Miracles!

My amazing family,

You are all so busy! Thank heavens school gets out this week. And send some rain this way please, it's too hot already. Keep doing all the good things you do. I look up to each of you so much.

It was one of those weeks that felt like eternity. I hit just about every emotion you can hit. I don't think it helped that we had interviews AND exchanges. With so much going on I am surprised it didn't go faster.
Monday was a pretty chill preparation day, as usual. Laundry. Cleaning. Writing. Calling home was sooo nice. Getting a bigger update from Landon about life and school made my week. I made creme brulee, I guess that was a highlight. Sister Mutter had never had it before so that was cool. I burned my finger on the broiler but still worth it haha. After Dinner we met with some people we're teaching and that was about it.

Tuesday was interviews in Fredrick, so we went there for district council, had a lunch break, then had interviews in the afternoon. Interviews were fantastic. President Mutombo was sooo busy and had like a billion other meetings today but he still took the time to come to Fredrick to meet with us in person. He gives very straightforward advice and council, he does not sugar coat and he doesn't always say what you want to hear. He pushes us very hard but I appreciate it. He has a lot of faith and trust in us. 

District council was also excellent. This district is awesome in their own way but makes me appreciate my last district a little more haha. They just get distracted easily. But they're still great. I learned a lot from Sister Mutter's instruction about becoming a disciple. Not the easy way, however. The next day I studied more about becoming a disciple (read the talk "Becoming a Disciple") and from that decided that I wanted to increase my patience and temperance. Maddy once told me to never pray for patience on my mission because Heavenly Father is quick to give us situations that try our patience. But I forgot and paid the price for it haha. My patience has been tried in so many ways this week. Yes, it has been painful. Yes, there has been growth. But now I'm just exhausted. One of the biggest struggles is that Sister Mutter's headaches are getting worse and worse. We've had to take it slower and slower and come in early some days. It's taking a toll on me because I feel like I am just hitting my stride and am ready to run. Hence the patience. 

Thursday night we had a lesson with Billy. He was in such a good mood! Like laughing and talking more than we've ever seen. We learned he's been reading the Book of Mormon every day! We had no idea! He's amazing! He is definitely progressing towards baptism but still has a lot to learn. 

After that lesson and then a lesson with a member family, we drove to Brunswick for exchanges. I was sooo excited! It's so nice to get into a different area and learn how other missionaries do things. It turned out to be everything I hoped for and more. 

Sister Eborn, the Sister Training Leader I was assigned to, has experienced many situations similar to my own and was able to give me amazing advice as well as show me how to be brave and bold talking to people. We talked to over TWENTY PEOPLE just walking around. And picked up a new person to teach! It was amazing. And we got to ride bikes!!!! I was like a genuine missionary! 

And to make the experience even more real both of our bikes broke at one point in the day haha. But we made it. It was so fun. We also got to go to Cafe Rio, the only one in the whole mission so #blessed. Met a distant relative there, thank you family history. Have to say that that was my second favorite day of the mission so far. 

Saturday was a pretty cool day. I saw miracles that come from prayer and fasting and simply opening our mouths. We were supposed to help a member family dig up some bushes and replant, but they weren't home when we showed up. We decided to walk around and see if we could do service for anyone while we waited for them to get there. We were crossing the street when I felt the need to turn around and go the other way. I saw two women in their yard and I asked if they had any service we could do for them. They were surprised but said that they could use some help weeding under their deck. While we were doing that the woman's husband came home and turns out he's an inactive member! We had no idea! 

He invited us back next week to have a cookout and a lesson with his kids. Miracles. Then we helped the member family dig up bushes. If my face looks weird and swollen in that picture, that's because it is. Allergies here are no joke. But it was fun. IT IS SO HOT HERE. The humidity is insane already. August is supposed to be a million times worse, we will see if I survive that. We are getting very tan and mosquito bitten. 

Later Saturday evening, I was blessed with this special dose of energy and faith. It was such an incredible feeling, like I could knock any door, talk to anyone, pray for any miracle and it would happen. It felt amazing. And we did have miracles. First, we knocked on a door and an older woman said I looked just like her granddaughter, down to the way I crinkle my nose. She said we could come back! Then we knocked on a door and the woman was so sweet. After we got her to open up a bit she asked us a lot of questions. She asked if she could have a copy of the Book of Mormon so she could study it for herself. Wowzers. She said she's been looking for a church for her and her son. Can you say miracles? Then later than night two woman chewed us out from their porch and it didn't even bother me. That's the power of the Holy Ghost. So many miracles. It was amazing. 

Other than that everything has been pretty mediocre. We had our ward memorial day picnic and that was pretty fun. A man we are teaching came with his recent convert son so that was exciting! Hopefully he will want to start coming to church. 

In between all of these miracles and highlights are some not so great moments. It just doesn't seem to be in the plan for us to get too comfortable before things get hard again. I have such a strong testimony of prayer and reading the scriptures. It doesn't always feel like it helps the hard and the hurt go away immediately, but nothing works better. Thank you all for the prayers and letters, I need them :) I love you all more than I can say! 

Love, Sister Peck

What a Wonderful World!

This week was a wonderful week full of wonderful moments and wonderful growth and wonderful realizations. It's a crazy world but it's wonderful. 

You know what makes it wonderful? Remembering to love people. Everything we do is a mess of  good, better, and best things, and we have to figure out the balance of priorities, but the thing that will make EVERYTHING meaningful and worth it is loving people all along the way.  Relationships are what last. That's what I learned this week at least. It's just so easy to forget sometimes.
 

I had the opportunity to meet and serve some really incredible people! And develop an even closer relationship with my companion. That's what made it a wonderful week. 
We did service almost every day this week. I LOVE service. 

We cleaned an oven. We did our usual hour at the thrift store, organizing and cleaning. We helped a less active sister who is moving. Her dog just had ELEVEN puppies and we got to give them all baths!!! It was so great! They are little pitbull-boxer mixes and are pretty darn cute. 

Funny story though, before we washed the puppies we were out back bagging up some old torn up carpets and junk. There were spiders all over (normal for here) but I was just kinda pushing it to the back of my mind so I could get the work done. But then I pulled up this blanket buried under some wood and a TON of spiders shot out with it. It sent me into a legit panic attack. I ran into the open but felt like spiders were crawling all over me and my shoulders were up to my neck (you all know what I look like when a spider is involved) and my legs and arms were tingling and I couldn't breath all that well. Sister Mutter was pretty worried about me haha. She finished pulling the blanket out, bless her soul and let me roll carpets instead. It's been quite some time since spiders have bothered me that bad haha. I'm just praying they don't invade the apartment...

We had some great lessons this week with member families. We made this game for the commandments kind of like charades, the kids get a kick out of it. I love this ward. I've made many friends that I'll miss a lot when I leave. Yesterday the Primary President made us cookies to take to a family that we are teaching. SOOO sweet!

A huge highlight for me this week was actually tracting! I actually love tracting. We don't do it very much though because it's not typically very effective. However, we had miracles! Yesterday a spot on the map was really sticking out to me so we went there. Three doors in a row let us talk to them. I've never had that in my whole missionary career! They were all deep, doctrinal discussions too, not just the basic approach and polite rejection. One is even legitimately interested. I have felt the Holy Ghost guiding us to know which spiritual truths to share. It feels amazing.

Another absolute favorite thing of mine is the scriptures. I've been reading to really understand certain sections in all the books and have had experiences where I got to share those exact sections! I'm also memorizing lots of verses. When I can't sleep at night I repeat them over and over. So I get a lot of practice because it takes me forever to sleep. But I love it. 

I got to teach the majority of the Restoration to a miracle person this week. This is Robert. We found his sister after we both felt inspired to go to this one house and she (his sister) referred him. We knocked a few weeks later and he happened to be there! And he talked to us for a long time! Anyway so Robert texted us earlier this week and asked if we could meet for dinner. We were hoping it was because he had read the whole Book of Mormon and wanted to be baptized. Turns out he just wanted to hang out with us...So ummm prolly not. We let him know real quick that we were there to teach. He listened to the whole lesson and had a lot of great questions. He was skeptical about the Book of Mormon but at the end mentioned that he was impressed by how much he could tell I loved the book. He was also impressed that I could pull scriptures from both the Bible and the Book of Mormon. That felt really good! I love the scriptures. We're still waiting to hear back from him but we'll follow up to see if he is reading like he said he would. It's been such a great week. We laughed a lot. We served a lot. We taught a lot. It felt really, really good. 

Thank you all for your prayers and emails. You are all having way, way too much fun but I guess that's ok. Just enjoy it for me! I love you all so much, thank you for everything you've ever done for me. Keep being amazing :) 

Love, Sister Peck

Zone Conference and Mother's Day

This week was a blur. I couldn't tell you which day was which except for Zone Conference and Mother's day. Besides those two things it was just a few solid highlights among a lot of decent days. 
We started the week doing some service for Lizzie. We started with weeding and raking and then helped sort paper in her craft room. She has more paper than I have ever seen in any craft store in that one room. But we did a lot and it was a lot of fun! 
Then we rushed to the church to have a video-call companionship study with our Sister Training Leaders. That was really great actually, I love learning from other people's experience. Except halfway through, my contact somehow rolled up in my eye and that was not fun. We had to hang up and go to the bathroom because I couldn't get it out haha. I survived. That night we taught an AMAZING Restoration lesson to our friend Vernadette. She loves learning about what we believe but doesn't absorb a lot (this is the third time she's been taught the Restoration). However, we showed her how to download the gospel library app and she LOVED it. So we've been sending her verses of the Book of Mormon to read and she is kind of keeping that up. Slowly but surely. 
Wednesday was Zone Conference. Zone Conference is the best thing ever. I came out of there so pumped. My goal is to be that pumped EVERY day. I'm getting there haha. President Mutombo and our Senior Couples are inspired, amazing people who show us unbelievable amounts of love. Our mission is getting bikes! That'll be fun. Anyway. This mission is so high caliber. The Lord is preparing this area and this mission for something big. Miracles are happening left and right. I'm kind of just in awe to be a part of it. 
The rest of this week we taught member families, did a Book of Mormon study with a recent convert, tried by a ton of people, the normal stuff. We finished Betty's flower beds! But we'll still go visit her occasionally. Some cool miracles this week:
We were driving when we felt like we should stop at the park. We felt like it was to talk to this one woman and her son, but she was not interested. Like zero, negative, glaring not interested. Slightly discouraging. We walked the long way back to our car, and on the way, passed a woman on a bench. Every MTC park bench scenario ever had prepared us for this moment. Miracles, she did want to talk. She talked to us for an hour about some very difficult things she's had to go through recently. We got to do one of my favorite things as a missionary-listen. Just listen and love. She said she has been to our church a few times and has some member friends but has our own church. She'll be ready some day. 
Right after this miracle was another miracle- our appointment with Vernie got cancelled, but right as she cancelled Tiffany (a person we're teaching) called us and asked if we could come over right away to talk to her husband-miracle.
Now, her husband is fairly open and chill. But extremely passionate about his Born Again beliefs. We had no idea if Tiffany wanted us over because he had a change of heart and wants to be taught with her or because she needed some defense from bashing. It was the second one. He was not rude, but a little contentious. A lot maybe. Then I had to coolest experience of my mission probably thus far. I felt the Spirit fill me and I was like shaking, but with excitement. It was like a righteous fire in my soul haha. I can't even remember the specifics of what went down but when I opened my mouth, the Spirit ran away with it. He went quiet and listened. I was able to answer questions I didn't know I knew the answer to. The Spirit is such an incredible being. I love Him. Tiffany's husband's heart may not have been changed, but we earned some respect and found some common ground. He even apologized for coming off as offensive. 
Super cool experience. And then when we got home-boom. A golden referral was sent to us from Fredrick. Dang I could have cried. Maybe I did a little. The whole week I just had so many manifestations that Heavenly Father blesses us when we keep His commandments and consecrate ourselves. 

Mother's Day was a definite highlight. I got to talk to my whole entire amazing familiy!!!!! One thing I have realized the most since being here is how absolutely amazing you all are. I am so blessed to have the special family that I have. I am so grateful. So, so, so grateful. 

I have also found incredile joy in the scriptures this week. Read them read them read them! I am in love with the Bible, you'll hear me talk about that a lot probably. Would recommend. They just make you want to do good and be good and there is no better feeling! Love you all! Love, Sister Peck

The sun, the rain, and an apple seed!

Thank you all for the emails and updates. You are my heroes.

So many things happened this week! It was kind of a blur. But that's not exactly uncommon. The days just kind of blend together.
On Tuesday, we got to see Miss Betty again (the classiest ever 91 year old that I want to be when I grow up). We are still finishing weeding her flowerbeds, a few hours a week. Other times we just come to visit with her and talk about how she is doing and then slip in a video, bible story, or explain more about our missions and our church. She loves asking us questions. And I LOVE hearing her childhood stories. She has very strong personal morals and won't accept anything that she can't repay so she keeps asking how she can make a donation to our church. After persistently assuring her that we do this because we want to serve and love as Christ did, and because we love her, she still felt guilty for having us do so much work so we told her she could help us by letting us practice our teaching with her. She agreed! So we get to "teach" Miss Betty :) She's the sweetest.

That night we went to a nursing home with our amazing relief society president to visit an elderly member. She couldn't hear us so we could only smile and sit with her a while but it was nice. 

Wednesday was an incredibly blessed and busy day. In the morning we had a bible study with a recent convert Sister. This Sister wants to teach her granddaughter the Bible stories since they are not members of the church (and the parents are opposed to her teaching anything from the Book of Mormon). We showed her how to access the children's Bible story videos and she loved it. We read the Good Samaritan and she practiced teaching it to us. Ahhh she is so wonderful. 

Later we went to a less active sister's house with a member who I LOVE. She's from Germany and calls us shnicklefritz. If that's how you spell it haha. This less active sister was nervous to have us there until we talked her into showing us her artwork. She does AMAZING paintings. It was fun to see her open up as she explained each one. 

Later that day I talked Sister Mutter into tracting (I am a bigger fan than she is) and the Lord BLESSED us. We had AMAZING contacts. Every door we knocked on that answered was extremely polite and we were able to even get in our testimonies (which is rare, usually we have about 3 seconds before the door closes). We talked to two people for a very long time. One was even atheist and actually said he would read the Book of Mormon along with the Bible (for intellectual purposes-works for us:). 

We had a lesson the next day with the mother of a family we are teaching. It was simply on faith but the spirit was so strong. Next time we are teaching the Restoration and the Book of Mormon but the pressure is on because the father will be there-and he said he would call out anything he didn't agree with. But we are excited because we know that he is seeking truth-and lucky for us, we have it! 

We did a Bible study with a less active sister. This was our third time. We love it. I LOVE THE BIBLE!!! I never knew how much I could love it but the last few weeks I can't get enough of it. Anyway. We read our chapter and were just discussing when this completely unrelated question popped out of my mouth (a.k.a. Holy Ghost). She paused for a second and then the tears just poured. She expressed a lot of anxieties and worries that she has been shouldering. It was an incredible experience of discerning needs because we were then able to address the real needs she had. 

The next AMAZING experience was during a personal study when I was having a not so great day. I felt prompted to a specific chapter in the Book of Mormon. I read it and felt very humbled but wasn't exactly comforted. I then felt so strongly that I needed to read one of the many family history stories my incredible mother sent me. I kept pushing the feeling off but I finally opened up the book. I scanned the names for the one that was calling me to read their story. I flipped through a lot before I stopped on my Grandpa Peck. I smiled just thinking about him. I scanned the first part when I had to do a double take because I looked at his birth date- May 4th- and my watch- May 4th. It was his birthday!!! Just that simple thing was such a tender mercy. I got to say happy birthday to my angel Grandfather who is with me more than I know. I love him. It completely turned my day around to read memories of him and to be reminded of his constant positive attitude. It had me singing Johnny Appleseed all day- "The Lord's been good to me and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the rain and sun and an apple seed. The Lord's been good to me". Between that and the humbling Book of Mormon chapter I read, there was no way on earth I could feel down. The Lord has been far, far too good to me, more than I could ever deserve. He has given us EVERYTHING we ever need-Jesus Christ. The Lord's been good to me, and so I thank the Lord. Gratitude will change your attitude quicker than anything, try it out this week :) I love you all!!!!!!! SOOOOO much!!!!