Lots of Food and the Law of Chastity

Ok so Monday night we went out to dinner with our ward mission leader Brother Sharp and his family. We had some yummy Mexican food. They are such an amazing family who've become like my second family! But they took us to dinner and then out for ice cream which was so sweet, and then we went to the S house for family home evening and they thought they were feeding us for dinner that night, so we showed up and N had cooked us an entire meal! So after being stuffed from all the food with the Sharps we sat down and tried to eat. I felt like I was going to explode, but the S are cool so they didn't make us eat more. They just laughed cause I literally ate like one piece of lettuce and said nope! 

We taught the 10 commandments, but only got to the first 5. We taught them the cute hand signals that go along with each commandment. When we talked about honoring our father and mother we had a good discussion about what we do to honor them and why. We talked about honesty and how important it is to be honest, and how being honest strengthens relationships and builds trust. But I was really thinking about how our parents give us rules for the same reason that Heavenly Father gives us commandments. It's because he loves us, and our parents love us too so they do everything they can to protect us, and how we can repay them is by loving and honoring them. I thought a lot about how my parents put rules on me and I thought they were restrictions and I never understood why there were so many rules, but now I know it's for my own good. They were to help me stay out of bad situations before it even got to that point. So thanks mom and dad you're the best :) I really love the S family and getting to spend Monday nights with them.

We taught L on Tuesdays morning. She read Alma 32 and 33 all about having faith and she really enjoyed it. She was able to explain the entire chapter to us, and it talked about how faith is like a little seed and if we nourish it it will grow. Just like our faith we have to be willing to act in faith in order to make it grow. We read Alma 34 with her for our lesson and it went so well! It talked all about how we can do anything by having faith in God. So we asked her if she believed that God would answer her prayers that this is the true church if she had the faith he would. She said yes he would answer her. So we invited her to pray to know that this is the true church. She gave the closing prayer and it was really good! 

We taught M Wednesday night about obedience, praying often, and studying the scriptures. It was a great lesson like always. He's opening up to us more every time we meet with him. He read Alma 34 and basically highlighted the entire thing because he enjoyed it that much! And we even asked what he got out of it, and he gave us a good summary if the whole thing, and shared his favorite verses! It was so great, oh and he also said he's gone 3 days without smoking and he's sure he is done now! We are so excited for him!  

Ok here's the moment we've all been waiting for since I came out on my mission. I know you're all wondering and waiting to hear about my first lesson on the law of chastity and let me tell you it happened on a rainy Thursday night. We taught M all about the law of chastity and because I'm the new missionary, and it was my first time teaching this, I of course got to start the lesson! And what a great lesson it was! He knew that it meant not to have sex before marriage and so I got to explain more about it and we taught him that it's one of the biggest sins we can commit, but also the many blessings we receive from living by this. 

We also got to talk about how we feel the spirit more when we keep ourselves pure, and because of that we are more happy, and everyone in the room agreed it was so amazing! Because we all know even M how keeping ourselves clean and pure in both thoughts and deeds make us happier and feel closer to our father in heaven. We taught that we are more confident so we read D&C  121:45 about keeping our thoughts pure and then we will become more confident and when we invited him to keep the law of chastity without hesitation he accepted!  

Then on Saturday M took us and his cousin K out to lunch at the really good Chinese food place. It was so sweet that our investigator did that for us! The bonds I am making with the people here are ones that will last the eternities. It makes me stop and think how I probably knew them in the pre-earth life, and told them I'm coming for you! And now here we are helping each other come closer to God. Missions are amazing. 

We went back and finished pulling weeds for MA. She's doing so great! She's feeling a lot healthier than she has been, and getting to see her and do service for her makes all of our days! 

Thursday was a day of horror. I was on the floor getting ready for the day, and I see this black blob moving across the ceiling and I look and there is a huge thick black spider crawling across the ceiling! And it was really big. But I wasn't about to smack it down because I didn't want it to fall on me. So I waited for Sister Sowter and I showed it to her and we didn't know how to get it off the ceiling, but eventually it started crawling down the wall. But I still didn't want to smack it with a shoe so I sprayed it with some white board cleaner and it flew off the wall on to the floor! And I smacked it with my shoe but it wouldn't die! So Sister Sowter started smacking it too and we finally took it out! Team work! But really you should have seen how big it was it was horrible! 

We had a lesson Tuesday night with a girl from the young single adults ward named S who is coming back to church after a couple years. She doesn't have a lot of knowledge of what we believe in so we were asked to teach her the lessons to help her better understand what we know to be true. She had a lot of questions about everything and I'm really happy we were able to meet up with her and teach her because she really needed her questions answered. She told us that one day she decided she needed to go to church and once she was there she felt the spirit and that's what kept her coming back. She told us that she doesn't feel the spirit a lot, but she always feels it when she goes to church and then during our lesson she pointed out that she could feel the spirit in that moment. It was really cool that she could recognize that great comforting feeling as the spirit. 

We got a new member of the beacon hill ward named Sh who is a recent convert of about a month from Southern California. We were told about her by the elders who taught her in the Carlsbad mission. It was really sweet because they wanted to make sure we were taking good care of her which is how I would act if any of the people I was teaching moved! we went to her house Monday before dinner and she wasn't home, so we wrote on a bunch of paper hearts uplifting things and scriptures and taped them on her door! And somehow she knew it was us because she texted us saying thank you for the hearts on the door! But we got to meet her Tuesday and she's amazing! She has two cute little kids and she's so nice and told us how much this gospel has strengthened her and brought her happiness. And lucky for us we get to teach her the new member lessons so we get to spend more time getting to know her and seeing her testimony! She showed us a picture on her baptism day of her in the white jumpsuit and she said when she put it on she told her elders she was not wearing that, so she wore a dress instead to be baptized. Sh has a really outgoing personality and I'm super excited to teach her! 

We had another amazing lesson with M on Saturday. We finished the restoration, and talked about Christ's life on earth, and the priesthood and she really enjoyed that. And she remembered about apostasy and so we taught her about the great apostasy and how Christ's true church was lost, and others built new churches on parts of the truth that they had. When we taught her about Joseph Smith praying to know which church to join, and getting his answer by being visited by Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ we asked her what she thought about that and she said she believed it. I was blown away! She has a huge testimony that God answers our prayers, but not only the fact that he answers them but that he does it in his timing. She prays on her knees every day. So when we told her that Joseph Smith got on his knees to pray with a deep desire to know which church to join and he received his answer she was touched to know the truth. It was so cool. Then we introduced the lovely Book of Mormon to her! We invited her to read the Introduction and pray to know the truth if the book. She said she would and she said thank you for the book a couple of times so she seemed pretty excited to read it! I'm so excited for her to know the truth for herself! 

Sister Sowter and I tracted Drury lane during a Murphy creek zone blitz looking for the muffin man, no we didn't find him, but we talked to a bunch of really nice people and had a great time walking around in the pouring rain.   

Anyways it was a pretty good week! And I hope you all have great weeks and remember that God answers your prays and I love you! 

Love, 

Sister Peterson