Week 5

Family and friends,

 Today marks the one month mark for my mission! I have been at the MTC 31 days exactly and I am still loving it! The food has gotten a little old since it is the same thing pretty much everyday but I am grateful for what I have! Thank you to all those of you who have sent packages! I have more candy than you could ever want but I am saving it for our last night here when we have a fiesta with our district! Speaking of that, I have recieved my travel plans!! I leave in 9 days! Not this coming Monday but the next week! I fly to Atlanta and my flight leaves at 2:20 and then I will get to Atlanta at 7:50 Eastern time. After that my flight leaves at 10:00 from Atlanta and I get to Argentina at 9 in the morning. It is over a full 24 hours of travel because we report to the travel office at 8:30 here. Although that is not going to be fun at all, I am so excited to finally get to Argentina and start teaching and serving actual people! One thing this week that made me really excited for that was skype TRC! TRC is where we teach investigators who sometimes are members of the church and other times are real investigators. Our skype TRC was with a member who lives in Argentina! He had a Boca Jr's jersey on so I knew I would like him right away! I could understand pretty much everything he said which was super cool! Although I talk slow and pause sometimes in the middle of sentences to think, I know the people I have been teaching understand me because of the Holy Ghost. It is so cool to hear people (who actually speak real Spanish) tell you that they think your Spanish is perfect because they are being taught by the Spirit, not me.I am still so grateful for the gift of tongues and know it is not because of me but the power of the Lord! This week I tried to only talk in Spanish. It was really good at the beginning of the week and progressively got worse and worse but it did teach me what I can do to improve and showed me how much I actually know! It was a lot of fun to talk to people who don't know Spanish and try to explain in simple terms what we were trying to say because that is what we have to do in our lessons. I heard something this week that I absolutely loved! "5 words that are understood are better than 10,000 that are not". This hit me pretty hard! I realized that I need to focus on the basics and explain things simply so that my investigators will understand. Our teachers this week did a demo lesson for us so we could watch and learn what we can do to improve our teaching. I loved it so much! I have been so worried about my Spanish that I have forgotten how to properly teach! I need to again go back to the basics and focus on what I do know and slow down and teach by the spirit! It was a good reminder for me of how to teach and my lessons since then have been a lot better! I am so very grateful I have been blessed with a positive attitude because a lot of the missionaries in my District have been kinda down and hard on themselves this week but I haven't been stressed out at all and know that everything will be okay as I am obedient and work hard! The word for this in Spanish is tranquilo. It basically means chill, calm down, everything is going to be okay. I love this word and it has been very good for our District! We got a new District this week and one of the responsibilities of zone leaders are to welcome the new district and give them a tour. It was so fun to be able to do this and I hoped I gave the new missionaries some hope that they will be able to learn Spanish no matter how overwhelmed or worried they are right now! Anyway, I think that is all I have for this week! I love hearing from all of you so thank you for the e-mails and letters! I hope everything is going well for all of you! I love and miss you all!

Con amor,

Elder Petersen 

Semana Numero Cuatro

Hello all,

  It was another great week here at the MTC! I have now been here 24 days and leave for Argentina in 16 on the fifth of October, crazy right?! I am so excited to finally get to Argentina to start teaching and serving the people there even though I don't really now Spanish yet. The Spanish is definitely coming a long very quickly and I feel like I know so much and could get by being fully immersed but I know I will be in for a great shock when I really get there! I have been studying ahead of what we are learning in class because I felt like I wasn't learning much so I would go and try and learn it for myself and then if I had questions when my teacher actually taught the lesson I would figure it out. It has helped a lot and it is showing! We had to do a speaking assessment this week and when I was being evaluated the teacher said that I was progressing faster that most missionaries usually do and that I only had made a few mistakes. I was super excited to hear that but I know it is not because of me! The Lord is blessing me for my hard work and diligence with the language. I hope I can continue to progress at the rate I am progressing at now! This next week I am planning on only using Spanish from the time I wake up to the time I leave class which is at 9:30 Monday through Friday. I know it might sound crazy and is going to be really hard but I know it will help tremendously and it will surprise me how much I actually know! When I first got here I was told that the days will feel like weeks and the weeks will feel like days. I didn't understand that until this week. I can't really explain the feeling but days last forever and then I think about the last time I got to e-mail or take the sacrament and it feels like yesterday, it is crazy! I got my first haircut here and it actually looks really good! I was so nervous to get a haircut because my mom is the only person to ever cut my hair but they did a surprisingly good job but nothing compared to my moms! Another big thing that happened this week was last Sunday. They called a new District Leader so I was done with that but then Elder Lundell and I were called to be the Zone Leaders for our Branch! As Zone Leaders we are given a cell phone that calls only the front desk of the MTC but we have to have it just in case. The last Zone leaders happened to have an alarm on for 6 in the morning which woke us up early and of course I couldn't go back to sleep. I was mad at first but looking back it was funny and all in good fun! It has been such an amazing experiences getting to know the rest of our zone better! I love them all so much! District A in our zone leaves Monday and I have gotten pretty close with some of them so it is going to be hard to see them go but I am very excited for them! It is going to be so hard to say goodbye to our District. We have become like family over these past few weeks and each and every one of them has taught something I needed to learn and I appreciate their examples in my life! AS missionaries in the MTC you have the opportunity to do service twice a week. Our service is Monday and Thursday. It is always in the same building just different jobs. One of the workers in our Monday service building is from Westerville and we were actually born in the exact same hospital which is crazy! He is a huge Buckeye fan and gives me updates every week of the game which is awesome! We shut out Hawaii this week so that is pretty good I guess. O-H! With teaching so many lessons a week and even multiple in a day I have kind of gotten in a pattern of how I teach each lesson. When we were practice teaching with our District we were teaching about the Book of Mormon and after we finished we were getting feedback from the people we taught. A sister in our District went on to explain how We did a good job of teaching and testifying but not really relating how it pertains to us in our lives. We had the opportunity to re-practice and I opened up and shared what I really feel and some personal experiences in my life. She said after how it was perfect and that the spirit was so much stronger! It was a good reminder that we as missionaries teach people, not lessons. Another thing I learned this week is really amazing! The word for Gospel in Spanish is Evangelio. The root of this word is angel. This means that we as missionaries are angels teaching God's Gospel on the world today. We learn more about that in 2nd Nephi chapter 32, read it if you can, it is an amazing chapter! Also read the end of chapter 31. Or just read the whole thing since it is my favorite chapter in the Book of Mormon! Overall it was another great week! Thank you so much to all those of you who have sent me letter, dearelders, packages and/or e-mails! It is so good to hear from all of you! Like Elder Hamilton said in his e-mail this week, it is like Christmas when we get letters here! Anyways, thank you all so much for everything you have done for me and for being such good examples! I love and miss you all and hope everything is going good for you!

Con amor, 

Elder Petersen 

Week Three

Hello all,
This week was full of up's and down's! I started this week off being sick, it sucked! We have an elder in our District, Elder Steadman, who we call doctor. He has all these medicines that he made me take and oils to put on my feet and throat. It didn't help at first but I got better after a couple days and am feeling fine now! I think I passed on the sickness to a few other Elders in our district because last night we gave three of them blessings. I had the opportunity to give one of the blessings. Being my first blessing I was very nervous but as I had my hands upon his head I felt the words come to me through the spirit. It was one of the most amazing experiences ever! I can't wait to be able to administer to the sick and afflicted when called upon throughout my life. Another exciting part of this week was for our Tuesday Night Devotional Bishop Causse of the presiding bishopric came and talked to us. His talk and his wife's talk were both amazing! They both talked about how our missions are going to be so hard but that we can do hard things! They shared experiences from their lives that were so cool! They also talked a lot about humility. I think we can all get better at that and that was my goal for this week. A low point this week was when an elder in our district received a letter from his mom about the passing away of his cousin. She passed away a few hours after birth. It was so sad but it was so great to remember why we are here, to share the message of the plan of salvation and that families can be together forever. Some of us got to share experiences from our lives that really helped him. We prayed and cried together, I love my District so much! Me and Elder Hamilton have different gym times so we can't play basketball together but I see him and Elder Bennett all the time! A cool story about gym time this week is that Danny Ainge's son is here and in my zone so I get to see him and play with him all the time! He is not as good as his dad but still super good! He is going to Utah State to play when he gets back and it was super fun to guard him and shut him down of course! Spanish is coming a long very well! We have kind of started to slow down which has tested my patience which I am trying really hard to work on! I just want to keep learning about stuff I don't know. I feel like we are just reviewing stuff I already know but it is very helpful for a lot of the other missionaries. We are teaching at least a lesson a day now, sometimes two or even three, it is hard but awesome! One lesson we had this week was with Gabriel who is really a member but is acting like an investigator to help us. This lesson he totally went out of character and talked about some of his problems in his life. It made me think how easy we really have it! After the death of his father and mother in law within a week his son was diagnosed with cancer. He told us he felt like a part of him was dying inside along with his son. He said how he prayed that he would be comforted and have the strength to comfort his family. When the doctor told him that his son was going to die he said he was happy. How could he be happy at a time like that? He was wondering the same thing but he knew it was because the love of Christ and Gabriel knew that because of the atonement Christ has felt the exact same pain he has. He knew everything would be fine. His son is doing great now and cancer free, amazing!  Gabriel, Elder Lundell and I were all in tears, the spirit was so strong. I am so grateful for good examples in my life like Gabriel and all of you for teaching me so much! In another one of our lessons we were teaching our teacher who was also pretending to be an investigator. We were teaching about Christ and talking about baptism because we were going to ask him to be baptized. Although he said no because he wasn't ready yet, we still left feeling great! We asked him to say the closing prayer and during the closing prayer he just started to cry because the spirit was so strong! We then had the opportunity to talk about listening to the spirit and how after our p[prayers we need to take time to be quiet and listen so we can have a conversation with Heavenly Father not just us talking to him. Overall it was a great week! I hope you all know how much I love and miss each and every one you! I love hearing from you and thank you to all of those of who have sent me letters, it's so nice to get actual letters which is really weird! Hope everything is going great for all of you!
Love,
Elder Petersen

This is my District at the Provo Temple last Sunday! 

Week Dos

I had suchagreat week here at the MTC! My ability to speak Spanish and understand the language has significantly increased, it truly is amazing! Me and Elder Lundell are like perfect for each other! When we teach lessons he is really good at memorizing things and has already memorized the first vision in Spanish which is amazing and I am good at just talking and connecting with the investigators. My district is awesome and I love each and everyone of them for a special reason! I hope you are all enjoying your Saturday and you better be watching college football. I really hate not knowing what is going on in the sports world. I run into people I know here all the time and it's great, I love it! Thank you to all of those of you who have sent me letters. It's great to actually get real letters! Sorry this letter is so short, I don't have much to say this week! Lots of Spanish and learning but I absolutely love it! Hope everything is going well back home! I want to let you all know how much I love and miss you! You are all in my prayers! Thanks for all you have done for me to prepare me for this point in my life!

Love,
Elder Petersen