Letters from home :)

Dear one and all,    7-13-2010

 

Man i love your letters.  i was just cracking up the whole time.  you make me trunky, in a good way.  the ward squirt out sounds like a fun success, at least for you.  ha ha your scout flag tactic is genious.  i can just see you doing it.  question, how do the targets change.  if you kill someone do you get their target.  can you be eliminated?  i'm a little confused.  sounds fun though.  the youth spectacular sounds interesting.    i can't believe korver what the heck.  so do we have anybody to replace them?  that is interesting.  the bulls aren't even that good anymore.  and lebron james is an idiot.  ha ha but he's dang good. 

 

 

i don't really know what to write this week.  nothing huge happened.  nothing other than the normal day to day activities which would bore you.  I got mail!! i've been here for nine weeks and i have finally recieved mail.  it was from the Johnsons.  oh man they are awesome.  i mean i hear from you every week in email but i can't believe i haven't recieved any mail from you in nine weeks, it hurts.  in the mtc when i told brother maynes that i had two younger sisters he said oh then you will be getting mail your whole mission.  this has not come to pass yet.  that is a coinincidence that you talked about mail when i was planning on reporting about my letter.  ha ha anyways...i still want something, even if that sounds selfish.  did you ever recieve my mail?  you never said.  i sent a letter to mollie and jaynanne once and then another time i sent a birthday card to jaynanne and spencer with a postcard also.  did you get either of those. 

 

they are changing the zone conference ways.  instead of having zone conference every 6-8 weeks we will now have it every 3 months.  thats a bummer.  i was looking forward to going to kk in a few weeks.  instead, president is going to visit each area and go visiting with the elders when we would have had zone conference.  oh well i have a visa run on august 10th.  so i will get a small break.  that may also be the same time as transfers because many elders are going home.  i'll let you know about that.

 

of course i have been following the world cup.  thats cool that spencer has too.  the other day we went to an appointment with Jason Chin.  he is a cool 17 year old kid in our branch.  he's way into football.  it was on the day that spain beat germany.  so we were of course talking it up.  he wanted spain to win it all so naturally i chose the netherlands so that i could mess with him.  ha ha so then he made a little bet with me.  if spain won i would have to buy him a spain jersey and a romli burger, if netherlands won he would buy me a jersey and cook dinner for us.  we shook on it and it was legit.  as you know, spain won.  the game time was 2:30 am so pretty much every kid stayed up all night to watch it,  it ended at 5:30 and then they all had school at 6:00.  ha ha so today i went and bought a jersey.  he's so funny, last night we saw him at a branch thing and he would not let me forget who won.  ha ha he's a really cool kid, good member, probably the best young man that is most likely to serve a mission. 

 

as for investigators, they are still all the same.  nothing different than last week.  Hendri should get baptized this Saturday and the Ning family is doing awesome.

 

since i couldn't think of what to report on this week i just started thinking back to the good old days.  i keep thinking about camp loll.  man i miss that place.  i want to write a letter to them but i don't really know what to say.  my experience there was life changing.  then i thought back to our trip to San Fran for some reason.  that was so fun.  thanks for taking us.  then i thought back to the jamboree.  oh man that was an adventure.  i'm so jealous that you get to go again.  you better take a lot of pictures and give me a good report.  don't waste any time there either.  do all of the activities and make sure you get into the patch trading.  also enjoy washington dc.  that was awesome.  i love that place.  hey will i still get an email from you when you are at the jamboree.  someone better still write me.  anyways sorry that was random. 

 

I miss you all.  i promise my next letter will be better. tell someone, anyone to write me a letter.  i miss you all!

 

elder petersen

 

 

ps  i have been emailing john.  he's hilarious.  he told me to tell you to write him a letter. 

Apa Khabar

Apa khabar!  7-7-2010

oh man i love your letters.  so entertaining. so interesting. so uplifiting.  it seems so strange how time is flying by.  when i left to the mtc it was the beginning of march and school was in full swing. now all of a sudden it is july and the summer is half way over and flying by.  it sounds like you are very very busy. thats good.  

ha ha.  so daddio.  when it comes to email i have a new idea.  I asked the zone leaders about this and they said it was fine.  our mission rules is that you can only write emails once a week.  but if you get letters in the mail you can read them anytime.  this should be the same with email.  you can read them anytime.  so the weilands have a mac at their home and they have the internet.  my plan is to read your email on sunday or monday because they usually feed us then.  then by wednesday i can write something.  i asked sister weiland and she said she would even print it for me.  so this means you would have to send an email by saturday evening around 5 oclock your time.  i don't know if you could do that but if you could that would be good.  but this will only work as long as i have the weilands so only as long as i'm in sandakan.

This week was truly awesome.  we reached every key indicator but one.  actually we blew most of our goals out of the water.  it all started with that family of eight i told you about.  they are so good.  the mother and father and one kid are illiterate but they are so good that they read the book of mormon together as a family.  last week on friday i believe, we committed them all to baptism.  they only hesitated for a second to talk it over and then they all agreed.  so now we have 11 people on date.  i expect them to make it all the way.  the only problem is that every one else we have put on date before gets many problems or falls away from us before they can make it to the waters of baptism.  hopefully they are different. 

now the fourth of july.  very interesting.  ha ha obviously no body celebrates it or aknowledges it here.  but we did.  it was fast sunday so after church we went and had "hot dogs" and "potato salad" and "jello" and "brownies".  i put those all in quotes because basically they were malaysian style ha ha so it wasn't exactly an american meal but it was close.  like they don't have buns or good jello or good ketchup.  but we got by.  it was fun. 

church was really really good.  we had 77 people come!!  Jason has been home from his mission for two years and he said this is the best he has seen the branch in that time.  the chapel was packed.  it was busting at the seams.  and 9 of those people were investigators.  testimony meeting was really good.  we have been told that the missionaries should bear their testimonies every month so i got up.  my malay is getting better.  i talked about how before i did not even know where sandakan was but now that i have lived here for two months i have come to love it.  i said that sometimes i miss my family but its ok because the people here are now my family.  the members here really are like family.  they are so good to us.  there were several other people who got up.  all in all it was a really good meeting and our investigators all really enjoyed it.

so this week elder carter keeps saying that he thinks he will be transferred soon.  there is really no way to tell but he's sure of it.  ha ha if this is the case then i will have to teach a new elder all about this city.  i think i could do it but it is a big task.  it is more likely that i will leave because i'm a trainee but he has already been here for 6 months.  only time will tell.  we'll probably know the first week of august because we have to make a visa run then.  it is interesting.

well thats about all i've got this week.  it was an outstanding week. ha hopefully i'll remember all of my stories for when i get home because i don't have enough time to tell you everything that happens here.  I'm really starting to love this place.  the people are awesome.  the language is fun.  its fun to be the tall white guy amidst so many short asians.  the food here is awesome. pretty much right now things are going really good. i love you!

Elder Petersen