BAPTISM!

(Hermana Ellsworth)

Hello Family and Friends :)

This week was such a wonderful week. This week we were able to have the baptism of Julio (or Tortuga- his Puerto Rican name) It has been such a humbling experience teaching Julio this past month. Some of my favorite memories with his is when he bought us water at 8:30 at night with the little money that he had earned for that day selling avocados. He insisted on buying us just a little bit of water and continued to share how important we were to him. That we had taken the time to teach him about Christ and all he could do to say thank you was buy us a little bit of water. I wanted to cry when he pulled out the 3 dollars he had to buy us water. Julio has such a sweet spirit about him and he has some wonderful friends in the church now. I am so grateful to be serving in Toa Baja still and I love this ward so much.

This week we got to do some wonderful service opportunities and I might have gone to the baptism with paint in my hair but the spirit was still there. Puerto Rico is still SUPER hot all the time and I am still not tanning :) BUT ITS OKAY!

I know the Lord loves his children and if he wants me to be a pale, burnt redhead in Puerto Rico then he has his purpose for why I am here. It is such a blessing to be serving in this weird little island learning some really weird spanish but I honestly love it here.

Update

(Elder Petersen)

Monday Night

Today my companion and I we had some ministering with member appointments right after our P-Day ended and these appointments were set up us so that we can manage to be seen in every home on ever ward in our Stakes. That's right I said Stakes (21 wards) this is because in my area although small geographically it has three stakes that we preside over and help. Well we had a few great visits and will be following up with a few of the families about some of the ministering to all work sheet that we gave them to help them figure out who they know that might need the gospel in their lives.

               Tuesday

Well today was a very interesting day my companion and I had to do a deep clean on our little apartment so that it could pass inspections so we had inspections at four PM today and we passed (by how much only our inspectors know). Well before our inspections happened we had to make a prepare to learn video doing a four minute restoration for our multi district council tomorrow which should be fun. At the end of our day we had dinner at a member’s house and then had five member visits that finished off our night.

               Wednesday

So I am doing my email a little differently this week then I usually do them because I just can't seem to find the time to write a good email on my P-Days so I am going to write about each day that day. Well today we had multi-district council so that took up our entire morning. So much so that we found it hard to get to our service that was assigned to us half an hour after our MDC was over. We managed to get there on time though which was nice. Our service assignment was to help at a humanitarian center in which we were assigned there to help tie knots on quilts which I have had a lot of practice doing especially after all the conference quilting sessions my mom does. But it was not hard and I enjoyed it. After the service we had dinner then some member visits after that so today was pretty full.

               Thursday

Well today has been an interesting day right before lunch we had a Huddle with our senior couple, their names are Elder Waldner and Sister Waldner. So we had lunch there after we huddled with them about what they were doing and what we were doing in our shared Stake. After the huddle we did a blitz split with our zone leaders (their names are Elders Zitting and Cziesla) we found a lot of new people for every area but ours. After that split we went with the zone leaders to nonmember that is moving out of their area into our area, so we helped them pack some stuff into their moving van and we will probably be helping them move into their new home tomorrow. After the move we had dinner at a member’s house with our zone leaders and then our night was relatively quiet until curfew. Not usually quite in the evenings but it was today.

               Friday

So today we went on a last minute ditch exchange because our district leader needed to do an exchange with us before transfers come up so our district leader came up and picked me up and left his companion this morning. He picked the worst day to do it though because not only did we have so much planned for today that we already needed to do splits, but he forgot that it was Friday and the Missionaries scheduled weekly planning day so we exchanged but I was really only not with my actual companion from 9am to 2pm and 6pm to 8:45pm. I learned a lot from the short exchange though and it was fun.

               Saturday

Today was a great day mainly because we had our first part of General Conference and we got revelation bombs left and right. Such good talks from Elder Bednar's talk about how cheetahs can be a real world example of how Satan tries to get us to commit sin. To the changes in how the church is going to organize priesthood quorums and young women's organizations. Love to hear about what you all think about the changes made. Most exciting of all though is that we learn about transfers tomorrow!

               Sunday

We watched General Conference today and it was amazing. We also learned about transfers today now we know that my companion and I are staying in providence. My second transfer here but his 6th transfer in this area. I am enjoying it here in providence and I am enjoying the people. I was talking to one family and we got on to the fact that Ogden is "sketchy". But it really is not because there is nowhere in Ogden that I would be scared to walk around in at night. Ogden is nothing like parts of Denver in which if I walked down some of those streets at night I might be afraid for my life. But alls well that ends well and my week has been good

From Elder Petersen

Pictures:

Playing basketball to loosen up during weekly planning

Weekly planning with our ZL's and DL

Multi - district council on Wednesday

Pick of transfer board

random pictures

BENTONVILLE IS GETTING A TEMPLE!

(Sister Slade)

First of all, if you can't tell from my title, BENTONVILLE IS GETTING A TEMPLE!!!!!!! If you can't tell, I'm a little excited. I cried when they made the announcement. It will mean so much to the people here. In Harrison, some people have to drive 6 hours to get to a temple. For people in Bentonville and Fayetteville it's 3+ hours.The blessings of the temple go beyond our capacity to understand and I am so grateful that the people here will be blessed to have a temple so close. I'm so excited!!!

This week was pretty lame except for conference and Bentonville getting a temple. Most of our time was spent working on the magazine for the mission. It takes about 15 hours every transfer to finish, so that is most of what we did this week.

We had a really amazing lesson with Johanna! We taught the restoration and read the introduction of the Book of Mormon with her. When she started reading the "we invite all men everywhere.. " part she started to cry. She said she felt like a blanket had been put over her shoulders. She is so prepared! I'm 99% sure she'll be baptized. She keeps all of her commitments, believes everything we're saying, and wants her daughter to be raised in the church so she can serve a mission.

I love the gospel! We are so blessed to live in a time with living prophets and apostles to lead and guide us. I know the Savior leads this church and that He lives.

God is good!

Sister Slade

Pictures (not many this time, sorry):

1. A picture hanging on our wall fell on sister Faleafa when we were doing comp study

2. The picture that fell on Sister Faleafa

3. Zone conference picture

4. Johanna's daughter really likes us and will pretend to teach the lessons with us

#GENCON 2019

(Hermana Ellsworth)
Hello dear friends and family :)  I hope you all are doing well and had a wonderful conference weekend full of answers to prayers. We watched conference in the stake center and there is a picture of our English room set up with almost all of our zone :)

I wanted to write a little bit about how Heavenly Father will always strengthen us during difficult times. One theme that I heard a lot about was finding Joy through temple covenants. Finding joy in the small things and especially finding joy in living the gospel is an important thing to learn. I know that when we are struggling or when others are struggling we can call upon the powers of Heaven to help those in need and help ourselves. He will give us strength to say what we need to say but we still have our personal agency in order to be the mouth piece of God. I am so grateful that we have living prophets on the earth today and that we are in the true church of Jesus Christ.

So sorry this is such a short email but I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week :) I would love to hear about your conference experiences :)

Questions of the week

What are your "General Conference" snacks?

What was your favorite talk?

What are you going to do differently in the next 6 months before the next conference? (remember the invitations from President Nelson)

Welcome to the ward! Will you play the piano for our baptism?

(Sister Slade)

So just kidding. I was supposed to be in a trio, but one of my companions decided last minute that she was going home. It's a pretty sad situation, but long story short, my only companion is Sister Faleafa. She has been out for 4 months and is from Utah.

Before transfers happened I had some really amazing experiences. We taught the young man whose in laws are members on Monday night. We taught the plan of salvation and it was incredible. I asked him what it would mean to him to receive the celestial kingdom and he said that it's the thing he wants most. The spirit was so strong in that moment.

Goodbyes are the worst. But it made me feel good that it was hard for the people I was saying goodbye to as well. :) Sister flippo threw me a small going away party. She's my mission mom in Harrison. Sister Pabst is my mission mom in Central Park. I wonder who my mission mom in Fayetteville is going to be ;)

Fayetteville has kind of been struggling because of the sister who left, so it's been an interesting couple of days. We had a lesson with a woman named Johanna. She is so golden! She wants to be baptized and have her 2 year old daughter serve a mission.

We also had a baptism on Sunday. His name is Tommy. He invited his brother to come to the baptism and now his brother wants to hear the lessons. Another cool thing that happened was that everyone was really stressed out about the music for the baptism because no one can play piano, so they were all praying that someone who could play would come. And then I was transferred into the area and was able to save the day. Just kidding. It was a really spiritual baptism though.

God is good!

Sister Slade

Pictures:

Rock climbing

Saying goodbye to the dean's

Saying goodbye to Grandpa

Tommy's baptism

Sister Faleafa and I at service on Saturday

Saying goodbye to sister Flippo :(

Saying goodbye to Gene

President let us go rock climbing and ziplining for our stake pday

 Saying goodbye to Addie

Saying goodbye to the people at service

At the stake activity

Sister Brown was really tired on wednesday

Generation picture with Sister brown and her trainee sister Johnson

Wow..What a week!

(Hermana Ellsworth)

Well I had my birthday this last week and that was eventful....

To start off my birthday we woke up in the middle of the night to a pretty good sized earthquake and a notice for a tropical storm that was going to hit Puerto Rico. We ended up not being able to enter our area due to the storm so we worked in the area that we live in. Through a weird series of events we ended up going to a members house to have lunch with the elders in the area and while they were singing happy birthday  lightning hit the nearby telephone pole and caused a black out for the day also... But I made it through the day and I am now officially 20 years old :)

 But the next day was the best day because one of our investigators and 3 of our recent converts surprised me with a birthday cake and a box of chocolates :)  Talito, Miyito, Miguel and Tortuga

I would love to talk about opposition. In 2 Nephi it talks about opposition in all things and I think I would not have loved that bithday cake as much as I did if not for the earthquake, storm, and lighting strike the day before. I know that we have lows we are able to experience the highs. I am really grateful for the blessing that the Lord has given me but I cant be grateful for the blessings without also being grateful for the hardships. :)

We have seen some amazing blessings in our areas and we have seen some amazing progress in Tortuga who has been giving up some really hard addictions recently through the help of the Lord.

The members here are amazing and I love being in Toa Baja. I will also be staying here in Toa Baja as a Sister Training Leader with Hermana Carrasco for this next transfer and I know this is where I need to be and the Lord knows what he is doing :)

I LOVE YOU ALL AND I LOVE HEARING FROM YOU ALL :)

Our first day as STL means FRAPPES!!!

Shawn and Cesar in our lesson :) #rules

September 30th email

(Elder Petersen)

So my week has been pretty good we got a kid baptized this last Saturday a it was so special his dad baptized him and after the Baptism the 9 year old boy just hugged his dad for a good long minute. It was such a special experience one that I will never forget. Today we had a multi-zone sports day and it was a blast we had a volleyball game going as well as basketball games and any board games that missionaries had brought which was fun but the big thing that is on my mind at least is general conference and the fact that, that Sunday I will know whether or not I will be transferred away that Wednesday so it should be an interesting couple of weeks love you all. Next report next week.