Semana Next (Cinco)

So I may have sent some of you the wrong zip code on my address, so.... yeah. If you write a letter you may want to check that out. I GOT MY TRAVEL PLANS!!! Not this monday but next I will be leaving on a plane to fly to Atlanta, I'll have a 4 hour layover and then an 11 hour flight down to Buenos Aires and then a 13 hour drive up to Posadas. I am so sososososososo excited! Anyways on to more important things. 

This week we had two amazing devotionals. One of them was on taking the name of Christ upon us and what it means. The speaker also talked about what it means to take the Lords name in vain. Anytime you use the Lord's name with frivolity or thoughtlessness or out of anger, you are taking the Lord's name in vain. Although he did not outright declare this, he suggested that one of the most common times that the Lord's name is used thoughtlessly is when a prayer is closed in a slur of inthenameofjesuschristamen. He suggested that out of everything that you say in the prayer, possibly the MOST important part is closing in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The other devotional was on charity. The speaker broke down a scripture. The message of that scripture was, You can speak with all the power that words can carry, but if you lack Charity for those you are teaching, you are annoying and give people headaches. Now if you're wondering where this came from look for the scripture that talks about charity and sounding brass. I won't tell you where it is because if you actually look for it and find it you'll be more likely to remember it than if I just tell you. But in the devotional the speaker asked if there were missionaries that played brass. The speaker asked the brass player questions and in the words of a brass player, a brass instrument by itself is just annoying and gives people headaches which is what happens if you do not have charity.

So about my investigator, she opened up to us more and asked a lot of questions and we had some wonderful lessons, all in spanish. My companions and I really grew to love her, but unfortunately we won't be allowed to teach her anymore, yesterday was our last lesson with her, but I know that the next missionaries will do a wonderful job. She did finally commit to pray about the truth of the things that we were teaching, and we promised her that if she did with faith and then if she sincerely looked for God's answer that she would receive an answer and the Holy Ghost would confirm it.

THE GOOF REEL

Me: So apparently I struggle with "antes de" which means before and "despues de" which means after. While speaking of the Atonement in a lesson where our teacher was pretending to be an investigator I messed it up and my companion said "you mean despues right" and I said "Ohh yeah" and so I tried to say it again and made the same mistake and then I made the same mistake again, and then I finally got it right. I was just speaking spanish and not thinking clearly about each individual word.

Elder Wendt: In one of our lessons with our teacher pretending to be an investigator Elder Wendt said the prayer at the close and he asked for Raul to be blessed and Raul's family and lot's of stuff about Raul. The prayer was amazing and very sincere, the only problem was that we were teaching Juan not Raul... Raul is a different investigator that we had.

Elder Graves: So in one of our lessons we committed one of investigators to baptism, not a real investigator it was a teacher pretending to be a man named Pablo. We had been teaching "Pablo" for a few weeks now and he finally decided he wanted to be baptized. Elder Wendt and I were so excited and were telling him how great his decision was and Elder Graves said "Mucho Gusto" he thought it meant I'm so excited but it actually means pleased to meet you. So in English it went something like this...

Elder Wendt:........lesson stuff.......Will you be baptized?

Pablo: (very long answer that ended with) Yes!

Me: That's so great Pablo

Elder Wendt: We're so happy for you!

Elder Graves: Pleased to meet you!

Pablor, Elder Wendt, and Me:...................................

Elder Graves: What?

It ended up being a fantastic lesson but it was really funny.

I love being on a mission so much and I'm so excited that before long I will be on the plane to Argentina,

I love you all!

Elder Peterson

Semana Cuatro (July 12, 2014)

So there's been quite a few adventures this week. I play soccer with some of the other Elders and got a huge bruise when me and another Elder both went for the ball. I was shooting and he tried to block me and we ended up kicking shin on shin about as hard as we could. It would have been worth it if I had actually made the shot but I shot over the goal by inches. And then I sliced my hand open when I climbed the fence to retrieve a ball that had been kicked over. It's healing nicely though.

We've started teaching an investigator that doesn't know English at all really. And it is amazing how blessed my tripanionship has been with the Gift of Tongues. Are Spanish has progressed beyond what could be conceivably be considered reasonable for the amount of time we have been studying in the MTC. Now we still have terrible grammar, but we do have the ability to teach the lessons. It's been amazing to see the changes that E our Investigator has gone through in just this short amount of time. The spirit was so strong in our last lesson where she prayed to know if Joseph Smith was a true prophet. But then it was sort of frustrating that she either didn't feel the spirit, or that she wouldn't admit it. But the simple fact that she prayed was a miracle, in our first lesson she told us that the only reason she was meeting with us was that so she could make sure she didn't lose her ability to speak Spanish while she was her in the United States.

This last Tuesday Elder Neil L Anderson, came and spoke to us about the Gift of the Holy Ghost. It was amazing. I just love being in the MTC and being taught by the apostles of the church. So far we've had a devotional by one or more of the quorum of the 12 almost every week! One of the things Elder Anderson emphasized was that spiritual learning is not a matter of a charismatic speaker it is a matter of the spirit. Often times the spirit is thought of as a feeling that comes when we want it to, The spirit is a real being, without a body, but a real being nonetheless, and it will only come when the circumstances are correct for it to. You cannot force the spirit to come.

I'm so excited that I'll be leaving for Argentina in just 16 days!

I love you all

Elder Jonathan Peterson

​

Semana Tres (July 5, 2014)

I've just learned so much while here in the MTC it's amazing. I know have two companions because Elder White left, so know I'm in a trio. We have already progressed to being able to teach entire lessons in spanish, and although we can't say everything we want to, and our grammer is terrible, we can communicate the pure and simple truths of the gospel and we have been able to have the Spirit strongly present when we teach and bear testimony even thought the people we are teaching are only pretending to be investigators.

One thing we've discussed a lot here is the difference between having a testimony and being converted. Elder Bednar gave a MTC devotional about it. It is simply not enough and never will be enough just to have a testimony of Jesus Christ and his gospel. We are told to believe and become converted. Elder Bednar said that being converted means consistently doing that which we know to be right. Elder Bednar also said that we should not be converted unto the Church or programs of the Church or leaders in the Church, we MUST be converted unto Christ. Only when we are converted unto Christ will we be able to keep everything in it's proper perspective. To many people are converted to the "church" and when the church changes something individuals become upset and leave because they believe the church is no longer true. They were converted to the organization of the church and not unto Christ. Now if you are truly converted unto Christ you will be a strong member of the church but if you think about it there is a difference between being converted to Christ, and being converted to the Church. 

Elder Bednar also said that when we are converted unto Christ we seek to follow the character of Christ. Now I've sat in about a billion lessons where we listed attributes of Christ, but I've never heard it so nicely summed up as the way Elder Bednar put it. 

The Character of Christ is turning out towards others when the natural man would turn in and focus on themselves.

Think about the atonement. After suffering agony beyond what we physically can comprehend or imagine, the Savior still looked towards others. Immediately after the atonement he must have been in a state of extreme exhaustion, he would have been suffering from much blood loss, thinking clearly would have been difficult, and he was just betrayed by one of his friends. After all of this, how many of us would have cared about the ear of a guard? When compared to what Christ went through and ear was nothing, and instead of asking for others to help him, Christ went to help someone else.

One of the thoughts that I had during this week was, Christ loves all of us. He is are older brother and he so badly wants to spend time with us in the Celestial Kingdom. He wanted that so badly that he was willing to suffer anything and did suffer everything so that he could. What exactly are we doing so that we can be with him? 

I love you all so much! I'd love to hear from everyone!

Elder Peterson

This is me and Elder White

Pictures with Elder "Blanco" the night before he left at 2:30 a.m.

Sometimes it is exhausting here...But it's totally worth IT!

My Companion got these in the mail from his family. We went out and practiced "door approaches" at the other Elder's apartments while he was wearing them.

This bear hot air balloon nearly crashed into our gym on the 4th of July. We saw 19 HOT AIR BALLOONS floating over our apartments when we woke up on the 4th of July.

Semana Dos

The MTC is still awesome, and I still am not overly stressed but I will admit that my brain is fried, all the spanish work and other things we have to do in such a short amount of time is mind blowing but the Lord has been very gracious in blessing me.

So no pictures this week, I forgot my camera at the apartment. 

Week two has been so crazy. The guy who was playing our "investigator" couldn't come twice in a row, so we taught him over email. We've taught him two more times since then. So far we've managed to teach the entire first lesson and part of the second lesson in Spanish. I can't really tell if he actually understands what we're saying or if he's just nodding his head. 

Some advice I have for any future missionaries, join the MTC choir. It is the best way to feel the spirit. 

This Sunday we had a devotional by Janice Kapp Perry and her husband, it was both spiritual and hilarious. For those of you who don't know Janice Kapp Perry wrote a ton of LDS music including a lot of the primary songs. She was telling the story of the first time her husband talked to her, they were in the same music class at byu and preparing for their clarinet final. She was sucking on her reed when Brother Perry came up and told her that he was pretty sure those lips were made for something better than sucking on reeds. Everyone laughed, and it looked like Brother Perry was sort of embarrassed but he turned the tables on Sister Perry by standing up and giving her a surprise kiss. All the missionaries about died laughing. It wasn't only funny but it was also sweet to see how she reacted to that, you could really tell that they loved each other. 

This Tuesday we had a devotional and it was amazing, as part of the MTC choir I got to sing Praise to the Man. This devotional was really special because this last week was the Mission Training for the all the new mission presidents so the 1st Presidency and the Quorum of the 12 were all on campus. 

Unfortunately not all of them came to the devotional but we did have 6 of the apostles there. It was super cool. Elder Christofferson gave the devotional on the worth of souls and it was so powerful.

On wednesday we got super sad news, Elder White or Elder "Blanco" as he is affectionately known is being sent to the Mexico MTC. Elder White has been hands down declared as the District favorite and we are all super sad that he's going to be leaving. When he got the paper it said that he was leaving at 2:30a.m. but they forgot to tell him that it was next week so he packed up all his stuff that day and woke up super early and went down to the front desk just to find out that it wasn't time for him to go. So it was a wonderful surprise for all of us to see him in the cafeteria the next day. He came over with whip cream and syrup spread all over his potatoes, and in response to why he did it he said "well, you gotta live." I figured that as tired as he was, he was welcome to eat whatever. 

So the MTC has truly been wonderful, I have never had the spirit as constantly in my life before as I have had these past 11 days and I really am so excited to go out and serve the Lord. 

If I could just ask a favor, I have some wonderful pictures of my family to take on my mission with me, but it would be nice to have a few of my friends as well. So if any of you would be willing to send me a photo in a letter that I could take that would be awesome, unfortunately email won't work cause we don't have access to printers.

I love you all,

Elder Peterson

First 24 Hours in the MTC

I've been very neglectful of the blogs.  And while I would like to put things up in order, his call, dropping him off, etc., if I do that, he may have grandkids before anything is available on the blog.  So please forgive a mom and just enjoy it in the order it comes.  I WILL try to get his letters in order, but the other may have to wait...

I'll be honest, it's been crazy, but I really haven't felt the stress that so many of the other new Elders and Hermanas are having. As soon as I was dropped off I was whisked through picking up a ton of books and then to the West MTC campus. The West MTC campus is an entirely spanish speaking campus made from half of Wyview and all of Raintree's apartments. Wyview is where we sleep and Raintree is where we eat and have all of our classes. Within 20 minutes of being dropped off I was sitting in Spanish class with a teacher who refused to speak a single word to us in English. In fact it wasn't until the third day that I heard him say a single English word. 

On the first day they had all the new missionaries in West Campus go to the church and meet in groups of about 30-40 missionaries with some investigators. After watching some more experianced missionaries talk to them for a little while (thankfully in english) we were instructed to take over and continue getting to know the investigator and try to help the progress. It was really difficult because all the missionaries wanted to take different angles and although they were many great things said it was confusing. After a little bit we began to get the hang of it and several other missionaries and I bore testimony of the power of prayer. The spirit was so strong, it was amazing. I was talking to one of the MTC workers afterwards and he told us that these investigators walked around campus all the time and that we were welcome to set up appointments with them when are schedule allowed. He also said that although most of them were actually members of the church, some of them were real investigators and that we would not be informed which ones were which. soooo no pressure there....

My companion is Elder Graves from Sansberry Utah. He is a really cool guy and he is also very hard working. It's really nice because we both push each other to do better and neither one of us wants to ever slack off. Yesterday we got to teach our first lesson in Spanish. That was so hard. We barely knew how to say anything and we already had to go teach a lesson entirely in spanish. We did okayish teaching Hector about God being our loving Heavenly Father. But we did have a prayer in spanish at the end that worked out quite well. 

One of the best experiences I think I've had so far, other than visiting the temple this morning, was at our People and Purpose Seminar. The normal teacher was gone and the sub was not informed that the class he was supposed to be teaching was on West Campus so he went to the Main Campus and ended up arriving very late. While we were waiting we all shared scriptures and messages that we had found to be very powerful in our personal experience. The spirit was really strong there as well.

Since I finished the Book of Mormon before entering the MTC I began reading it again and one of the thoughts that I had while reading about Nephi's attempts to retrieve the plates and how he was unable to do it until he had the Lords help was. We are here to learn and grow in our faith. As such the Lord is rarely, if ever, going to ask us to do something we are already capable of doing on our own. When the Lord asks us to do something in order to obey his commandments we are going to need his help.

If anyone wants to write me letters(like actual on paper communication) you can use my MTC address for right now.

Elder Jonathan Allen Peterson

JUL28 ARG-POS

2023 N 900 E Unit 820

Provo UT 84062

I will not be able to receive packages in Argentina but I can in the MTC until I leave on June 28th.

I'd love to hear from all of you guy's whether through letter or email.

My companion and I

Elder Jonathan Peterson

First night in the apartment

 

Bus stop at main campus waiting to go back
to the West Campus after Elder Graves
doctor appointment.

p.s. I know I've left out so much but this has kinda been one long day and it's difficult for any of the Elders or Hermanas to remember any kind of specifics. That's why we have journals, unfortunately I left mine in my apartment.