Transfered

   Wow hearing about Mitch being in an area for almost a year makes me realize that three transfers is nothing! ha I'm happy to hear that he was being a champ all the way through to the end though! I guess wrestling does teach a lot of Endurance ;) ha just kidding! From what I have seen so far, staying in one area for a long time can get pretty tedious and can become boring! It is awesome though when missionaries can keep a positive attitude and work hard all the way through! Speaking of transfers, I am going to Lamentin, Guadeloupe! Just moving to a different area on this Island! My new companion is Elder Christensen and I am super pumped! It is going to be a great transfer and I know I am going to definitely learn a lot. We will have the missionary bus basically (it is just a van) but no more bikes! I am not sure if I will miss all of these hills and what not! Probably eventually when the car starts making me unhealthy haha! I didn't expect this transfer at all but that is usually how it always is!
   A couple little stories about the week! I gave a talk in church about the joy in serving the lord and that was pretty good! I ended up talking for 20 min and I am not sure how that was even possible! I was happy though that it turned out pretty well! On Friday we went to an investigators house whose name is Marius! He was an investigator probably 4 to 5 years ago and we have just started teaching him again! He works in the banana fields and is very poor and every time we go to his house I just feel so bad for him! It is awesome thought because he is one of the nicest most humble people you will ever meet! He is always trying to give us stuff! We felt impressed to read in third nephi when Christ comes to the America's and he blesses all of the sick and afflicted! It was a sweet lesson and we were so happy to be there with him. He told us after that it gave him comfort and hope! It was super sweet!
   Good luck ben on your mission! I'm pumped for him! He is going to love it! I hope everyone has a fantastic week and I send my love and prayers! Read the Book of Mormon, it will change your life, even if it already has! It will push you always towards christ and it will show the way! I love you all! Thank you for all that you do for me!! Love elder peterson!

"deny yourself of all ungodliness"

This week wasn't our best but I learned a lot from it and I just need to put everything that I learned into practice. Weren't very diligent and that definitely showed in our numbers. It just pains me to know that I wasted time this past week and that is driving me to really work hard this week! I've noticed that my effort never really feels like enough but then when I look back at where I was when I first started my mission, I can tell that I have really made a lot of progress down the straight and narrow path! I thank my savior so much for have allowing me the opportunity to be here and to make this progress! Just like in Moroni 10:32! I love the scriptures so much and I know my leaders back home were not kidding when they said that true conversion will come from reading the book of mormon! One cool thing that happened this past week, actually yesterday, we saw a family who was taught by the missionaries a couple years ago and we feel as if they are ready to hear the gospel again! They told us a story of how the missionaries came over one day and the wife was sick so they gave her a blessing! They explained how she was healed almost instantly and that they have always remembered that! The seed was planted and it has grown! Such a huge blessing and we are going to really focus on this family! On a side note, we ended up playing Dominoes with a neighbor of a member and we made a deal that if we won we got to share our message with him, he agreed. We ended up losing but we still shared our message with him and that was pretty cool!

We got 24 dr peppers this past week and me and my companion drank them in like 5 days, they were so good! Our recent convert jean was dancing for us the other day and that was super funny haha! Life is good here on Guadeloupe! This is the last week of the transfer so we will see if I stay or leave! Have a great week everyone and good luck on your farewell talk Ben! I love you all so much!! Love elder peterson!

Zone Conference

Well zone conference is on Tuesday, time to see if I have the 84 scripture references memorized! ha! I am super excited for what our mission president is going to teach us, because he always seems to blow our minds! We love it haha! This week was a pretty busy one actually! I had to go to the prefecture on tuesday so I can be legal here in Guadeloupe and that stuff always takes so much time so I wasn't looking forward to it! The workers are always super angry with everyone and when they start getting angry at me I start stuttering and can't speak french haha not a good combination! But we got it all taken care of and now I have an appointment in october to get it all finished! But then on Friday I had to take Elder Ehlert to get his done! We spent a lot of time on the bus and walking around! It was a pretty long day!

Cool things that happened, Friday night we went to Jean's house, the recent convert, and we made pancakes for him and his neighbors and surprisingly just random people started showing up and we may begin teaching them! It was a pretty awesome miracle I thought! I decided we needed to do pancake night more often! People eat pancakes like crepes here and they like fold them up and put jam on them! It is really weird! I just want my peanut butter and syrup! Anyways, Sunday morning before district conference (or steak conference) we had micheal call us (recent convert and now less active) and tell us he was at the church! It was like 8:30 and it didn't start till ten. He told us he was going to go home because he didn't want to wait! He told us to call him back and after I hung up I felt impressed to pray that he would stay, so we all knelt down and prayed! He ended up staying and even brought is aunt who isn't a member! :) It was a huge blessing and I'm so thankful he ended up staying! It was a pretty awesome week!

We got our bikes bike and I am pretty happy about that! Walking is no fun haha But I hope that everyone has a great week! I send my love and prayers! Have fun in the hot sun! :) I love you all! Love elder Peterson!

Busy Week

Wow, that was a pretty busy week and it seems like all we did was just run around all over the place! We had so many meeting and stuff to be to that it just seemed like we were always at the church or traveling to the chapel in Abymes! But we had a baptism and it went great! Jean has been such an amazing person and now he has finally made it to the port and made his way through! The baptism was awesome and a lot of members were there which was a blessing! It always seems like we can't get a whole lot of members to baptisms so we were blessed with this one! Funny little story, in sacrament meeting, I had the wonderful opportunity to translate from French to English for two of our members because there was a family from the states here and they wanted them to understand. The Father of the family served here 20 years ago! But the translating was a huge challenge! It kicked my butt! I need to put more work into language study, that is for sure! But it did surprise me with what I did know and what I did understand! This week we had a devotional that President Eclar put on and I feel like that went pretty well! It was on missionary work but he talked a lot about how we can share even just small things to plant seeds in the hearts of others! Also had to take my bike into the repair shop so we have been on foot for the past week now! I was sick of "jimmy rigging" stuff to make it work so I decided to take it in to be fixed! I am looking forward to getting the bike back, foot is kind of slow work! We had a bbq to celebrate the 4th of July and it was great to be able to think about America for a little while! The highlight of the week was definitely the baptism! We love Jean and it has been such a wonderful opportunity to work with him! The Lord has been blessing us and helping us immensely!

I hope everyone had a fantastic fourth of July and that all is well back home! I send my love and support and I'm so appreciative of the prayers and thoughts on my behalf! I love you all and have a great week! :) Love elder Peterson!

 Elder Savage Making Us Some Hamburgers

 Elder Smith Doesn't Like Hot Foods

 Jean

Obedience and its blessings!

We had an awesome week down here in Capesterre! We set goals and we achieved them! Of course there were some goals we didn't meet but we improved a lot! Jean was interviewed this week and he is ready for baptism! I love him so much and I am so happy that he has made this choice to be baptized! In church on Sunday, he bore a little testimony in Priesthood and it was so powerful. It is amazing to see the impact of the gospel in the lives of others! He has come a long ways I think and I think that it has been pretty cool that I have been a part of his story from the beginning! He makes a laugh and we love being around him! Of course all of this success has been coming from the lord! We can see that our obedience and our desires to work hard have been paying off! It is easy to be lazy and to be lax about rules but it is definitely more worth it to work hard and to be obedient! I have noticed the past couple months that my attitude towards being obedient has grown so much! I contribute that to my own conversion to the gospel! The Book of Mormon talks about how when we become closer to Christ, we begin to have an abhorrence for sin! It has been a blessing so far in my mission!

We have been a little stressed about our branch here because all of the members are leaving on vacation and there won't be many member here on sunday's! In fact I was called to be the temporary secretary for the Branch until the secretary gets back from france haha! Elder Ehlert received a calling too as aaronic priesthood teacher! The funny thing is we aren't supposed to hold callings but we have no other option! It will all work out and things will work out like they are supposed too!

That is about all for this week! I hope everyone has a fantastic week! Happy fourth of July! I am going to miss that! Ammeerrica! I love you all!! Love elder peterson!

 Pancakes for a friend

 Jean is getting Baptized

 Went to the Zoo

Awesome Week

Dear Family!

I am not really sure where to begin this letter so this may be bad news haha! Just kidding! We had an awesome week and we found so many people and we have been really working on talking to everyone that we come in contact with! On Friday we decided to go up every city that was in a hill and oh man I was dead tired after word and my clothes felt like I jumped in a pool! But coming down all of the hills was a blast! I switched my bike seat to a different one that we had at the apartment and I was regretting that! It is a lot smaller and a lot harder seat! Great new though, we have a lot of hope about Jean getting baptized here on the 5th of July! I love that guy and he is always making us laugh! We went the other day to see him and the first thing he told us was that he bought a tie! So on sunday he was at church in a white shirt and tie and it was so awesome! He really feels like he is progressing to be baptized and we can see it too! Such a huge blessing!This sunday we were really worried that we weren't going to have very many people at church because they made Basseterre a group and that took a lot of our members from our branch. Miraculously we had a good number of people at church and we were all so happy about that! I really don't have a lot of stories for this week!

I am running out of time today so I need to go, sorry about the short letter! I hope that everyone has a fantastic week! I send my love and prayers your way! :) Thank you for all support! Can't believe it is almost July! Love you all!

Love elder peterson!

Elder Peterson and Elder Lewis

 Elder Peterson in the Rain

 The food Elder Peterson made

Dear Family and Friends

Well here we are again sending emails haha I will probably never understand how time flies like this but that is life I guess and it seems to only speed up! We had a great week and saw some pretty wonderful miracles as usual! I always try and keep President Uchtdorf's talk on my mind so that I can be thankful for the rain or my trials before I see the rainbow and it seems to be working and helping me out! We just received our transfer calls again and I am staying here in Capesterre for another six weeks and I am looking forward to it! I really want to see what I can do here to progress the work and see what things I can learn! We have been finding a lot of contacts lately because of our desires to find new people haha so we are being blessed! We have been setting the goal to work more with the members so we will see if we can't get some member referrals! :) I can testify that members make all the difference in missionary work!

Saturday we had our Polynesian day and it was super sweet! All of the members on Guadeloupe were there along with a bunch of investigators and friends of members! The Tahitians made a whole bunch of food by heating up a bunch of rocks and burying them in the sand! We watched them dance and had a bunch of activities and it turned out really great! It makes me want to visit Tahiti now! :) 

Also quick little story, Elder Ehlert and I had to out run some gangsters last night on their scooter! We where going down this hill and here comes this scooter head on with its lights off and almost hits us! We didn't really think anything of it till later down the road we heard honking and yelling and I turned and looked back and saw that scooter coming after us so I said that it was time to go and we booked it out of there and basically had to do some evasive maneuvers to escape them and it got our adrenaline pumping! It was pretty funny to think that two white boys out ran some gangsters on their scooter! It was fun :)

Well that is all for this week! I hope fathers day was great and that all the fathers got spoiled ;) I love you all! keep on keeping on!! Love elder Peterson!