A whirlwind....of surprises

Email sent Monday 11 July 2011

Hey y'all.  This week was another great crazy week here in raymondville.  Happy Birthday to Quinton yesterday!  I thought of you and celebrated in my head.  haha Also today is 7/11 so I want a free slurpy, but I have't seen any 7/11's.  :(  Oh well.

So I had a lot of things written down to tell y'all, but I left my planner at the church in harlingen and so I am lost, but I will try to remember all of the things.  In random order.

This week was crazy, our numbers last week were sooo good, but this week a lot of people fell through on stuff.  One of our investigators even went to jail.  It was so sad, we are praying for him.  We have a lot of good things going in this area, we have 5 people who could get baptized any day, literally, they are all ready adn willing, but are just waiting on mom's permission, or 1st presidency permission, or grandm's permission.  Those five people are so important to me.

Last night, at about 10pm the zone leaders informed us that we were going to have to pick up 3 mini missionaries at 10:30 am this morning.  We told them NO because we could not fit them all in our car, so they figured it out and said we would only have 2.  So then we were still scrambling trying to figure things out how the driving situation would work witht the elders and everything and how we now had to plan two activities for the whole week.  Then we talked to the zone leaders again, and Elder Haskell said, "Sister Petersen, it gets even more confusing."  I was confused and didn't know how it was going to get worse.  He then proceeded to say, "the ap's just called me and we have news for you.  You are being transfered on Tuesday.  You are white-washing Port Isabel with Sister Perkins."  WHAT THE?!  For real?!?!?!?!?  No way.  My mind started racing, and freaking out.  I'm still freaking out just trying not to think about it.  haha The worst part of it is leaving D... and his family.  I have loved working with them so much.  And his mom and grandma are so close to embracing the gospel as well.  But ya, he told me that I leave tomorrow.  Port Isabel is on the ocean.  For real.  It is an elders area right now, but as of tomorrow it belongs to sisters.  Sister Perkins has only been out for 2 transfers I think.  I have never met her, so I don't know anything about her, other than that Sister Zamora, my former comp in Laredo trained her.  I am white-washing!!!  Oh my gosh.  THat is kinda scarey, but I have always wanted to do it.  But it is going to be really hard.  I hear the people are really rich and don't want to listen.  But I don't care.  It's the gospel, they have to listen.

So ya, that's the biggest news.  I am so sad to leave Raymondville, especially on such short notice.  I am not going to be able to say good bye to hardly anyone.  I don't want to think about it.  I love it here and will miss it a lot. 

Another big news, I did something today that I have thought about doing for many many years.  So many people are going to be so excited when they hear I finally did this.  Can you guess what it is?  Well, my two companions finally talked me into it.  And now is the perfect time because I don't have basketball games I have to take my jewelry off for...So guess what?  Today, I got my ears pierced!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Yup.  For realls, no lies.  Ali Bytheway is going to be so excited.  My comp's are so nice they even split the price of it three ways.  So I have to wear these earings for 6 weeks and then I can take them out and wear whatever I want.  I was scared ad my heart was racing, and they took pictures of me in the process of it, so you'll see them soon...er or later.  It hurt a little, but it wasn't that bad at all.  Now I just have to make sure I clean it.  And don't worry my comp's asked president if we could do it, before we did it, and he said, "only one whole in each ear sisters"  so i think that was permission.  haha.  So I have my ears pierced.  At the age of 22 finally.

What else?  hmmm, I think I like salads.  They are good sometimes.  No tomatoes though.  Those are still gross.  And avocados. 

Oh thanks again for the package.  Those cookies you sent were so good.  I actually made teh bar things it had a recipe for on the back and they were awesome.  I tried to go buy more at the store but I don't think they carry that brand here in Raymondville walmart.  :( 

Dad, that's fun that you went up to the Uintah's again.  Sorry no one goes with you.  But 18 fish, that's a lot! 

Well I love you all, I hope I will have good things to tell you next week about my new area and new ward and new companion, and new everything.  Pray for me.  White-washing is tough.  But it will be fun.

Love,

Sister Petersen

P.S. White-washing means both me and sister perkins are new to teh area.  There are two elder in there right now, but they are leaving and we are taking their spot.  We have to figure it all out and get to know the members and investigators all on our own.  We are starting it fresh with no one to help us.  hah

A couple days late...that's how busy we are haha

Email sent Wednesday 6 July 2011

Sorry it took so long to write this. But obviously the library was closed on Monday for the fourth and yesterday we had scheduled too many appointments to be able to come and email. So it got put off till today. Sounds like y,all are having way too much fun with out me. Except for all of the things going wrong with our house adn cars and sprinklers and such. I hope dad's back gets fixed. Chiropractors work miracles. My headaches are doing fine. I still haven't gotten a really bad one since the blessing. I'm doing good. My ear still bugs me, but whatever.

Wow that's a lot of people getting married. I didn't have any idea who some of them are though cuz you didn't say some last names. If they were sending me requests for my address to get a wedding invite you should go on again and give them the La Vista address. Please and thank you!

I can't believe that Nathan Black is home! I didn't remember that he was almost done. Wow. That's weird. I can't wait to hear all about his mission.

So this week was another crazy one. It is weird working in a trio, and interesting being back with my greenie. haha. She is cute. Trios are a bit difficult because you ahve to re-learn how to teach together. It was a rough week and Sister Salan got overwhelmed by the status of everything in the branch here. But we are doing good and now that there are 3 of us, if we can just find one member to work with us we can do splits and do twice the amount of work. This week is full of changes and we are still adapting, but for some reason, president has sent 4 experienced missionaries and one with 6 months under her belt, and a senior couple to Raymondville texas. We are needed here, and we are doing His work. I will have quite the stories to tell about this place and the faith of these people. I am learning so much about the organization of the church and the proper order of things. God needs each one of us here for a specific purpose. It is interesting how things work out.

For the fourth of july, well, it was sort of just a normal day. Well raymondville had a parade, if you can call it that, on Sunday and then I don't think much really went down on monday here. It was pretty quiet. LIke everyone left town or something. But we all went to harlingen, and played basketball a bit, adn tehn we went to teh mall, and my companions got some perfume and lotion from victorias secret and when the elders saw the bags int eh trunk they freaked out. it was funny. Then all of the missionaries in our zone we had a little bbq at a members house. It was fun. But we had to leave because we were all supposed to be in our houses by 7 pm. So that was our fourth of july. Nothing much. Just a normal day really. I didn't even get to see any fireworks. :(

But ya, thakns for always writing and telling me what's going on at home. I hope you all had a great independence day and keep having fun.

Love,

Sister Petersen