Thanksgiving!

Dear Family and Friends! Happy thanksgiving to everyone! It is really weird to think that I year ago I was in the same place celebrating thanksgiving! But this thanksgiving was a lot better because the Richmonds, our senior couple, prepared the food and not the missionaries! :) It was great, it had been so long since I had Turkey and there was even Dr. pepper so I was happy! It is really great to sit back and be thankful for all the things that I have! The Lord has truly blessed me with an amazing family and with amazing Friends all around me! I'm so thankful for my experiences and the trials that I have had in my life! I'm also so thankful for this Gospel and the wonderful change that it has brought into my life! It has been a blessing for me to be on a mission and do the Lords work! I love it more and more every day! There is a great feeling and satisfation in serving and I'm so so thankful for the opportunity that I have to be here! I love the Gospel and I love thanking God for the blessings that I have in my life! We all need to have a spirit of thankfulness in our every day lives! I love my family so much!

We had a pretty busy week as I was trying to become a legal citizen and get my legalization process taken care of! I will tell you what, it is like sitting in the Drivers license division for about 3 hours! But I got to get some good reading in the Book of Mormon done! There was a guy sitting in there with a Miami Heat hat on and I went and sat by him and asked him if he liked basketball and he said no not really and then I asked him about his hat and I don't think he even know who the miami heat are! It was pretty funny! People do that a lot here!

We have had some slow times with Francoise the past couple weeks! It is so sad to see people get so close to entering in by the way and then they choose otherwise! I have seen it so much in my mission! Just as soon as people get close, satan comes in and works to his best to bring them off the path! Narrow is the gate right!? We haven't lost faith for her and we know she will be baptized! It is just a matter of time! The other day during companionship study we learned how we can help the local church leaders go out and reactivate less actives! We read in Alma 17:31-33 and it is really cool to see how Ammon went out and had a lively attitude toward watching over the herds of the King! We will be working on applying this with the leaders here and we pray that we will see success!

I hope everyone has an absolutely fantastic week! Make sure to thank your heavenly father for your blessings! :) Have a great thanksgiving and I love you all so so much!! :) Love Elder Peterson!

Washing the Van

 Letter from Grandma I finally recieved

 Thanksgiving

Ma chère famille

Hello family and Friends! Well I don't have a lot of time because I spent a lot of my time sending pictures so I hope you enjoy those! I will tell you what though, I don't enjoy sitting in airports all day long! We had quite the experience getting to Trinidad! So our plane left Tuesday from Guadeloupe at 6:55 am and we made it to Martinique right around 8 am. We were supposed to leave Martinique at about 10 or a 11 am to make it to a flight from barbados to trinidad at around 1 pm! Well when we got to Martinique (we as in all the French side missionaries which makes 10 of us) the plane was delayed and we didn't end up leaving till about 1 pm and by the time we got to barbados our plane had already left and the next flight wasn't until 8:55 that night. I didn't get into bed till about 1 in the morning and then we woke up at 6 to walk to the mission home! :) It was a fun experience! Trinidad was amazing and we had such an amazing time all learning and being inspired by the spirit! It was so great and I was definitely sad to leave the next day but I was pumped to go out and apply all the things that we learning in the Leadership conference! Now I just hope that Elder Johnston and I can relay the message with as much power! :) We talked about a lot of things in our conference, from effective branch councils to teaching skills and then at the very end we had a giant testimony meeting where everyone bore their testimonies! It was such a great experience for me and I'm thankful for the opportunity that I had to go there and learn! I was inspired to work so much harder and to continue letting the gospel change my life! There is so much to say about it but not enought time, I'm sorry! 

Francoise and Noemi weren't at church on Sunday so we will be setting a new baptismal date with them this coming week! We don't doubt that they will be baptized! It is just a matter of time! There have been some members that have been giving us some sweet referrals and we will start working closely with them this coming week! We are truly being blessed! I'm pretty sure I always say that but it is true! :)

My companion is awesome! He has been such a great friend and he is so kind hearted! He makes me laugh all the time too and I enjoy that haha! He has been out on his mission for 2 transfers longer than I and he is from arkansas!

I have to go though but I send my love to you all and I hope everyone has a fantastic week!! Thank you for all the love and prayers!

Love Elder Peterson! Read the Book of Mormon, it is sweet! :)

Elder Johnston and I

Ford mustang

Martinique airport and walking out to the plane

AMERICA IN BARBADOS!

Elder Belnap and I

again walking in the rain

Taking off shoes to go into the mission home

and another mission friend!

Elder Hatch and I

In Trinidad

, they gave us rain ponchos

also walking out to the plane in the rain

In Trinidad

Banane pesée. The Police got us. Just kidding, that is Luciennes daughter and she is a police officer!

Mission Leadership Conference November 2014

apple store

We are in the apple store emailing right now because all of the cyber bases are closed for some reason so this is going to be a pretty short email! It was a great week! Francoise and Noemi are struggling a little bit with doubts but we are working closely with them and things are going well! We did some driving this week because a couple missionaries had to fly out to do legalization stuff and be able to be legal in a french country! That took a good amount of our time but we still had a good week! We are also going to trinidad tomorrow until thursday for a missionary leadership conference so we are really looking forward to that! It has been a long time since I have been on a plane so I'm excited for that and I'm excited for all of the sweet stuff we are going to learn! But we have to go so have a great week everyone! I sure do love you all and think about you lots!! :) Love you all! Love elder Peterson

Going crazy!

That was a pretty sweet week. The zone had a really productive week and we were so happy to see that! We knew that the Elders and Sisters in our zone really wanted to do an activity today for P-day so we made some goals together so that we could do an activity and the results were awesome! Everyone worked so hard and I believe that each one of us really learned from this week, seeing that all is possible if we work hard and put our trust and faith in the Lord! It seems like everyones bikes and other means of travel have been breaking lately and that isn't what we want.

We have been working on getting all the missionaries taken care of so they can be out working to their full abilities! We had some awesome work done with the members in our branch this past week and we were blessed with their help! We even had two members that came out with us and saw a couple people with us! We are really trying to work very closely with our branch president and other branch leaders to help strengthen the branch here! I will tell you what though, it is quite the process! We are seeing blessing though and things are being accomplished! Francoise and Noami are still doing great and they are so determined to be baptized. The Francoise this past week asked Noami, "do you think we will really be ready for the 22nd of November?" and Noami responded by saying, "are you trying to back out?" It was pretty funny and super cool to see how determined she is, along with Francoise! It will be a slow process with the rest of the family but it will come along! From doing the activity with the zone, I found a lot of ways to be effective with our work and how we plan things. It is true that when we go out and go "crazy", that's my term for working extremely hard, we are blessed and I can telly that the Lord is happy with our efforts!

For some reason that is all I can remember. Short term is kicking in! I love you all and have an awesome week! :) Elder Peterson

Me with a great friend that goes home in a couple weeks.