September 3, 2013 Post

Hello amazing family!! Sounds like you all had an amazing last week, especially David and Tasha (pics please). This was a great week for me as well!! Since we are opening the area, we do lots and lots of tracting! After P day we had an appointment with a less active lady. She has a great testimony, but she never comes to church because her mom is sick and she visits her mom on Sundays. My goal is to get her back to church before I leave this area. Later that night we actually had an appointment with a girl we had met on Saturday, but she wasn't home. There were these 2 adorable little kids in the yard next door and the little boy was like "are you from a church?" and I was like "yep! do you go to church?" he was like, "no, but I still believe in God." how cute is that!? it made me smile!! After tracting for a little bit, we went to visit a less active woman who lives in an apartment complex that is probably the most ghetto of our area. We went and had to knock on a bunch of doors because we didn't have her apartment number. it was a little scary but we finally found her apartment and her husband was home and told us to come back the next day. We ended the night talking to a man in a courtyard of an apartment complex. he is in his 40s or 50s i'd say and believes god is good but hasn't found the right fit as far as churches go. We invited him to come to church on Sunday. I love talking to people about church and about God because it's amazing how many people truly believe in Him. It kind of restores my faith in humanity. Tuesday we had District Meetings at the Stake Center. This is where we do a bunch of practice teaching. Being around all the other missionaries was so much fun. Tuesday afternoon we had an appointment set up, but when we got to his apartment he said he had to work. He had read parts of the Book of Mormon so we answered some of his questions and then tried to reschedule an appointment but didn't get anything really solid. He's in school and working right now so it's hard to get a solid time with him. We had dinner with the a family that night. They are an adorable older couple in our ward. All of her kids have served missions. She also served as a trial 19 year old mission in the "Western state mission". I didn't even realize they had those!! How cool is that?? In the middle of dinner she told us how her husband isn't a member, which we were suprised by because he offered the dinner prayer exactly how a member would offer it and knew like everything about missions and the church! She met him while she was teaching in Germany and he was in the Airforce there. It would be awesome if we could get him to church! After dinner we visited another family. the wife is the Young Women's President here. She is such a cute lady and her family is great! Her husband is a convert to the church. He was introduced to the gospel by one of his friends in the Marines and when he got home from one of his tours, he called a church building and a random member answered (it was a Tuesday) and he told the man he wanted to be baptized. The member found one of the Bishopric Members and 9 days later he was baptized! Tuesday night we had our appointment witht the another family. They are a really great couple. The wife converted about a year ago and her husband has been a member his whole life. They haven't been coming to church much lately so we are trying to reactivate them. When we left their apartment, there was a huge german shepard police dog and a bunch of cops trying to get into the neighbors apartment...not going back there at night again haha! Wednesday was pretty much exactly what I needed! I had a new missionary expectations meeting. I drove the car down to Centerville, which is about 30 minutes away. Virginia driving is scary!! I was able to see a Sister from the MTC and some other sisters I knew in the MTC so that was fun. President talked to us a lot about fearing God more than fearing man, which was something I was really struggling with. It's not like I cared if people thought I was weird, I just didn't want to offend the people we talk to and once they start seeming like they are going to reject us I would just kind of back off. So that really inspired me that I needed to be bold and not care what people think. We had dinner with a ward family that night who are a younger family in the Ward. They have a little 2 year old boy, he is soo cute! The wife is really excited to have sisters here and wants to work with us a lot. After dinner we went and found people. I loved it so much more than earlier in the week! I was able to be bold and to not get disappointed in myself when people rejected us. Thursday we didn't anticipate to be a very good day because we had zero appointments scheduled. That meant from 1-5 and 6-9 we'd be out tracting. I was soo nervous. It started out pretty rough because no one is home at 3 o clock in Virginia. Then this grouchy old lady cussed us out, but I was able to laugh about it and her next door neighbor was a really nice woman so that made me feel better too. We met a younger guy who seems really interested in the church. He said his parents are atheist and wouldn't like us coming to the house but that he'd like us to teach him at the church! I'm excited for that. We were tracting at these town homes up the street from us so we just walked there and by the end of the tracting, I was wet with sweat all down my sides! IT WAS SO GROSS!! But I was just like "YEAH !! this is missionary WORK!" it was seriously so much fun. I had a really great language study idea this week. I have been reading the Portguese Book of Mormon out loud. I think it's been helping me. Friday was amazing as well. We go to an addiction recovery training class once a month taught by Senior Missionaries. I learned a lot there just about getting the Lord's help in our missionary work and about relying on the Lord through our trials. Then we had our weekly planning session and I was able to talk to my companion.... We set some really good goals and I'm excited to see how they'll turn out this week. We tracted for 2 hours after that and didn't really meet anyone, but it was fun. After dinner we tracted at these apartments and when we got out of the car we heard this woman cussing and screaming and then this guy walked out of an apartment with his friend and was cussing and screaming and then the woman came out on the phone to the police and was yelling at them and telling them to get to her apartment..it was crazy. So of course I was watching and then she hung up the phone and started yelling at me. That's when things turned from funny to scary for me. So we just went to the other side of the complex and started tracting. That's where we met the Bench Boys! They are GREAT. They are a group of 4 70 year old men who sit on this bench at their complex every night. We talked to them about the gospel and they all told us how they'd had these experiences recently where they felt they should go back to church. We left them with Book of Mormons and will return to teach them more this Friday! They are so fun. When we went back to our car, the cops were at the apartment with the screaming lady, and luckily we didn't have to deal with her. We decided to find a guy and make sure he wanted to go to church still. He is quite the character. He kept telling us how great we looked and that we looked like we had just come from a beauty pageant. I don't know what beauty pageants he's been to, but I'm pretty sure 2 sweaty Sister Missionaries who have been tracting for 3 hours don't win beauty pageants! He couldn't come to church this week but he said he will next week! After that we tried to visit Evan, who wasn't home, but his roomate was. he is AWESOME! I had the most powerful teaching experience with him. Being on my mission I've gained such a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon. It just becomes more and more interesting the more I read it. I was able to testify to him of the Book of Mormon and we invited him to church, but he goes to a church in DC with his family, so he has to work some things out there before he comes to church with us. We ended the night by visitinga family. They are so cute! Only the kids were home. the boys are 10 and 12 and they both just got baptized last month. Their mom has been a member for a long time but just recently got active again. They are from Chile! They have 3 daughters, the oldest is a member but is moving to San Diego to live with her husband. There is a 16 year old and a 14 year old girl. The 16 year old had a friend over so we didn't talk to her but we talked to her alot. She is going to come to church next week! She's an amazing girl. When we told the Bishop that we talked to her he was really surprised because she won't even come downstairs when the Elders are there. I loved talking with her. Saturday was hard because my companion's back was hurting really bad so we had to stay inside til our dinner appointment at 5. We had dinner with the Bishop and his family. They are so awesome! They gave us a bunch of names to go and see and after dinner. She really wanted to gain a testimony and know the church was true but she never felt that. So we talked to her almost all night and she is a really amazing person. I hope that through meeting with us she will be able to finally gain that testimony for herself. Sunday was Fast Sunday. We weren't expecting any of our investigators to come to church because they were all busy this weekend. Church starts at 11 and at about 10 Sunday morning we got a call asking where our church was. We hurried and got to the church and there we found 2 guests . We had given one a mormon.org card earlier in the week and he decided to come check the place out. It was awesome!! Everyone in the ward was so excited to have new people there. I couldn't even count the number of people who came and introduced themselves! It was funny because they are Baptist so they were doing a lot of "amens" during the testimony meeting and prayers. It was GREAT. They said they want to come back to church another week! In Sunday School I met the husband of the woman from Brasil!!!!! And then I finally got to meet her! She is soo so sweet and I got to talk to her for awhile and I totally understood what she was saying and she understood me too. We are going to start teaching her soon. Apparently the missionaries in Brasil were really dumb and they would either not show up to the appointments with her or only come for like 5 minutes! I was so excited to speak Portuguese and to realize that I haven't lost it at all! P day felt super weird not emailing home! It was a good day though. We did zone sports at the Stake Center. We were the only Sisters there and the only sport to play was Basketball, so at first i wasn't excited. Then my competetive side came out and I almost won the game of bump we were playing. I only had one more Elder to beat and I would of won! Oh well, next time for sure! We tracted pretty much all day after that. Tracting at 8 PM is NOT fun!! I was so scared we were going to wake someone up and get yelled at. But no one yelled at us so it was fine. It was a great week and I'm sure this week will be even better. I am learning so much about myself and about the gospel every day. I love meeting all these new people and sharing with them what I KNOW is true! Thanks for all the wonderful support and know that I love you all and pray for you all! Have a wonderful week familia! eu amo voces!! love, Sister Pehrson