The Lord helps his servants!

Hiiii

So this week was super awesome.
  

We went to a different area everyday to help find new people to teach. So we only spent one afternoon in our area and that day we spent planning our activity, which turned out AMAZING!!!!!!!!! Talk about blessings from the Lord!!!  A couple things fell through and I ended up having to play and sing the guitar...i learned a couple of hymns in about 10 minutes, that was interesting. And then someone picked one and I had about 30 seconds to learn to play it....that was difficult haha, but it´s nice improv practice!!!

But it was an activity about the plan of salvation and we were all in a plane and the Flight attendants were selling cookies, cake, pop, and water and the people had money to buy them, but everything was super expensive so they had to use their 'white papers' to buy the food. It was really interesting. It was super fun!! Then the people who kept their 5 white papers (covenants) went to the celestial kingdom, 3-4 terestial, and 0-2 telestial. They only stayed there for about 5 minutes and then they could visit the other kingdoms to see the things they "missed" and we ended with testimonies and experiences. But it was AMAZING!! People found each other after the mix up and they were hugging and excited to see each other and people heartbroken that they have to be split up, it was just a wonderful experience! And everything worked out!!!!!!!!!

I almost forgot to mention that I made 240 cookies for this activity. And not just normal small cookies we had to have HUGE cookies to represent pride and let´s just say that Saturday was Cookie day!! Haha

Gabriel has had a traumatizing experience with water so we are going to help him this week try to get over his fear so he can get baptized!

Cauan went to church on Sunday in church clothes and he was adorable!!!! He sang in the primary program and he is so excited to get baptized!!!! We taught him a couple lessons this week with pictures and designs and activities and he understood SUPER well!! He is a really smart 8 year old!!! he is super excited to keep learning and get ready for his baptism. It will be when his "uncle" can come from São Paulo to baptize him. He is wonderful!

Marcos and Patrícia got married on Friday

Marcos and Patrícia's wedding day

Marcos and Patrícia are getting married friday and baptzied with João Pedro on SATURDAY!! I am soooo excited! It is going to be AMAZING!!!!!! He is so amazing!! His grandma passed away, he was diagnosed with kidney stones, and he is having financial problems and still he fasted and went to church and paid a fast offering. He is the Example investigator to me!!! He never gives up!!!!

Sandra and Maria Eduarda from the 3rd ward got baptized yesterday, I forgot my camera to send pictures, but if you remember a lady cutting my hair, it´s her!!!! She is amazing!! Love her so much!!! She is a sweetheart!!! She wanted us to be there so we ended up running from our ward to hers and on the way someone gave us a ride!! God is so good to us!!! He looks out for us in all the different ways in our lives!!!!

We are so excited for this week!!!

Work hard and stay strong!!!!! Keep reflecting on General Conference and everything you learned!!!!!!! 

Love you much!
Sister Peterson

Marcos and Patrícia got Baptized with João pedro on Saturday!!!!
Marcos afterwards gave an AMAZING testimony that
made me want to cry! HE is so amazing!!! He already has an
interview marked with the bishop for the priesthood!!!!!
I am SOOO excited!!!!!!

We are also working with a couple other people but I´ll write more about them next week!!!!!

Also Cauan got baptized and he is adorable.
After he was confirmed he sat down next to his mom and said
"yay, i got the Holy Ghost!" he was so excited! It´s adorable!!!!!
This weekend was literally a MIRACLE!!!! I am so happy!!!!

The pictures explain everything :D

Look at them all Progressing :D

Hiiiiii

This is sign outside of the secretaries office

How is everyone doing???? We are doing AMAZING here!! :D

Our investigators:

Erika is amazing!! She went to church yesterday and liked it!! She is stopping to drink coffee and she is excited for her baptism this weekend!!! We are going to make homemade pizzas with her and her family tomorrow. I will try to remember to bring my camera!!! We are going to work with her husband too, he works a lot so we haven´t been able to teach him, but he has already had contact with the missionaries and he likes the church!!!!!

Gabriel was interviewed and will be baptized this weekend. He loved church yesterday!! The young men in our ward welcomed him in with open arms!!!! His mom is amazing!! And is coming back to church super strong! They are such a wonderful family!

A pigeon decided that it wanted to live with us...
and it kept hitting the window and couldn´t get out,
so I had to open the window to help her.

Marcos, Patrícia and João Pedro are great as always :D They are super strong and excited for their wedding and baptism next weekend!! They weren´t able to come to church yesterday because Marcos´grandma passed away and they were at the cemetery, but he is doing okay. He is super strong and always turns to the Lord for help.

Michelle, Cauan and Matteus returned from Recife. Cauan wants to get baptized so we are going to work with him this week to get ready. Michelle wants to get baptized too but she has to figure out her situation, if she is going to stay with her boyfriend or not. But they all came to church on Sunday and it was wonderful!!!!!

We made cookies for a FHE here,
it was sooo much fun and they turned out super well
even though I didn´t have all the ingredients haha.

We are working with a couple other people but they aren´t super firm, so we will see if we will keep working with them or not, and I´ll let you know!!!

This week we had a lot of fun and success!! We are excited for this next week!!!! 

We were teaching the word of wisdom the other day and I decided that I am going to write MY Word of Wisdom (MY WOW) to help with my personal life. I know there are things I do and eat that make me feel good and active, so I am going to try to put this into effect. Then I will WOW myself with how much better I feel each day :D I challenge you (because I´m a missionary and that´s what we do :D) to write your own WOW, and see how it really blesses your life!!

Love you all!

Sister Peterson

Conference was AMAZING!!! :D

Hiii!

Wow Conference was the highlight of my week!!!

I would like to share EVERYTHING, but you will all read about it in the ensign next month, but I will share some things I particularly loved!!

Boyd K. Packer talked about how we say, "someone must pay for this!!!" He gave us the best answer..SOMEONE ALREADY DID! Christ has already paid for everything!!!!! It´s amazing!!!

Conference also talked a lot about obtaining our own testimonies and being spiritually strong through personal revelation. I have noticed the impotance of this. Here on my mission I cannot lean on the testimony of someone else. I have to be strong for myself. And there will be a time in EVERYONE´s life that they will have to be strong for themselves. That´s my invite to all of you, really gain your own testimony of Christ and the prophets because that is what will keep you strong and firm even in the worst storms of life!

We need to take responsibility for ourselves, salvation is individual. We need to each be a strong element personally! They also talked a lot about parenting. I would just like to send a smile of thanks to my parents who have been the best examples I could have ever hoped for!!! Thanks Mommy and Daddy, you are the best parents in the world, I love you!!! All the things they talked about today, YOU taught me! I´m glad that I had this as a child for it to grow into a habit. I love you!!!

Also about the sacrament!! There was a lot said, that must mean that it is SUPER important!! And it is!!! It is our blessing to be forgiven of our sins and made clean, make it a spiritual experience!!!

We all know that life is hard, but I love how the prophets and apostles remind us that WE AGREED to all of this!! We agreed to the sickness, the hard times, the trials, the sadness, everything. We wanted and were anxious to come to this earth. WE WANTED THIS!!! Let´s show that we still do!

It was interesting how straight forward everyone was in this conference. You are doing this wrong, stop, and make it right. No beating around the bush. So we just learned all these commandments that the Lord has given to us, what are we going to do with them??? SIster Cabral has us make check lists for everything, make a check list for conference and then APPLY it to your life. YOU WILL SEE THE DIFFERENCE!!!!

Our investigators are doing well!!! We met a new family we started working with and a lady Erika who went to one of the sessions of conference and liked it!! I´ll update you more on everyone´s progress next week!!!

love you all :D

Sister Peterson

PS

I loved how they were able to speak in their native language!! Talk about amazing new things!!! :D

One of my favorite things I learned that I will teach to EVERYONE:

Learn the power of prayer verse the routine of prayer!!

LOVES!!

Miracles :D

Hiiiii

We had mission conference this week and it was super awesome! I love getting all together and learning how to be better missionaries from our leaders!!! I didn´t bring my notes with me, so I will write something next week about it. But at the last minute we decided to sing a quartet!! We sang Be Still my Soul a capella and it turned out super well!!! We didn´t do all the breathing right, but I think we were the only ones who noticed haha.

Jorge was confirmed yesterday!!! It was a miracle because he told us he had to work on Sunday which would make him wait 2 more weeks to be confirmed because there is conference this weeked (YAYAYYY) but we prayed all week and he was there at church!!!!!!!

Speaking of church, it was amazing!! We had the choir from our english class so in our ward conference there were about 30 + visitors!!!! It was amazing!! And they sang soo well! I was so proud of them :D

Marcos and Patrícia are doing well!!! At church they gave out little book marks that said "The Temple should be every family´s goal." And behind it gives some helps for how we can get there and one is have FHE every week. João Pedro with his 10 years turned to his Dad and said, Daddy, we don´t have FHE everyweek, we should!!! He is so amazing!!! There baptism is going to be on the 25th, one day after they are married! I am so exicted for this day :D

Bishop called us this week and said someone from a different ward passed a refferal for an inactive that lives SUPER close to our house!! So we went to visit her and she is AWESOME!!! She has been inactive for more than 4 years and her husband passed away last year and she never knew that there was a church 5 blocks from her house!!!  She came to church yesterday and loved it!!! We went to visit her and figured out that her 15 year old son isn´t baptized yet! So we are going to work with him to get ready for this special day for him!!!

I am so excited and blessed to be a missionary of Jesus Christ, to represent Him. We can all be missionaries too. Imagine if we didn´t just have a ward of members, but a ward of missionaries. Imagine how much we would grow and how much we could help our friends who are standing right beside us.

I love you all!!! Keep smiling!

Sister Peterson

p.s. sorry no pictures this week, next week for sure :D

MIRACLES!!Jorge´s baptism!!!

Jorge´s baptism!!! All the missionaries came to support him!! yayy

This week was full of miracles!!!!!

So ´ll start off on the sad note. A sister that we were teaching who was amazing and ready to be baptized got called to go back to work on the boat early. So instead of going to church she had to go to São Paulo for an interview and yesterday she flew to France to get on the boat for 7 months. She was amazing and wanted to get baptized, but Satan works really hard sometimes, and she ended up going :/

Jorge´s baptism!!!

BUT let´s not get down, because there are ALWAYS miracles after the test of your faith!!! So we have been teaching this guy Jorge who lived in the 3rd ward but then broke up with his girl friend, moved out and is now living in our ward. So, we started teaching him with the Elders, but he wanted to know everything before he got baptized. But, on Wednesday at English class he said he wanted to get baptized on Sunday, we started talking to him about baptism and then he changed his mind. We told him to pray about it and call us Friday. Friday morning he called saying he wanted to get baptized! We called our district leaders and they came running to do the interview at 3:30. It was amazing!!! He was baptized on Sunday and it was literally a miracle. He bore his testimony afterwards and it was stellar!! He has already moved so much and I am excited to keep helping him grow in the gospel!

We also found a new guy Rafael!! He is awesome! We have only taught him one time, yesterday, but he is already excited to find the true church. He doesn´t really like the idea of church because he thinks it´s all a business now, but we explained to him and he liked it!! I´m excited to keep working with him!!

We had a beauty salon day
with all the ladies in the stake and
we invited Sandra (invesitgator from the 3rd ward)
and she came and trimmed my hair!!!!

Marcos and Patrícia are awesome! They are doing great as usual and they all came to church on Sunday in Sunday best!!!!

Paulo and Thays, they don´t live in our area, or our stake, but we may just start teaching them because they are always at FHE with a couple in our ward! They are going to get married in the next couple of months!! yayayay so that is going to be amazing!! 

We got the transfer news and Sis Ermácora and I are STAYING!! We didn´t believe it at first!!!! We called Marcos and Patrícia and she screamed when she heard the news!! She told us we have to stay here for the rest of our missions, haha!! This is the longest I have stayed with one companion and I´m excited to keep doing the work we have started!!!

I´m so excited to keep working here!!!!

Love ya!
Sister Peterson

Our last zone meeting!!

The Wait

Hey!!!

 

So a little summary about the people we are working with:

 

Ana Lucia - She is amazing!! She stopped drinking coffee!! And she was super excited! She didn´t come to  church on Sunday :/ I don´t know what happend. She was super excited to come with us but then when we went to go get her in the morning, the door man called up to her apartment and no one answered. But we are going to keep working with her because she is super strong and excited!

 

Jaysa - A new lady we found to teach! When we talked about the Restoration she loved everything and she cried during the first vision!! She was a miracle to find because we found her at about 8:50 at night...so I have learned the lesson to not give up, even if you only have 10 minutes before you have to be home. We finished our lesson at 9:23 and ran home to get inside before 9:30. We can´t break a rule after the Lord just blessed us!!!! She wasn´t able to go to church because she has a 1 year old who didn´t sleep the night before :/ But we are going to keep working with her, she is really amazing!

 

Marcos and Patrícia. So, marriage in Brazil takes a little bit of time. Once you have everything ready, they make you wait... so we have to wait until October 24th. Then they will be baptized on the 25th. I am so excited to continue working with them. We have transfers next week so I hope that I will be able to stay and continue seeing their progress. They all went to church on Sunday in their Sunday Best!! It was the first time that they came in church clothes :D I almost cried when I saw them!!!

 

We had a super cool activity on Saturday in another Ward and we taught anyone who wanted to come and know about the church all of the missionary lessons in 5 minutes each. It was really cool and the people learned a lot!! Now this week the sisters there are going to teach them all and I´m excited to see how it goes!!

 

We already started our christmas choir if you can believe it. It´s all missionaries and we are going to go around doing firesides for the stakes here. I´m excited. I was playing the piano for the first rehearsal, but I think I am going to sing because the Sopranos need help and the other pianist is an alto..we will see how it goes. I´m excited :D

 

I have been learning alot about how we can trust in the Lord. I feel like when everything is going well, it´s really easy to trust him. But it´s those times of dire need, and hardship that our faith and trust can grow. Even when everything is going wrong we have to trust that He is in control and if we do His will, it will all work out in the end.

 

Love you all! Have a wonderful week!

Sister Peterson

Eternal Families :D

Heyyyy all :D

So I´m just going to try to explain my joy when it comes to Marcos and Patrícia!!! Sooo many things happened this week!!! Okay so we went to a lesson with them and we were talking about the importance of prayer and fast and doing all we can to receive an answer because Patrícia is a little iffy. So We all decided to do a fast together saturday night until Sunday. We were planning it out when little João Pedro asked if he could fast too. We said for sure!! This was all on wednesday.

Then we went back on Friday to see how they were doing and had a short lesson with them. And they invited us to eat lunch with them on Saturday!!!! Yayyyy :D So we went Saturday and it was so fun!!! Marcos taught us how to cook Stroganof Brazilian style and I made apple crisp for dessert :D

Sunday, Marcos and João Pedro came to church and then Patrícia came for Sacrament!! It was testimony meeting and she teared up alittle during the testimonies!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHH

SO the marriage. So, Marcos said he had to get his birth certificate sent and the faster way cost more money. So he talked to the Lord and said if the money showed up to do it, he would do it. AND THE MONEY APPEARED!!! Confirmation after confirmation for him that the church is TRUE!!! So he gets the documents TODAY, and then he has to set a day at the place to get married. It will be more simple because they are already stately unified, so YAYYYY!!! We are going to talk to them tonight to see if they are going to be able to go this week or next week :D I´m so exicted!

We also started teaching a lady Tanya whose son is a member in another ward and she went to church on Sunday too!! She didn´t go to our ward, but that´s okay, she wanted to go with her daughter-in-law and I understand. But it was amazing to see that she was happy about it!!!

We did a finding activity where we drew the plan of salvation on the ground this week!!! It was super fun!! We made a lot of contacts!!! It started to rain, and then it stopped, so we had to go over our lines again, but it was a great activity!!! :D

We started teaching another family!!! Oswaldo, Rosi and their daughter Victoria. They live in the front of the church and he goes to English class a lot. ELECT, but super busy, like he leaves in the morning super early and gets back at 10 at night. BUT, we won´t let that bother us!!! We will teach him on the weekends :D yay

Well this week I have been reading a lot about Faith, and how we always have to be cultivating it. Imagine a small tree, if you don´t give it the nutrients to grow, it will die, but if you nurish it, it will grow to be a huge tree with a ton of fruit!!! That´s what we can do with our Faith.

Love you all!

Sister Peterson