Oh Happy Day

Letter received 7/31/13

Hello!

I hope you are all doing great! thank you for your continual prayers and support. i love you all!

Shout outs!: Amy!, Daren!, Matt Duffy, Susannah, Joe, Kimmy, Tyson, Alexis, Katie! im sure i have missed someone else who is getting married, haha so if i did i am sorry, but i love you all! SO happy for all of you and i wish you ALL the happiness in the world as you take this next step in your life! Sending my love to you from Iowa! yay!!

It's been a great week, and i really feel so blessed to be here. I love Glenwood. Transfers were this last friday, and i have never been so happy to stay in the same place! haha i know that the Lord needs sister palmer and i here to continue building up this amazing ward.

talking about the ward i am in, let me tell you. it is incredible. The bishop and our ward mission leader have such an amazing vision it makes me giddy just thinking about it. the bishop has been working non stop to revise our ward mission plan, along with figuring out how to excite the ward more to share the gospel. something awesome that he has done is he wrote out a lesson plan all about "16 small stones", talking about the brother of Jared and having the faith to see the finger of God. He is having us go around to all of the active families in the ward and visiting them weekly, sharing a message and committing them to praying and fasting to know who they can share the gospel with. We are having a bonfire/fireside at our ward mission leaders house the first weekend of September, where we will be teaching the restoration and having the bishop speak. the goal is to have every active member there with a non member friend/ or accompanying a less active member. it should be so amazing i cannot wait!

We had an awesome day on sunday. It was the missionary fireside at the stake center. All the missionaries in the Council Bluffs zone gathered together and the stake came with their non member friends as we (the missionaries) sang and taught about the restoration. it was powerful! I was asked to give a devotional before the fireside for all of the missionaries, and it went really well. i talked about performing to bless, not to impress (bromley's!) and i shared the experience of losing my voice in nauvoo, and receiving a blessing and then being able to sing. i didnt want to share that story haha, but the spirit told me to and it turned out being really powerful and just what needed to be shared."the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me". i totally believe that. i was lucky enough to sing the song "Praise the Man" with all the missionaries singing behind me. i filmed it, so hopefully i can get it to load! if not i will just mail it :) it was awesome.

awesome experience this week:

We received a referral from a member, so we went over the next day to try it. we talked with the woman and she was nice, and told us we could come back the next night to share a message with her! it was great and we were super excited. so, that next day we did a thousand role-plays in preparation to teach the first lesson to our "new" investigator! sister palmer was super excited, and i was praying continually that it would go well. we walked up to the house, and knocked on their door. nothing. so, we walked around to the back of the house and there was a man standing there. long story short, he told us that his wife who we talked to the day before was just being nice, and they really were not interested at all, and he kindly asked us to leave his property.

man. i wanted to cry. we walked away from their house, and felt so shot down. sister palmer was about to cry, and we were so disappointed. but we said a prayer asking for the Lord's help. well. I had the thought to go visit a man Jeff, who we have been sort of teaching the past couple of weeks. we walked over there and jeff didnt answer the door, but his roommate, Kurt did. We had never met him before and started talking about religion, and long story short ended up teaching him the whole first discussion right there for the next 40 minutes! we were able to teach exactly what we had "role-played" earlier, and sister palmer was able to give him a book of mormon. we were ecstatic!! haha. it was just a testament to me that the Lord is SO aware of us. even though WE had planned to see someone else, the LORD needed us to meet Kurt. everything happens for a reason. and now we are teaching Kurt. miracle.

The church is true! Jesus is the Christ! i love Him with all the i am. I love being here, and there is no where else i would rather be, and nothing i would rather be doing. Let's do this!

Love love love,

Sister Peterson