A Missionary's Work: Halloween

11/7/2016

Hey everyone! So we had Halloween this past Tuesday. I wish we could have been more involved, but the mission president gave us a 6pm curfew because of the mass drinking that goes on, but for Halloween here everyone gets together as a family and even friends. Instead of trick-or-treating, they go to family members graves, set up some chairs and tables and feast. Ya, it's way more a family holiday than anything else, but it's also a day off of work so toward the end (late night) people like to party hard.

So our area here is considered the scariest area in this zone, though everyone here respects us. Just to be safe, and I just wanted to make something, as we visited a member in his welding shop, I made some ghetto brass knuckles ha. My companion and I always wake up early to go jogging or workout or play bball, it's fun and good for us. The jogs are the best because of all the beauty here and I get to see so many new things, it's great! There's a park here where they do Zumba from 5-7am crazy!

Since we've been here in our apartment, our attic is so noisy. Lots of puttering of little feet. We figured it was some cats, but couldn't find any hole outside so we went up there. We found some rats and a tiny chair (oo creepy ha). So we put some rat poison up there, hopefully that works. I also tried to cut my own hair for the first time...  horrible haircut:1   me:0 ... but I will get better with practice. Also, for language study, I'm learning a children's song and whenever I sing it people seem to just love that I'm learning it.

So the spiritual thought. We have this short clip called, The Will of God, and it's about a bush. The gardener trims it drastically and it says to the gardener, "Why did you cut me down, I was making so much progress? Why did you do this to me?" The gardener says "well little bush, I'm the gardener here and I know what I want you to be." Later the bush grows and now bears fruit, and thanks the gardener for "loving him enough to hurt him." I like this video a lot because I think of God's plan that he has for us. He loves us and even when we have trials, and we think "God, why did you do this to me?" God has a plan for each of us, he sees who we can become, from an iron rod going through the heat and beatings from the iron worker, only to end up as an iron rose. Even if we can't see who we can be, or maybe much less than we can be, God sees it and will help us get there, through trials, hardships, learning experiences, or any other thing that can help us change to become as God wants us to be. "Thank you Mr. Gardener for loving me enough to hurt me", watch this 3 min video it's so great!

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2012-01-014-the-will-of-god?lang=eng

Love you all,
Seeya next Monday!

Elder Peterson