Feliz Navidad!

Hola Amigos!

Hope you all had a merry Christmas and felt the spirit as you remembered the true meaning of Christmas! It was fun to get to go to church on Christmas! Definitely a different experience being a missionary but it was great. Obviously the highlight of my week was getting to skype home yesterday. It was so good to hear my families voices!

So Christmas. We started off opening presents. Thanks fam! I got a super cute purple floral dress and a cute bracelet. My mom even has a matching bracelet! I also got lotion, socks, gloves, and other great stuff like giftcards from members and other family. I then made pancakes and we went to church. After church we headed to a members home and hung out with them and then got to skype! It was fun to get to know the members better and hang out with them in a more casual way. We then headed to a less active families house and stayed there for a couple of hours just talking to them. We then headed about 30 minutes west to another members house. She had both her sons in town (one of them is actually going to UVU right now) and we had a nice Christmas dinner. We helped her get most of it ready and that was fun, I really enjoyed it! Their family was so fun to hang with. I was afraid a little because when she took us out to dinner a couple weeks ago pretty much all she liked to talk about was how much she hated Utah Mormons so that was fun haha but it was better yesterday. Inbetween the less actives and our last house we were actually going to be there a bit early so we decided to pull over on the street before and take a 20 minute nap because we both had headaches from crying with our families. We then headed home after staying for a couple hours. When we got home we planned and then wrote in our journals and talked to our STL's then I got the best Christmas present of all!! I got to go to sleep early! That was seriously all I could have asked for. I know it sounds stupid but I am so exhausted and there is no way to describe it. We are SO busy all day long and I sleep so well every night. Missionary work is great but definitely put an emphasis on the work part! One of the STL's shared a quote with us last night 

"You will  come to know what appears today to be a sacrifice will prove to be the best investment you will ever make" -President Gordon B Hinkley

She told us to just think of Christmas away as a huge investment in our future.

This week we had a party with all the missionaries in the south side of our mission called Jingle Jam. It was so much fun! It was basically just a huge talent show and Christmas  celebration. If you look at the mission blog there are pictures from it on there. One of my favorites was they did a skit like Jimmy Fallon's "thank you notes" and they came up with some good ones, Thank you pump jacks for adding variety to our landscape, thank you tiwi (the device attached to our car that doesn't let us speed or go over bumps and stuff or leave our area) for always helping us check our speed (because that is what it says in a really annoying voice if you go over the speed limit). Anyways, it was pretty funny. We also got to watch the Saratov Approach which litterally everyone cried through but it was so good and we learned so many lessons from it. Trust in God. He has a plan for every person on this planet regardless of the choices you make.

It has been a rough teaching week because no one is home or they don't want to hear us because they are too busy. We are hoping it will pick up again after the holidays. "God cares a lot more about who we are and who we are becoming than about who we once were. He cares that we keep on trying." Elder Dale G Renlund. Basically this is my life motto right now. If anyone wants an explanation of what missionary work is like go listen to the album The Work by Nashville Tribute band. I haven't listened to all of it yet but Sis Acosta got it for Christmas and it explains a lot of the unexplainable thoughts we have out here.

I love you all sooooo much!

Hermana Peterson

Semana 2 in Texas

Hey everybody! Hope you are all doing great! It's official, I have been in Texas for 2 weeks now. It is such a weird feeling. The people here are great though!

Update on the Texas winter: 2 days this week it was in the 80's and super warm and then this morning when we went to the store it was 21 degrees and it felt like my hands were going to fall off. Good thing we were only out for a second!

Thankfully my family sent us a GPS so the directions were a little easier this week but still a struggle haha! We started off the week by going down to Midland to do exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders. We went down Tuesday after district meeting and came back Wednesday night. They are awesome! I had good experiences while down there. We got to do 2 different types of service while down there which was exciting. On Tuesday Sis Schultz and I went and walked dogs that are waiting to be adopted at PetsMart and on Wednesday we went and volunteered with Habitat for Humanity. We helped build a house! Things I never thought I would be doing! Our job was caulking around all the shelves and molding in the closet.

Had a first experience this week! I got pulled over!! Don't worry, everything is fine haha. I was terrified because we had left dinner late and so we were late to our next appointment and we didn't know how to get there so Sis Acosta had the map out trying to figure it out and as I am turning I see lights out the back window so of course I start to freak out. It turns out she just needed to see proof of insurance because it wasn't on the car or something but that really gave me a heart attack! We were off on our way, calling our appointment to let him know we'd be late and he ended up canceling anyways so it was alright. We got a new car this week as well so that is exciting!

We got a call from a woman in the ward this week asking for help cleaning up her house and we let her know we'd be happy to come over. When we got there we were met with the unexpected. It was a daunting task and we only had an hour but we were able to make a small dent in her living room. She wanted help because her boyfriend is coming in to town for Christmas and she was embarrassed of her house. I wasn't sure how much we could do, but we got started and she was so appreciative! She is sweet and I am glad we got to help her a little.

Thanks to everyone who has sent me letters and packages! I will try my best to get out individual thanks as well!

We found out some not great news yesterday. The Elders left us a super promising investigator. They told us he was so ready and his baptism is supposed to be on Jan 7th! Yesterday we found out that that may not be the case. We found out that he and his fiancé broke up (they were getting married Jan 4th) and that he is hanging out with his old friends again. We are super sad, he has canceled appointments with us like 3 times this week. We don't want to have to tell the Elders about him!

This week I also got to receive a "new missionary blessing" I guess that is a thing. It was awesome, most of our districe got together (6 of us) and we talked about some of the things we have been going through and then the 2 of us that were new got priesthood blessings. It is amazing how aware the Lord is of us. Things were mentioned that I haven't told anyone and it brought me so much comfort.

Feliz Navidad everyone!!!!!

The Lord loves you and so do I!

Hermana Peterson

Lost in Lubbock

Hey Y'all!!

I made it back to the great states!! It really does feel great but at the same time I do wish I got to experience living in Mexico a little more! I want to tell you guys everything but there is just not time so I will write everything that I can remember and if anyone has specific questions send them and I will answer them next week!

So I "woke up" ( I only really slept for like 20 minutes) at 1 am on Monday morning and headed to the Mexico City Airport and our driver was super nice and he walked us in and made sure we knew where to go before he left us. We headed to the gate and just sat there for awhile because we were pretty early for our flight. A couple hours later one of the elders on a different flight comes over looking for help because he can't find his flight on the board and we realize that our flight changed gates so we helped him as best we could then walked over to our new gate across the airport. 5 minutes before boarding our flight changed back to the original gate so we had to trek across the airport one more time, hoping that was really where our flight was but we made it! The flight was pretty good, it was stormy so the last 30 minutes to Dallas was pretty turbulent but overall it went well! We got to Dallas and went through customs and whatnot then found a payphone so that I could call home!! It was great to hear my families voices for the first time in 6 weeks! I talked for a while and then let Elder Humphrey use the rest of my minutes to call his family. While he was on the phone I ran to go get some food because who knew when I would eat next and I had been up all night too. On my way back there was time to board but I wasn't worried because we were right next to our gate but as I was walking back I noticed that our gate had changed, I went to tell the other Elder and he kept talking for  a minute then we left, 10 minutes before our plane was supposed to leave, not knowing that the Dallas airport is huge and that you have to take a train thing to get to the other side of the gates or terminals or whatever so of course I am in full panic mode because it is time for our flight to be leaving and we are stuck on a train. We get off after our flight is supposed to be gone and run to the gate asking if there is any way we could still get on and she looked at us confused and said the plane was gone. E. Humphrey starts trying to figure stuff out and she then asks where we are trying to go and we told her and she said that is not the flight that was at this gate so I guess the board was wrong. One of the other gate attendants looks up flights to Lubbock and tells us that it was at another gate nearby and it had actually been delayed. That was a miracle because there was no other way that we would have made it!!! We got to the correct gate just as they began boarding! We got to Lubbock and the Heaps and the AP's were there to greet us. We then waited about 15 minutes and about 14 missionaries showed up from the Provo MTC. In case anyone is wondering Texas (at least west texas) actually does get cold. It is cold here and the wind never stops blowing. We even woke up to snow this week! It melted quickly but it is still cold!

We stayed the night at the mission home after a long day of orientation which I could not stay awake in. Sis Heap made us delicious enchiladas though! I kind of felt left out though because everyone else had gone to Provo so that was a little hard, some of them were even still with their companions so I was excited for the next day to get a new companion and not have to be alone! On Tuesday I took the transfer van, which is a 12 passenger van that tows a trailer full of our stuff, to a church in Midland I believe which is about 2 hours away. I got to meet my companion there and as we were loading my luggage she informed me that I would be driving  because she does not have a license. I was pretty worried about that! I hadn't driven in 6 weeks and I am terrible with directions! It is going pretty good though.

Surprise!! I am not even teaching in Spanish. What the heck...I know. So I guess there is not very many Spanish Sister areas so we are in an English ward right now and if we have any Spanish investigators we have to pass them on to the Spanish Branch Elders. I am pretty worried that I will not learn Spanish now. My comp is Hispanic though so we are trying to practice well and she is helping me during language study everyday.

We are supposed to try and do 10 hours of service a week. The two main things we do is work at Catholic Charities which is a food pantry where we help people get the right amount of stuff and just talk to them. A lot of them are Spanish speakers so I get to practice with them if they want to talk to me while I help them. The second thing we do is work at the food bank, we sort food, clean cans, and check expiration dates. I really enjoy being able to serve!

Everyone I have met here is so nice! The first people I met were some members that we went to dinner with. I guess that every time they have the missionaries over they make us sing to earn our food so that was interesting haha!

On Saturday we got to go back to Lubbock because Elder Rasband of the quorum of the twelve came here! We were really hoping that we got to go down Friday night but we didn't. It is about 2.5 hours to Lubbock so we had to get up at 4 am. I will never catch up on my sleep! We are having an extremely hard time with directions because all the streets have weird names and are all curvy haha. Anyways, we only have a map of Odessa which is our area so we had to ask for directions to get to Andrews where we had to go because we were carpooling with them. We made it there after a few wrong turns and then they had a gps to get the rest of the way! Hearing E. Rasband was amazing! We also got to shake his hand! I really want to write more about what I learned but I forgot my notebook and I don't have a ton of time to write now. Afterwards we went to Chick Fil A which was great, there were so many other missionaries there too! We then headed to the Mission Office to pick up some things before we headed home and I had a package and mail! I had been having a hard day and those made it so much better so THANK YOU! On our way home after that we made it to Andrews and then back to our house we got sooo lost. The biggest problem is that once you are headed the wrong way it is super hard to find somewhere to stop and ask or even just somewhere to turn around because it is just a highway amidst many many fields (:

My first Sunday went pretty much how I expected, it was good! I met a ton of people!! Hopefully I can remember at least some of them. We got to visit a recently baptized less active after church and it was an awesome experience! We just took over an area that elders were in previously so my comp doesn't even know 1/2 of the people we are over which is hard too but that just means we get to meet people together. Our area is pretty big and we spent most of our week just planning and figuring out who people were.

My comp is Sis Acosta. She is from Temple, TX which is just a few hours away. She is super nice. She just got out of training and is now my trainer! Her family is not active in the church but she has a strong testimony! She was baptized when she was 16 and she is now 20.

Look for the Lord in every aspect of your life, He is the reason you are even able to take a breath today!

I want to write more but don't have time!

I love you all so much and thank you for your support!

Hermana Peterson

Christmas lights at the Mexico City CCM

Sister Peterson, Sister Gomez (our teacher), Sister Ramsey

District 12C in the Mexico City CCM

Odessa Apartment

Snowing in Odessa with Sister Regina Acosta

Love from Home!

Arriving in Texas

Texas Lubbock arriving missionaries

with Pres. and Sister Heap

Texas Lubbock Mission December 2016

After mission conference with Elder Rasband