Week 72: It Will All Work Out

Usually stories have the moral or main theme at the end but this week mine is at the beginning..... 

  Trust in the Lord with all thine heart ; and lean not unto thine own understanding .

In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths . 

PROVERBS 3:5-6

So this week I learned a ton about trusting in Heavenly Father!!!! Someone asked me what's the biggest thing I've learned. My answer: How to receive personal revelation and How to trust in God. 

Tuesday we met with a few of our former investigators and really tried to figure out if they were ready to progress

again. One of them has so much real intent, but because of some of her daughters poor choices she as the grandma has to take care of her grandson. Because of that she isn't able to come to church or really take lessons consistently. You could tell she believed what we taught, but this is holding her back big time. In the middle of the lesson we were reading the scriptures and her grandson was a little rowdy and he came up and RIPPED PAGES OUT OF SISTER LIMB'S SCRIPTURES......my heart literally ached...,...I felt so bad!!!!!! Oh my goodness...I wanted to cry....Sister Limb was like...oh no don't do that...she is so sweet!!!! We both wanted to cry!!! Our scriptures are so important to us!!! We tried to tape them back together after ward...we'll see if they stay!!! The scriptures we were reading with her was Mosiah 24:10-16....some of you know that those are my favorite verses of all time!!!! We felt really inspired to share those with her to show her that if she trusts in the Lord he will help her bear her burdens!! After we read, She said I've read a lot of passages but none of them ever make sense.....this is the first passage I've read in my life that I understand and can apply to my life....I WAS SO HAPPY RIGHT IN THAT

MOMENT!!! I was happy that I could help her understand the scriptures. That she now had something she could use in her life to help her! I was happy that I had prayed and asked if we should share that scripture or another one. I was happy that Heavenly Father answered my prayer and that he knows our investigator so well that he inspired me to share that with her. Tuesday night we had too many appointments, so we had to do a split with the sisters!!!! Sister Nelson and I went and taught Levi!!! It was a good lesson. We taught the 1st part of Gospel of Jesus Christ about Faith and Repentance! He was telling us about confession in the Catholic church and how it used to be (imagine how it is in movies) and how confession is done now in the church. We told him that we can pray and receive forgiveness straight from The Savior and if we do need to talk to a church leader we can. He seemed unfamiliar with the concept of personal revelation.....it made me really grateful for the knowledge I have
that I can communicate with my Heavenly Father whenever and I can tell him the true feelings of my heart and go

straight to him! We ended our night (wow....looking back this was quite a busy day!!) visiting the Bishop's family!!! Bishop Oliver is the BEST!!!! He loves BYU football....but aside from that he is a great bishop for this ward!!! We brought our name tags and made the kids missionaries!!!! They have such strong testimonies of the Book of Mormon!! it was so cute!!!  Wednesday we met with Wilma! She is friends with one of the ward members, and she invited us over to talk more about the church!!! SWEET!!! We really had to reign in her questions about all sorts of stuff and just tell her that we teach the basics!! By the end she understood that she needed to read the Book of Mormon and see if it's true!!! Later that night we dropped by a member families house and to our surprise they used to be Catholic! We told them about how a lot of our investigators have a Catholic background and they told us how we could best help them! Especially teach them about personal revelation!!! It was definitely inspired!!! Thursday we planned! We spent our day down in South Kelowna and man was it cold!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My feet were numb the whole time hahahaha We had dinner with one of our favorite members

Sister Stevenson and we were going to ask her to start praying about someone to give her Book of Mormon too and she had already been doing that!!! GOLDEN!!!! Our night plans cancelled...which stinks because it's freezing....people don't like last minute lessons....and we are stuck wondering what we can do with the remaining 2 hours of the night!! So we really had to trust in the Lord!!! So we prayed and got a prompting to visit our friend Marta in the ward! She is blind and we usually read the Book of Mormon to her each month! I just really felt like we needed to visit her. So we went and she said she had been praying that day because she wanted to phone her friend the next day for her birthday, but she had forgotten the number and because she can't see she was unable to look in her address book. She had been praying that someone would help her. We helped her memorize the number, so she could phone her friend in Germany for her birthday!! It was SUCH A LONG NUMBER and she memorized the whole thing again!! I still have it memorized hahaha  It was such a little miracle!!! 

Friday we went on exchanges!!!! I went with Sister Nelson and we had planned a great day the night before
and Friday morning rolled around and something happened and we had to ERASE OUR WHOLE DAY OF PLANS.....once again I needed to learn to trust in Heavenly Father!! So we erased it all and wrote down some
more stuff in a different area and went to work! We followed the Spirit the whole day!! We met some amazing people we wouldn't have met otherwise!! Some guy talked to us on the street and said he has actually been thinking a lot about Jesus Christ lately and wants to learn more about his life....perfect!!!!!! We met some other

people who were less interested, but we were able to clarify some things about what we believe! It was great! Later that night our plans cancelled AGAIN and so we prayed and started walking! We ended up meeting these two guys...Donovan and Nelson...they were like a dynamic duo! We asked them what they were up to! Nelson said "I convinced him that this is the best season to walk and go and buy ice cream because it won't melt on the way home" hahahahahahahhaha They were like those 2 guy friends from a Tuesday night sitcom or something hahahaha Nelson actually knew a lot about the church and had been before!!! He said he met with the Elders and then started saying random facts about our church and missionary work lol it was super funny!!! He wasn't interested anymore, but it definitely made our night!!

Saturday was the Miracle Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ALL OUR APPOINTMENTS CANCELLED YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We really used the Spirit!! ALL OF OUR SET APPOINTMENTS and MPL'S (member present lessons with investigators) cancelled!!!! Oh my goodness!!! I was like wow...Heavenly Father must really need us to run an errand and be somewhere!! So we tried SO HARD to find the reason!!! We DID!!!!!! Our appointment with Sandra (investigator) cancelled and the reason was so we could be walking past Erin's (less active)  house. She hasn't let us come back in 4 months....we had a prompting to just say Hi!!! She let us in and we were able to rekindle that relationship we had before!! IT WAS AWESOME!!! Karen (a less active) cancelled her lesson and it was so we would stay in an area a little longer and receive a prompting to go visit Cheri (a recent convert) who has been MIA for a while and

she is NEVER home!! We stopped by and SHE WAS THERE!!!!! Because our lesson cancelled we were able to spend some time with her in the scriptures and praying.  Before she didn't want to come to church because she can't take care of her daughter alone, she didn't feel worthy, she hadn't been in a long time....the list went on and on....at the end SHE COMMITTED TO COME TO CHURCH AND SHE CAME ON SUNDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT WAS THE FIRST TIME SINCE I'VE BEEN HERE (SINCE AUGUST) THAT SHE HAS COME!!!!!!! Everyone was so happy and she was so happy and she really did receive revelation through coming to church!!!! She's coming next week too!!! Then our appointment with Tim (current investigator) cancelled and it was so we could meet with the member that was going to come to the his lesson and she could invite her friend over that has questions and we could make him a new investigator!!!!!!! I AM SO EXCITED THAT HEAVENLY FATHER HAD A BETTER PLAN!!!!!!! It made for a great day!!!!!! 

Sunday was EVEN BETTER!!!!! Leslie and her kids came to church!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Patricia came too, so we had 4 investigators at church!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was sitting next to Leslie and her kids and Cheri our recent convert and all their fellowshippers!!! It was a bench of love!!!!!! I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY AT CHURCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I WAS SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE THAT WERE MAKING GREAT CHANGES IN THEIR LIVES BECAUSE OF JESUS CHRIST!!!! I REALLY FELT LIKE I WAS FULFILLING MY PURPOSE AND DOING MY JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Words can't even explain how happy I was yesterday!!!!!! I am just loving my mission so much!!!!!!! It has been such a successful week!!!!!!!

Even though all our appointments fell through and some investigators called and dropped us, dissed the Book of Mormon, told us we were crazy for doing this....in the end it all strengthened my testimony and it turned out to be great!!!!!!! I loved it :) 

Love,
Sister Peterson