A Long Time Later

Hey There!
This is post Mission Taylor! I'm post the mission by like a year and a half. My family stopped Blogging my emails at about my 1/3 mark for a few reasons like to avoid publicizing the stories of people I was teaching and also because it was a lot of work. Now that it has been so long and since the site does get some views, I figured I might post the rest of my emails, you know, for posterity's sake! Any posts beyond Westminster week 37 I have put up myself. Hope you enjoy!  

Greeley Week 53

Hello everyone!

So we got to meet with president Toombs on Wednesday and he's bring some exciting new things to the mission. After like a 7 minute interview with all the missionaries in the stake he talked to all of us about himself and his plans. He has some great goals to keep the missionaries busy and he definetly is excited about the work. Hopefully he can get his ideas like an increase in ward leadership involvement moving so we can see them before we near the end of our missions. Also the church has done something interesting for all the missionaries worldwide. Each companionship now has a portable DVD player strictly for our studies so that we can watch training videos and other church media. All the return missionaries we tell this to kind of go into a state of confusion usually because they walked their whole mission without cell phones or didn’t even get to email from another country. It’s kinda a shock that the missionaries are actually progressing through the technological era even if we are 10 years behind. 

Well this week was pretty exciting because we finally met some investigators that were being taught be the old missionaries. We met a couple were one is a less active member and the girl is an investigator and the have a three kids. At one point she was pretty interested but then the missionaries found out they weren't married, sound familiar? Well we found out their actually getting married the end of this month! That’s one giant check off of our checklist and that means the family would be that much closer to partaking of the blessings of eternal families. ... Isn't that awesome!!!!!

The work is moving forward, we're working hard, and life is great. I love teaching this wonderful gospel.  

Greeley Week 51

Hello everyone!

This has been a great week! We have had such a warm welcome from this ward. They have not had missionaries here for 3 months and it seems like we were really missed. An email was sent out and our dinner colander was filled in no time. The bishopric wanted to publicize the fact that we're back so they had a completely missionary themed sacrament meeting. An update from a mom of a missionary, a sister leaving for her mission then me to talk about how we can all work together to accomplish our goals. It was a pretty good day. We also have several investigators that were already teaching! Some of them have been investigating for a while but others are attending church weekly and really enjoying it. It’s so great!

I love being a missionary. I’m getting along great with Elder Samiu and today we are going bowling!  Hope life is great for everyone back home! Cya later 

Greeley Week 48

Hello Everyone,

So Elder Samiu and I have had a pretty good week! We did a lot of service. I think we did some almost every day in at least some small way. It’s been pretty fun being able to serve in so many ways. We have started teaching an investigator that has been being taught since like 2008. May he's finally ready to make some changes. Oh yeah that lady we met last Monday came to church and that was so great to see. this next week we plan to work hard and start preparing the area to be closed by making sure all our investigators have ward missionaries that can continue teach. I think we’ll have a great week. Hope life is well for everyone back home! Life is good!   

Greeley Week 47

Hello Everyone,

Elder Samiu and I have had a great week. Our mission president had his last zone conference with us and as always we left being filled with the spirit and a reenergized drive for the work. Memorial Day was really fun too. We got invited to a couple barbeques and since it was our p-day we we're able to just hang out with some cool families in the ward. I did eat a ton however. 
So something kind of exciting happened yesterday. We got a message form the church referral system that came directly from mormon.org. Someone had entered in the name address and phone number and put in the message "I used to be a member and I want to come back." She did this Sunday; we got the message Monday and met with her Monday night. We visited for a while and she is actually really excited to make this change. We ended our meeting by sharing a short message about the blessings of the spirit she will receive because of what she is doing. I’m trying to express how excited I am for her. A lost sheep has decided to rejoin the 90 and 9! The blessings of the church are going to be available to her again. I think she has been ready for a while but it all came down to her pushing that button on sandy to send us that message. Whether we're teaching non-members, members or returning members, being able to help people come unto to Christ is such a great experience. Like I’ve said before, I love being a missionary. Life is good. I love my companion and the people I serve. Thanks for all your prayers!    

Greeley Week 46

Hello Everyone!

Hope you all have had a great week! Elder Samiu and I have been getting along great. We've been working hard looking for people to teach and contacting old investigators. So far nothing really cool to report yet. We did have a really good tracing experience on Tuesday though. We both felt at different times that it would be a good idea to tract around a members home and when we did we had a lot of good visits and even got invited in a couple doors and got contact info for future meetings. We'll see how that all works out.

Well this week we have our mission president’s last zone conference. That means we have to clean our car for inspections and prepare to possibly be called on to present trainings for the zones. Should be fun. It’s crazy because when president Ely goes home I hit my year mark. I can’t believe I have been out this long! The other day someone said in not that green cause I’ve been out so long but I don’t feel well-oiled yet. I guess it better that I stay humble anyway. This work is great and I’ve definitely changed a lot into something better. I’m actually finally about to finish Jesus the Christ by James Talmage that I started months ago. I only read with my free time which isn't a lot. I’m on page 740 and it amazing. Well life is great and I hope that everything is good in the real world too! Bye. 

Westminster Week 41

So this week has been pretty crazy not because of all the distractions we had. the tread on my tires are getting pretty thin and I didn’t have sealant in my tires so I got like 5  flat tires but I put sealant in them and have plans to get new treads. Elder hunt also snapped a shifting cable that we couldn't fix so had to spend some time on a busy Saturday to get it fixed. We also had doctor’s checkups for elder hunt and were both kind of getting allergies. We’ve both been kind of slowed down. But this still has been a pretty good week. I did get a ton a work on our records while in the waiting room at the doctor’s appointment and even talked to this really nice old lady about our church and gave out a book of Mormon to some people we met on the way out! That was pretty productive.  

So essentially not much happened this week besides the package that you guys sent arrived on Wednesday. Thank you so much for all the treats those were actually my dinner the other night, ha-ha. So I don’t have much else to add. Your guys are great and hope you have a great week!

~Elder Peterson