selamat hari bersyukur!
wow awesome letters. first and foremost i will be praying for the U's success. that is the best news i've heard in a while. wait, does spencer have his license? that is so weird ha ha. i can't wait to play games with you guys when i get home. i just remember back in the day i used to crush you all. we'll see if that still the same ha ha. occasionally we play games here and uh i hate to brag but yeah i haven't lost yet. ha ha. i can't believe bishop is a runner. sweet. you guys all seem to be on a running craze right now. also can.
well well this week was awesome! seriously i can't even tell you everything that happened. friday was a big day. ok well every monday and thursday we report with our zone. thursday after reporting elder hawkins and i were trying to think of what we could do to help out our zone. we feel like we are definitely limited because we are 6 hours from one city and 9 hours from the other. we decided to have a fast the next day on friday. we decided not to do it on sunday so that it would seem different than your average fast. so we were pretty pumped and we told everyone about it. so we started thursday at the end of the day. friday morning at about 10:30 elder hawkins and i joined in on a conference call with all of the zone leaders in east malaysia and president clark and the ap's. we didn't really know what it would be about but we assumed that it would be about our gap between our goal and our actual performance as a mission. we were right. with six weeks left before the end of the year we are pretty far off from our mission baptism goal. in a loving way president clark told us that we simply are not doing good enough. he said that the past few weeks have seen the fewest number of baptisms since he has been president but we have the potential to see the highest number of baptisms soon. i really wish you could have heard him. he was incredibly inspiring. no doubt he cracked down on us and was mad. he was very too the point and told us what needs to be done so that we can hit our goal. he said each companionship mission wide must have 4 baptisms before the end of the year. there will for sure be people that dont hit that so some need to step up. he said obedience brings blessings but obedience with exactness brings miracles and brethen we need a miracle. the only way that i can describe this to you is that he sounded like off of some sports movie like "miracle". in the end he said you have failed if you didn't do all that you could. if you could have had 15 baptisms and you only had the four required then you failed. so he told us to have a zone meeting and pass this information on. well we couldn't exactly meet with our whole zone together so that night we had our own conference call. there was no way we were as inspiring as president clark but i think we passed his message along. so right now it is crunch time.
so like i said friday was great. after the conference call i was pumped. we were already fasting and we had nothing planned for the day besides going finding. the night before as i was laying in bed i was thinking about where we could go and i really felt like we should go to this one area that we scouted out a few days before. it felt good. so that is where we went. i basically had in mind two streets there. well before we started knocking we had a prayer. the first street started off with a muslim house. there were so many dogs barking everywhere that i felt we should just abandon that street. so we left it and said we would come back later. the next street was completely fruitless. lots of muslims and angry chinese people. people ignored us or closed the door on us. nothing. we wandered around a little bit and had a few other lessons but really we got nothing. i was feeling pretty bummed because i was so pumped earlier. so we went back to that first street. the first house we knocked was a christian but she totally ignored us and was rude. ok whatever. next was muslim. it was looking like a repeat of street number 2. the third house was different. a katazan lady invited us inside her gate and we sat on her front porch and talked. she was really nice and has 5 children and we were able to share a good message about the restoration. she gave us her number but didn't set up a specific return appointment. so she wasn't quite a new investigator but had potential. she was the last house on the one side. the next house we knocked was the last house on the other side. an old lady came to the door and she was really quiet. there was some dogs barking so i asked her if we could come inside the gate so we could hear her better and surprisingly she said yes. she took it a step further and set out chairs and told us to sit down. we talked with her for like thirty min. as she told us about herself and we talked she actually shed a few tears. she told us that lots of people from other churches have come by her house but she never let anyone else in before us. sweet. she also told me that she saw me on the bus before. she overheard me contacting someone on the bus one night and she wanted to know what i shared. after a closing prayer she said a specific time we could come back. awesome!! she also has a big family. two houses in a row. wow. the very next house was a similiar story. we were standing by the gate and there was a lot of people walking around and stuff and we asked if we could come in. they said of course. they probably let us in more out of kindness than anything but we were able to share a good message with them and they gave us their phone numbers. wow. three houses in a row. it pays off to endure to the end. those were the last three houses in the area. we were invited in and had three good discussions with a potential of about 12 or more people. really awesome. it was still light out and we wanted to keep knocking so we went over to another area and continued. the first two houses were no good. at the third house there was a man and wife outside weaving a couple of fishing nets. we said hi and they invited us over. we talked about fishing for a second and then sat out on their porch and shared about the restoration. they were pretty strict catholics but really nice. it was a mom and dad and one teenage kid. he gave us his pone number but then said oh no now you are going to call me every day right? so we don't want to pressure this guy too much. by this time it was dark and we had to go back to the city. but what a day. four solid solid potentials. that was almost a week ago and we've already had follow up lessons with two of them. elder laycock said to me, "i'm not going to lie i feel pretty spiritual right now." ha ha me too. i think our fasting and our preparation paid off. it was a good day. miracles do happen.
 |
| Contact Mario at the Mall |
 |
| Harun Sisters Mission Calls to London, England |
their mission papers for more than a month now. on sunday they opened them. a bunch of us went to their house after church. it was way exciting and way spiritual and way surprising. they both report to the mtc on the same day and they both are going to england, one to london england and one to london england south. they just cried and hugged when they read them. cool.
well things are going awesome here!! i love it. we have p day on thurs this week so we can celebrate thanksgiving. later we are going to the larson's for some southern style cooking. the larson's are from the south and they are so so so funny. she is just like paula deen. i love you all. thanks for everything. oh i really need your full chocolate chip cookie recipe. i told everyone it was my specialty so they want me to cook for christmas. ha ha. we'll see how that goes. say hi to everyone in the ward.
elder petersen
No comments:
Post a Comment