What an awesome week it's been here in Virginia!! I have felt so much gratitude for being a missionary this week and being able to witness little miracles that happen every day! I've never been happier than I am now on my mission and I know that this kind of happiness doesn't come from anywhere else!
On Monday after we emailed, we went thrifting, which was so fun! I got a really cute dress which will work for here and for Brasil!! I also got some sweaters cause it's getting chilly here, but it's supposed to be like 70 all this week so that'll be really nice!! We had dinner and family home evening with a family in the ward and it was so awesome! They are such a cute family and we played this game where we spinned the bottle and then the 2 people that the ends of the bottle pointed to said something they loved about the other person. it was really cute! their little boy who is about 2 kept trying to crawl all over me and it was so awkward because we're not supposed to hold kids so I just kind of awkwardly sat there haha. then we went to a teaching appointment. it started out really rough. she was just complaining about all this stuff and wouldn't even sit down and was trying to reschedule with us so I just said can we leave a short message with you before we go? of course she said yes and we shared 2 scriptures with her that compared the attitudes of Laman and Lemuel and Nephi. we talked about the difference it makes to have a positive attitude. I understand she has it really rough, but we just really wanted her to see how she could find little things to be grateful for every day. It was cool as we shared the message with her the spirit in the room completely changed and she said the closing prayer and just cried and cried and thanked heavenly father for sending us there and talked about how we always brighten her day. This woman isn't exactly a warm and fuzzy type of lady either so it was so touching to hear her say these things. It was good for us to see that our visits really do make a difference. I got some really adorable pictures of Cash and Colli on Monday night so I was so happy about that!!
Tuesday was so awesome! BIG NEWS: OUR MISSION IS GOING ON FACEBOOK!!!! We don't have lots of details, I'm sure we'll get them tomorrow, but yeah, pretty insane! After our studies, we went and knocked some doors for a while. We met a really grumpy old lady, which it always shocks me when grandmas are mean, but then we met this lady who didn't actually live at the house she was at, but we're going to check back with her sometime this week because she was really promising. Then we had dinner with a really cute family in our ward. the husband was talking about how mad Brasil is at the US for spying on them, so who knows when my visa will get here now haha. It pretty much changes every day how I feel about that..lol. So we started doing the work for the other wards less active sisters tuesday night. It was an adventure!! We met one lady, who was really sweet. she was like "oh! you're the lady missionaries!!" She said she is "totally inactive", but would love to have us for dinner! then we tried this other ladies house and her husband answered and asked where we were from. we told him the church and he said "please don't ever come back here again." and slammed the door on us! the good thing is, i've gotten a lot better at dealing with rejection. i also feel a lot more confident when we try to find people now. i feel like i've just learned so much since I started my mission and I can be more confident and be myself. it was really funny at the end of the day we went to the mailbox to check the mail, and the elders were there on their bikes. well the one elder tried to move over and he fell off his bike into the bushes....good thing he had his helmet on! :)
On Wednesday, we did service for one of our investigators. It's so mentally exhausting helping her because she's doing EVERYTHING and then her husband and daughter just sit there watching tv...it's a really sad situation. we had dinner at a family in our wards house who have ELEVEN CHILDREN...it was funnny though because the mom was the only one home! she was like "I think this is the first time I've eaten alone with the missionaries..." but we had a really good visit with her and helped her come up with some ideas on how to share the gospel with her friends. After that we went to our lesson with another person. It was the plan of salvation lesson and i was realy nervous because I was supposed to teach most of it, but I've never taught that in english before. but things got crazy as they always do in that house and the lesson turned into the little brother, bringing up all this random information. But the beginning of the lesson was really sweet because her brother, who is 10, was teaching his sister how to pray, so that was just a really sweet moment to watch!!
Thursday was the halfway mark of the transfer! I feel like this transfer and this month have just flown by!! we had interviews with both President and our zone leaders. they were really awesome. one of the zone leaders asked me if i could give myself advice, what would it be. i said "be confident in the Lord, not in myself." he told me to take my own advice, so I've been focusing this week on working on my confidence in the Lord. then in my interview with President he talked about how missionary work is hastening. he talked about how the Lord is micro managing my life and if I truly give myself to him, my life will be so good and I can be so much happier! that's another thing I really want to work on. President is just such a great guy. he exudes love. it was an awesome interview with him.after that we had a lesson with 2 other ladies, who I love so much!! then we had the most amazing lesson with a nice woman who is a less active member of our ward!! So remember how on Tuesday we met the woman who said she was "totally inactive"?? turns out that is she is the ex-daughter-in-law, who she is still on really good terms with. This woman’s grand daughter, who is 11, called her and was whispering and said" hey my mom is in the shower and i just had to call you and tell you this exciting news! the sister missionaires came over and my mom told them they could come back! she didn't know I was downstairs listening but I heard the whole thing and I'm so excited!!" So yeah, strange "coincidence" right? I'm really excited to see what happens with that. She is such an amazing person and it would be awesome if we could teach her granddaughter. we had dinner with a ward member who is a caterer so it was amazing!! then we went with the elders and visited some less active members of our ward. i had a minor heart attack because as we walked up to one house, there was this GIANT black snake on the porch and the elders ran over and were like "guys, it's fake." so the lady at the house was like yeah our neighbors always throw that over here as a joke. well they fooled me! haha.
on friday we had sisters conference, which was like a mission conference, just with all the sisters of our mission. it was amazing!! Sister Riggs gave an incredible talk on our relationship to the priesthood. I learned a ton about differentiating the Power of the Priestood and priesthood holders. another member of the mission presidency's wives spoke about being a good companion so of course I learned a ton from that. She talked all about how we are all so different and we never really know what is truly going on in someone elses mind of life so to take things as they ought to have been said or intended. i've learned on my mission that i get offended so easily...i need to work on seeing the best in others and in not taking offense so quickly. so when we got back from the mission conference, we went to the library to do progress records. I sat by the most interesting man...as soon as i sat down he satrted telling me how he was so mad because he was telling his friends about some revelation he received and he said they started telling him he is a prophet and he doesnt like labels? then he asked if the elders were from Ohio...he was a goofball. we had a lesson on friday night which went AMAZINGLY!! I love lessons with her soooo much. we read the family a proclamation to the world in portuguese and she talked about how much her relationship with her husband has improved since we began teaching her and she is so excited to get baptized. she said "this is a very important time of my life that I'll never forget." Love her!! so then we had a lesson with another man we have had a hard time getting an appointment to teach. since he hasn't been coming to church, we decided to bring a member with us to meet him and offer him a ride. so this couple who is in their upper 50s came with us. Our investigator is this 26 year old from the Congo..so we get there and he had friends over. he takes us all into his bedroom where there are 3 other guys, in thier 20s, so it's us, this older couple, and these 3 guys in this bedroom. i just had to laugh at how weird it was. one of the guys was pretty drunk so that made things a little interesting. i'm just glad the members were there because that could have been a bad situation! one of the other friends there committed to come to church and is now investigating the church, so that turned out good!
on saturday we did service at a home from 8-12. it was our last time with her which was sad. she is going to a center to help her quit smoking so I'm excited for her new changes in life. After service we went to a member of the wards house who is from Brazil!! it was really fun. she is really sweet and has been a great friend to one of our investigators. She was an exchange student in idaho and got baptized then, how cool is that? after lunch we headed to our appointment with another woman. it was sad because she was really upset when we got there because she realized how she's being taken advantage of by her son. she is in her 50s and has lots of health problems, including arthritis, but she walks everywhere. she walks to work and to the grocery store and everything, and her son never will take her anywhere even though he has a car! it's frustrating. it was sad. but in her prayer she said "god, thanks for sending these ladies. they mean a lot. i know they don't think they do, but they mean a lot." she is so sweet. after that we had the ward halloween party! it was so much fun. we swtiched name tags with the Elders, that was our costume. everyone got a kick out of that. there were lots of cross dressing jokes made haha. i also wore yellow orange and white so i looked like a candy corn! One couple came and their son was dressed as a pirate. it was so cute. We also met this new member of our ward who served a mission in Portugal and speaks portuguese so now hopefully one of our investigators can have another friend in the ward! we trunk-or-treated and got SO much candy...way more than the elders! haha :) there were lots of non members at the party too so it was an awesome activity.
Sunday was such a great day!! a ward member picked up our guy investigator and for the first time he actually came to church! we were sooo excited!! He was wearing a shirt that said "cool story babe, now go make me a sandwich." i about died laughing when I saw him wearing that to church. he told us he was going to wear a suit! lol you just never know what to expect on the mission. it was the primary program so it was so awesome. i loved hearing the primary kids sing the primary songs. they are so beautiful and simple but show the true simplicity of the gospel! I love sundays on my mission because I don't feel so far from home!!
any news on the visa? i think if i don't get it before the transfer, I'll stay in here and my comp will be transferred. we'll see though! I love it here so much and I would love to be here for the baptism. we'll see what happens. Well i love you guys so much and thanks for the mail and everything this week!
love, Sister Pehrson
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
October 28, 2013
What an awesome week it's been here in Virginia!! I have felt so much gratitude for being a missionary this week and being able to witness little miracles that happen every day! I've never been happier than I am now on my mission and I know that this kind of happiness doesn't come from anywhere else!
On Monday after we emailed, we went thrifting, which was so fun! I got a really cute dress which will work for here and for Brasil!! I also got some sweaters cause it's getting chilly here, but it's supposed to be like 70 all this week so that'll be really nice!! We had dinner and family home evening with a family in the ward and it was so awesome! They are such a cute family and we played this game where we spinned the bottle and then the 2 people that the ends of the bottle pointed to said something they loved about the other person. it was really cute! their little boy who is about 2 kept trying to crawl all over me and it was so awkward because we're not supposed to hold kids so I just kind of awkwardly sat there haha. then we went to a teaching appointment. it started out really rough. she was just complaining about all this stuff and wouldn't even sit down and was trying to reschedule with us so I just said can we leave a short message with you before we go? of course she said yes and we shared 2 scriptures with her that compared the attitudes of Laman and Lemuel and Nephi. we talked about the difference it makes to have a positive attitude. I understand she has it really rough, but we just really wanted her to see how she could find little things to be grateful for every day. It was cool as we shared the message with her the spirit in the room completely changed and she said the closing prayer and just cried and cried and thanked heavenly father for sending us there and talked about how we always brighten her day. This woman isn't exactly a warm and fuzzy type of lady either so it was so touching to hear her say these things. It was good for us to see that our visits really do make a difference. I got some really adorable pictures of Cash and Colli on Monday night so I was so happy about that!!
Tuesday was so awesome! BIG NEWS: OUR MISSION IS GOING ON FACEBOOK!!!! We don't have lots of details, I'm sure we'll get them tomorrow, but yeah, pretty insane! After our studies, we went and knocked some doors for a while. We met a really grumpy old lady, which it always shocks me when grandmas are mean, but then we met this lady who didn't actually live at the house she was at, but we're going to check back with her sometime this week because she was really promising. Then we had dinner with a really cute family in our ward. the husband was talking about how mad Brasil is at the US for spying on them, so who knows when my visa will get here now haha. It pretty much changes every day how I feel about that..lol. So we started doing the work for the other wards less active sisters tuesday night. It was an adventure!! We met one lady, who was really sweet. she was like "oh! you're the lady missionaries!!" She said she is "totally inactive", but would love to have us for dinner! then we tried this other ladies house and her husband answered and asked where we were from. we told him the church and he said "please don't ever come back here again." and slammed the door on us! the good thing is, i've gotten a lot better at dealing with rejection. i also feel a lot more confident when we try to find people now. i feel like i've just learned so much since I started my mission and I can be more confident and be myself. it was really funny at the end of the day we went to the mailbox to check the mail, and the elders were there on their bikes. well the one elder tried to move over and he fell off his bike into the bushes....good thing he had his helmet on! :)
On Wednesday, we did service for one of our investigators. It's so mentally exhausting helping her because she's doing EVERYTHING and then her husband and daughter just sit there watching tv...it's a really sad situation. we had dinner at a family in our wards house who have ELEVEN CHILDREN...it was funnny though because the mom was the only one home! she was like "I think this is the first time I've eaten alone with the missionaries..." but we had a really good visit with her and helped her come up with some ideas on how to share the gospel with her friends. After that we went to our lesson with another person. It was the plan of salvation lesson and i was realy nervous because I was supposed to teach most of it, but I've never taught that in english before. but things got crazy as they always do in that house and the lesson turned into the little brother, bringing up all this random information. But the beginning of the lesson was really sweet because her brother, who is 10, was teaching his sister how to pray, so that was just a really sweet moment to watch!!
Thursday was the halfway mark of the transfer! I feel like this transfer and this month have just flown by!! we had interviews with both President and our zone leaders. they were really awesome. one of the zone leaders asked me if i could give myself advice, what would it be. i said "be confident in the Lord, not in myself." he told me to take my own advice, so I've been focusing this week on working on my confidence in the Lord. then in my interview with President he talked about how missionary work is hastening. he talked about how the Lord is micro managing my life and if I truly give myself to him, my life will be so good and I can be so much happier! that's another thing I really want to work on. President is just such a great guy. he exudes love. it was an awesome interview with him.after that we had a lesson with 2 other ladies, who I love so much!! then we had the most amazing lesson with a nice woman who is a less active member of our ward!! So remember how on Tuesday we met the woman who said she was "totally inactive"?? turns out that is she is the ex-daughter-in-law, who she is still on really good terms with. This woman’s grand daughter, who is 11, called her and was whispering and said" hey my mom is in the shower and i just had to call you and tell you this exciting news! the sister missionaires came over and my mom told them they could come back! she didn't know I was downstairs listening but I heard the whole thing and I'm so excited!!" So yeah, strange "coincidence" right? I'm really excited to see what happens with that. She is such an amazing person and it would be awesome if we could teach her granddaughter. we had dinner with a ward member who is a caterer so it was amazing!! then we went with the elders and visited some less active members of our ward. i had a minor heart attack because as we walked up to one house, there was this GIANT black snake on the porch and the elders ran over and were like "guys, it's fake." so the lady at the house was like yeah our neighbors always throw that over here as a joke. well they fooled me! haha.
on friday we had sisters conference, which was like a mission conference, just with all the sisters of our mission. it was amazing!! Sister Riggs gave an incredible talk on our relationship to the priesthood. I learned a ton about differentiating the Power of the Priestood and priesthood holders. another member of the mission presidency's wives spoke about being a good companion so of course I learned a ton from that. She talked all about how we are all so different and we never really know what is truly going on in someone elses mind of life so to take things as they ought to have been said or intended. i've learned on my mission that i get offended so easily...i need to work on seeing the best in others and in not taking offense so quickly. so when we got back from the mission conference, we went to the library to do progress records. I sat by the most interesting man...as soon as i sat down he satrted telling me how he was so mad because he was telling his friends about some revelation he received and he said they started telling him he is a prophet and he doesnt like labels? then he asked if the elders were from Ohio...he was a goofball. we had a lesson on friday night which went AMAZINGLY!! I love lessons with her soooo much. we read the family a proclamation to the world in portuguese and she talked about how much her relationship with her husband has improved since we began teaching her and she is so excited to get baptized. she said "this is a very important time of my life that I'll never forget." Love her!! so then we had a lesson with another man we have had a hard time getting an appointment to teach. since he hasn't been coming to church, we decided to bring a member with us to meet him and offer him a ride. so this couple who is in their upper 50s came with us. Our investigator is this 26 year old from the Congo..so we get there and he had friends over. he takes us all into his bedroom where there are 3 other guys, in thier 20s, so it's us, this older couple, and these 3 guys in this bedroom. i just had to laugh at how weird it was. one of the guys was pretty drunk so that made things a little interesting. i'm just glad the members were there because that could have been a bad situation! one of the other friends there committed to come to church and is now investigating the church, so that turned out good!
on saturday we did service at a home from 8-12. it was our last time with her which was sad. she is going to a center to help her quit smoking so I'm excited for her new changes in life. After service we went to a member of the wards house who is from Brazil!! it was really fun. she is really sweet and has been a great friend to one of our investigators. She was an exchange student in idaho and got baptized then, how cool is that? after lunch we headed to our appointment with another woman. it was sad because she was really upset when we got there because she realized how she's being taken advantage of by her son. she is in her 50s and has lots of health problems, including arthritis, but she walks everywhere. she walks to work and to the grocery store and everything, and her son never will take her anywhere even though he has a car! it's frustrating. it was sad. but in her prayer she said "god, thanks for sending these ladies. they mean a lot. i know they don't think they do, but they mean a lot." she is so sweet. after that we had the ward halloween party! it was so much fun. we swtiched name tags with the Elders, that was our costume. everyone got a kick out of that. there were lots of cross dressing jokes made haha. i also wore yellow orange and white so i looked like a candy corn! One couple came and their son was dressed as a pirate. it was so cute. We also met this new member of our ward who served a mission in Portugal and speaks portuguese so now hopefully one of our investigators can have another friend in the ward! we trunk-or-treated and got SO much candy...way more than the elders! haha :) there were lots of non members at the party too so it was an awesome activity.
Sunday was such a great day!! a ward member picked up our guy investigator and for the first time he actually came to church! we were sooo excited!! He was wearing a shirt that said "cool story babe, now go make me a sandwich." i about died laughing when I saw him wearing that to church. he told us he was going to wear a suit! lol you just never know what to expect on the mission. it was the primary program so it was so awesome. i loved hearing the primary kids sing the primary songs. they are so beautiful and simple but show the true simplicity of the gospel! I love sundays on my mission because I don't feel so far from home!!
any news on the visa? i think if i don't get it before the transfer, I'll stay in here and my comp will be transferred. we'll see though! I love it here so much and I would love to be here for the baptism. we'll see what happens. Well i love you guys so much and thanks for the mail and everything this week!
love, Sister Pehrson
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