Rain!

Well it has been raining so much lately and I'm loving it! :) It is pretty good stuff and it really comes down! You could only be out in it for like 3 seconds and you come out entirely soaked! It always amazes me! This so called storm that is supposed to be coming through today hasn't impressed me to much! It did rain for a little while this morning but nothing to special!

This week was a super busy one as we are coming toward the end of the transfer we needed to do some exchanges and a shadow with the sister missionaries! We also had one of the missionaries in our zone just fly to another country to get a legalisation card so we had his companion for a day! The whole week kind of just blured together but we still did fit in some really cool stuff! We had a lesson this past week with Francoise. A lady we have been teaching for a little while now and who had a baptismal date but hasn't had one for a little amount of time. We were blessed to plan a baptismal date for the 22nd of November! She seems really determined and that makes us pumped! We still have a lot to accomplish with her but it will come along! Lucienne is still doing awesome as a new member of the Church! She is even starting to have family home evenings with her family which is a huge miracle with her daughters! We love that family so much! It is crazy to think that six weeks has come and gone again! Goodness! I've been learning a lot lately on how important it is to let God's plan for life ingulf our personal goals for life! It is easy to forget what God has instore for us and worry about what we want. What we should really want is God's divine help and put our trust in him to become what he wants us to become!

Kind of a short letter but I hope that everyone is doing well and I love hearing about all of the great things that are going on back home! The Lord has blessed me with awesome family and friends and I love you all! I'm thankful for the change that has been wrought in me by the atonement of Christ! I love Him! Have a great week everyone! I love you all! :)

General Conference

Well, since everyone wants to know what conference is like here I will try and explain what happens! Since we are two hours ahead, it starts at 12 each day and is done at 6 in the afternoon. Priesthood was from 8 until 10 at night! The three branches of Guadeloupe (basse-terre, lamentin, abymes) all go to the Abymes chapel! All the members listen two it in French and the missionaries that want to listen to it in English go to a different room in the building! We all stay at the church and just talk with Member/Investigators. But yeah it goes kinda like that! Conference was amazing! Five years ago, I don't think I ever thought that I would love Conference as much as I do now! I long for it and I love the messages that are shared. I'm so grateful for a living Prophet and his Apostles! I could feel the Lord's love for us and he servants talked! Something that I thought was really cool during General Conference was the Love that the Apostles showed towards the Prophet! Elder Russell M. Nelson really made it known to me of the brotherhood that these mean have! I love them and will thank them forever for their devotion to the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! In our Zone meeting a little while ago and we talked about the fears that we have as missionaries. One of the fears that I added to the list was the fear of change! Well change was talked about in General Conference and how we should welcome change! I thought that was really cool! Also, I know that coming out on my mission, I didn't want to change some of my characteristics and others I felt free to change. After listening to the messages, I know now that I have to whole heartadly turn towards the Lord and let him change me into what he wants me to be! I was really inspired this Conference and I'm thankful for that! I sincerely love this Gospel and I'm thankful for the changes it has wrought in my life! The Lord has truly blessed me!

We had a great week and my companion is back to good health and all is going well with that! We are keeping pretty dang busy and it doen't ever seem like there is enough time! I guess that is just a part of life!

I'm proud to know that two other of my family members are out on missions! I've been blessed with an amazing family and with amazing examples who have helped inspire me! I thank you all and I send my love and prayers! Have a fantastic week, and as President Monson said, "be a little better!" Love Elder Peterson!

The half puzzle he recieved for his half way mark.

Lucienne

We had a pretty awesome week, even though Elder Christensen was a little bit sick! Lucienne was baptized and it was an amazing baptism! It was a miracle because her two daughters, the ones that looked up ex-mormon stuff, acutally came and supported their mom and they were very nice! Such a huge blessing! A good amount of the members of our branch were there and that was also a blessing! For a good amount of the time that we have been teaching Lucienne, we have been seeing her with President Eclar's wife but it was pretty much the whole family! Anyways, since Sister Eclar has been battling with Cancer it was awesome to see the spirit touch her life in helping bring someone to baptism! As Lucienne came out of the font, they both hugged and Sister Eclar teared up. It was something special for me to see! Lucienne not only bore her testimony at her baptism but also in Church! I can tell this has changed her life and she has a special glow about her now! We were blessed to have two of our other investigators at her baptism as well! The members are doing wonderful work and we have been blessed! It has been an interesting week for me as I have had some time to ponder and look on some things personally in my life. I'm thankful for the changes that I have made spiritually, thanks to the Atonement of Christ! I still have a lot of work to do and I need to put my will into God's and let him shape me into who I'm supposed to be! I'm thankful for the chance I have to be on a mission. Every day I grow more and more to love the Gospel, it is true! And God lives, along with his son and we can know of it thanks to his spirit! I love you all and I hope you have a great week! Thank you for your love and your prayers! :) "Christ can change men/women, and changed men/women can change the world!" Ezra Taft Benson, with some alters! Love you!

Family

Well I wanted to start off by saying happy birthday dad!! :) I sure hope you go out and do something fun for me! Maybe a nice harley ride :) Happy birthday again!!

Zone conference was super awesome this past week and it was super great for all the missionaries here on Guadeloupe! Elder Zivic is an amazing person filled with love for everyone! We got to hear him give a devotional in Spanish and Elder Gamiette translated it to French! It was super cool! Elder Zivic also speaks really good English! We received instruction on a lot of things but I guess the them was how to be more effective missionaries! and also how we can have more faith! It was super great and we learned a lot of things! I don't really have a lot of time to talk about that today! But I can say the upcoming weeks are going to be awesome, because we are going to try our best to apply all the things we were taught and we know that our zone here will start seeing miracles!

Lucienne had her baptismal interview and she is preparing for baptism this saturday!! :) It has been awesome to have had the chance to work with her and watch her testimony grow as mine has grown a long side of her's! It was pretty cool, last night we sat down and listened to a talk by President monson and she goes, "wow, that was edifying!" haha she is so awesome!

I'm personally going to be working hard these next couple weeks on sanctifying myself and becoming more virtuous! It has been a work in the progress but I know it will come a long and I have my whole life to try and perfect it! That's about all for this week! Time to go out and baptize!! I sure do appreciate all the prayers and love in my behalf! I thank everyone for all the support! I think about you all often and you are in my prayers! May the Lord bless you! Love elder peterson!

Scriptures

Well, here we are again, sending emails! I'm just going to start off by saying that the scriptures are awesome! Each day I get up and study, I learn something awesome out of the Book of Mormon and surprisingly that day I end up using what I learned! It is a pretty simple concept but each time it happens I'm pretty amazed! The Book of Mormon was truly inspired for out time and for the questions that we all have!

We had a pretty great week here and things are starting to pick back up again! Lucienne was at church along with two other investigators we have! Lucienne asked us saturday night, how long she needed to let us know that she wants to get baptized, before the actual baptism! We believe that her baptism will be this saturday! That is what we are praying for atleast! :) She is amazing, she has read like 3/4 of the Book of Mormon and her book is so marked up! She loves it! I was blessed with the opportunity to give a talk on church on sunday and we all know how much I love giving talks ;) but it went pretty good and I talked about the Joy in serving the Lord! When I get infront of people like that I'm sure my French is awful cause I get nervous haha! Oh well! Last night we went and saw a guy that is the highest catholic priest on all of Guadeloupe and it was pretty cool to sit and talk with him! He was super nice and we simply just talked about religion and different things! He has even read the Book of Mormon but I'm not sure how he felt about it! This week we have zone conference and we all pretty excited for that! Elder Claudio D. Zivic will be here. He gave the talk in the last general conference about Delicat Arch in Moab! That will be a pretty cool experience! We are trying to make the work better in Lamentin, something that seems like a never ending process but it is great :) Always room to improve something!

Sounds like everyone is doing well! I send my thoughts and prayers! I've been hearing rumors about some stuff that is going on in the world! Not good to be hearing that but I know that if we focus on the things that really matter in life, the plan of salvation, the atonement of christ, we can find happiness! Christ's light will shine in any amount of darkness! I love you all and send my appreciation! :) have a great week!! Love Elder Peterson!

N'importe qui biten

That was easily a quick transfer and I think that has to do with the fact that it was just so busy! I'm definitely looking forward to the upcoming transfer and what can come from it! Elder Christensen and I learned a lot together and I'm excited to see what can happen when we put all the new things into work!

It was quiet an interesting week for us here. Might as well get the bad news over with and say that Lucienne didn't end up getting baptized, but don't worry, it will come here soon! She has made so many changes in her life and she told us that she doesn't want to go back but she wants to keep moving forward! So earlier this week she was feeling pretty sad because of some family issues that she got solved then Tuesday night while I was down on an exchange, Elder Christensen and Elder Ehlert went and gave her a blessing! She expressed her feelings that that really helped and that she was still planning on the baptism this past Saturday! Well Wednesday, the day of the interview, we get a call from her and she ended up telling us that she wasn't getting baptized because her daughters wouldn't let her and that they don't support her. She also mentioned something about about her daughters looking at stuff on the internet. Right then and there a red flag came up and Elder Christensen and I knew that they had looked at ex-mormon stuff. So we asked her if we could come over and talk to her and her 2 daughters. We went over later that night and we basically got attacked but we listened respectfully to all of their arguments and towards the end we attempted to respond to their concerns but they were to set in their ways. It was so sad. It makes it even more sad to know that we could have responded to all of their arguments with doctrine but they refused to listen. So that lesson didn't really help anything but it was really spiritual for Elder Christensen and we both came out edified by the spirit and we were taught many lessons! Lucienne came to church on Sunday and she loved it. It was a tender mercy because a couple of the testimonies that were born concerning a lot of the difficulties that Lucienne was having, without anyone even knowing! We saw her last night with a member and she is still planning on Baptism but she doesn't know when! We invited her to pray concerning the "when" so we will see what happens! We are really praying for her and we know that God has a plan for her! The Lord has been blessing us! We have been so thankful for all these blessings! We have an awesome transfer ahead of us and we are going to get work done! :)

There is some more stuff but I don't really have anytime so that will have to wait! I hope everyone has a great week and for those of you that started school again, good luck! :) I send my love and prayers! Especially my appreciation! Have a great week!! :) Love Elder Peterson!

Life

Well I'm not really sure how we are already going into week 6 of this transfer! I feel like it should only be like week 3! It amazes me how fast time has been going by lately but I'm sure it has to do with the fact that we are trying to stay as busy as possible! The sickness moved it's way out on Monday so I was set and ready to go for the whole week! I was pretty dang sore though for a couple of days though but now all is going well! So we have had some interesting things happen, Dina, the lady that we met contacting one day and left with a Book of Mormon has kind of disappeared on us and we are pretty heartbroken you could say, about that! Also we haven't been able to see Francoise for a really long time now! We don't know what has been happening and we have been trying to do all that we can to figure things out! We didn't have any success this week with them but we still have this coming week so we will see what happens! Things are going great with Lucienne, it has been really cool to see her fulfill D&C 20:37. We have seen so much change in her and we know she is going to get baptized! We have her baptismal interview this week and hopefully her baptism on Saturday! We ended up doing a lot of finding this week and the Lord really blessed us with some amazing contacts! It is really cool to see what difference the Book of Mormon makes on people when we introduce it for the first time! There really is something so special about it! I can't really remember a lot of other stuff so I guess that will be all for this week! Something funny that happened, we came accross a french guy and the contact was so funny! He came out to the gate and opened it and was super friendly! He continued to ask us why we were there and we told him what we did! Instantly his mood changed and he slammed the gate on us! I stood there so confused as he starred at us! Note that he was just tall enough so that his eyes made it over the gate! And he starts walking away saying I don't need all this religion and stuff and he was super mad! I was still in awe and it was pretty funny to us! It is really sad when people don't give these things a chance!

Life is great here! I've been really trying to focus my thoughts towards the Savior in all things and it has been really blessing me! It helps a lot and the spirit is so much stronger! I also love the Book of Mormon, I know that the words were really inspired for our time and that they can really help us get so much closer to Christ, as I have seen it in my life! I invite everyone to take the time to read from the Book of Mormon, and I can testify that it will change lifes! :) I love you all so much and I hope everyone has a fantastic week! Thanks again for all the love and support! Love Elder Peterson!