Feb. 14, 2017

Monday we got to go to the dunes with an investigator of ours who is on date!  His name is Dan! He took us to this little spot that was a ton of fun to drive his RC trucks at! He had this big monster truck, like legit monster truck with the back wheels that turn too, he also had one that he built! It was a 3 wheeler that looked like the one in his house! And then this little truck that actually did really well out there! We some how got the motor lose on that one and then while he was driving his 3 wheeler RC, he bent the frame some how! But it looked so epic! It was fast too! But his monster truck was tough and the beating like a champ! 
So I have to say how incredible the ward is here! One of the moms saw that we didn't have dinner for Monday and so they brought us dinner! But not just for Monday but also for Tuesday! And not just a little food, a lot of food! So we have good food for probably one more day! I am so thankful for them! 
As the night went on, we didn't have much success.. but after a little bit, I was sick of sitting around so I started searching for some person to visit! I found this one person and we were able to set up an appointment to come see her again! And before we were leaving she asked about the young women program because her sister who is a member has a daughter who used to go to mutual but hadn't for a while because she didn't know when and where it was. And so we went over to the dales house and the mom was so happy to see us and invited us in and asked if we could teach them for family night! Wednesday it rained so hard all day long! It has been crazy here with all this rain! It had really been raining since I got here! While we were working at the foods bank today, the main lady there asked me to Build a cart for them. So I did!I was so excited to help them and to be able to build something. And this little kids helped me to because his mom was shopping and he was a good helper! He would hand we a screw and play with the wheels and stuff! It was really cute! But after i thought I was done i tired to stand it up and just like every man I guess I had failed to look at the instructions and had missed a step..... so I had to take it all apart and do it again. But it wasn't easy to put those screw in and I put them in good so it was hard to twist them back out! I have to battle scares to prove it! So that was fun! Haha not! But after we went and saw brother Terrebrood and he open up to us a lot and pretty much asked us to help him spiritually! He has people helping him physically and mentally but he needs some spiritual help. He is in a lot of pain and is struggling with of things.  So I'm looking forward to teaching him because we relate a bit and I felt I have some experiences like him that can help him come back! It won't be a typical missionary lesson but it will have a lot of the same things, just taught in a different way! I love to help people and to be able to help them feel loved! I was to help as many people as I can while I'm here! Thursday We had dinner with our recent convert who's name is Rick. Rick is a retired vet that got pretty injured from his service. He is so much fun and always has a good story to tell me. So as I hope you know, Thurday was national pizza day and so Rick got us some pizza! One of the pizza he got was called a Chicago style pizza I believe. Which is like a pizza pie. It is a pizza in a pizza! It was so epic and I got so stinking full from it! But it was so good! As I was eating and he was cooking these pizzas in his toaster oven, he loves in a trailer and I guess he ran out of Gas for his oven or something like that so we just had to cook like one quarter of the pizza at a time, and while he cooked then he would tell me stories and teach me self defense! He taught me how to counter a punch marine style! Which I probably will never use or be able to use because it requires you to be able to read the person so you know when they are going to punch and then be able to catch their punch and use it against them. But he also told me about how he can to know God is real and that he love him personally and also how he loves us! It was a super incredible story and one that brought tears to how face and almost mine. We had ZTM on Friday and I learned a lot of good stuff! Since we are in the coast and the zone is so spread out, we had to drive to north bend/ coos bay to meet. Fun fact, our zone is the biggest zone in the whole mission but the only time we see each other is at our zone meetings! So I finally got to meet everyone and we have a cool zone! In one portion of the conference, I was asked to share how i gained a testimony of something. They asked me a couple days in advance to do this so I thought about it a lot and I felt like it would be OK for me to share my experience of coming back and how I decided to do that. It was a very spiritual moment for me and I feel like I was able to really testify of the power of prayer and God's love for us! Which was perfect because that was what we were talking about! After the meeting ended we did a zone power hour which means all the missionaries from the zone go and help find people in one, in our case two,  areas and help those areas find more people to teach. I got to go with elder Watson and he is really good and talking with people about the gospel and teaching them on the door. I'm still working on that and so it was so helpful for me to see it in action. I want to be better at teaching people the gospel and not always taking the first no! 
We met with Daniel and taught him the gospel of Jesus Christ and  i keep being blown away with how open and ready to learn he is! He doesn't have a ton of gospel knowledge and doesn't really know what happened in the bible so we have to explain those parts carefully. But like we teach him this stuff and he is just like OK, that makes sense! It makes it hard sometimes because I like to base what I teach off question they have but he doesn't have many questions. So I have to try and follow how it goes in Pmg but then I feel like I'm just reciting things to him and I want it to be more from my heart. I just don't know all the point yet and I don't want to mess up and not teach him something or teach him something he doesn't need to know yet. But it will all come as I study more and even more as I keep teaching.So crazy story,  our dinner forgot that they were going to feed us on Tuesday so when we showed up they were scrambling to get some food ready for us and then they had to run out the door to because they had to go to this basketball game so they left us with there 16 year old son that had got in trouble so he couldn't go to the game. But also there youngest son, Micah, who is crazy, and acts like the dog, got to stay there too. But this kid was crazy! He was all over us and he just insane! I don't even know how to describe how crazy he is! 

This week I have had a testimony builder week. I was struggling to feel peace and to get my comp to work with me and feeling depressed and completely spent by 9 every night and over stimulated. I tried to feel the spirit each day and to recognize that I was loved and that God was blessing me every day in many ways. I looked and I looked by I had a hard time seeing. Now I am not telling you this because I want you to feel sorry for me or try and comfort me.  I tell you this because of what I learned Sunday and Monday about myself. Sunday in elders quorum we were reading president Hinckley's teaching in chapter 3 and if you haven't read it in suggest you do! It is the best pump up talk I have read, or maybe the spirit was telling at me while we were talking about it but it all struck me and was very impact full to me! He talks about making every day the best day possible and how while he was on his Mission he would look at his comp and say " today is good!" Or something like that.  And then yesterday in interviews with President Russell I was expressing that I was struggling and that I was having a hard time feeling the spirit I thought. I am not exactly sure what he said but he helped me recognize that I am still feeling the spirit and that I am an incredible missionary. He told me that the elder Peters that he sent home last summer was not the one that came back! He told me that he trust me so much and it's very thankful for me! I am not sure if it was that fact that I was able to recognize that I was still feeling the spirit or the fact that he helped me feel loved! I think back to when I asked mom why I felt like I want feeling the spirit and how she said that sometimes we get so used to feeling something that we forget that we are feeling it but it is always there! HE is always there! No matter what, HE is there! Oh my goodness this gospel is amazing! So if any of you feel down or when you feel down remember to find ways to show people love and that your attitude can change ANYTHING!  Our brain is such a powerful thing! If we can learn to master it,  we can learn to push ourselves high then we have ever thought possible,  do things that we never imagined and possible my favorite, we will be able to run Satan out of our mind! When we have control and we rely fully on the Lord, we are unstoppable!  I love you guys and I hope that everything is going great for you! Because things are pretty epic here! 
I love you all so much!
Elder Michael Peters 

 Driving over the bridge into coos bay

This is our district on our way to zone conference

 pictures of the lady we baptized. Jan Turner 

 Hey funny story for you! Well this week we had a baptism and the person we baptized is pretty old and she has a hard time walking and balancing so it was tricky for her to get in the font! And the to add to all that her brother in law baptized her. He has a super hard time hearing and he has a strong opinion! So we got them both in the font and he tried to start and you know how you usually have the person being baptized hold onto the baptizer? Well he didn't do it that way, I don't even know how do explain how he was doing it. He stood so that he was  perpendicular in the font so like if she when to far she would not her head! And then he very strongly felt that the baptism prayer was wrong and he kept not holding his hand to the square. So now imagine all that and having to try and correct this guy while he is baptizing. But you can't just whisper it to him. You have to almost yell at him! And then to add on that, the women doesn't like water, at all! So she had a really hard time going under and her  knees are bad so syst the 3rd time she finally made it!  But that's attest like 5 minutes of trying to correct this guy...... boy I was glad the bishop was to so I could fall back on him!

 This is the zone! We are so far apart that we have to Skype to talk with each other!