April 7, 2014

Hey fam!! sorry this is probably going to be pretty short...I'll try my best to get everything in though! the reason this is so late is cause we went to see the cherry blossoms today! it was not really fully bloomed but we got some really pretty pictures and there were a few gorgeous trees! anywho back to the rest of the week! so after emailing last week we went to a place called Neilson's frozen custard. it's owned by Mormon's so we got a discount! woot! then we went to a thrift store and just sat outside for awhile in the sun!! we had dinner that night with some members who have the craziest little daughter ever. she's so cute and so full of energy! she's probably the most enthusiastic little girl ever! it was fun eating with them. after that we stopped at an investigators house and ended up just setting up a time to come back. after that we knocked doors and met a world war two war veteran! he is 90 years old and was so cute!! Then we had correlation with the bishop which was awesome! Tuesday was another amazing day! we had district meeting and talked about working more with the members. we also talked about facebook and how to be more productive on there so I'm trying to come up with new ideas! If you guys have any ideas let me know! after the meeting lunch and studies we went and saw Valerie. that was an adventure as always! it's funny because she thinks we're not teaching her but she keeps asking us questions that lead us to talk about the gospel so she's really not helping her cause! but today she asked us what we thought about the role of women in society and so that was fun to talk about. after visiting Valerie we studied more, did facebook, and ate dinner. after dinner we visited a less active woman in our area. she lives with her 2 sons who are grown up and they are so interesting. After that we tracted and we met the nicest woman named lelani. sister martindale had to go to the bathroom really bad and lelani let us use her bathroom. she also let sister martindale play her piano and we just had an awesome talk with them. we didn't teach her and her family, but she invited us back for dinner which is pretty exciting! after that we went and checked on a former investigator who wasn't home. we kept knocking doors since it was like 8:30 and there was nothing else to do and surprisingly no one yelled at us and a couple people let us in! we had a ton of fun tracting and just made it a party! i love my comps! Wednesday was also great! after studies and facebook we ended up finding a new investigator! we thought we were checking on someone else but it was the wrong house. but it was obviously the right one because we met Tenne. she's from Sierra Leone and her husband used to investigate the church! she invited us back to give her a book of Mormon and teach her more! after that we went and saw sister koford. she is from brasil and helps us with our Portuguese once a week! she's so amazing! we were telling her about the Brasilian family we met last week and she told us to give them her contact info and she'll have them over for dinner and stuff !super exciting! we then did a whole ton of tracting! we were actually by an investigators home and a couple people we talked to said that our investigator had talked about us so that was pretty exciting!! after that both me and sister martindale needed to use the bathroom so we went to our investigators house. she wasn't home but her husband was and we kicked yet another man out of his house to use the bathroom! haha we are just on a roll lately! after that we felt like we needed to be somewhere else. on our way to the car we saw a girl who lives with one of our investigators. her name is Maddie. we ended up talking to her for like an hour and she invited us to a bunch of stuff, including the restaurant she works at and made plans for us to come see her there on Friday. Thursday was so full of miracles!! the first came in a text!! one of our YW told us about her friend who found the book of Mormon on her kindle and downloaded it and just started reading it! that day she asked the member if she could come to church with her!!! the second miracle was when the young women president called and told us a girl came to mutual last night who had been telling people at her school that she was going to be baptized Mormon and stuff so one of the young women asked her about it and she was like yeah i was meeting with the missionaries and I'm supposed to get baptized in Annandale but they stopped calling me. so i guess that a member in annandale was taking her to church but it was just too far away and she kinda fell under the radar. but we got her number and now we get to teach her so it's super exciting!!! that afternoon we talked with Valerie in Portuguese. she's an awesome lady!! after that we had dinner with the Brazilian family in our ward! the wife is helping me and sister Egbert sooo much!! after dinner we were checking on some people in a certain apartment complex and we all felt like we needed to go somewhere else. we prayed and decided to see the Stoupas. they are a really cute family of a mom, a 12 year old girl, and a 16 year old girl! the daughters are so interested and they are great friends with members so it's really fun to teach them! they said they would watch conference this weekend so that's exciting!! the other miracle that happened Thursday is that sister Egbert has a friend in Russia on his mission. he's a zone leader and he emailed sis E telling her that he has some sisters in his zone who are teaching a guy who speaks Portuguese and a little bit of English so he asked if we could do skype lessons to help the sisters over there teach him. we set up a lesson for Friday afternoon!! Friday we got to do the lesson on skype and it was soooo cool! Pedro is the mans name and he actually understood our Portuguese which was sooo exciting! i am so blessed to get to use so much Portuguese in my area right now! it was a real confidence booster knowing that he knew what we said and so we're going to be helping teaching him from here on out! after the lesson we had weekly planning which was awesome! then we went and ate at that restaurant where our friend Maddie works. she has so many questions and is a really awesome girl. after eating we went and had a lesson with Luis, the guy who was sooo excited about prophets! we took a member with us and Luis kept flirting with her and i guess she felt really uncomfortable but we thought it was pretty hilarious! but Luis is so hungry for the truth and so prepared! i am so grateful i get to teach him because the spirit is so strong when we have lessons with him! he's just SO prepared and he hangs on every word we say! it reminds me of why i came out on my mission! i love it! another cool thing happened at that lesson. so Luis rents out his basement to 2 girls from Rwanda. we met them and one of them was like what church are you from. we told her and she said she used to go there and she has read the book of Mormon! she moved here a while ago and has been too busy to go back but we gave her the address and invited her to call us and come to church here! miracle!! conference was soooo amazing! poor sister Egbert got food poisoning and was sick all day...i felt so bad she is such a trooper! Conference was seriously exactly what I needed! i never realized just how powerful conference is until my mission! one of the biggest and strongest impressions I got is just that I need to be more bold. To truly forsake the world (which is not easy an a FB missionary!!) and to really not care what other think! I felt so much peace and happiness and confidence as I listened and I know that those feelings only last if I do what is right!! As i sat reflecting on this I realized how amazing my life really is. i am so blessed to be a missionary! i' so blessed to be here in Vienna! i sometimes forget to enjoy this season of my life, but this weekend I just savored it! And i realized I need to do that more often! After Thursday, I've only got 9 months left to change the world here in VA!! crazy right?! i also loved conference on Sunday. i wish i could give you all the insight i received but I'll send it next week since I'm running out of time! a cool thing happened Sunday evening! we were out tracting and we met a guy whose house had flooded so we got to help him move a bunch of stuff and he ended up giving us a ton of artwork because he didn't have room for it anymore! he was so grateful for our help and it's always fun to find those random times to serve! anywho sorry this email is THE WORST! I feel like such a bad missionary because I hardly had time to write you! know that I am doing so well! I haven't hit the 9 month mid life crisis (yet) so don't worry about that! But I know it's gonna be another amazing week! you guys are the best and I can't imagine life without you! love you tons!! love, Sister Pehrson