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!