Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Isa. 7:14

Hey Everyone
This week in Omak we are having a Baptism on Tuesday! I am super excited for it!

we have like 2 or 3 investigators coming to it also.  

We had the ward Christmas party last Friday and we had 2 investigators come to

that and they both enjoyed it.  

Omak is progressing for sure! We also got some snow this last weekend and it has

made everything slippery so it has been a bit of a challenge trying to stay on the

roads but we are getting a new car next week to better that.

 

Our mission has been focusing on Mormon.org this Christmas. Everyone should

Check it out and make a profile you will love it! There are cool videos and you can

even check out my profile! http://mormon.org/me/8DQB I encourage all of you to

make a profile and to share the gospel this Christmas season!

Love you all
Elder Peterson

..arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord. Acts 22:16

Hey, his week was transfers and I stayed in Omak and
got Elder Wydner he is a funny kid who is very hard working.
I dont have much time to talk this week but we do have a
baptism on the 11th and we are super excited to light up this
area the next 6 weeks!

Love you all Elder Peterson.

It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most high. Ps. 92:1

Hey Everyone,

This week was great. My comp. and I had two great Thanksgiving dinners with some nice families from our wards.

 We also got to do some work on a members house. He is adding onto it, so he fed us as we helped him work on his house a little bit. And it is always fun to get out of dress clothes and work with a hammer. 

We have Bro. Harris still on date for Dec 11 and that should be super exciting. He has been meeting with missionaries for a long long time and he just quit smoking so he is ready for baptism. We are all so excited and we also have 3 people we are working with that are really close to baptism. 

I am Staying in Omak and I got a new companion, his name is Elder Wydner, I dont know anything about him.

Love Elder Peterson 

The twelve apostles, or special witnesses of the name of Christ in all the world... D&C 107:23

Hey everyone,

 This week was great! We are in the process of helping two people quit smoking right now and it is crazy to see how hard it is for one person to quit, then for the other person it seems like they have never smoked a day in there life and they can quit easily. The one thing that I can see to be the biggest factor in the whole thing is the support. If you have support in anything you do you are going to try harder and you are going to feel better about doing it and you will feel better about it also. We try to be there for support as much as we can but there is only so much we can do as missionaries.

    

This past week our new mission president came out with his new music rule and it boils down to we can listen to talks and any music produced by the church. So needless to say we have been listening to talks by Elder Holland and others. I was really bummed to hear this at first because I love listening to music but this has been a blessing in disguise as we have been listening to the talks we have seen how what the Prophets say and apply it to our investigators. So we went and bought CDs and we have been giving talks to our investigators that we think would help them out. So this week has been an great learning week too!

    

We have about two or three thanksgivings we are going to on Thursday so it should be a fun next week! 

We also went to the temple today it is really small and beautiful!! 

Love Elder Peterson

And he commandeth all men that they must repent, and be baptized in his name... 2 Nephi : 9

Hey Everyone,

  This week we had our first snow fall, we have about 6 inches now and it is still snowing. It has been great! It's only about 30 degrees outside right now so it is not to bad.

We have been making progress with the people we are teaching here. Two of our investigators fell off date but it was a good thing because we talked about baptism, and they want it now instead of us wanting them to be baptized. So we are letting them pick there own date to be baptized. 

We still have one on date. He is trying to quit smoking and he is doing the churches 15 step program and he is on day 5 out of 7 days. We are going over there today to see how he is doing with it. He is a strong guy so i'm sure he will be doing fine. 

Coulee Dam is starting to have some work move forward but it would really be a smart idea to split the areas and put missionaries just in the Coulee Dam Area! 

We just met this new family that just moved into Coulee Dam and they are super close to going to the temple so we will be helping out with that. They are a way awesome family!

Elder Peterson

O how great the plan of our God! .... 2 Nephi 9:13

Hey Everyone,

This week was fantastic! We have two people on date for baptism, and some more good potentials on dates for baptism! 

Yesterday at church, Sis. Williams came up to us and asked us if we would come over to her house tonight because she has invited some non-members over for a FHE thing. So that night we went over to her house.  It turns out that the people she invited over was a part member family, and the husband has been looking into the church for a really long time.  He asked us what he still needed to do for baptism. So we went over the interview questions with him.  The only thing holding him back from baptism is he smokes. So we are going to go through the 15 step program with him and help him stop smoking! Then he will be ready for baptism! 

I am so thankful for this gospel and what it does to people's lives. After hearing other people talk about how it changes them it really strengthens my testimony.

Love Elder Peterson

...we know thou art a teacher come from God... John 3:2

Hey Everyone,

This week we have had some good things happen! We had a new investigator come to church this Sunday and he stayed for 2 hours, and he answered questions and he read with the class! He was awesome! Then we had a lesson with him after church and we talked about the restoration with him.  We asked him if he came to know the Book of Mormon was true, would he be baptized and he said yes!  He is on date for the 17th of November and he is a really cool guy! 

We also had our Halloween parties in both wards. It was really fun! There was chili cook offs and pumpkin carving and a hunted house even! It was fun! 

After the parties, we had a lesson Sunday night with a less active family.  After the lesson the dad really opened up to us and he told us about what he is going through and why he is not going to church. After we talked with him he told us he is going to be at church next Sunday!  That was really cool to see him want to come on his own, we did not even have to invite him or anything.

It is starting to get cold here, it is getting down to the 30s and the 20s and it is very windy! 

Love you all Elder Peterson

A members house that we stay at 2 or 3 nights a week. 

 Our spooky apartment!

 Ward Halloween parties!

 Chopping some wood to help someone out!

We are so awesome!

...when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God. Mosiah 2:17

Hey Everyone,

This week has been good. We found this great young family. His name is Joe and his girlfriends name is Beatrice. They have a 6 month year old baby girl and she is really cute. We found him just knocking on doors and he was out back splitting wood. We asked if we could help him, he said no and did not pay much attention to us and kept working.  We started telling him who we were and what we do and he started to listen and then he said to us, "oh I thought you were here about the house. I thought you were about to kick us out or something because of the way you are dressed." haha We asked if we could help with the wood again, this time he looked at the wood pile then at us and said yes. So we helped him finish his wood cutting.  Then after we were done, we talked to them about the church and left them with our card. Three days later, we show back up and he invites us in and he is super friendly to us and we get to know their family.  We shared the Plan of Salvation and they both said they really liked it. They don't have very much back ground on religion so they are really ready to learn.  As we were leaving, we didn't even have to ask if we could come back, they asked us when the next time we could come back was. That is always the best feeling. 

I hope everyone is having a great week I love you all!

Love Elder Peterson   

O how great the plan of our God! 2 Nephi 9:13

Hey Everyone
How are you doing? Sweet, sounds good! 

So this week was a pretty good week! We had one really cool experience that I would like to share. We went to see a less active member and we were talking about the Book of Mormon and going to church. Just different things, and he is a pretty old guy so he has a caretaker named Jessica who was walking around when we were there. She asked if she could join in with us. We of course said yes and she went and got her little cute 1 year old baby girl named Virginia and sat down. She had some question for us about the plan of salvation and we told her about it and she loved everything we told her. Then she said she has been thinking about baptism for a long time, and she asked us what she has to do to be baptized in to our church. We then, told her that she could be baptized on the 24th of November if she wanted to meet with us a few more times so she knows what she is getting baptized into. She was way excited and happy about it! It was really cool to have someone ask us to be baptized haha! 

     We also got transfer calls this last Sunday and Elder Hardesty and I are both staying in Omak for 6 more weeks. I love you all and I love your support and your prayers they help tons!

Love Elder Peterson!

Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire... Ps 104:4

Hey Everyone,

So this week Omak has been on fire with the Gospel, I mean literally on fire, the hill is on fire right next to Walmart haha!

This week was really hard to get a lot of lessons because we had 2 meetings 2 hours away from Omak. And then we had General Conference, so we did not get a lot of time to see very many people. But the people we did see were pretty good. We saw Rena, she is really cool, she watched General Conference. She always has a bunch of questions when we go over there so she is progressing really good. She reads the Book of Mormon everyday and last time we talked to her she said she would start praying about it and ask god if it was true! She told us she had the same dream Lehi had about the tree of life after she read it, so that was pretty cool.

Transfers are next week so I will let you all know how that turns out i dont know if i will stay or go so we will see love you all!

Love Elder Peterson

And again, tobacco is not for the body... D&C 89:8

Hey everyone,

 This week has been kinda good and kinda bad, ok well not really bad but some let downs. 
I will start with the good news first. We have an investigator who is going to the Baptist church every week.  We did a fast with him this week to help him stop smoking and drinking. It was the first fast he has ever done in his life. And he came to church with us. He is progressing, just slowly. I think he likes the Baptist church for the entertainment because he believes what we believe, he just won't come to church every Sunday. So we are working on him. 
The bad news is just that almost all of our referrals and legit investigators we had last week dogged us or tried to drop us this week. So it's not so good in that case but we will try to get ahold of them this week and get them to watch General Conference. 
I am so excited for General Conference! It is going to be sweet. I hope all of you reading this get to watch it. It is amazing that a prophet of God can talk to us! 


Stay good!
Love Elder Peterson

And God called the dry land Earth.... Gen 1:10

Hey Everyone,
 This week has been great! We have been working with some of our new investigators this week. We have a new investigator named Teana, she is a Indian lady who is like 5 foot nothing and as humble as can be! She is so happy every time she sees us! Her friend just died and her son has been in and out of the hospital, so she has been wondering about the plan of salvation. So next time we go out there we will be teaching that! She also has a son in-law that we met one time when we went over there and we are still trying to get a hold of him. He is really into the gospel!
     We have been covered in smoke the past 2 weeks from all of the fires going on in Washington. We have been trying to stay off the bikes and not breath it. It is harder than it sounds! We heard from this guy that they are saying that breathing this in for one day is more harmful to your lungs then if you were to live in LA for one year! 

Got to go!

Love you all!
Elder Peterson

Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven. Ps. 85:11

Hey,

This week was pretty good! We found two new people to teach, one from each ward. The one lives in Coulee Dams, his name is Nick but he goes by Tiger, and he is a very humble guy! He does not know a lot about Jesus Christ so he said he was going to start reading to Book of Mormon. He told us before we left that he was going to take it serious and it really means a lot to him that we would stop by and share this with him. It was a really cool experience! 
The guy in Omak we found is kinda the same way. He has been going though some tough stuff in his life. His house is starting to fall apart and he has pretty much no money to fix things so he has been trying to do it himself. He is doing a great job and I might add that place looks nice for a trailor. But we gave him a Book of Mormon and told him it would bring peace into his life and he could find joy form our savior and that we could come help him with service if he needed us. He was very impressed with us I think he wants to meet again before the end of this week so that's good! 

Thats whats been going on in my little life! I love you all and hope you are all happy...if you're not, read the Book of Mormon and get happy!

Love Elder Peterson

...that the soul of man should be restored to it's body, and that every part of the body should be restored to itself. Alma 41:2

Hey Everyone, 

This week I got transferred to Omak. Omak is a huge area. We have 2 very small wards with 3 or 4 investigators. My companion is Edler Hardesty from Saint George, Utah. He has been out 22 months and in this area for 5 months so I think I will be his last companion. Then take over the area so I will probably be here for awhile.
   We had a cool experience this week in Omak. Our investigator text us randomly and asked if we could have a lesson today from 5:30 to 6. So investigators just don't do that so we are freaking out that she is going to drop us. So we go to meet her at the church and we get there at 5:20, then she text us and pushes it back to 6. We are just hanging at the church when this guy in a safari hat and an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt walks by and sits down at the church in some shade. I said "lets go see what the crap this guy is doing", so we walk over. And at this point, he has taken his shirt all the way off. We walk over and he jumps up and puts his shirt back on and starts saying sorry and he didn't know this was a church. We told him it was ok and we are not getting him in to any trouble or anything. So then after a little small talk we started telling him about the church he was napping on and it turns out that he has a few LDS friends. He has never been inside one, so we invited him on a fast church tour. Because Katelyn our investigator was on the way. Right as we finished the tour she called us and said she is out side and she brought a friend. We had an awesome restoration lesson with three non members in front of the baptismal font in the church! It was crazy!! And I love it when crazy things happen!! 

We also went to Coulee Dam this week and there was a lightning storm and it caught the hill on fire all over the place! The town looked like a battle zone!!

Love you all Elder Peterson

...for whither thou goest, I wil go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: they people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Ruth 1:16

Hey Everyone,

 This week i'm getting trasferred to Omak, WA with Elder Hardesty. He is going home soon so I will be there a while I think. I am going to miss Lewison I love it here!! And I will miss Elder Wendt. 

Funny story about Elder Wendt, he crashed on his bike hahahahah it was so funny! He went off a jump and he made it over the first part of the jump and then his tire got stuck on the dirt and he went over the handle bars and slid face first on the dirt! haha Then some guy walks out of his house and he says "I have seen 7 year olds ride over that with out crashing, now go put your training wheels on and learn how to ride a bike!" Then he walks back inside! He didn't even ask if he was ok are anything. I was laughing so hard!!! 

We also got 23 lessons again this week it was a really successful week! 

I love you all and I will let you know how Omak is! I hope it is great :)

Love Elder Peterson 

AFTERMATH OF THE CRASH!!

The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. 2 Sam. 23:2

Hello Everyone,

This week Elder Wendt and I have been doing a lot of finding and trackting. It has been paying off too because we had 23 lessons this week and that is the most lessons I have had in one week my whole mission! We had two great experiences this week.

1. We were trackting and we found a less active member of the church who just moved in to a new place. So we talked to her and she has a daughter who is 7 and we are hoping we can get her active then get her daughter baptized. After we left her house we saw a man walking down the street with groceries in his hand we asked if we could help him carry them to his house, he said yes. We took them to his house as we talked about the Savior and about church. Then we asked him if he would like to come on a church tour and see how we worship and he said yes. We asked if he could do it later that day and we set it up for 2 hours latter. Then after the church tour we taught him about the priesthood and we invited him to be baptized for the 29th of September, he said yes!

2. We took some future missionaries trackting with us so they could see what it's like to be a missionary. And we had some great experiences but the best one was when Elder Wendt and Riley asked a woman to be baptized on her front lawn after they had taught the first lesson and she said yes. She said she wishes she could read the book of Mormon and be baptized but she has no money to buy the book. They told her it was free and her face lit up like a light!

Love you all! Next week is transfer pray that I stay here with Elder Wendt. And pray for my Dad!

Love Elder Peterson

Then Joseph commanded to fill their sacks with corn, and to restore every man's money into his sack... Gen. 42:25

Hey everyone,
    
This week the branch is dying. Everyone is leaving to school and on missions. It is really sad to see all my friends that I have made are leaving, haha, its hard. These next couple of weeks should be slow in the branch. Then hopefully it gets booming with college kids and we can get more investigators! 

In the ward this week we had a picnic and it was really fun we meet a lot of inactive people that came to that. And we got to know more of the ward members who came. It was all really fun until had to go to the bathroom! I went into port-a-potty and locked it, then when I tried to get out it would not come unlocked! haha So I was stuck in that dumb thing for like 10 min. I was shaking it and it was rocking so I dont know what people thought of when I was in there, but i bet it was a funny thing to see!! haha 

We also went to a BBQ place called Mad Dogs where Elder Wendt and one of our investigators did the "Mad Dog challenge" and that is to eat 9.5 pounds of food! A 7.5 pound hamburger and 2 pounds of fries.  And if you eat it all then it is free and needless to say they didn't eat all of it!! They still had two good size hamburgers when they finished haha but it cost them about $53 dollars because they didn't eat all of it!


I am loving Lewiston it is great and I love the people here they are awesome! I love you all too 

Love Elder Peterson

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tiding unto the meak..... Isa. 61:1

Hey Everyone,

 

This week we have been trying to contact a bunch of less actives and potential investigators! We went to contact this one potential and he told us he was working his way to be a pastor to the Lutheran church. He said he would love us to keep coming by so he could learn more about the Book of Mormon. I don't know if he will be baptized but it is still cool to talk with him.  He even asked if he could come to church with us next Sunday! 

The work with the members has been going really great. They are signing up to feed us a lot and they have been giving us some good referrals. 

Our last lesson with Ken and Linda Jones went really good! We taught the plan of salvation and they really liked it. They said that it made sense and now we have another lesson with them on Tuesday. 

Now we are trying to get some members that have kids around the same age so they will feel comfortable coming to church! 

I am having fun with Elder Wendt, he is a good guy and we are working hard!

 

Love Elder Peterson

...and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths..... Isa 2:3

Hey Everyone! 

This week we have been trying to get to know the members and get them to give us referrals. We have been doing a 3 week program with some families. The ones we are doing it on has been working really well, they are getting to know us better and to trust us more. 
This Sunday we had two lessons just happen out of no where. It was really cool! After church, a lady invited us over for dinner and said her son in-law in a non-member. So we talked with him and answered a few question then we picked him up as a new investigator. Then after that, we went to visit an elderly lady in our ward.  Her grandson who is like 30 wanted to have a bible study with us, so we read the book of Mormon with him and set up another time to meet with him. 
That was really cool to have two lessons and two new investigators just pop up from out of no where! 

I am having a great time and loving the work I miss you all and I love you too!!

Love Elder Peterson

And there shall be no more curse..... Rev 22:3

Hey Everyone,

This week was my first week with Elder Wendt, he is awesome! He was in the MTC with me! So, we already know each other and are good friends.  I'm excited for the next 6 weeks! 

This week we have been going around visiting members. And getting to know the ward and build their trust. Since I have only been here 7 weeks and Wendt has only been here 1. It is going good we are getting to know the ward better which is good so we can get more referrals from the members so the ward can grow! The branch is about to die off in the next couple of weeks. Every one of the members we have right now are going to school some where else or going on their mission soon. We are going to have to wait until school starts up here to get the branch going again. So we are trying to focus on the ward a little more right now.

So there is a Lewiston curse that happens every time a new missionary comes in that something bad happens! And it happened again the start of the week Elder wendt is allergic to nuts so the day before he got here he ate some peanut butter brownies and got sent to the ER for 4 hours haha now he has to carry an eppie pen with him every where he goes!

Everything is going great I'm loving Lewiston and my companion. I am very excited for the work to fire up the next 5 weeks!!!

Love Elder Peterson

Praise ye the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Ps. 146:1

Hey Everyone


This week was awesome! 
First of all transfers are this week and I am staying but Elder Whiting is leaving. I am getting Elder Wendt he came out with me from the MTC!!! 

This week we had some fun experiences!

We were Knocking on doors and we knocked on Kevins door.  He came out and laughed at us and he was making fun of us we could tell he was not interested. He asked us why he even opened the door to us and I said "because we are two awesome people ready to talk to you"! He laughed and said "no because you guys are retarded". After talking for a while he saw that we were normal people, so he told us to sit on his steps and he was going to talk with us. So we talked to him for about a hour before he said wait here and ran back inside! He then came out with a tin of shoe shine and he told me to give him my shoes. He then shined our shoes for us and he invited us back next week for a steak dinner haha! Its funny how people can change after they get to know a person! 

We also are starting to teach this amazing guy and his family again. He has been trying to get to see his kid who looks just like him for like 5 months, and finally got to!  He is such a cool guy!! I think he will be getting baptized some time in the near future!

I love you all!

Elder Peterson