How's the weather over there? We've got 70s with 75-95% humidity pretty consistently. It's alright though, I'm getting used to it (not really).
Last week Elder Mangan and I met with a woman named Audra Rodriguez. She was referred to our Bishop by a guy at a car dealership and Bishop Dinsdale referred her to us. We sat down to get to know her for a minute and has a super great discussion. She said she believes that Jesus Christ is real, but she doesn't know much about him. We shared a couple scriptures and basically told her we can help her learn. She also expressed concern with scriptures and how it's hard for her to understand them. We can help with that too! We asked her to read 3 Nephi 11:10-12 (I think) to get a good start on who the Savior is. We are super excited to meet with her again and learn about Christ together.
We also did a lot of service this past week. We (and other Elders) helped a lady do some yard work in her jungle of a backyard. We had to clear out her yard and then we just took a couple weed wackers and made it look waaaay better. We and some other Elders also helped a woman in our ward, Sister Lerdo, clean out her garage. It was pretty gross, it smelled not too great and there were more roaches than I've probably ever seen, along with other bugs I can't identify. It was a good time though, we cleared out a ton of junk. In this part of Texas you can throw your garbage on the grass space between the curb and the sidewalk and it will get picked up. No can or bag even needed (makes the streets smell awful sometimes). So we threw all the trash on this little section by the curb and filled it up very quickly. After being there for a couple hours we told her we had to go, but that we'd love to help finish up some other day. Hopefully she lets us help again!
In missions where phones or ipads are used we have an app called areabook. All the files and information that used to go on the physical areabooks (those 5 pound binders the missionaries used to lug around) is now digital and way easier to use. Unfortunately, with technology comes new problems. Like your areabook not recognizing you're in a new area and failing to sync, or instead of sending someone's information to the correct missionaries it will send it to no where (this is rare though). In our case, we have no area. Since Elder Mangan and I are technically opening an area, the app has to draw new boundaries, give us stewardship in the ward, give us the teaching records of people in our area, etc. Areabook I'd being stubborn and has decided to take its sweet time with the process, so we have been basically starting from scratch. Eventually (Hopefully within the week) it will update and then everything will be fine, but until then we are pretty much using the spirit to guide us. The situation isn't as bad as I make it seem, but it's slightly annoying. The Great news is that we've been able to meet with people anyway, which is a tender mercy for me because I really enjoy talking about the Gospel with people.
So even though this past week has been a bit hectic (I forgot to mention we moved into our own apartment finally), the work of the Lord continues.
Hurrah for Israel!
If any of you have any questions or I forgot to write about something you are curious about, feel free to email me!
I hope y'all have a great week!
-Elder Peterson
1. A chicken from a BBQ place.
2. We had a leak last week. Luckily it got fixed very quickly.
3. A nice, classic Texan sign.
4. The missionaries on the left in this picture are from the Texas Houston SOUTH Mission. It was funny to see them at that bowling alley, so we got a picture.
