Peter's Ponderings

And it came to pass in the fourth week of the fifth transfer the work hastened even more!! Media Referrals (people who filled out an ad to meet with us): We stopped by a media referral late at night with a member. Robert, the media referral answered his door with a gun then saw us and said "oh it's the LDS missionaries! Come in come in." The member was pretty concerned but we weren't too phased and we walked in. The member asked "is that a gun!?" to which Robert said "yeah let me put this away before it goes off accidentally." He is super cool! Apparently he came to church 2 weeks ago without us knowing and he's pretty interested in learning more and he came to church again yesterday! Alex filled out a media referral as well. He was on date when I first got here but he was too busy so we stopped teaching him because he couldn't set up a time and he couldn't come but we reached out after his request on Monday and he set up a time with us...

 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...

And it came to pass in the second week of the fourth transfer we have 4 people on date!?!! Mission vehicles have a thing that tracks EVERYTHING. Acceleration, speeding, seat belts being buckled, aggressive driving and you need to log into using a card. I went on exchanges with Elder Fox in the first ward on Thursday and he got robbed a couple days before the exchange so he didn't have his card so I drove for the first time in 6 months! I drove a 2025 rav4 with 8k miles on it. Mission vehicles are really nice. They also get them straight from the factory in bulk for a good price then resell them at a certain amount of miles for a similar price as what they bought them. Anyways, the exchange went really well! We talked to many really cool elect people and it was just a really good day. I later found out that in my area Elder Howell and Elder Fonger stopped by some people formerly being taught and ended up putting 2 people on date for baptism! Then we stopped by them on Saturday and o...

And it came to pass in the first week of the fourth transfer I got a new companion. Elder Howell is an exceptional missionary and musician! I imagine there will be many duets and a lot of fun! We but Jane on date for baptism! We were about to stop teaching her because she wasn't progressing much and had refused baptism a lot in the last but she accepted this time so she's on date for the 21st! Other than that not much happened. The book is blue and church is true! Read the book and go to the church! And pray. Spiritual CPR. Church, Pray, Read. Do it! Stay alive spiritually! I love all y'all! And thus ended the first week of the fourth transfer. This is the only picture we have together

And it came to pass in the final week of the third transfer it snowed 7 inches. We were stuck inside again on Saturday and Sunday. So no church again. Our friends haven't had the opportunity to take the sacrament and next week is Stake Conference so it'll be another week with no sacrament. Fortunately for me, we were given permission to administer the sacrament again. Elder Pedersen is from Texas and this is the most snow he's ever been in. It was pretty fun to play in the snow with him and also really funny how amazed he was by it. We had a lot of fun throwing snow at each other. Also we played some chess!! I love chess. Needless to say.  Yesterday we had a really cool lesson with Lashonda! She was super excited and interested in the Book of Mormon app and also hearing modern day prophets so we set up the Gospel Library app on her phone and she also asked if there was a way to make a study plan so we set that up too! Been pretty busy today so no crazy spiritual thought. Bu...

  And it came to pass in the sixth week of the third transfer North Carolina shut down. Since last transfer was 5 weeks (so transfers didn't end up on Christmas) this transfer is 7 weeks. So normally it would be week 6 that comes out on a Wednesday but this transfer it'll be week 7 that Pday is on Wednesday, so my next email will be February 4. We went on exchanges with the zone leaders on Tuesday. We live in the same apartment complex and they told us Tuesday morning in the gym that we would be going on exchanges starting at lunch. I went to the  Goldsboro  1st ward and overall not too much happened. Thursday morning I woke up to a message from my mom informing me that the Governor declared a state of emergency due to dangerous weather coming from Saturday to Monday (more on that later). We had district council that morning then after we went and did service as a district. We covered some greens at a local golf course to help the grass survive the freezing rain (pretty s...

  And it came to pass in the fifth week of the third transfer I was sick. I wasn't terribly sick but I was sick. Because of it not too much happened. If stuff happened I was zoned out and I don't remember it, other than two things: interviews with President and Sister Stevens and a member took us out to Western Sizzlin and I ate gizzards and livers. Livers are not very good, gizzards are alright but still not amazing. I don't know exactly what a gizzard is but I know I saw them when we processed roosters so it's got something to do with chicken insides. Interviews were really good but scheduling them was a mess. Interviews were going to be on Thursday morning for some people which is when we usually do district council so we had to reschedule that. Then President got sick so they pushed everything back a day so we rescheduled district council again. Then President and Sister Stevens had a meeting pop up between the time scheduled for Elder Pedersen's interview and m...

  And it came to pass in the fourth week of the third transfer miracles are abounding! We see miracles every day! That's not new, what's new is I'm going to share a couple miracles we saw with our new members on Sunday. (new members are any converts in the last year) First, Dylan. He hasn't come to church since beforr Elder Pedersen got to  Goldsboro  which was October! And every time we stop by he's not home. He can only message over Wi-Fi and he doesn't have Wi-Fi at home so he's hard to contact. But we stopped by on Thursday and he was home and said he wanted to come to church! We were able to find someone to talk him to church and Dylan passed the sacrament! He also named a cat after me! So now there's a cat named Shadel wandering around somewhere. Second, Debra. She needs a ride to church as well but we couldn't find one. We gave her a call to let her know and she was sad and said that she had faith someone would be available and she already got...

  And it came to pass in the third week of the third transfer I got to go to the temple!! Happy New Year! It's already 2026!? This is my blackout year! Meaning I'm going to be a missionary for the whole year of 2026. And apparently in the south there's an old wives tale saying if you eat collards and black-eyed peas you'll get rich. So some members had us over and served us some along with some amazing southern food! Deep fried chicken, sweet potato casserole, and rice. Whatever they do to the rice out here it is amazing! I've been getting lots of good Southern cooking here in Goldsboro and lots of leftovers too! I went to the Temple on Friday!!!!!! One of our new members recently hit her year mark as a member so she was able to go through the temple and get endowed and we got permission to go with her! She also was sealed to her deceased husband which is so cool! It was so awesome to be in the temple again. It's been too long since I've been able to go. Upd...