Almost done...in Argentina!

Having fun!

It has been really good. we only have 4 more days left and they are all the classes that tell you the dangers of your mission. its going to be pretty fun. id rather not talk about the language. haha just kidding. it is very hard though. everyone is so much more ahead of me. but i know that God answers prayers now so maybe ill ask him. ; ) i have a teacher down here, is name i hermano hertler who is so cool. he makes me laugh every time i see him. he has had the hardest life you can possibly imagine but he is still strong in the gospel and keeps his little brother close to the gospel as well.

I'm so excited to finally go the place i was called to serve. it has been raining and flooding in paraguay and i'm excited to go help out. i also heard that the elders in our mission all get a machete because some of the villages that we are going to have to go to are in the middle of jungles. i saw a picture of one of the mosquitoes in paraguay and body of it was as big as my pinky finger. oh yeah. bring it on Paraguay.

i love hearing about home. and i'm stoked to get the package with more pictures of you guys. i sleep on the bottom bunk and i stuck all the pictures underneath the top bunk so i can look at them before i go to bed every night. i want to know more about whats going on back home, i love to hear about what you guys are doing. oh i've been getting super swole (swollen/buff) downhere i'm pretty sure i've gained like 32 pounds of muscle. hah just kidding if anything i've lost about 10 pounds.

we went proselyting and got put in a new area. we had a dog follow us where ever we went. it was a pretty cool dog. we named him Doge ( Dow-ge) he is now the official dog de la iglesia de jesucristo de los santos de los últimos días. oh haha we were talking to these four guys sitting on a bench waiting for the bus and i was preaching away and one of the men offered elder heckel the beer that he was drinking. it was a very nice gesture but then i explained to him that we don't drink alcohol. it was pretty funny. elder heckel is so oblivious. he didnt even know what was happening. haha he thought he wanted him to hold it for him. so he grabbed it. thats when i explained that we don't drink. then the man took it back and threw it way. the people here are either really receptive because they are looking for anything to give them a better life or they already have a good life and they want nothing to do with you.

i love you guys and i want you to know that i'm doing great. it is now only 23 months until we again. thats not too bad.

Love Elder Petersen

Letter #4 July 17, 2014

Dear Family,                                                                                                               July 17, 2014

This week was pretty good.  My homies left from the older district so that bites but it’s alright because the new North Americans show up today. 

This week proselyting was pretty awesome.  We committed 5 people to baptism, taught 25 lessons and contacted 96 people.  One of those 96 people that we talked to was named Esteban.  We met him in the streets and stopped to talk to him.  He seemed to be in a rush and didn't really want to talk to us, so trying to get him on his way, we ask him if we can pray for him, we prayed for him and when we open our eyes he starts to cry.  I know exactly what hit him and it certainly wasn't my half Spanish prayer.  That was a huge testimony builder for me to know that the Holy Ghost truly is there and is a constant companion when you’re doing what is right.

Moon over the Temple

"One of these things is not like the others..."

Must be his Zone

There was also a lot of pornography everywhere so we don't look at any of the magazine booths.  We also ran into the biggest meanest looking dog I’ve ever seen in my life.  This sucker was probably 200 pounds of pure muscle and was the size of a teenage grizzly bear but looked like a pit bull, therefore we called him the grizzly dog.  Speaking of dogs, they are all over the place!  They are in the trash cans, dead in the gutter, on rooftops and catching up to you… no baño ; )  people down here don’t think that joke is very funny. : (

This one is going to be short sorry. I’ve got to go but hopefully next week I can make up for it.

I love you guys. Thanks for that prayers, I’ll need em.   : )

Letter to Sarah:

Well Sarah,

i know your birthday is coming up and i cant spend any time with you and that plucks the heart strings if you will. this the only birthday of yours that i wont be around for (minus those ones when i wasn't born yet). i love you so much and i love to here from you. i hope you have an amazing birthday i hope everything goes well for you guys. i also hope you find the courage to kick Sean right in the juevoes. no one disrespects my sister.

this past Saturday we went proselyting. it was so cool. we started out and about an hour into it we had only 10 contacts. that sucks just in case you were wondering. then it started to pore rain. i cant tell you how much water there was. i would have taken a picture but about two seconds in that rain it would have been toast. the roads turned into to rivers that spilled over the curbs and onto the sidewalks. we had no chance of staying dry. elder evanson and i were proselyting together and we see a man that is walking pretty fast heading to work so we stop him and talk to him about the church. we ask if we can pray for him and he is hesitant at first but finally gives in. during the middle of the prayer i look up and this man named is crying. it definitely wasn't my Spanglish prayer that was so powerful. i don't know why he was crying but he felt something. it was a true testimony builder of the spirit being a constant companion. my testimony has grown so much just in the past few days. i love being out here working hand in hand with the lord.

I clipped on my name tag this morning and realized that its not just a name tag, it shows that i am a representative of the Lord. this last Saturday was very good. we asked 5 people to get baptized, taught 25 lessons, and contacted 96 people. i talked to everyone i saw and then some more. we also saw a lot of pornography this go around but it was very easy to block it out with some help of the holy spirit of course. ; ) we also saw a grizzly dog. seriously you could have road this sucker. it looked to be about 200 pounds of pure muscle and the size of a teenage grizzly bear. it scared the shiz out of me and i think i might have peed a little, but it was raining so no one could tell. JKing... Argentina played for the world cup on Sunday but they lost to Germany so that was a bummer but they were all so happy to have come in second. they are such a humble country. 

anyways thats it for now. i love you and wish the best for you. happy birthday and to Owen as well.

love elder petersen 

ps. these are my two favorite people. elder evanson and elder torres.

#3 letter from Jeffrey

July 9, 2014

Well, I love to get emails from you guys and the pictures were even better.  I love you guys so much and I hope all is well back en Estados Unidos.

It has been absolutely awesome down here!  All the teachers watch the game down stairs while we are in class studying. It’s disappointing not being able to watch but it’s great to hear their reactions when Argentina scores.  This last Friday we went proselyting and we killed it!...(So humble, lol)  We asked 3 people to be baptized taught 21 lessons, got 11 referrals and had 46 contacts.  It was very nerve racking but after talking to a couple of people I got the hang of it.  I talked to everyone I saw! (This is huge for Jeffrey, before he got his Eagle Scout, he HATED talking to people)  

Our area was next to a companionship of sister missionaries that have been here for over a month and it was there third time proselyting and every time we saw them they were sitting in the exact same spot they were the last time we saw them.  We found out later that they only got 8 contacts and taught no lessons.  They said that their area was really hard…it’s probably because they didn't talk to anybody, but I guess everyone has their own struggles. 

Jeffrey, sleep walking?  With assistance?

His new buddies

One man that we met was named Rodolfo.  He was smoking a cigarette when I introduced us as missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ.  He stopped to talk to us but wasn't really receptive. I asked him if he had ever heard of us before and if so, what he had heard.  He said yeah and that all he knew about us what that “you guys are wrong".  I was a bit taken off guard and didn't really know what to say other than to ask him why.  All he said in return was "so what happened with the year 2012".  We explained to him that that was not our church.  I testified to him that we have living prophets who speak with God but we don't know when the world is going to end or when Jesus will come again.  At that point he put out his cigarette and started to open up to us.  You could tell that he felt the Spirit and that it testified to him that what we were saying was true.  It was quite amazing.  He told us an experience he had had with God, so he knows that God exists.  We then told him about the example Jesus Christ set for us and asked him to follow that example and be baptized by the proper authority.  He said yes but didn't want to do it right then.

We get to go out again this Friday, unless Argentina loses because then they will play on Friday and everything closes on game days.  (Argentina won!)  I hope to meet Rodolfo again and become good friends with him. I know that his life will improve if he has the Gospel. 

The area we went proselyting in was a really nice area for Buenos Aries but the equivalent to the ghetto of South Jordan (haha!..or Los Angeles).  There were dogs on the rooftops and sketchy hobo villages everywhere.  I never knew what a great country we live in and how privileged we are to have the things that we do. 

Our teacher, Hermano Cristeche, was telling us about the mosquitoes that are in Paraguay.  He said that the biggest one he saw was about as big as his pinky finger!!  He also said that they eat monkey! haha!  Oh, I can’t wait. : )  I’ll take some pictures of the city the next time we go out and I’ll send them to you next week.

I love our family so much and I pray for you guys every day.

Love Elder Petersen

Letter #2

July 3, 2014

Jeffrey, Elder ?. Brother Hertler, Elder Floyd

Jeffrey...water polo taught him that there's no such thing as person space!

ahhhhh, I love you guys so much!

Before I forget I do need a couple of things but they need to be sent to my mission home and ill get them when I get there. I need rain boots, some more shampoo and toothpaste, and some more pictures of the fam. if you could make that happen it would be absolutely magical. I also need Baileys new email address please.

Well this week wasn't quite as entertaining as my story was last week but it was still awesome. We went to the newly redone temple and it is sooo beautiful. I thought it was hard to understand it in my native language.... I had no idea how hard it was going to be in Spanish. but it was still amazing

There is fog every morning that is so thick that i cant see the ground from my second story window. but it rolls on out at about 11 everyday.  They finally let us take some pictures that I'll send to you asap. There are also some parrots that like to chill in the tree right outside my window so i got a picture of them.

Last night a bunch of new Latino elders came in and so we decided it would be funny to play a little prank on the newbs.  One of the "older" elders has a prosthetic leg so he acted as though he fell off of the top of the bunk bed and snapped his leg.  They all bought it until elder Floyd just wrapped it in a blanket and ran off with it.  The funny thing was that they had no idea what we were saying so we yelled random stuff like " theirs an olive in the cheese grader" but we made it sound like we were really distraught.  It was kind of a mean prank to pull but it was so worth it. the Latinos are so happy to be here that once they figured out that it was a joke they couldn't stop laughing. lol!

On the more spiritual side of things, we had an amazing lesson last night about being the best missionary you can be.  It was taught by a teacher named Hermano Hertler (we call him Adolf, lol ) but he was saying how much of a struggle it was for him to come on his mission. He was filling out his papers and his mom found out and kicked him out of her house so he went to live with his dad who is an evangelist preacher. After a while of living with his dad, his dad finally found out that he was anticipating a mission call. so one day he came home and walked in his house and smelled something burning. his dad had put his scriptures in the oven to get rid of them. his dad then kicked him out of his house. Hermano Hertler went to stay at his friends house before he left for his mission. Hermano Hertlers girlfriend and his friend were the only two people at the airport for him and a month into his mission he got his dear john letter. He started to question why he was on his mission when it seemed liked nobody cared that he was out there, but his senior companion told him to buck up an become a great missionary. so he did. the following two months he baptized 126 people.

We get to go proselyting tomorrow in the sketchiest town I've ever been in and I cant wait. I'll tell you all about it in my next email. Elder Evanson and Elder Floyd have gone proselyting twice now and they got over 60 contacts both times but while asking someone there name, Elder Evanson got a mouth full of smoke blown in his face... this is the same Elder Evanson that got in a fight (boxing?) the night before he came to the MTC, the same one who was 10 and 0 in his boxing matches before he came out and the same one who is 6 foot 6 and weighs a 225 and this short little Latino blows smoke in his face.  He said the people in the city know that you can't do anything back to them so they do whatever they want no matter the size difference. So what I'm saying, pray for me.
haha
na chiste (just kidding ) I'll be fine.

I love you all so much and i cant wait to skype with you guys at Christmas time. have a happy fourth of July. 

love elder Petersen