Great Work in Tarbes!!!

Hello, Everyone,

Sorry about that last week, there was a problem with the churches email server and it said the message had been sent but alas.. Non.

But. Bonjour a Tous!

Life is going well here in Tarbes, time has been flying for me, I have been here almost two months already, it’s insane how much I have seen in my time on the mission, I have been gone for about a year and a half! Wow I can hardly believe it! It doesn’t seem like I have enough memories to fill a year and a half!

On Monday evening, we went to eat at a members house of whom the daughter is active in the church and preparing to serve a mission but the mother has been less active, so we were invited to go over and because of rules for the missionaries we were not able to go alone but we invited our AMI C to come with us and he graciously accepted. We went and had a great visit together, we didn’t just sit down and do a formal lesson t, it was more of a very natural visit between some friends, which is what they needed. Here in Tarbes, it is a little different, because we only have a few members we kind of have to be in the place of members and missionaries at the same time.  As an example, in large wards, the missionaries can be kind of robotic or just like really stiff and it doesn’t matter because the AMIs will see that the members are normal people and they will feel welcome, but here we have to play the cool members at the same time which is really nice, as we live our daily lives, we try to make friends in the city rather than just tracting/contacting and that seems to work the best.  We talk to store owners or the person that always walks their dog when we are coming home for the evening. We are friends with a lot of people and then they become interested in the gospel and it is a really great way to do things, they see that we are normal and that they can trust us.

Tuesday, we finished helping the family L move, it was actually a miracle, we had a couple people cancel on us and so I felt impressed to call a member and see if we could come see them, they tell me they are working on the move for his brother still so I say we can come help, it turns out, just about 2 minutes before we called they had prayed to get help because they had so much work to do and then we called! There are not many feelings better than doing something for someone and then finding that it was actually the answer to someone else’s prayer.

Wednesday, we went to President Grattepanche’s house to present them with the temple invitations that were given to us in Carcassone a couple weeks ago. We explain to them about the way to present these things, and then we ate an amazing meal with them. The President keeps bees! During, the cheese course we were eating goat cheese which my companion doesn’t really like 🙂 🙂  then I asked if we could have some honey with it and he breaks ourtsome incredible honey from his bees and we have it with the goat cheese! It was great and it completely changed my companions mind about goat cheese. 🙂 🙂

Then we went to see Fr P to help him more with French it went really well, he showed us a home video from a zoo he went to with his family and we had home explain it to us in French. He has been making a lot of improvement! He is such an incredible man, very spiritual and full of faith. Cambodia was ruled by a dictator when he was a child and when he was 14 his parents were killed by the dictator and left orphaned.  As an orphan but he always had faith in God, he didn’t know a lot about God but he had faith, and he has some of the most incredible stories about how God has helped him along the way! He has some incredible dreams, he had a dream of Jesus walking on the water towards him, and then the elders met him 2 days later and show him a picture of Jesus walking on water and that is when he got is testimony! He didn’t know who Jesus was! He is incredible and his stories are endless!

Thursday, my companion was sick from the helping that family move, it was cold and he got sick again, the problem is that we were almost better and then bang, it hits us again!

Friday, we went and visited a couple of less active people, the first person is J who we have been trying to help quit smoking for a few weeks and we get there, he is obviously on drugs because he could not stop laughing. No matter what we said he was busting up about haha, it was really sad that he was such a slave to these substances but at the same time is was hard not to laugh when there is a 55 year old man laughing at every other thing you say… Anyway we got out of there fast…

Then we visited the other less active who is pretty much back to full activity! He is doing so well and he is working towards getting a temple recommend so he can go to the temple in August! We shared a talk called “nuln’etait Avec lui ” no one was with him. By Jeffery R Holland, it is amazing and it touched him a lot because he often feels alone, he is divorced and doesn’t have a lot going for him so he really loved this talk about our Saviors path that he suffered alone so we don’t have to. 🙂

Saturday, was really good, we saw an old AMI that had called us, his name is N and he is in the French military, so he is often away on missions in Africa. However, when he is home he loves seeing the elders and talking about God, we will see where it goes this next time! It went well and he is open to our message. We are hopeful!

Anyway that’s all folks!

Love you all!

Elder Peterson,
La mission Française de Lyon.

Plagued with Internet Problems…

Hello, everyone,

Let’s hope not to get a repeat of last week’s email! Haha sorry about that 🙂

This week was fantastic!

The Lord has been working really hard here in preparing people for us to teach and to invite to come unto him!

This has really been the first normal week of the full transfer! Haha, no crazy travel plans or meetings in far away places, only one day out of city and that is a-ok with me!

Tuesday was a very important day here, it was pretty fat, we ate a lot of crepes you know why? It was fat because of the crepes, but the word fat in French is Gras, and it was Tuesday, and French the word Tuesday is Mardi… Which means… MARDIGRAS! :):) It was really different this year, last year I was in Montpellier which is a big city with lot of students and so there was a huge parade of about 7000 people going through the streets wearing WIERD things… It was a real party 🙂 :). However, this year it was POURING rain. Like wow, a lot of rain, so we really didn’t want to be knocking on doors during that kind of weather, especially not on Mardi Gras (elders in another city near us, did it.. and were welcomed by an old woman who answered the door in a bunny suit.) We got an RDV to have crepes with a member, it was a really good evening and we felt very French.

Wednesday we did have a meeting in Toulouse, we went EARLY in the morning, on what we call the waffle train because it is at 6:42. We skip breakfast and buy a waffle from the vending machine at the Gare. The waffle train gets us there at about 8:30 and then we walk down to the church, it was raining.. As it was all week. We got there and dried off, and started preparing the lunch stuff to make after district meeting. I made pizza sauce from scratch which was super yummy 🙂 and then we had a great district meeting. This meeting had no outline given by the mission, and our district leader asked each of us to talk about a topic for a few minutes. I chose to speak of the worth of a soul, it is a topic that is very special to me. It is the knowledge that God knows us as individuals and that he wants us to succeed, he is a loving father, and like any father he wants us to become like him, he wants us to learn and to improve, to fall and then to lift ourselves up, to progress. the worth of a soul is in its capacity to become like God.

Then after the meeting, we split up and worked with another missionary for the afternoon, I was with Elder Pesnel who is an amazing missionary, he is still pretty young in the mission but he is great. We hit the streets and started talking to people, in the rain:) 🙂 and there was one woman that stopped to talk with us who was a Jehovah’s Witness, she was very kind, but there were a lot of passive aggressive comments made. 🙂 It seems that the JWs always do. However,  we ended on really good terms and we testified about the truthfulness of the Book Of Mormon.  It was evident to us that she was touched by the spirit and she knew it. 🙂

Thursday we helped a family move for most of the day, they are a really great family here and they have 2 kids. They bought their first home so they were very excited to move in! And guess what… the rain stopped so we could get them all moved in. 🙂 It was a good day.

Friday we got our transfer calls and we are both staying here! This is the first time on my mission that I am staying with a companion, we are very happy to work together so it is going really well! President told us the Lord is preparing this city and a lot of stuff is going to start happening…

We saw the miracles starting to flow the very next day!

We got out of our apt after our studies on Saturday and then we saw a woman who we had met on the bus a few days before, she stops us and asked if we could meet the next day!  We say of course! Then we go and help Fr P with his French like every Saturday so he can get ready for the temple. It is going really well and we are seeing a lot of progress. After that, we go home and I make some cookies to bring to a family that we had met a couple weeks ago who invited us in to talk for a little while, they were supposed to call us and fix an appointment but they had not so we decided to make cookies and stop by.  We go by and he invites us in immediately, we sit down and talk to him for a while before his wife gets home and then she joins the discussion. It was incredible, it wasn’t like a normal lesson but it was like we were friends and we were talking about like every subject! It was great and then they fix an RDV with us for next week to eat with them! They are Muslim, he is from Senegal and she is French, she recently converted to being Muslim but they are not practicing, they only pray in their home. It is the only way they have come to learn about god. But they are very open 🙂

Then Sunday, we have a great time at church and then we have this meeting with this woman we will call her P and she is 57, she is so kind, she got us some Hot chocolate and we talked about “Le Bon Dieu” for about an hour, she is very believing and she has seen the missionaries on the street for years but they never seemed like the right ones to talk to but when she saw us she was like, ok. it’s time. She has also written books about genealogy! What a perfect person to be taught! She said she will bring the books next time and we will get them into the church database through the website.

Are you keeping count?  I hope so because that is already three new Amis! Then this morning we got a call… It’s an old AMI, of the elders and he asks if we can see each other Saturday… We said sure and he gave us his address! We look at his paper from the old elders and it says “wants to be baptized but is leaving for Army, contact when he gets back”!!! 🙂 🙂 It’s so cool!  We are excited to see how that goes but we know the Lord is working hard here and I am humbled and so thankful to be his hands!

De fond du cœur,

Elder Peterson,
La mission Française de Lyon.

PS. I sent this last week, but there was a server problem in the church

Internet is not so good…

Hello to all my family and friends,

I just spent a long time writing a long email about the week.  However, it just completely deleted itself.  I am not too happy, but it’s not a huge deal I guess. 😦 😦

We had a very busy week last week with a lot of train traveling, and because we are in France… And it’s January. And we were on trains… We got sick! Yay! 😦 The entire south of France was sick this week so yeah. 😦 😦  Friday we finally felt well enough to go out and we had an exchange.

There are 10 zone leader companionships and our zone is the Toulouse zone. The ZLs are in Toulouse so being in Tarbes, I am no longer a Zone Leader. I am currently in a branch presidency and it would be way too much to also be in another calling. I was only ZL for that one transfer and president told me it was kind of training for this current calling.

We helped people. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Our Amis are doing very well. 🙂 🙂 🙂

I am very happy. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

We visited a cool place called Lordes for p-day today. Pictures should be posted 🙂 It was beautiful.

My companion is from Germany but he was born in Mexico, his mom is German and his dad is Mexican. He speaks 4 languages and is a great companion.

Time has been flying again! I feel as if I just got to Tarbes and this is already the last week of the transfer!

Sorry, I cannot write more, I don’t have the time!

I love you all! Talk to you next week!

I am not happy that the big email got deleted. 😦 😦 😦

Elder Peterson,
La mission Française de Lyon.