Peter's Ponderings

 A nd it came to pass in the third week of the fifth transfer... I don't really want to write out too much and honestly there isn't much to write anyway. There were a lot of events but none of them were super eventful. ~ AP exchange with Elder Fonger (my zone leader last transfer) ~ I got to drive the AP's minivan ~ We had a zone temple trip! I got transferred into a zone that didn't have one yet so I got 2 transfers in a row! ~ We had interviews with President. They didn't go too well. He thought I was doing something I wasn't. ~ I love general conference! We got to watch every session with a member and we had lunch and dinner with members all weekend! ~ I broke my glasses but I went to a place and got them fixed My biggest general conference takeaways! ~ Minister to the one / no one sits alone ~ We are all children of God! He loves and ministers to us individually! ~ Celestial marriage is necessary! I can't think about that one yet though  I love y'all...

 And it came to pass the second week of the fifth transfer the work hastened in Lake Wheeler! Narrowing down the people we are teaching to only the elect was epic! I don't think I've ever talked about numbers before because they aren't the most important thing but it emphasizes how effective this has been! Typically this area had 20-30 new people each week. We dropped it to 12 however we got 10 people to sacrament! Last transfer the most was 4. We got 30 Lessons with members participating! Last transfers high was 17. And we have 5 people on date for baptism!! This area is super elect and as we have focused on finding the elect instead of just anyone God truly has led us to those prepared to take action and come to church and accept the restored Gospel and it has been incredible! God is so good! I had an exchange with Elder Hardman. It was fun but not very Eventful. We had zone conference and after zone conference a member took us out to a really fancy restaurant. It was so ...

  And it came to pass the commencement of the fifth transfer was indescribable  We now have permission to go to the temple once a transfer. Because temples are closed on Monday we can move our Pday one time to go to the temple that day. I'll try to warn y'all before that happens if possible, but if there's no Monday email that's why. Transfer news! I am in a trio in Lake Wheeler, which is in the South Raleigh Stake! It is considered one of the most elect areas in the mission. I've heard it called "The Promised Land" Apartment: it's my first one bed one bath apartment and it's for a trio. It's also the smallest apartment I've had. We have a bunk bed as well. It was also filled with random junk from previous Elders. I've spent over 3 hours organizing stuff that people might actually want one day and throwing away anything that's broken, useless or gross. Overall the apartment isn't actually too bad now, even if it is small. Compan...

  And it came to pass that the fifth week of the fourth transfer was full of lots of random things  I went to Mount Olive with Elder Bergstrom and it was awesome! I love him so much it was such a great exchange! We have a lot in common in the way we approach missionary work and how we teach. We also went to a Pentecostal funeral for the mom of one of their friends on date. It was good. Different than what I'm used to and it made me miss country music. We also put 3 more people on date for baptism!!! On Sunday we had an amazing ward conference! Our bishopric and elders quorum got reorganized. The bishop is still the same. The best part was that Woody, one of our friends we're teaching, came! And the ward was so awesome and welcoming! He was very touched and felt the spirit for sure!  Other random things: * A guy we talked to said he's good at chess and that he'd beat me. Elder Howell let me set up to come back on Pday so I'm going to be playing against him later toda...

  And it came to pass the fourth week of the fourth transfer Sunday was crazy! I had almost nothing to write about until yesterday and now this email is long. We are teaching a lady named Sincere and her 9 year old daughter Sinclair. Sincere is struggling with alcoholism and at one of our lessons gave us her last bottle of alcohol and let us dump it out and throw it away!!  I was on exchanges with Elder Openshaw here in Goldsboro. We decided to stop by someone we lost contact with a few weeks ago and Lashonda has read the Book of Mormon EVERY DAY since we last taught her because we set up a daily reminder to read it. She is so cool! If she can read every day y'all can too! It was also one of my favorite exchanges. It was a lot of fun! Sunday was the craziest day. Random stuff came up for Sincere and Lashonda so neither of them were able to come to church but both of them really wanted to and we're confident we'll see them next week! The power was out when we got there (45 m...

And it came to pass in the third week of the fourth transfer we had an AP blitz. This week was kind of a blur. Back in my first transfer Elder Nikolaus blitzed me and Elder Walker in Siler City. Four months later he did it again in Goldsboro! The exchange was crazy. We found a ton of really cool people! Sometimes when we talk to new people they don't seem super interested but we still act in faith and try our best to help them, but during this exchange we found many really cool people! Several of them said they'd come to church and we called them on Sunday morning and they confirmed but no one came?! It was really sad. On Saturday Jane Davis was baptized which is super cool! It was a good baptism and everything went pretty smoothly. We had to change a speaker last second because something is happening on the air force base and it was all hands on deck. Bishop said he had multiple people say they wouldn't be there on Sunday and they would need subs for a lot of things. Overa...