August 17, 2015

BE TRUE. BE YOU.

Well...this week has been super weird. I am not sure how but it just flew by so freaking fast. But it was a pretty good week with some ups and downs. I have been out for so long I think I have gotten used to it by now. But let's start off with what happened this week...

We had a Family Home Evening with the Cheve family and the Traore family! It was super fun and super cool. We talked about eternal families and how that is their goal after their baptism. After the spiritual thought and the food the Cheve family gave us a little musical presentation and then everybody started singing. It was a really spiritual moment. :)

Sadly, later on this week we found out some bad news about the Traore family. We found out that they won't be able to get baptized on the 22nd of August because, apparently, their Muslim family found out that they were going to get baptized and they weren't so happy with that. So the Traore's are in a little bit of a predicament and, and so far, the baptismal date is dropped. We told them that sometimes we just need to do what God wants us to do no matter our circumstances and the consequences. They said they will pray and ask God what they should do.

Honestly, I am not too surprised about the whole experience. I kind of figured that something like this would happen and it is just up to them to overcome this trial and do what is best in God's eyes. We will still be teaching them though so that is still good. :)

This week we have been all over the place. We went on exchanges on Thursday in Paris with the Assistants, then we ate Chipotle (which was so dang good) in Paris, then we woke up at 4 am the next day to catch our train to go to Rennes for our Zone Conference, then interviews with President Babin. They interviews went over so we missed our train to go back so then we had to sleep over at Nantes...haha. We finally got back home Saturday morning.

The Zone Conference was really good. The main theme was about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how it is so important to explain that to our amis. Then at the end of the Zone Conference, Elder Madsen and I were able to give a training about how we should be ourselves and use the divine talents that God has given us to help others around us come unto Christ. The title of the training was "BE TRUE. BE YOU." That's why I used that as the title for the blog this week. It went really well. Sometimes as missionaries, we have a hard time on being ourselves and we often judge ourselves or others too harshly. So we talked a lot about that and how it is important to become what God wants you to become. It went really well. :) At first we did a little talent show which was super fun and then we finished it off strong with the spirit. :)

Well...That is about it for now!  I hope you have a great week! May God bless you!

Love ya! Bisous!

Elder Evan Peterson

Here are some pics:

1. Muhammad is jamming out on the guitar
2. A panoramic view of "La Defense" in Paris where we ate Chipotle. 

August 10, 2015

"Don't touch the Butt" (Boat)

Hey guys!

Well...this week we went to La Rochelle on exchanges and there were a ton of boats. So I thought a lot about "Finding Nemo" while I was over there. 

We worked a lot with the Elders down there and it was really good. Hard work really does pay off.  There is a ton of tourists down in La Rochelle. It was pretty crazy because the city is relatively small!

This week was pretty good though. Sadly almost all of our amis were out of town. The Traore Family wasn't able to get baptized because the mom's mom got sick and went to the hospital so she made plans to go fly to Mali to see her. But it turns out that she wasn't able to go visit her because she didn't have enough money to fly down there. We were able to see them again and fix another baptismal date for the 22nd of August. They are doing really well though and they came to church! :)

Guess what? I got my itinerary for my flight home this week. That was a surprise, a really weird surprise.  Usually people don't get those until 3 weeks before they get home but I guess they decided to give it to me now...haha. I was kind of mad about it this week, but everything is fine now. That just means I need to work harder.

We were able to find two cool people this week. One of them was this young 17 yr old kid...Brandon, and an African guy...Joan. We met Brandon on exchanges and he said he really wants to know if God was there and so we gave him a tour of our church. He really liked it and he said he was super grateful to come to the church. The other dude we found was super legit. He is super believing and knows the Bible really well but was not agreeing with us. The cool thing about this guy was that he knew that God could answer him if he studied and asked if God really did restore his church. So we are going to teach him this week and he said he will try the experience. ;)

Other than that we have just been preparing for our Zone Conference that we will be having on the 14th! It should be fun! :) Love ya all! Have a great week!

Elder Evan Peterson

Me with the boats:

Elder Madsen and I with the Cheve family eating some pizza!