Gym

Hello, everyone!

It is another beautiful day in the neighborhood of Salt Lake City. Okay, the city is a bit bigger than your average neighborhood. But, life has been good for me down here. Later today will be our transfer conference (six weeks has made for a long transfer, though I suppose that in a teaching mission that is the normal length), but I don't suppose that much will change for me; based on my previous interviews with President Fenn, and the fact that neither me nor my companion received a moving notice yesterday, I think I can safely guess that I will remain in Data Services for the last month of the mission. It is a bit of a weird thing for me to think about, that I truly am near the end; once the current outgoing group of missionaries leaves, Elder Hauswirth (who came in with me) and I will be the longest out in the mission; soon after that, I will be packing my bags myself. But, I do still have one more month, to do that which I had kept telling myself that I would do. I still have time to complete that which I had planned on completing, and getting my things in order so that the mission will not have to miss me too much. There is still a work to be done, and it is up to me to not forget that, and to hold out strong until the end, that I may truly be able to say that I have fought my way through, and endured to the end. (Is that inspiring enough for you?)

Now, going forth with my week... The zone has been made much more interesting recently. The leaders of the zone had met together to discuss the current training regime which we had been doing. There had been some discussion regarding what was going on in the training, so we had decided to make some changes to improve what was going on. So, we carried out the new changes on Monday; now, rather than two hours of training courses, we only get one hour of such, then we all discuss things happening in the zone, training topics which the missionaries need to know more about, etc. We had also more widely publicized one-on-one training, which gave missionaries more change to learn in a more hands-on experience than can be gotten in a classroom setting. all in all, I think the common consensus is that the training is much better than it had previously been! It is noticeably more personalized, and missionaries are much more able to pay attention/stay awake for the entire thing! Aside from training, things have been rolling swimmingly at zone. There has been much more work for us all to do - even at night zones! There is currently little reason to try and say there is nothing for us to do! So, the work has therefore been going well.

Apparently, the Church Office Building has a gym on one of it's floors! Even better than that - missionaries have received authorization to use this gym, if they so desire. A missionary in my district, Elder Sannar, had wanted to go to this gym, which would require him to wake up early; his companion was not overly enthused with the idea of waking up early to exercise. They had wanted me to authorize an exchange so that he could take Elder Showgren instead; however, Elder Showgren was not overly interested either. I had been wanting to go to the gym myself, so I decided that I would go with him instead. And boy, do I need to go to the gym! I had realized during my time there that my arms could use all the extra working out they can get! I could barely put any weight on the machines before it was beyond what I could do. So, I will definitely be going there more often; maybe my arms will be some good by the time I am done. Another interesting thing about this gym is that it is opened to and used by the entire Church campus, including the general authorities of the Church (we are still not allowed to talk to them unless they talk to us). I did not anyone like that during my time in the gym; however, when leaving the gym through the Church campus's underground tunnel system (the buildings I think were still locked up), me and Elder Sannar did run into and get to meet Elder Gong!

I have been singing with the choir more, though the songs for the month of February have been selected, so my composition won't be able to be sung before I leave the mission. Oh well. It is still good to be in the choir. I will look forward to finishing strong with them. I have enjoyed being in the choir during my mission, and hope to be able to participate in such things when I get back home, such as choirs or other productions. But, again, that is a month in the future. For now, I get to sing with the choir still, and I will enjoy doing so.

That is about all I have to report for the week. Life has been great, and I have had good things to report. Now, if my next E-mail does not come on a Tuesday, don't worry too much; it just means I have had a rescheduled P-Day. That said, I don't think that P-Day will change for me; I don't think that very much at all will change for me at the end of my mission. So, there you have it. I hope you all have a good week!



From,

Elder Bryce Petersen



Challenge: "And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order." (Mosiah 4:27). In this day and age, hard work is made somewhat simpler with gas-powered tools, which perform the same job as their hand-powered counterparts with much more power and efficiency. This is seen in lawn mowers, chainsaws, and ice augers (you're welcome, Dad). In fact, oftentimes the hardest part of using such tools is getting them to start! I remember spending a lot of time and effort pulling on the cord of such tools to get them roaring. In such situations I have been aided by a "primer", which puts a bit of fuel into the engine so that the spark plug will have some fuel to ignite to start the engine more easily. Oftentimes, this is necessary to get the tool to start up at all. Similarly to how a primer helps an engine to start operating, careful planning can make the difference in whether or not our objectives will be met or not. Planning allows us to take some time to look ahead, and determine what we will do, and when we will do it, so that when we are thrust into such a situation, as an actor onto a stage, we will not be without a script. I could talk for quite a while on this subject, but to get to the point, there is no better planning ahead than to plan to obey God's commandments. We must know what we will do in a situation where we are tempted to break the commandments, especially those which we have hitherto struggled with. Today, use your primer - "choose you this day whom ye will serve; ... but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15). If you decide today that you will serve the Lord, then if you are confronted with a decision regarding His commandments, it will be more easy to decide that you will obey His law than if you had to make this decision right then and there. The Lord will not force you to make this decision, but he will also not condone unrighteous actions if you choose not to serve Him; therefore, there is a right and a wrong answer to the question of whom to serve. Choose to serve the Lord; I can promise that He looks after His own.

Seeing Stars

Hey, everyone!

So, it has been a bit longer than usual since the last time I was able to get an E-mail out to you; it feels even longer than that, though, because there was quite a bit of stuff which happened between then and now. This of course included two major holidays: the first being New Year's, and the second being my birthday! (What do you mean, my birthday isn't a major holiday??) Of course, there are a few other things which have happened in this time period, including (but not limited to) the change to the two-hour Church schedule and another family history workshop which I got to help put on! So, let's get right on down to the exciting stories of my week!

It feels weird writing to you about the new year's celebration, because it seems like it was longer than a week ago. I guess that it was so, but that's usually the amount of time separating my P-days, which explains things. Now, the day was mostly a day off, which was nice. Much of the day was spent either hanging out with other missionaries, and cleaning up the apartment, as well as the regularly prescribed missionary study time and the like. Later in the day, the mission got together to watch another classic movie. You see, just as I thought that we were in for a long chain of sports-related movies, they changed things up on us, and we are getting old movies instead, which may or may not have been in black-and-white originally. So, we had spent the afternoon watching a movie called Ben-Hur. It was a pretty good movie, though it was also quite long! We had gotten together to eat a dinner and watch the movie at around 4:00, and after soon after the movie ended, the curfew alarm on my phone went off (for those of you who don't know, curfew is at 9:00). Despite the length, I feel the time was well-spent. I will have to watch again after the mission sometime!

So, after that, the work in the zone has stayed somewhat the same. The highlight of the zone work this week was putting together a training for the missionaries in the zone on a certain aspect of the work we do here in FamilySearch Support. It was also our first training meeting in a new room which we were all able to get ourselves fit into. After our big move back to the JSMB, it had been a bit of a challenge for a while to find rooms which have been open and available for us to meet in, and we always had to resort to rooms which were often too small for us all. I was recently trained in how to go about reserving a room, however, which allowed me to go in and find one for us, which solved that problem. I feel that I have come a long way from where I had started at on the mission, and in the zone. A mission truly has the power to change a person into someone greater, I feel. As far as I have come on the mission, however, I still have a long way to go, and I only have so much mission left to go. However, though a mission is a great learning experience, there are also such great experiences out in the world outside. So, I guess that I will do my best out here while I can, and hope for the best when I return home.

Now, my birthday was yesterday, which was great! I do feel that I am growing up quite nicely now. I have grown a lot on the mission, but it is also nice to have a number to go along with this! I was not able to celebrate on the day of, due to the busy missionary schedule. This was yesterday (Monday), which means that the evening was not spent at zone; however, there was a fireside with President Fenn which kept on getting scheduled, then cancelled. Eventually, they had settled on having the fireside; however, it didn't make much of a difference for me, as I was scheduled for a family history workshop that night anyway. The location for this one was at a care facility known as Friendship Manor; unlike many of the previous such workshops which I did, this actually had a pretty good amount of people in attendance. There were ten of us, and all of us were able to keep busy with helping the residents there with their family history research! It's great to be able to go out and do this service for them, and I hope to be able to help out like this in the future!

Now, today, I was able to have a celebration of sorts for my actual birthday! The day was a bit limited, especially due to a shopping trip that went much longer than expected. However, I was able to visit the local Clark Planetarium, which is a place which I had visited a couple of times when I was younger, and wanted to visit again before leaving the mission. Of course, I did not feel that it would be acceptable for the mission rules to watch the films which they had shown in there (these specific ones may be, though I wanted to be safe), so I instead got to enjoy the exhibits. It had been a while since the last time I had been there, and things have not changed a whole ton since this, which was nice; there were some noticeably newer things there, though, which also was cool! I feel it was time well spent down there.

Well, that is my extra-long week for you - and boy, what a week that was! I should also thank everyone who had sent me birthday presents; I will also get cards sent out to you for that. I hope that this E-mail finds you all in good health, as always. Have a good one!


From,

Elder Bryce Petersen



Challenge: The Church has been giving us more responsibility as of lately, with the ministering program and the "Come, Follow Me" curriculum. We as a Church have been given a trust from the Brethren that we will make the most of such an opportunity. It is important, now more so than before, that we make the Gospel important in every day of our lives. Consider the Zoramites of the Book of Mormon - among other things, one of their major problems was that they only worshipped God on Sundays, in their Church buildings (see Alma 30). In fact, their unwillingness to live the Gospel every day of the week was likely one cause of their religious practices degenerating to the state described in the Book of Mormon. To put it simply, there is strength in the Gospel - strength to endure adversity, strength to resist temptation, and strength to rise above where we now are to become the sons and daughters of God that He wants us to become. Just as with physical where I am serving, I am obligated to say that family history work can also be a relatively simple task which can make a big difference. It is small and simple things like this by which great things are brought to pass (Alma 37:6); if you can work to incorporate goals like this into your daily life, you will be able to find strength in all things previously described. Your testimony will remain strong, and you will retain the blessings of the Gospel.