The first was on Tuesday afternoon. We went to see this less active that is super hard to get an appointment with. She was just so up front about where she was at with the restored gospel. Kathy has been inactive most of her life, and she now wants to understand the gospel. She knows the church is true, but she is attending the Methodist church with her husband. She wants to just understand the gospel simply though, and our church was so over her head. I can understand that, even though I would rather her be with us. I prayed right then and there to know what God would have me say to His precious daughter. Whatever I said helped her to decide that meeting with us to learn more about the gospel would be helpful. I was upfront about how our dream as missionaries is to see her go to the temple. Though she is not ready to come back, she wants to progress. That's all we can ever ask for.
We also finally met with this 13 year old who is super solid. We wanted to meet with her and her grandma, so we keep putting it off in hopes her grandma could attend, but this time we just decided to go ahead and meet with Alliyah alone (outside of course). She was pretty receptive and accepted Alma 32 as a commitment. It always makes my day when people are willing to read the Book of Mormon.
Friday, we had another miracle. We picked up this investigator who was a Bible referral. He's a little out there, but we thought we would give him a chance and teach him the restoration. While we were sitting on his porch, who should roll up but Dewayne Bosby. Dewayne is someone who had learned about the church in the past and was on date for baptism. He has been so hard to contact, so this really was a miracle. He is the reason why we were there. We had a great lesson with him the next day and he set his own return appointment!
This weekend we also had Stake conference. Honestly, I was just super excited to see President and Sister Smith. It makes my day when I get to see them. The conference itself was fantastic though. We had Elder Eduardo Gavarret of the 70 come as well, and he was a fantastic teacher! I feel so blessed to experience all of these general authorities lately. They are such talented servants of the Lord. Something I loved from conference was the added emphasis on the Sabbath day. Growing up, the Sabbath day was not a concept in my life. So, that was one of the harder commandments I had to learn to keep. Now, I am learning more and more how to actually make it a delight and honor it. This is super poignant because on Sunday, we got a ride from members to conference. Our Stake center is in Mobile, which is about 45 minutes from Daphne (our area). The members who took us were starving after conference and had convinced themselves that it would be okay to go out for lunch. Since they were our ride, we had to go along. They offered to feed us, but I respectfully declined. That came with a little mocking and some attempts to make me eat out, but I was determined to keep the Sabbath holy. Afterwards, the members told me they were actually proud of me for upholding my standards. I actually love getting opportunities to stand up and keep my standards. It makes me realize how wonderful this gospel is and what power having exact obedience can bring.
Our mission president said something really cool in his talk that I loved. In the middle of conference, he had all of the missionaries stand up. There are 38 of us in this Stake, which is a lot. He invited the members to all pray for us by name. I would like to invite you all to do the same with your missionaries. They need you more than you may ever realize. This work cannot be done with us doing our parts out of sync. Please pray and ask God what you can do THIS WEEK to help the work progress.
I love you all so much and I am just so incredibly grateful for your support, prayers, and little notes. They mean the world to me. Keep on Keeping on Folks! Enjoy the pictures!
-Sister Peterson
Montez. She's a great investigator who wants to leave the Jehovah Witnesses. I love my sassy old black ladies :)
We got to go to a football game in the south! It's super legit here!
cotton :)
Alliyah. I talked about her.
Deriyah. She is so fun! She had a similar situation to me with baptism, but now that she's 18, she's not sure if she wants to be baptized.
We had a starbucks date
The cotton is snow to people of Alabama
