Letter #53

Dear family and friends,

To start off, my new companion is Elder Putnam. He's from Bountiful, UT. He's great and super hard working. We've gotten so much stuff done and have the rest of this transfer pretty much all mapped out as to what we're going to do. There's a lot of work to be done here in Lake Hamilton. It's no small task. But we are hastening the work of salvation. I was reading the allegory of the olive tree this morning in my studies. Possibly my favorite chapter right now in the Book of Mormon. Something that really stuck out to me as I read was how the Lord of the vineyard emphasized over and over again that his servants who worked diligently would share in the reward of the fruit that would be gathered. The other big thing I noticed was that the Lord of the vineyard did a lot of things that didn't always make perfect sense to the servant, but he reminded his servant that he did it "for mine own purpose." It really got me thinking about everything that the Lord does, and has done, since the very beginning that most of the time we don't understand. But when the end comes, we will understand the purposes and the wisdom of the Lord.

This week has been really good. The Acostas are doing really well. We had an awesome lesson with them last night. We read 2 Ne 32 with them, and the mom was asking some awesome questions about baptism and the sacrament. This is possibly the best lesson we've ever had with them. It's so clear that she wants so bad for it to be true. She loves the idea of eternal families, and talks about it every time we go over. Last night she had a huge smile on her face as she was talking about the whole family being dressed in white and being "tied together forever." Really, her only struggle is getting used to our church services. Because she picks up stuff so fast and she's learned so much, and when she has questions she so readily accepts our answers. The Spirit was so strong in our lesson last night with them. The dad might take a little longer to come around, but he loves the Book of Mormon and how easy it is to understand in comparison to the Bible. So things are going super good with them.

Well, I'm way excited for this coming week. We're going to get so much stuff done, this area isn't even going to know what hit it! Love you guys, hope you have a great week.

Elder Petersen