9/23/13 Letter

"The devil says look at your sins,

 the Lord says look at my son!"

Well  right now i am tying this letter with puffy fingers as last night i was "stuffed to the rafters!" i truly have never known the meaning of full until i came here!! i never want to see a hotdog again in my life!  This amazing member feeds up every wed and she is  a great cook  but man every time she makes us eat till we cant walk out the door.....  its Hansel and Gretel all over again ha.. it was pizza with hotdogs cut up! here in Croatian we have pizza, pasta, creeps,  kebob ( like shredded meat with veggies.. so good) then meat stuffed with cheese and cabbage or a tomato cabbage salad.. is so good,  but not a whole lot of different options to chose from ha.

The then night before that we went to a members house she gave us a meal that was awesome, but then dessert is a whole nother meal here as the they make u scarf  food! i think i had 10 creeps  for dessert yesterday as member just kept them coming haha and if u dont eat all of it then wow rude!! ( Elyse u are probs laughing right now cause i remember u talking about being so full!) but i am so grateful cause i hear to get feed every week is a miracle here! 

Anyways i had a miracle this week  as we have been trying to find this lady for weeks and we felt like we should not give up on her. So we were walking and saw  this lady just standing on a street corner doing nothing so i tell my comp that we should talk to her.. well are we approach her she says ooh sister peterson! i was thinking how the heck does this lady know we... well turns out that the random lady was the person we have been trying to see!!! ahhh wow that truly was a miracle that God placed her in our path cause she was like right out side our apt and so far from her house!  she said she has her religion but is open to talk so im really excited!
and also we had the senior couple leave but we still had 20 people at church! the 2 kids who are 11 and 14 came to church again and for like the first time we had a kids Sunday school!  we did an example with water how u have pure water but when Christ was killed and when his apostle were killed the gospel and priesthood left the earth.  so then we put dirt in the water and said it is still water but not its not pure like how man started taking some truth along with there own and  making up there own religions that had some truth but not the whole truth.  Then through prayer god came down and restored this whole gospel at once so man would not be led into the dark any longer through Joseph smith. The teens  who come to church alone said they knew it was true and prayed for others to know it!   they are the most well behaved teens i have ever met as they just listen and don't move in church! Peter is so funny as we call im 50 cent and learned English through watching tv.. wish i could do that with Croatian! 

We had zone conference and i just love my mission president and his family!  we also have transfers coming up but i think me and my comp are staying together in varaždin! um tomorrow my comp is going to Slovenia on exchanges so i will be holding down the fort here!  ahh im so nervous pray for me!!!!  well have to go but love u all so much and congrats Heather and Zack  and know i wish i could have been there on your beautiful day! 

love y'all, sestra peteson 

PS ahhh so sad someone took out a pipe and hit the window of our church! Talk about hatred. It was definitely Satan because the church is growing so fast here. that's that.  

9/16/13 Letter

This gospel can change people and that cause they know its true people truly try try to follow the eyample and walk in christ foot steps!  FORexample Vanja, when i met her she was less active and told us that she cant stop smoking and that i dont know what its like cause everyone does it her and that she use to smoke 40 a day! well if we follow hollands example and "Hold on the ground we have already won" and act one the small things then honestly we can have a small seed of faith start to grow!   NOw by just meeting with us she has started to change  and the girl who said she cant has now been reading here scriptures for 3 hours a day and not just reading but truly studing and trying to undersatan what is happening. I could never undersatand when people said we have a light in our eyes, but now i understand as she is trying and there is a light of christ is in her! she looks diffrent and now she doesnt smoke around us and is really trying hard and wants to tell people she is mormon.  the biggest thing here is that no on here lets it be know  they are mormon and we only have one whole family in the church cause others dont share it so we are trying to bring familys together cause this goepel blessed familys more than anything. familes are so important that u not only have your family but when joining this chruch u gain another family helping one another stay on the path to grow closer to our Savior, our God. and thats what church is all about!  i heard and older couple say this and loved it "church is for sinners!" No one is perfect and we are all tryign to figure out how to be our best.  With perfect people there would be no need for church! A lot of people have fallen away cause of smoking and have little faith cause they dont think they are worthy to be there, but church is the place where sinners can try to become saints as we have to but forth the action to be better.  

I was reading in the liahona mag and it was on christ grace for us and it talked about how GRACE and how its like piano lession. have a teacher  who tells u how to pay it how when we hit the wrong notes the teacher will correct us, and then we have our parent to want us to learn and pay for the lessons. our parents have payed the price for us to learn but if we do not practice then we its a wast.  Christ has payed the price for us! Grace through the atonmnet is us having to practice to get better like to be TRANSFORMED into a mozart who still practiced everyday and even more the better he got. So  never give up. No matter how old or how small the gosple is for anyone at anytime.

Here we have a lot of less actives and we have seen how important it is to not only find new people but really have lessons with the members and less actives to make them come back to church!   And on sunday we had the MOST people come to church!!!!!!!!!!  we had 2 less actives there were going to be three but on was out of town  and 3 new investigators and 2 of them were 14 and 11 and came by themselves!  The other was the less active daughter who is 40 and has a baptizim date on oct12.  so it was so great to have a mother and a daughter there! then a member brought her son and is wife so the record was 23! we had a goal before zone conffrence to get 20 people to church and tomorrow is zone confrence!!!!!!  we tryed putting an extra row of chair to see if we could fill them and we did! The missionaries preformed "love is spoken here" with my comp on the piano i sang the girls part and the elders sang it was amazing cause they have never hear that song cause we dont have primary song transalated here so elder bates transalated it!

And never before we had an aktivnost for english adn members And the theme was mexican party cause they have NEVER HAS TACOS! they dont even know what mexican food is haha! so these kids helped me make a pinata and then rosted marshmellow which they have never done before too! it was way fun we double the turnout size last time!  oh and we has a magic show!!! #soooocool! untill he pulled out a trick with some naked girls in a book and scared some peopled haahah. he put that away reall quick!

Then we visited a less active and she said sisters make the biggest diffrence cause she has not been visited in like 5 years cause they didnt not have sisters here! so i am happy to be here and making a diffrence in peoples lives.

love,
sestra peterson

9/9/13 Letter

Dobro jutro,

This very wet and raining morning as its thundering outside right now.

Well this week a tone of good stuff happened! First off English class was the best the have ever seen it!  all out hard work payed of as 30 people came to english!!!!!!!!!! they have never seen those numbers like that and in in such a small place like varaždin!  The members said it was a miracle!!! the crazy girl holding up a huge poster really work as i think no one does that in Europe ha! So lets hope we find people who are interested in the gospel through these classes!   Well first off  teaching is good practice for me cause i had no clue what present continuous was and well  i just dont know english! me and my comp are teaching the advanced group so i have to know my stuff! i made sure we had lots of fun games to keep them entertained and understand the concept of the grammar principal so we played Simon says and looked at pictures and they had to describe them!   ha one part i didn't know why the grammar was that way so i said, "  it cant be ANY chicken  cause any is implying like a live chicken but some is like just a piece of chicken haah! 

well we have that on Tuesday and Thursday from 5 to 8!  One  of the goals we have is to really make this ward excited to be a member and they are!  one inactive has come back to church  named Štefona. she is so inspiring as all of her siblings has died ex for 2 one is in a coma.  and she said she did not have enough money to buy food like so many of the members here! u see in Croatia its so messed up as you work for money but the bosses chose to pay u or not. like they always say well next week we will pay u so  they have that hope for money but sometimes they never get it.  and it so humbling to walk into someones home and they always give u juice no matter what even if they have no food!   u feel bad for eating it but if u don't its way offensive!  i have never gone into a home where i just taught a lesson with out juice.  so anyways Štefona  has not been coming to church cause its a long walk and she has back problem but has a super strong testimony!  but after we met her she started coming back and says that her back feels so much better! but then this poor person, i have never heard of a persons life being so  horrible as hers as her brother just passed away. so we brought her food and came to visit her with flowers and she just is such a beacon of light as see cried a little but then knew it was going to be ok as we know there is more then life after death! the plan of salvation has been such a blessing in her life. she said its a blessing to have sister missionaries here and that there smiles give her peace. so on Sunday i sat next to her out of the 11 that were there and just gave her the biggest hug. ts just so humbling to see these members faith here!  even in the hardest time like Holland said " dont lose the ground u have already won with faith, hold on to what u have!" 

Everyone has to see this Mormon message called mountains to climb its really good!  well we have talked about faith a lot with this one investigator who like everyone else is addicted to cigarets.  i wake up in the morning and right when i walk outside i smell like a cigaret.  i was teaching a first lesson and the person will be blowing smoke right in your face. So anyways we have been trying to get this member to stop smoking so we made fake cigarets for her to use! not going to lie they look top of the line!   we used pencil shaving, straws and white and brown tape!  so i am just praying really hard she will stop cause we spent a long time rolling them ciggies and cause i see how  it its taking over her life.  but it was really cool cause she was going to go to zagrab to hang out with her friends to party and we tried everything to stop her but she went to i was all depressed cause we cancelled some lessons to help stop her from going and it was all a wast and she was not going to come to church, but to my surprise she we got a call and she said she pulled an all nigher and and came to church straight off the train! She said that they were making fun of her for trying to change her life  and giving up smoking and drinking as she just had coke cause it so not the European way, and at that moment she was like " i should have just listen missionaries and they really care about me unlike these friends!"  ahhh it was so cool cause when we met her her testimony was a little see adn not i can start to see u grow back  and gaining strength! people can change and anything is possible through prayer!   i now have realized  why elyses prayers are so long  as its because as a missionary though they get u through the hard times as u pray with real intent for others to have there hearts open.  i have never been on my knees talking to our father as long  as i have on my mission! 

love u lots and God bless all,

Sesrta Peterson 

PS Our outlet for out fridge broke cause this morning i woke up to water all over the floor!  our apt looks nice but like the toilet seat is broken  almost all out lights are out and now we had water covering the floor ahah

9/2/13 Letter

Well this week as had its up and downs as i think everything has happened, but my email has to be short to send pic!  well spanširfest  was great as as we had great sauces as we held up a English class sign  for people to sign up for English class that starts tomorrow!  we are going to have a record as  i was holding the sign and screaming FREE ENGLISH!Well this week as had its up and downs as i think everything has happened, but my email has to be short to send pic!  well spanširfest  was great

everyone was way happy and couldn't believe what we were doing! sadly we couldn't hold up any gospel related things but, everyone has been calling about coming to English class! Everything ended yesterday so now it back to every day life! We didn't get to do a whole lot this week cause we made the sign, then we would spend 3 hours holding the sign and then lessons.  then Friday surprise.... i got FOOD POISONING FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!   and the sad thing is that  it wasn't even all the greasy  food at spanširfest but we think it was the beans me and my comp put in our salad to try to be healthy for once we think.....  i just woke up a 5 feeling sick  but went back to bed after an hour then at 630 my comp woke up  and said i don't feel well,  

well i guess the cool thing was that i just finished praying saying father please help me throw up to feel better  so i can do your work  and after i said amen, guess what happened... blessing do happen haha then my comp did the same thing then me again and then her and that's about it, we were keeping score but she won by one point haha to much...to soon haha sorry.

Anyways then it has been raining all week, but that didn't stop people from coming to activnost  as we had the most people come to activnost !  a guy from German who was down her at spanširfest  who does drugs and smokes saw us holding our English sign and said he wants to come back to church and right then and there he gave it up cold turkey  and the next day he came to aktivnost  and said he was about to smoke but remembered us!  the nataša who wants to be baptized came with her inactive mom who made the best pizza ever came! she loved it!  well then we went to this city called čakovets and guess what  a girl was wearing a SAN ANTONIO TEXAS SHIRT! o man i freaked!

her family lived her for a mission trip with her church!  being from Texas is the best as everyone knows where it is! 

well other than that not much has happened but because everyone smokes here that is the biggest thing we have to work on with people and right now we are trying to help one member who is just an amazing person who  is 23 and ahh just so great! so we said she stops smoking i only speak in Croatian for 10 days...

so hard and i think my comp hates me not cause I'm understanding more but she gets so frustrated with me and i feel so bad. i hate the fact that i feel like a two year old but that's all part of being humble i think..  well lets just say its p day so i spoke English... yikes!  well today i went to a beautiful castle  ahhh so beautiful!!!! wow i want to live there in the village! this might be the most beautiful place in the world!

i just acted like i was a princess ..nbd ha!  well somthing that really stuck out was 1 nephi 17:3   and also as i was reading  i loved how nephi is tied to the boat for 4 days  drowning to death  cause of the waves for the massive storm because of his brothers and yet he never complained... but after he says my hands  and feet were swollen" i praised god for humbling my brothers hearts and for watching over me"! cray cray! no matter when times are hard and it feels like god has left, don't give up hope  and thanks god for the life u have  and after the trial of your faith  get on your knees and just thank god right away! 

love u lots and got to go teach <fhe!

sestra peterson 

fell into that hole and almost went swimming