A Missionary of Success

Week Sixty-four!

This week I have restarted to read Preach My Gospel. And with the grand blessing I have been able to rediscover my favorite section. "A Successful Missionary"

I love this section.  Mostly because serving in Peru isn’t as everyone has always described it, like a family baptism every week.  But also the mission itself - like being a senior companion after completing half your mission.

The thing is I came into the mission field at a very special time for the work of salvation.  A time were we are here to work as a team not only as a companionship but also as a work.  Working with other missionaries in our ward and the ward leaders to find the people that the Lord has prepared for us, and not just those who want to be baptized without knowing the significance of the gospel.  A time were the wave, of new missionaries, was ending and now almost all of the missionaries have more than a year in the mission and are more experienced and ready to work.  I’m in a wonderful spot and we are working hard to do good in the little town of Ambo.

And even though I don’t have a million baptisms, or the title of senior companion.  I know that we are really a tool in the hands of the Lord and we are striving to be better, because "You can know you have been a successful missionary when you:

• Feel the Spirit testify to people through you.
• Love people and desire their salvation.
• Obey with exactness.
• Live so that you can receive and know how to follow the Spirit, who, will show you where to go, what to do, and what to say.
• Develop Christlike attributes.
• Work effectively every day, do your very best to bring souls to Christ, and seek earnestly to learn and improve.
• Help build up the Church (the ward) wherever you are assigned to work.
• Warn people of the consequences of sin. Invite them to make and keep commitments.
• Teach and serve other missionaries.
• Go about doing good and serving people at every opportunity, whether or not they accept your message." (PMG Cap 1) 

These are the things we are striving to do in our areas and in ourselves.  Maybe I’m still not perfect yet but I know that with the Lords help I will get there one day.

Jesusa is progressing well, she still hasn’t had the opportunity to attend church but this week she promised us that she would go with us and I know that she will feel the Spirit of the Lord while she is there.

I know this gospel is true, and maybe we won’t always have the success that we desire but we will have the success that the Lord desires.

I love you All

Hermana Peters

I dont really know what to write this week

Week Sixty-three!

My companion is going home in like not very much time.  So we are passing some time helping her get ready while still being very focused in the work.  We are staying focused a lot more with fasting.  I have never really had a huge fasting experience but I know that with our faith it will bring us miracles in these next couple weeks.

We are working hard to find the people here that God has prepared for us, and I know we can find them.  There have been people working in the center of Ambo for about a year, so I know that there are just so many people here waiting to hear the gospel.

I’m doing really well and I am so happy to be here we found this wonderful lady named Jesusa and she has a son and daughter who are 10 and 8 and she is a single mom who doesn’t know how to read and doesn’t have a religious background at all.  It is so great to go back and really be able to teach the stories of Jesus and of the Bible that we always think that we all know and see her faith just grow.

She has such a desire to learn and her 10 year old son helps us so much. He is so smart. He reads to his mom and knows the scriptures so well.

Their faith amazes me and I know that she is one of the people that God has prepared for us.

I love you all

Hermana Peters

The Power of Ambo

Week Sixty-two!

I don’t know what it is about this place, but there is just something you need to love about Ambo.  When I came here in divisions one day I really was not a fan I will admit it but really it is more than just working in a little pueblo on the side of a mountain climbing up and down every moment.

I don’t know if it is just being outside of a city but there is just such a good atmosphere here everyone knows who we are and even though they are still slow to accept this wonderful message they still accept and love us for trying.

As my last few areas have been, Ambo is kind of slow in the work we don’t have any baptisms planned and we are finding it slow to find new people to teach but I can’t let that put me down.  Our Ward Mission Leader is working hard to help us in the work.

I am so grateful for the General Conference we were able to see this week and I would just like to testify that I know that those men The Prophet, His Councilors, and the 12 Apostles are men that are called of God.  That despite the flaws of men that they have the power and ability to receive the revelation that they need to direct the church of God today.  I know that everyone that went to the Conference looking for answers received what they were looking for.

If you were wondering what my favorite talk was it was a tie between David A Bednar and Dieter F Uchtdorf.

I know that, despite the view of the world, Satan is attacking the family more than ever before.  That is the reason that men ordained of God focused so much on that topic.  If we can strengthen a few families and our families personally it is the best thing we can do.  As Elder Tom Perry shared, if every religion which believes in a higher being, believes in the same law how could we say it wasn’t ordained of God.

I don’t have much else to say but this testimony I have.  If you just pray and ask God if Thomas S Monson is a prophet, with REAL and TRUE intent to know, God will answer you and there is no need to fear.

Maybe there were quite a few things that threw off this conference, like problems with translators, the group not sustaining the prophet, but we can still feel the peace in the words of these great men.

I love this gospel.

I love our Prophet.

And I love my Father in Heaven and my older brother Jesus Christ.

Love

Hermana Peters

PS. the president of my university is now in the first quorum of the 70 so we will see what happens with that.

AMBO

Week Sixty-one!

Well I was moved, I’m now in a little town called Ambo it’s just outside of Huanuco and to get a bus or car here we actually have to go to my old area.  The parents of my pension in Tarapaca live here so it’s pretty fun.  But it is so good here, it has the same weather as Huanuco so you can expect me to be very tan.  My companion is Hermana Wiexler, which is cool she’s a cool kid but it is weird at the same time because she is an Hermana Leader and usually they have a companion that is an Hermana Leader, but I’m still just a normal missionary, so something might happen with that during this change or at the end of it.

I have been thinking a lot lately about how I am the way that I am you know with the whole social disorder thing.  And I kind of just want to share what I like to call My Bullying Story.  Somethings some people know and have heard but I think I kept a lot of things guarded close to me.  But in the mission I have done a lot of growing socially and have realized that I went through a lot more than some people did without even experiencing it.  I have accepted that and would like a lot of people to read this.  Just so they can see things can get better and that its okay to let people help and to ask for help.

I don’t know if these have an effect on things but I only have two memories from Kindergarten.  The time I wet my pants which I have shared often and if you don’t know the story you can ask my mom.  The other I haven’t shared very often but I just remember being in the playroom playing with the Barbie’s by myself.  I don’t remember if anyone joined me after the part I remember but I just remember seeing all the other kids playing together.

I’m sure a lot of things happened between then and my next memory but I’m not sure what.  I just remember there were people who were nice to me but I never really had good friends, (except Sophie she was always there) but my next memory is in the fourth grade.  When someone who I thought was a really good friend came up and told me very bluntly that I was fat.  More than anything I was just sad that a friend would say that because I had heard it from the girls who weren’t really my friends in ways that weren’t so blunt, but it still hurt.  I feel like I have forgiven this person but I know it made me a little bit more introverted to the point I had a really hard time confiding in my friends.

Before I move into the next part I feel like more importantly people realize that I didn’t understand that I was being bullied and that more than anything is the reason that I never really said anything.  Because you always think of bullying as like name calling and punching and stuff, but more than anything people just ignored me and didn’t want me around them.

That’s what happened more than anything in 5th Grade and that’s the reason my 5th grade teacher said it was the year she almost quit teaching.  I did have a few friends I thought and I’m pretty sure that is kind of when my parents realized that I didn’t have very many friends.  I’m sure that I refused help because I didn’t know it was something so bad for people to do.  It was the end of fifth grade that I really realized that people didn’t want to be my friend.  When the cool girls made the rules of popularity for middle school and one was to not be friends with me.  I received notes from the people that were nice to me that I thought were my friends saying that they couldn’t be my friend anymore.  That day I cried harder than I have the whole rest of my life.

Then I started middle school and I kind of brought the rest on myself.  I went emo and started being weird because I thought it was cooler that way anyway.  With that new found persona people started the rumors that I was lesbian, which isn’t anything against lesbians but it makes it really hard to get a boyfriend.  That I cut myself and that I hated all people.

None of which were true but I lived with it anyway.  I did have a good friend in this time.  A girl with the same personality and the same persona and we were friends for quite a few years.

Which leads us into high school.  My sophomore year I was still friends with her but I really started to evaluate my life.  I looked at where I was headed and really analyzed what is it that I wanted for my life, especially when I found out that this girl who was my really good friend got into things like sex and drugs at a young age.

The summer between my sophomore and junior year the bishop challenged the youth to read the whole book of Mormon and that we would have the answers we needed if we did it.  So I read the book of Mormon that summer- the whole thing and I don’t remember a huge all at once change but I can see now that slowly I became more of the person I actually wanted to be and at the start of Junior year and dropped my friends who were doing things against my new found beliefs and went solo.

Then that year the luckiest thing in the world happened.  Two new girls moved to the school from Nevada.  Girls of the church who had personalities like mine who became my first real friends.  That year in seminary there was a young man who was a little weird and we were kind of mean to him at first (sorry Blake) but he was actually really cool.  And Sophie came back more fully into my life and I love her for always being there.  The Lord blessed me so much that year and that’s how I knew the gospel was true because those blessings came after I started doing things right and with my own desires.

It may not sound like the worst story out there, but it really did affect me and I didn’t realize how much until I got to a strange country with people that I didn’t know that I had to force myself to talk to and it was really hard.  I socially did not know how to talk to them I could not carry a normal conversation with someone and that more than anything was the reason the mission was so hard.  It’s still hard sometimes but I now can talk to people and that is the biggest blessing ever.

Trust me it gets better.

I’m so happy to be here and I love the gospel and know that through the atonement of Jesus Christ anything is possible.

Don’t worry about me.

I’m so happy here.

I love you all.

Hermana Peters