Week 37:Fairmont Ward, Houston East Stake; Companion Elder Mangan

This past week was a little slow to start with. We had a couple appointments fall through and no one really wanted to meet. I didn't let it affect me too much though, we kept plowing ahead. Eventually it did start to get better, but not until Saturday really. But I wasn't even in the area on Saturday.

     Elder Rivers and Elder Chappel, our Zone Leaders, wanted to do a little 12 hour exchange. We drove over to the Broadway Chapel (my first area) and met them there while they were in Spanish class, which we joined. It was fun, the teacher (I have no idea how to spell his name) is a very smart man, both with Spanish and Doctrine. We got to ask him some questions and his answers were very insightful. After the class we began our exchange and I was staying in Broadway Spanish with Elder Rivers. 

     The day was great, except I only understood every 10th word people said, so it was hard to follow what was going on. It was fine though, Elder Rivers is a great missionary and I could tell he's a great teacher. Towards the end of the day we headed over to the house of someone his ward for a fiesta. It was awesome, they were making suuuuper good tacos. It was kind of awkward though, because people would ask me questions or try talking to me and I would just go "uuuuhhhh... no hablo Español, lo siento." Then they'd look at me kind of funny, no doubt wondering why Elder Chappel had been replaced by an English only Elder, and then walk away. It was also kinda funny though, so I didn't mind. That was the end of the exchange though, after that we drove back to Pasadena and exchanged back.

     Yesterday we met with Marie and Lilia again and they accepted our invitation to be baptized! Marie kept expressing that she's ready and that she knows it's the next step for her. Lilia was a little hesitant though. She told us about how she had tried joining another church a while back and the ostracized her for the stuff she liked to do, such reading Harry Potter. I assured her that the Relief Society organization is incredible and that she will feel love and belonging within it, and also that liking Harry Potter isn't that weird. I told her that many of my relatives love Harry Potter, which got her super excited 

      Later in the day (actually right after that, I think) we went to Sister Saldana's house to teach her friend the Restoration. It was fantastic! Lauran had many awesome questions and she loved what we shared with her. She accepted our invitation to continue reading the Book of Mormon (she's already at 2 Nephi ) and to pray about the things we shared. She's been having a really hard time though, so I want to ask all of you to keep Lauran (and Marie and Lilia) in your prayers. 

     That's about it for the week... transfer day is next Tuesday! This one went by pretty quick, which is nice.

     Thank you, have a great week!

- Elder Peterson 

Pictures:

There's some potatoes from Idaho, I saw a fish in the water, I forgot to mention that a member of our ward is a bee keeper and he let me hold some bees . Also Elder Bengtzen holding a scared dog and then there's a cool picture of the shore I got.