This week had some pretty good lessons. We met a guy named Andrew who I believe was an online referral (clicked an ad). We taught him the Restoration and gave him the Book of Mormon to read. He said he's really excited to start because he loves learning. He also said he'd be blowing up our phones with questions, which would be great, but we haven't gotten any yet.
We also met with a guy named Daniel again. We've talked to him before, he just wasn't super ready for our message yet. But this time he was eating it up and asking great questions. We gave him a Book of Mormon and a couple pamphlets and invited him to read and pray. We should've met with him yesterday, but he keeps rescheduling. Hopefully we'll actually be able to meet him soon.
Last Friday I joined Elder Gale in his area and Elder Fisher took my spot. Elder Gale and I ended up doing a lot of street contacting, though not a lot of people allowed us to speak to them. We talked to a couple good people but then had to finish the night off with finding old investigators by knocking on their doors. The next day we met at a breakfast place called the Feed Store and had a great breakfast. After ending our exchange Elder Bowers and I had no lessons, he and Elder Fisher stole them all. So we went out and tried to find new people to teach, with not much luck.
Nothing super interesting yet, right? Yeah, listen to this. Last night Elder Bowers and I went to knock on a woman's door. She had spoken with missionaries about 2 years ago, so we wanted to see if she'd be interested in meeting with us sometime. She answered the door and boy, she was a character. The tone of her voice as we spoke was extremely rude, but what she was saying was nice enough. She told us about how her roomate, Alan, had some kind of disease and she wanted us to pray for him. She brought him out and had him introduce himself. She then told to put our hands on him. "What are you waiting for!? Put your hands on him!!" I set down my bag and then as I was standing back up she went on, "Hug him!! HE NEEDS IT!!" Elder Bowers and I each put an arm around him and then I prayed for him. Afterwards she was a lot nicer and she was talking a lot less... rudely. We got out of there and kind of chuckled to ourselves, it was very strange.
Lately I've noticed how easy it has been to love people I've never met. If you know anything about me, that's a strange development. Even people who are in a way hostile to us. I'm finding that as a missionary I can view people almost how the Lord does. I often imagine the people we teach in baptismal clothing and it reminds me that they are children of God. Sometimes it's hard to want to talk to people, but once a conversation starts, the spirit warms my heart and it becomes so much easier to converse. I'm grateful for this blessing and I really hope that it will stick with me for a long time.
Thanks for reading, hopefully next week is more interesting. Pray on!
-Elder Peterson
Not many good pictures this week, sorry folks.
1) My mother's street
2) Cool spiderweb I noticed while studying
3) Moon.
