Thanks so much for your emails this week! They always make my day :) It was another awesome week here!
On Tuesday morning we had zone training, which is where our zone leaders report what they learned at their meeting with the mission president. It was all about how we are a new zone and we are going to be different than the other zones. I've noticed a lot of times on my mission, especially in the beginning, where I have felt weird or uncomfortable because I know people are judging me or looking at me weird because of the dress I'm wearing and my name tag. We talked about how Christ was mocked and judged when He was on the earth, and that's just something we have to go through as part of our missions! It was really cool though because I realized that it doesn't matter what everyone else is thinking, as long as I am doing what Heavenly Father wants me to do! It was a good reminder to me to not worry what everyone else is thinking, but to be different, because that's what's going to make people want to talk to us! We also talked a lot about inviting people to be baptized in the first lesson and always bringing up baptism. I've learned that when you don't bring it up right away, it gets confusing when you do a baptismal invite later. But when the people you are teaching know that that's what you're going to invite them to do eventually, they don't get freaked out by it! I always thought it would be really scary inviting people to be baptized, but it's always the best part of the lesson and people are much more receptive if we do it right away. We had a lesson with L and D on Tuesday as well. D was only there for about 10 minutes so we just had a long talk with L and we brought up baptism but she said we'll talk about it later. I think the real reason we are there is to get her son back to church. After dinner we decided to go visit our investigator J who didn't come to church last Sunday. So apparently he went to his moms church cause he had to interpret her sermon, (he speaks french, swahili and english) so he ended up missing church. But he told us that he only had 2 more pages of the Book of Mormon left to read! We invited him to be baptized on November 9 and he said he would! it was very unexpected but it was really cool!
On wednesday we did some service for M, who is trying to get everything packed up by this saturday for her big move...she is so overwhelmed and i feel so sorry for her, but I know that this move will be a really good thing to her. She got a phone call while we were there and she was like "Sorry I gotta go, my sweet mormon sisters are here helping me!" she's such a cute lady. We had dinner at one of our favorite ward members home that night. It's funny because we always do what we call "member invitations" where we share a thought and then challenge them to do something whether it's inviting a non member to something or reading the scriptures more, but I feel like the members are always feeling guilt tripped by us! they always tell us all the stuff they haven't been doing and how they know they need to be better and I think some of them just think we are perfect. If only they knew how many mistakes we make every day and how far from perfect we are!! it helps me to recognize what the members expect of me and helps me realized how i can do better! i'm realizing more and more how my mission is preparing me for the rest of my life. the habits i am developing will bless my life and my future families lives so much! it's awesome. So after dinner we had a meeting with the goose creek ward mission leader and we will be doing some work over in that area from now on. I think things are going to be a lot busier around here now! After the meeting we had a lesson with N. it was about temples, which was really intimidating seeing as it was our second actual lesson with her, but it went really well. the spirit was very strong and we got her really excited to go to the visitors center the next day. Their dog Nino jumped on my and started trying to eat my nametag and one of the little boys said "I told you, Nino loves eating Mormon's stuff!" hahaha I love that little family.
On Thursday we had a class called launching leaders. One of the senior missionaries in our mission was one of the founders of franklin and covey and he does this leadership course with us and it's so awesome!! we watched this seminar and this speaker talked about these 2 salesman who went to south africa to sell shoes. the first one wrote home saying "this is a failure, no one here wears shoes." the 2nd salesman wrote home: "this is the most amazing opportunity!! no one here has shoes yet!" when you compare this to missionary work, you have to have a good attitude always. you have to believe that you will be a success because if you're negative, you'll discourage others and hinder the work. the speaker talked a lot about believing in your cause as well. I know I am guilty of looking or talking to a person and thinking "They're not going to accept this! " I am limiting my own potential and the potential of others!! So something I am really trying to work on is being more enthusiastic when we're out talking to people and being more confident as well! so the youth of our ward had a temple trip on thursday so we rode with one of the leaders to the temple. but before the temple, sister S and I grabbed some dinner at Mcdonalds and we were eating it at the church and this guy told us that his daughter was like "missionaries can eat fast food??" lol. it's so funny because before my mission, I was the exact same way. I never pictured missionaries going out and shopping at Walmart and doing all the stuff normal people do, so now when I do all that stuff I just laugh to myself because it feels so weird doing it as a missionary! so the visitors center with N was SO AWESOME!! There's this really cool art exhibit up which you can actually read about in the church news on lds.org, a woman from our Stake here did all the art work there and it's all about the life of Christ as a child. and what the artist calls the "in between moments" like Joseph looking at Mary right after he found out she was the mother of Christ. N absolutley loved that because her mom is an artist and she really enjoys art as well. It was so beautiful... It's hard to describe how amazing these paintings were, but I loved them so much and it was awesome looking at them with N and talking to her more about Christ. Then we watched a movie about eternal families which she really liked. she's really close to her family and I think she is starting to recognize how the gospel can help her be with them forever. Then we watched a book of mormon movie. I felt the spirit so strongly as we went through and taught her more about the gospel. The more i share the gospel, the more I love it. It is a perfect gospel! we are not, but the gospel is.
Thursday was an interesting day! We had another lesson with L and D. L had just heard some bad news about a friend so literally the entire time we were there she had "wind beneath my wings" by Gladys Knight on repeat..apparently that's what she does when she's sad...haha i would be happy to never hear that song again!! but we saw her son while we were there and invited him to church on sunday. then we had our correlation at the ward mission leaders house! it was a good meeting and we are going to set up exchanges with some of the young women and relief society members! we had a lesson with A which was so awesome. I found out that I am apparently not going to get my visa until December because she chose November 30 for her baptism date. A bunch of her husband’s family is coming for thanksgiving so she wanted them all there! it's weird now because i'm actually worried that my visa will come!!! i want to be at her baptism really badly, but i know whatever happens is exactly what needs to happen! I am just so grateful that I have been able to see the gospel improve her life. I would be sad to miss her baptism, but really seeing that change that I have seen in her is enough for me! We talked more about the baptismal covenant. We have been sharing mosiah 18:8-9 with members this week and talking about the promises we make at baptism. When i was 8, I don’t think I fully realized those promises I was making. It's cool to read in Mosiah and see what those promises are and kind of do a check on how well we are living those promises!!
On Saturday we were heading to the library and we saw 2 of our investigators on the street holding "free hugs" signs. they saw us and called us and told us to come back , but we just said we were too busy because we didn't want to explain how we can only hug girls ha ha. so then we were driving to our appointment with J (which we rescheduled like 80 times this week!!) and we saw him walking down the road so we called and rescheduled AGAIN for later that night. we talked to him about church attendance since he hasn't been coming to church. so we started reading Moroni 6 with him and we had him start reading, and he couldn't actually read which confused us since he told us on Tuesday he only had 2 pages of the book of mormon left to read. So we are hoping he's just one of those people who can't read out loud because we really don't think he'd flat out lie to us. We are going to get him a book of mormon in french though because he said that would be better for him.
Sunday was a really great day! we had set up a ride for J but he didn't show up to church. A was at church like she always is! :) We got to teach relief society yesterday since it was on missionary work. it was really awesome! we used Elder Ballards challenge to reach out to one person between now and christmas. I talked about when a friend had the lessons at our hourse and it made me realize waht an impact that had on me! I'm sure back then you guys probably didn't think it affected me very much, but I'm so grateful I was able to see that change in him, it was a really cool experience! I want my future family to have experiences like this as well! We had dinner at the ward members home who is neighbors with melanie, and she had invited M and her husband to dinner with us all. it was a really cool experience. we shared a spiritual thought with them about the atonement. I had read Alma 7:11-13 earlier that day and I had noticed something different. it says in verse 13 that the Spirit knows all things, but Christ chose to atone for us and our sins so he would know exactly how to understand us and help us. it's amazing how much the knowledge that someone truly, 100 percent understands you and can help you can truly change your life!
This next week we are going to really try and focus on finding new people to teach. We need to get out and do more tracting because we haven't done as much as we should have been doing these last few weeks, so look forward to some good door-knocking stories next week! :) one of the sisters in the ward gave me a bunch of sweaters yesterday, and a coat, so don't worry about sending warm stuff! I am just going to return all that to her whenever i get my visa or leave this area. Things here are going so great and I'm excited for how these next 3 weeks of the transfer will go! time is flying...I love you all so much and am so grateful to have you in my life! I don't know if I could do this without your support. Keep us in your prayers, Love you so much!!
love, Sister Pehrson
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
October 21, 2013
Thanks so much for your emails this week! They always make my day :) It was another awesome week here!
On Tuesday morning we had zone training, which is where our zone leaders report what they learned at their meeting with the mission president. It was all about how we are a new zone and we are going to be different than the other zones. I've noticed a lot of times on my mission, especially in the beginning, where I have felt weird or uncomfortable because I know people are judging me or looking at me weird because of the dress I'm wearing and my name tag. We talked about how Christ was mocked and judged when He was on the earth, and that's just something we have to go through as part of our missions! It was really cool though because I realized that it doesn't matter what everyone else is thinking, as long as I am doing what Heavenly Father wants me to do! It was a good reminder to me to not worry what everyone else is thinking, but to be different, because that's what's going to make people want to talk to us! We also talked a lot about inviting people to be baptized in the first lesson and always bringing up baptism. I've learned that when you don't bring it up right away, it gets confusing when you do a baptismal invite later. But when the people you are teaching know that that's what you're going to invite them to do eventually, they don't get freaked out by it! I always thought it would be really scary inviting people to be baptized, but it's always the best part of the lesson and people are much more receptive if we do it right away. We had a lesson with L and D on Tuesday as well. D was only there for about 10 minutes so we just had a long talk with L and we brought up baptism but she said we'll talk about it later. I think the real reason we are there is to get her son back to church. After dinner we decided to go visit our investigator J who didn't come to church last Sunday. So apparently he went to his moms church cause he had to interpret her sermon, (he speaks french, swahili and english) so he ended up missing church. But he told us that he only had 2 more pages of the Book of Mormon left to read! We invited him to be baptized on November 9 and he said he would! it was very unexpected but it was really cool!
On wednesday we did some service for M, who is trying to get everything packed up by this saturday for her big move...she is so overwhelmed and i feel so sorry for her, but I know that this move will be a really good thing to her. She got a phone call while we were there and she was like "Sorry I gotta go, my sweet mormon sisters are here helping me!" she's such a cute lady. We had dinner at one of our favorite ward members home that night. It's funny because we always do what we call "member invitations" where we share a thought and then challenge them to do something whether it's inviting a non member to something or reading the scriptures more, but I feel like the members are always feeling guilt tripped by us! they always tell us all the stuff they haven't been doing and how they know they need to be better and I think some of them just think we are perfect. If only they knew how many mistakes we make every day and how far from perfect we are!! it helps me to recognize what the members expect of me and helps me realized how i can do better! i'm realizing more and more how my mission is preparing me for the rest of my life. the habits i am developing will bless my life and my future families lives so much! it's awesome. So after dinner we had a meeting with the goose creek ward mission leader and we will be doing some work over in that area from now on. I think things are going to be a lot busier around here now! After the meeting we had a lesson with N. it was about temples, which was really intimidating seeing as it was our second actual lesson with her, but it went really well. the spirit was very strong and we got her really excited to go to the visitors center the next day. Their dog Nino jumped on my and started trying to eat my nametag and one of the little boys said "I told you, Nino loves eating Mormon's stuff!" hahaha I love that little family.
On Thursday we had a class called launching leaders. One of the senior missionaries in our mission was one of the founders of franklin and covey and he does this leadership course with us and it's so awesome!! we watched this seminar and this speaker talked about these 2 salesman who went to south africa to sell shoes. the first one wrote home saying "this is a failure, no one here wears shoes." the 2nd salesman wrote home: "this is the most amazing opportunity!! no one here has shoes yet!" when you compare this to missionary work, you have to have a good attitude always. you have to believe that you will be a success because if you're negative, you'll discourage others and hinder the work. the speaker talked a lot about believing in your cause as well. I know I am guilty of looking or talking to a person and thinking "They're not going to accept this! " I am limiting my own potential and the potential of others!! So something I am really trying to work on is being more enthusiastic when we're out talking to people and being more confident as well! so the youth of our ward had a temple trip on thursday so we rode with one of the leaders to the temple. but before the temple, sister S and I grabbed some dinner at Mcdonalds and we were eating it at the church and this guy told us that his daughter was like "missionaries can eat fast food??" lol. it's so funny because before my mission, I was the exact same way. I never pictured missionaries going out and shopping at Walmart and doing all the stuff normal people do, so now when I do all that stuff I just laugh to myself because it feels so weird doing it as a missionary! so the visitors center with N was SO AWESOME!! There's this really cool art exhibit up which you can actually read about in the church news on lds.org, a woman from our Stake here did all the art work there and it's all about the life of Christ as a child. and what the artist calls the "in between moments" like Joseph looking at Mary right after he found out she was the mother of Christ. N absolutley loved that because her mom is an artist and she really enjoys art as well. It was so beautiful... It's hard to describe how amazing these paintings were, but I loved them so much and it was awesome looking at them with N and talking to her more about Christ. Then we watched a movie about eternal families which she really liked. she's really close to her family and I think she is starting to recognize how the gospel can help her be with them forever. Then we watched a book of mormon movie. I felt the spirit so strongly as we went through and taught her more about the gospel. The more i share the gospel, the more I love it. It is a perfect gospel! we are not, but the gospel is.
Thursday was an interesting day! We had another lesson with L and D. L had just heard some bad news about a friend so literally the entire time we were there she had "wind beneath my wings" by Gladys Knight on repeat..apparently that's what she does when she's sad...haha i would be happy to never hear that song again!! but we saw her son while we were there and invited him to church on sunday. then we had our correlation at the ward mission leaders house! it was a good meeting and we are going to set up exchanges with some of the young women and relief society members! we had a lesson with A which was so awesome. I found out that I am apparently not going to get my visa until December because she chose November 30 for her baptism date. A bunch of her husband’s family is coming for thanksgiving so she wanted them all there! it's weird now because i'm actually worried that my visa will come!!! i want to be at her baptism really badly, but i know whatever happens is exactly what needs to happen! I am just so grateful that I have been able to see the gospel improve her life. I would be sad to miss her baptism, but really seeing that change that I have seen in her is enough for me! We talked more about the baptismal covenant. We have been sharing mosiah 18:8-9 with members this week and talking about the promises we make at baptism. When i was 8, I don’t think I fully realized those promises I was making. It's cool to read in Mosiah and see what those promises are and kind of do a check on how well we are living those promises!!
On Saturday we were heading to the library and we saw 2 of our investigators on the street holding "free hugs" signs. they saw us and called us and told us to come back , but we just said we were too busy because we didn't want to explain how we can only hug girls ha ha. so then we were driving to our appointment with J (which we rescheduled like 80 times this week!!) and we saw him walking down the road so we called and rescheduled AGAIN for later that night. we talked to him about church attendance since he hasn't been coming to church. so we started reading Moroni 6 with him and we had him start reading, and he couldn't actually read which confused us since he told us on Tuesday he only had 2 pages of the book of mormon left to read. So we are hoping he's just one of those people who can't read out loud because we really don't think he'd flat out lie to us. We are going to get him a book of mormon in french though because he said that would be better for him.
Sunday was a really great day! we had set up a ride for J but he didn't show up to church. A was at church like she always is! :) We got to teach relief society yesterday since it was on missionary work. it was really awesome! we used Elder Ballards challenge to reach out to one person between now and christmas. I talked about when a friend had the lessons at our hourse and it made me realize waht an impact that had on me! I'm sure back then you guys probably didn't think it affected me very much, but I'm so grateful I was able to see that change in him, it was a really cool experience! I want my future family to have experiences like this as well! We had dinner at the ward members home who is neighbors with melanie, and she had invited M and her husband to dinner with us all. it was a really cool experience. we shared a spiritual thought with them about the atonement. I had read Alma 7:11-13 earlier that day and I had noticed something different. it says in verse 13 that the Spirit knows all things, but Christ chose to atone for us and our sins so he would know exactly how to understand us and help us. it's amazing how much the knowledge that someone truly, 100 percent understands you and can help you can truly change your life!
This next week we are going to really try and focus on finding new people to teach. We need to get out and do more tracting because we haven't done as much as we should have been doing these last few weeks, so look forward to some good door-knocking stories next week! :) one of the sisters in the ward gave me a bunch of sweaters yesterday, and a coat, so don't worry about sending warm stuff! I am just going to return all that to her whenever i get my visa or leave this area. Things here are going so great and I'm excited for how these next 3 weeks of the transfer will go! time is flying...I love you all so much and am so grateful to have you in my life! I don't know if I could do this without your support. Keep us in your prayers, Love you so much!!
love, Sister Pehrson
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