest of his family members aren't members of the church. It was cool that we could find him. Hopefully we will be able to teach his family. Thursday and Friday were normal. Saturday we did a service. We painted the outside of a family's restaurant that we have been teaching. In the family, the little kids are all members of the church, but the parents aren't married, so they cant be baptized. The mom has been coming to church and wants to be baptized. The dad would never listen to the missionaries before, but he has listened to us a few times now and he came to church this week with his wife! 

We've been working really hard here with less actives and investigators. Since we got here the attendance has been 35-40. This week there were 71 people at church. We almost didn't have room for everyone. Hopefully it can keep it up so that Tena can have a chapel someday!! That was pretty much our week. Hopefully the families we are teaching can progress. The work is good! 

Love you all, hope you have a good week! Listen to the spirit always. 
 
D&C 75:26,27, Alma 37:36,37

Faith

This week was a good week. We have been working our butts off without a ton of results. There have been a lot of difficulties in the sector and were trying to figure out the best way to sectorize still. Since we started this change, we have found 4 or 5 new families. Of those we are still working with two. Hopefully they will progress. They still haven't gone to church. One of the problems we've seen with our investigators, less actives, and members in our sector is that the church is really far away and you have to take a bus or taxi. They don't have money to pay for that. It's either work, put food on the table or spend the money to go to church. So, it has been a difficult thing for them to exercise their faith and make that sacrifice. The branches attendance hasn't improved much since we got here, only slightly. Hopefully these next couple weeks will be better. These last 3 weeks have flown by super fast.
 
This week we did a service project. I got sunburned again. Saturday we went to visit a family. This family lives about an hour and a half away from Tena. It's an older couple that got to know the church when they were in Spain for three months. They live out in the Amazon, and have a little farm more or less. Not the kind of farm you think of when someone says farm in the United States. They've been members for probably 12 years and have at the most not made it to church only five times. They have to take the bus at 5 in the morning. Sometimes they wait for hours until someone opens the church up. Sometimes they haven't had money to pay for the bus, so they take some things from the farm, fruits etc. and sell it while they are waiting for the bus. Then they make enough for the trip. They are very faithful. They showed us around their farm and I sent some pictures of that. Overall, it was a good week. 
 
The church is true. I love this gospel. 100% obedience equals 100% blessings. I hope you all have a great week! love and miss you, you're always in my prayers.

 


 

New Pictures

Lunch with new companion
Caught in a rain storm



One of the rivers

A bridge

View outside of apartment


Breakfast for the next few weeks!


Pretending to fish on Pday.





Up close with local monkey
 

Growth and Goals

This week has been good overall. We spent the first days trying to get to know the area. We got to meet a few members that live in the ward. There are two active member families in our sector, and two or three that are inactive. The ward had an attendance of 60-80 over the past year as an average. Right now it has been more like 30-50. There were 39 this Sunday. So obviously the branch is struggling here. We don't have a chapel. We hold meetings in a building. It has been a physically tiring week. We walk a lot because our sector is really big. We cook at home sometimes. My companion likes to cook a lot so that's cool. We've been doing a lot of contacting, and serving people where we can. We helped a bunch of people move the other day which was fun. We also had an interesting talk with a family. They told us a lot more than we needed to know. I realized that the world is a very messed up and disgusting place and that we are so blessed as a family. So very blessed! By the way, we have an awesome family if you haven't figured that out yet. We have so much fun together. I'm so grateful for the wonderful life you guys have provided for us.. So grateful! The mission has put a lot of things in perspective for me.  It's going by so fast. I have set a lot of goals for the new year, but overall as an unsaid goal I have the goal and hope that 2015 will be a year that I never forget, that changes my life a lot, where I become a true disciple of Christ. That's what I'm going for though. I've also realized that that is only accomplished through obedience. I've realized that obedience plays a big role in what we will or will not accomplish in life. 
btw my favorite scripture right now is Alma 27:18

Tena

We had changes. I'm in a place called Tena now. It is super hot here. It's like the farthest place out in the mission. It was a 5 hour trip today from Quito. I'm opening  a sector here with Elder Cruz, from Guayaquil. I'm senior companion. They just took all the missionaries out of these sectors so there are 6 of us now and we are all new. There hasn't been baptisms here for the last 3 months. It should be fun. They are starting from scratch though. I'm sweating so hard right now. Oh and we baptize in the river here which is awesome!!

Our apartment was disgusting when we got here. We spent the day cleaning all day, because we couldn't leave the house that day. It was a mission rule. It still smells bad, and water always leaks from the toilet, so we need to get that fixed somehow. The street doesn't have a name. It's on a dirt road.