Hello Chattanooga (Chatt Town)

He's in Chattanooga! I just love his enthusiasm for the work! Here's his first letter from Chatt town:


So this week I got transferred to the Chattanooga Branch and I'm with Elder Tucker! I like it here, we're in the city even more than I was in grove park, and it's really cool. Our church building is a civil war mansion, it's really cool. And there are tons of black people because we're really far south. We go into Georgia a little, but we aren't the furthest south the mission goes.

So this week was interesting, on Monday night we met with an investigator so I could say bye, and by the end of it my throat was killing me, so we went over to Walgreens and had the sisters pick us up and take us home. So I prayed that I'd feel good enough the next day to at least be able to go around saying bye to people, and the next day I was able to say goodbye to everyone who I wanted to. It was hard to leave Grove Park though. Then we had transfers and while President was reading who was going where I leaned over to Elder Rayburn and I was like, "I really wish I didn't want a car as bad as I do." So then when President called me he said I'd be serving in Chatt Branch with Elder Tucker in a bike area. So I'll be on a bike for a while longer. It's not too bad though, I'm just going to assume it's because I'm in better shape than all the Elders in cars. 

When we got to my new area Elder Tuckers Aunt picked us up, she lives in a ward nearby. It's cool because Elder Tucker was serving in the Sierra Leone Mission in West Africa and was evacuated to the TKM which happens to be the mission his Aunt lives in. She's really cool and helps us out. 

So the down side to this week is that I've been sick most all of it. I got a dual sinus infection and I've been getting bloody noses a bit and coughing a lot. It sucks to be sick as a missionary, because you really don't want to stop going, but when I tried to keep going I ended up getting a bloody nose at a members house and bleeding all over the place, I felt bad. But I'm getting to feeling better, so this next week I might be healthy again.

Love y'all,

Elder Jared Petersen

 It took me a little while to figure this one out. Here's a hint: missionaries aren't allowed to back up without someone outside the car. :)

Here is their church building

Civil War Mansion 

Goodbye Knoxville - Grove Park

This has been a really hard week. It is hard to hear the sadness in Jared's email about leaving Grove Park. He said it has become a home away from home. He has a good attitude about transferring, but my heart can't help but hurt for him. He has met some really great people on his mission and I can't imagine having to leave them behind every few months. There are many people whom I would love to meet when we go get him. I can't wait! I hope to have pictures of some of them at the bottom of this post. 

I can't wait to hear where he got transferred and who his new companion is.

Oct 20 2014 -- email from Jared -- Goodbye Grove Park

This week we had transfer calls and I'm being transferred out of Grove Park. I'm not excited to leave because I've loved it here, but I guess I'm needed somewhere else.

So this week we also had a lot of rain, and we had to bike in a lot of rain, it was so cold!! The rain here is liquid nitrogen, I swear. We were able to have some really good lessons though, so it was good. There's one couple who has been inactive for years and recently moved here, and we happened to come across them even though their records aren't here. They were excited to see us and we got to know them and they've had some seriously hard times, but they have a lot of drive to improve their situation and they want to get back into church, so I'm excited for them. Another family we met with is a part member family who recently started coming back and it's almost the same thing, they have a lot of drive to get back into church and the members of the family who aren't members of the church are really interested and show a lot of promise.

We also had zone training this week and there was one really good training. One of the sisters told a story about 6 people who went on a journey and their destination was this super great city with mansions for everyone. A boy and a girl found each other early on in the journey and started going with each other, then they came across 4 youngins who they took in and helped along the journey. The youngins grew up and one by one decided to go off on their own on this journey. Eventually the boy and girl got to the city and waited for the rest. Over some time 3 of the 4 showed up at the city gates and came in. After a while they had a homecoming feast prepared for them, and when they went to the feast and all sat down they noticed that there was 6 chairs, but only 5 people. The empty chair overtook all of their thoughts and they couldn't eat knowing that this chair was empty. So they decided to go back and try to find the last one, but they learned that once you're in the city you can't get out, so they'd have to just hope and pray that another person who was still on their journey would come across the last one and help them along the way. The whole time she was telling the story the room was completely silent, and the spirit was very strong. She then explained that we are those travelers who they're relying on who are still on our journey and the only way those people will be with their loved ones again is if we go and find them and help them. She also gave us a kind of motto, it's "No empty chairs"

Love y'all,

Elder Jared Petersen

Silly E Rayburn

Oct 13, 2014 -- email from E Petersen

We helped out at the bishop's storehouse again this week, it was really fun to help out and see all the people who go. I saw Elder Smith there, one of my MTC companions, and I got to talk to him and talk about all of our experiences. We hit 7 months yesterday!Time is going by so fast it doesn't even make sense. We also got to see the Meet The Mormons movie, it was so good! If you haven't seen it, go see it and take a friend. The people on there have amazing stories. A sister missionary in our ward had her birthday also, so a member took all the missionaries in the ward to O'Charley's, which is a nice southern restaurant, that was fun. We had another lesson with the family who we're teaching who is progressing really well, we taught them the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we committed them to be baptized on November 8th. They don't really have any holdbacks except coffee and tea and when they were talking about giving them up they were saying when, not if, so we were excited about that. They also really want to know that it's the true church before they decide to be baptized for sure so we were excited about that because they are asking really sincerely. An 8 year old boy in our ward was baptized on Saturday also. It was really cool because his parents had us go over the lessons with him before he was baptized, so we got to teach him and get to know him before he was baptized.

Love y'all,

Elder Jared Petersen

 Group at O'Charley's

 He got stung by a bee that was stuck in his shirt. OUCH!

A week later after the sting. He thinks it makes his arm look "buff" =)

I just love the look on his face..... this was the look I would get if he was annoyed.

Boy, I even miss this look!

 Jared volunteers at a library and found this.

Us girls thought it was HILARIOUS!

Dad didn't. 

Aiden enjoying the "tie trick"

Evidently you can ask any RM and they can show you.

Email updates Sept 29 - Oct 3 2014

Jared's email -- Oct. 3, 2014

This week has been a blast, and we've done a ton of biking. We started off the week going mountain biking on p day with one of our favorite members and it was really fun, he told us "To brake is to admit defeat" So I ended up going off the trail a time or two, but it was really fun. 

Then on Tuesday we biked down to Magnolia (the ghetto that's far away from our house) and on the way this lady was like "HEY MORMONS!!" So we stopped and talked to her and she's a nonmember who loves missionaries and likes to feed them, so we were happy to come across her. We had our dinner appointment that night in Magnolia and it got dark earlier than we expected, so we had to bike home from Magnolia after dark. We biked really hard because we're strongly advised not to be in Magnolia after dark, so we made a bike ride that usually lasts at least 45 minutes into a 30 minute ride. On the way back this guy on a bullet bike passed us and as he flew by he was moving his foot in circles like he was pedaling, it was the funniest thing ever.

On Wednesday we had district meeting and exchanges. Elder Froelick (a missionary in Chilhowee ward) came to Grove Park with me and we biked down to Magnolia again and then while we were trying to find an address we ended up in downtown Knoxville, so we went around just talking to people which was pretty fun. Luckily our dinner appointment gave us a ride home from there, so we didn't have as much biking.

On Thursday we had a lesson with an investigator family which went super well, we taught them the plan of salvation and they really seemed to like it and had quite a few questions that were good. Then we had to bike as fast as we could because we were going to be late to another appointment, which was a challenge because of how tired our legs were, but we made it.

A member in our ward owns a mattress store and I had been talking to him about getting a memory foam mattress from him because he offered them to us at his cost. So we'd been talking about this and this weekend he came over with 2 memory foam mattresses for me and Elder Rayburn and he just gave them to us! He also gave 2 to the sisters! He is an awesome guy, so now missionary work in our ward is going to pick up even more because we sleep a billion times better.

I also really liked conference, it's so great to watch as a missionary. My favorite talk was Elder Bednar's talk directed to non members, I loved how he explained that we want to share what is most precious to us with everyone and also that we didn't want to force anything on them, just share what we know. I also really enjoyed Elder Holland's talk and President Uchtdorf's talk.

Love Y'all,

Elder Jared Petersen

Jared enjoying his new mattresses? Crazy missionaries.

Letter from Sept 29, 2014

This week has been so fun! We've had a ton of referrals to contact, so our schedule has been packed! We've contacted a lot of them, and quite a few of them told us to stop by later so we're thinking we'll get some more good investigators out of the deal. We've also been talking to a lot of people as we're going places. Since President Griffin has challenged us to spend 2 hours a day finding new people to teach we've been doing a lot of finding. Our favorite way to find people is to just go places and start talking to people. Most of the people who we've found are people who are just out in their garage or lawn and we'll ask if we can help them with anything. It works really well because you get to help them and then they want to hear what you have to say. We also had another lesson with the same family as last week and it was super powerful. They came to church, which was super exciting, and then we were able to meet with them that evening. They had a lot of questions about church and stuff and the whole lesson was mostly answering questions. She asked us about how to forgive people who you haven't been able to forgive for a long time and Elder Rayburn started talking to her about the atonement and how much we can benefit from it. It was super powerful and it was absolutely silent other than him talking. She even started tearing up, so there's no doubt that they felt the power of the spirit and it's only a matter of time before they'll want  to be baptized and join the church.

Love y'all,

Elder Jared Petersen

E Petersen always takes pictures of funny things ....

 He says you can put a noun in front of the words "Baptist Church" and you will find it.

"The South" according to E Petersen

September 17th He Had a Birthday!

 ♥  Happy 19th Birthday Jared!!!! ♥

This was a hard day for mom, but it was a GREAT one for Jared! 

He loved all the packages he received in the mail. 

Jared was excited to get some homemade jam. I thought this story was funny.

A couple other missionaries tried to talk me into giving them one of the jars and I was like "This jam is worth more than gold, I'll let you have like a pb&j with it, but there's no way you're gonna get a whole jar"

Here is the email after his birthday on Sept 22nd 2014:

This week has been packed! My birthday was great! Thanks everyone for the packages and cards! On my birthday we had zone training, and it was really good. It was focused on finding more people to teach and we were challenged to spend 2 hours every day looking for people to teach. We can find them however we want, so the method we like most is called 'OYMing' for Open Your Mouth. Basically you just go around talking to everyone you see and try to bring up the gospel, it's super simple. We met a few people on Saturday in the park who we're going to try to teach so it should go well. We'd also had the Knox county fair last week and we've started getting a ton of referrals from it. The first one we contacted, I went on a split with a member to contact them and she was really excited to have us in and hear what we had to say. I taught her the Restoration and she stared me down the whole time, she was just soaking in everything I was saying and when I finished she asked quite a few questions. The member who I was with answered a lot of her questions and spent a lot of time bearing testimony to her. He told her how the gospel has blessed his life so much and what he wanted most was to help her to have the same feelings and blessings that the gospel brought to him. We visited her again yesterday with her husband and taught the restoration again and they both were super receptive and you could see in their eyes that they could feel the spirit and they asked quite a few really good questions. The member who we brought was able to share his testimony and answer some of the questions also. They said that they wanted to really know that the church was true before they'd want to be baptized, which was a really good sign, and they also said they liked how we explained that all churches are trying to do good and how they have some truth and we have the full truth.

Love y'all,

Elder Jared Petersen

Here are the selfies he promised along with the new ties!

Sept Transfers/New Apartment/New Companion/Same Area

 Jared's letter 9/15/2014

This week we had transfers, my new companion is Elder Rayburn, he's awesome! He's from salt lake city, all my companions so far have been from Utah, it's ridiculous haha. We get along great and have a lot of fun though. Elder Bills went to brainerd, which is in Chattanooga and it's a bike area. I told him he was going to a bike area in chatt before transfers so he was not happy that I was right. We also had stake conference this weekend and it was really good, President Griffin spoke and at one point he had all the missionaries come up to the front to show the stake what kind of efforts were going on in their stake. There was over 40 missionaries. It was so cool, they also showed us the preview for a movie called "meet the Mormons" and when they showed the preview President looked at me and Elder Rayburn (we were on the front row) and he could tell we were wondering if it was approved and he just smiled and nodded his head, we're super excited for it! The members who have met Elder Rayburn so far have loved him too, they like being able to joke around a little and have fun, but still be able to talk about the gospel. It's been great!

Love all y'all,   Elder Petersen

Pictures of  E. Petersen and E. Rayburn, and the group picture is of his new district. 

(Missionaries are organized into districts and zones.)

Sept 3rd 2014

Ambur, Jared's cousin, sent him a package which included a tie. 

Jared will send a picture, selfie, to anyone who sends him a tie. This one was for Ambur.

Ambur you are AWESOME!! It means as much to me as it does to him!

♥

I find that I am not good at updating this blog if I don't have a picture to post. I love pictures! Pictures are worth a 1000+ words. Anyway, Jared had some great stories in his last couple of emails. It is awesome to read the impact that he has on those he teaches.

Email from Sept 2nd 2014:

This week has been pretty great. It started out with one of our investigators almost being evicted from his apartment, and he turned to us for help which was cool to see that he trusted us that much. The situation all got figured out though and he wont be evicted which is really good.

 One of our recent converts had us over for lunch and he had come across some anti Mormon stuff, so he was asking us about some of it. We were able to explain it to him and he said that most of the things he'd already assumed were made up or twisted, so it was cool that his testimony has gotten strong enough that he trusts what he knows more than what he hears. At church he was also answering a lot of questions in gospel principals and getting all the answers right, so me and Elder Bills were pretty proud that he knows his stuff.

 Elder Bright got emergency transferred because there's been a few missionaries who've had to go home sick so president has had to switch things up. Elder Bright was in our district and he was awesome so I wasn't happy to hear that he was gone, but he was replaced by Elder Froelick who is pretty cool too.

 Our investigator took us to Litton's and it was so good! They give you a ton of food though that's all really good so I stuffed my face and ate until I couldn't swallow another bite, it was great! While we were at dinner with him his son called and he told his son "I'm chilling here at Litton's with my new brothers. They're Mormons. They're from Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! They're my homies." (he's black by the way) So after talking with this guy 4 or 5 times we're homies. He also asked us quite a few questions about our beliefs and he was really receptive of our answers. His questions covered a lot of the stuff in the first 3 lessons, so that'll make teaching him go well.

 We helped install a new wood floor for our ward mission leader and we got almost all of it done. He's still recovering from donating his kidney, so we did most all the work since we didn't want him to push himself to much (which he ended up doing anyways) but it looked really good and it was fun to get it done for him.

 All the wards that meet in our building hosted a blood drive and a lot of people donated, Elder Bills was one of them. A few ward members were trying to convince us to donate and Elder Bills caved, but I stood my ground and didn't give into peer pressure. One of the members was really trying to convince me to do it though, but there was no way I was about to get poked. I'm saving souls, so I figure someone else can do the saving lives. A lot of missionaries donated though, so that was cool.

That's most of the highlights for this week, another great week as a missionary.

Email from August 11th:

I decided to do what a lot of missionaries do and just send out a mass email about my week because apparently it's easier that way. So this week Me and Elder Bills lead the district by teaching the most lessons which is awesome because we have 4 sets of really good missionaries in our district, so we're pretty proud of that. I also learned this week why I've been told by so many missionaries not to drink soda before you bike, it really is a bad idea, the heat and exercise have some kind of reaction to the soda that just hurts for a while. It goes away after a while though, and now I've decided I'm never going to do that again. We also had zone conference this week and President Griffin is awesome! He told us some of what he expects and how he's going to make sure we reach our full potential. He also talked about rules and when he was going over the music section of the white handbook he had someone start playing journey in the background. Then after a minute he turned it off and asked us how well we could focus and feel the spirit while the music was going and told us that's how we can determine if a song is ok to listen to or not. It was a really cool way to show us how to follow the spirit of the law, which he explained is actually harder than following the letter of the law. I also gained a bit more faith about prayer this week. A couple weeks ago we were struggling for investigators and so I prayed for about 2 days in a row for people to teach and then we found 2 or 3 people in 1 day who we could teach. Then this week we needed more investigators again and so for about 2 days in a row I prayed for investigators and in 1 day we found 2 people who we set times that we could come back to teach them at, and 3 more people said we could just stop by whenever and they'd talk to us. It wasn't until the second time that I realized how quickly God had answered my prayers both times, but it was amazing to see how it had worked.

♥ my missionary

July 28th Petersen/Bills

First off, E Petersen was not affected by the tornadoes going through Tennessee this week. He told us that he was at a missionary fireside at the church, so therefore he was safe :)

It's kind of funny that some weeks I feel like there isn't much too share, but this week there is a lot....

It is so amazing to watch the growth of a missionary. I often wonder if it is as visible to them as it is to us as their family, friends, and neighbors. I feel like my son has gained so much from serving the Lord already that I can only imagine what another 20 months will do. I miss him soo much that some days I just want to fly off to Tennessee and be a fly on the wall, just to watch him. Okay, honestly there is no way I could just watch him and not give him a huge hug =)  I am so proud of all that he is doing and who he is becoming. His spirit has always been huge. When he was little he would prepare his own talks for primary (age 5-9) and would amaze everyone with his simple testimony and words. He typically chose to talk about David and Goliath, that was his favorite. He still does an amazing job at speaking and has no fear of doing it, that definitely didn't come from me. Here is what I assume is a talk he gave recently. (I will correct if I am wrong). I love that is in his own handwriting, sorry if it is hard to read.

(If any of this was too hard for you to read... Please feel free to ask and I would be glad to interpret.)

Here is an excerpt from his letter this week:

"I'd say the way I've grown spiritually the most is just through helping people learn about the gospel and sharing my testimony that it's true. It's helped me to look at why I believe in the church and how it's blessed me in my life. 

I had a guy just the other day say to me "At 18 what can you really say that God has done for you in your life to people that will make them want to hear what you have to say?" And I told him that He's helped me by sending me to a family who already knew and believed in the gospel and that I haven't had to look far to find the truth, like a lot of people have. I also told him that He's given me a lot of opportunities to help people who need it, and He's given me the ability to help them. When I answered him I didn't even have to think through what I was going to say, it was kinda just coming out of my mouth as it came into my head."

I just LOVE my missionary!!

Have a GREAT day!