HERMANA?!

 So... I'm not going to make you wait until the end of the email to hear transfer news because I am freaking out. My companion and I totally thought we were staying together and we weren't panicked at all... until we got a call from Sister Pingree. She told us she needed to talk to us each separately. The door is thin, so we could hear each other's calls lol. I heard her tell Sister Jensen that she was training, so I thought that I would probably be training as well, but in another area. When I got the phone, these are the words I heard, "Well Sister Peterson, your dream is coming true... you're going Spanish in Miami." WHAT IN THE ACTUAL HECK. I am sooooooo excited, but also terrified!! The gift of tongues better be real because imma need it!! So, sorry everyone. No more soap operas from the YSA in your mailbox haha. Just new stories about downtown Miami 🥳😂 I'm sure it will be a wild time. 

So now for the week. I hit my 6 months!! The sisters came into my room right at 6:30 am with lots of balloons 🎈 and it was adorable! 

Thanksgiving was so fun!!! We started with district council and we made our district little turkey cups and filled them with pudding, oreos, and gummy worms! Then we went to a member's house and had a FEAST!!!!! The entire time we sat across from this man named Jose and he was talking about his ducks that come and visit him every day. Turns out that he feeds 50 ducks every single day and they fly onto his driveway at 5 pm sharp. Haha!! 🦆🦆🦆

Funny stories: We biked to FHE, so our bikes were in a dark room in the church. Apparently they weren't hidden enough... someone put chairs on our bike seats and switched our helmets lol. 😂 

There was a big spider right above my face when I laid in my bed and I couldn't sleep like that, so I sat there with a paper towel for like 10 minutes straight staring at the spider while my companion was laughing at me. 😂 I finally just sent it and I got it!!! Then I looked at the paper towel and I thought it was still alive, so I screamed and threw it across the room!!! One of the other sisters ran in and asked if everything was okay! We're fine... hehe. 

A new Christmas album came out on gospel library... let's just say it's very entertaining lol! We ran into our zone leaders and told them to look up one of the songs. Next thing we know, we got a video of the elders blasting it on their speaker and "stretching" (aka dancing) hahahaha!! 

It was the funniest thing I've ever seen. 

Miracles: We have been teaching this girl named Maggie for FOREVER and she has reallyyyyyyyy bad anxiety. She finally started praying and reading the Book of Mormon and she can feel the power from God and she is getting extra strength from that. It's been so cool to watch the change in her!! 

We have a member in our branch that wants to go on a mission, but his dad doesn't like the church. Apparently he got his patriarchal blessing and when his dad heard it, he told him that what he was doing in the church was good and he should continue! I guess all he could do was hug him! Soooooo cool!! 

We went over to the Boggess' house on Thanksgiving and their rich Jewish friends were there. We were scared because we weren't sure if we should share a message or not (they were scary) and then President Boggess said, "Sisters! You have a message for us, don't you?" We were like okay it's game time. So we shared a fire message and they told the Boggesses afterwards that they really felt something!!! 

Lastly, I just want to end by saying that as Christmas comes around I've been thinking a lot about being Christlike. He really is our perfect example and he knows our situations and hearts better than anyone else. Trust that he will help you! He is there. He loves you. ❤️  Annnnddddd so do I!! I hope you all have the best week ever and don't forget that you're not alone. 

If You're Going To Be Lonely, At Least Get An Octopus

 Hello everyone!! We're back to normal p-day today until next week when we hit transfers again. I can't believe this 7 week transfer is already coming to a close!! The past few days since Wednesday have been so fun!! We went to the temple which was amazing. God really does answer prayers.

Then later in the week the Elders called saying that they had a service project for us! We were so excited! We went and helped this man move into an assisted living facility. It was so sad. Lots of dust, cat hair, body fluids, and musical instruments!! The box spring of the bed had cockroaches running all around in the plastic and the elders had to carry it for so long! I was carrying a box and I must need to lift some more weights because my arms are still sore from carrying it around for 15 minutes straight. 😅 Apparently right before we left, the man picked up an old harmonica that was covered in dust and cat hair and started playing it. Stuff came flying out!! 😬

My amazing branch president and his wife had a pool party at their mansion and we got to go! We got all of the new people's numbers and had a hamburger and left because as you know, swimming is not allowed. I don't think I've ever wanted to jump in the water more in my life though haha! FOMO to the max.

I also got a call on Saturday saying that I was speaking in church the next day. That was stressful. Don't worry though. Heavenly Father helped me a lot, and it turned out fine... even though I did cry in front of all of them. (A spiritual cry of course😂)

We visited our recent convert that just moved here from Chile and he was using Google translate to talk to us! His last text to us was, "see you at burgen kin!!" It was so tender, haha. We got to practice our Spanish with him! I want to be a pro by the time I get home!

We went to the zoo today!! It was so fun!! 

Funny stories/reason for the title:

We were having a lesson with another recent convert and we had one of our members come with us. We had to make it super friendly because she was not having a great day. They went around talking about their futures and it got to me. I told them the usual: I'm going to be a cat lady. Our member looked at me with the most serious look I've ever seen him give and he said, "Please don't do that Sister Peterson." At this point I was thinking aww, he's being surprisingly nice! Then he continued, "If you're going to be lonely, at least get an octopus; then you can play chess together" 😂😂😂 So funny! 

I told Elder Jabouin that I was sad that he was dying (going home) and he looked at me and said, "oh, Sister Peterson, don't be sad. I'll be in a better place" and started cackling 😂😂😂

It was Elder Weaver's birthday and he gave me a HUGE piece of cake and while I was sitting there contemplating how I was going to eat it, one of the other Elders asked if I wanted to switch. He got a tiny piece. 😂 I switched and he full on ate the giant piece with his hands!! 

I was backing the car for Sister Jensen and I was holding all the leftovers from Panda. I dropped a bag of egg rolls!! I ran and grabbed it, and I guess it looked hilarious in the back up camera 😂 

Miracle: We had to get gas, so we pulled over to a random sketchy gas station and this dude came up and said, "Mormons?!" We asked if he had run into missionaries before and he said he had been taught! He told us he loved the Book of Mormon and asked for another one, so we got his number and gave him one! Hopefully it turns into something!! 

Have an amazing week!! Love you all!! Talk to you Tuesday! ❤

Something's Fishy... Literally

 Sooooo... haha, this week was WILD. AGAIN. Lol. First off, being from Cedar City came in handy this week!

It all began a couple weeks ago. I have been having a really hard time (as most missionaries probably do) and I was feeling terrible!!! I think Heavenly Father wanted to give me some excitement in my life because we had another hurricane come our way... hurricane Nicole. We ended up evacuating to Fort Lauderdale for a couple nights, but before we left, the bad luck began... We had to hurry and pack and we went to FHE for 15 minutes because we had a friend coming and SHE ACTUALLY CAME!!! She's so cool! 🔥 Then as I was super excited about this, my companion and I went out to the car and we were jumping for joy and my bag strap snapped off! It stunk. Don't worry though, I sewed it back together, and now it's twisted. 🤦‍♀️ Then we went to a sketchy gas station and ran into our friend Billy! No coincidences! He was so excited to see us! I was excited to see him too, so I got out of the car, and when I went to get back in, I looked down and my phone was in a puddle!!! 😬 Luckily Heavenly Father saved it and it still works! Then it stormed BADLY all the way to Fort Lauderdale. We made it safe and went to a cool hotel. When I showered, I set my tag on the shelf above the toilet and it DROPPED IN THE TOILET!!!! I am a major germaphobe, so this was not good... Luckily my companion loves me and got it out for me lol! That day the Tech Elders called and told us we were going to be in some videos for the Facebook page! As we were filming, we looked in the grass and there were 3 catfish!!! We were so confused on how they got there and one of them was trying to get to a puddle. I wanted to help it out, so I said that and my zone leader said, "Do it" . He expected me to chicken out, but I just said "okay" and walked right down to the fish and helped it into the puddle. Haha. Then the other Elders picked it up and threw it in the river on the other side of the church. Someone came out afterwards and said, "something smells fishy" hahaha it was the Elder's hands!

We got a tour of the Boggess' mansion and it was SO COOL!! We were helping them move their furniture back outside after the hurricane and a lizard came into the mansion! I remembered my skills catching lizards growing up and I caught the lizard and brought it outside! Sister Boggess thought that it was just wonderful and took so many pictures haha! She's so cute! When we drove past the ocean, there were police cars ALL OVER!! They were blocking the entrances to all the beaches because the waves were so big!! They weren't letting anyone in! It was insane!! 

We went on campus with a whiteboard and no girls would sign our board!! Only guys! They thought they were so funny and wrote the weirdest things haha! 

Funny story: A girl in our ward asked me what I used in my hair because I guess it looked healthy to her and I had used socks to curl my hair, so my immediate answer was "socks"... She looked so confused and then my companion told her what conditioner I use. 😂 It made sense in my brain until I realized what she meant hahahahaha. 

We had a super fun FHE activity this week! We played capture the flag, but with nerf guns! It got heated and it was so fun!! The bully was on my team and she was SO nice to me!! It was weird!

Miracles: We had a missionary boot camp with the stake leaders on Saturday that no one knew about until Friday night. We showed up and they made all the missionaries sing a song that we also didn't know about. He said, sing hymn (whatever it was) and said 1,2,3 and we all just started singing and it sounded amazing!!! We never practiced or anything! Angels were definitely singing with us! 😂 

We were doing a family history stand in Downtown Delray and this girl came up and wanted to talk to us. Her friend literally started yelling at her to not talk to us, but she stood her ground. Her friend left her, but she told us that she used to be a member and that the missionaries helped her through a really hard time. We invited her to some activities and she has been soooooooo excited! She said she made some bad choices, but she wants to turn her life around and knows that it wasn't a coincidence that we met. She's AMAZING! 

Things have been getting a little better, and even when it's hard, Heavenly Father loves us. He is always there. ❤️  Love you all!! Whatever you are going through, turn to Heavenly Father! He is always there to listen and to love you! 

Hurricane Nicole

 Dear Parents and Families of the FFLM Mission:

We want to give you an update on Hurricane Nicole that will soon make landfall just north of our mission near Pt. Saint Lucie. This should occur around midnight on Wednesday night as a Category 1 hurricane. Because of the winds and rain we are moving 41 missionaries out of the storm's path for two days. All of the missionaries will be safe and have supplies and provisions through Thursday when those displaced will return to their homes. We will continue to monitor the storm closely and will make necessary adjustments if a need arises. We appreciate your prayers and support.

With love and appreciation,

President and Sister Pingree

Round 2...

 Hello everyone! I hope your week was good! Mine was alright! The good news, I made it to November!! I keep waiting for it to cool off here and for the leaves to change... Then I remember there are no seasons here. 😂 Still feels like summer. I never thought I would miss getting up early and slipping down the driveway on the ice to scrape my car in the mornings... but I do!! 

Other than that news, I had some fancy hamburger helper for dinner made by a member, and his family told us how their iguana got lost in their house for A MONTH and lived... 

We tried to surprise one of our members with a present and ended up getting yelled at. Lesson learned. Never surprise people in Florida. Ever. 

We finally had a lesson with this guy that we have been trying to meet with this entire transfer, and it was so weird!! He basically told us that he didn't really care if God was there because he had more important things to worry about. Like money. He also told us he wanted to go paintballing with the elders, so he was like, "well, guess now we can go?!" If I send pictures and I have welts in all of them, you know why...  We talked about how to get him interested at district council, and they told us to show Chris the dollar and how it says, "in God we trust." Well done Elders. 👏

Our mission has banished a slang word that we all use pretty often, so we've been trying to stop using it. Each of the Elders in our district council said it at least twice and kept going "ahhhhhh." 😂 They couldn't stop.

We went to film a video for the sisters at a board walk nature walk, and there were SO MANY BIRD WATCHERS!!! They all had their big cameras and fanny packs! It was so funny! They kept getting in the shot, so we had to leave. 😂 

Okay, now for the reason of the title... turns out Fernando (the guy who got kicked in the face by a horse) is actually supposed to be in the YSA, not in Wellington. So we got to go to dinner with him again. It was a hoot and a half. He told his whole story again and Sister Jensen was shook. It seemed even more bizarre this time. Hopefully the YSA will be good for him. 🙏 He told us he had been doing statistics all day and he looked at the garbage can and threw his napkin on the ground and then just looked at it. 😂 Then he realized and was like, "what am I doing?!" Statistics messes with ya!! 

Lastly, the miracles: SO COOL!!! The elders sent us a referral a couple weeks ago and we had been having phone lessons with her. She kind of stopped answering, so we wanted to visit her! They didn't have her apartment number. Only the building number. As soon as we drove in, we were drawn to a door, but we decided we would try the doors in the building they put first, so we knocked on every door and none were her. We went and tried the door we were drawn to and… no one answered. We left a pass along card. The next day she called and sent us her address, so we went over and guess where she lived? In THE door!!! She saw the pass along card we left! She is amazing, and we can't wait to have another lesson with her! 

We also had a person in our contacts that was about to be deleted (automatically) and we called and he actually answered!! We are having a lesson with him soon! As soon as the call ended, the system deleted his contact, but luckily we still had his number because he texted us!! 

We also found this girl while we were on campus! We were walking and we passed this group of girls. One of them smiled super big at us and we almost turned around, but then she called out to us, and asked if we were on our missions! We said yes, and she told us that her best friend is serving!! We got her number and she is coming to an activity on Tuesday!!

You never know what influence you are having on people! Keep being examples!! Love y'all!! ❤️