Great 2nd Week

"Thank you so much for the letters those of you who wrote, and thanks for the emails. This week has been really interesting. It's been a good week, but required a lot of faith and abiding by the spirit. So this week we have had very little luck. We have one investigator on date, but we haven't been able to catch her. She won't return our phone calls, and she won't meet with us. Our other two investigators came to church yesterday! We got them from the zone leaders. They are progressing a lot. Yesterday one of them told us that she thought Sacrament meeting was boring, and asked if she could only come to the last 2 hours of church - in all my life, I have only heard people say that the last two hours are boring...it was WAY funny, Sister H. and I laughed a lot about it."

"So because the week has been so bad, the zone leaders have been so good about taking care of us. They heart-attacked our door with sticky notes with scriptures on them, and left us bags of truffles. We have the BEST zone leaders and District leaders."

"I have an assignment for you - Listen to "The missionary next door" if you haven't already. I don't remember who it's by...Diana someone...but EVERY member of the church needs this CD in their home. It is incredible! Keep striving to be good member missionaries, because the work really does start with the members. The members in this ward just need a little "pumping-up" about the work. It's sometimes really hard to get referrals from them, but we keep praying, and we keep realizing that if we keep the faith that the Lord is preparing people for us to teach." (The CD is by Diana Hoelscher and is available at the library.)

"Yesterday before church, Sister H. and I decided we wanted to go early to sacrament meeting and play the piano. I started to mess around on the organ. People started coming in, so I thought that I would play a little prelude to get the Spirit in there, and help others be prepared for sacrament meeting. After a few songs, I stopped playing and went to go greet people, when one of the counselors stopped me and asked, "You play the organ Sister Peck?" I told him I had been learning before my mission, and that it was definitely a work in progress.  He then asked me to play if the ward organist didn't show up. I agreed. She never showed up. I played my first Sacrament Meeting yesterday." (By learning to play the organ, she means the choir director in the singles ward gave her a few pointers so she could accompany one of the Christmas songs for their Christmas program.)

"Tomorrow we are having our first district meeting. I have been asked to play the piano, tell my funniest mission story so far, and to make treats. The District leader has assigned me officially the "treat-maker-piano-player" for our meetings. Can you send me some fun, easy, I'm-feeding-elders recipes? Tomorrow I am making mom's famous peanut butter rice krispy treats. SO excited!!" (If you have any recipes feel free to share them with her.)

Christiansburg, VA

"FANTASTIC week here in Christiansburg Virginia! It is greener and more beautiful than my last area. It's a little more "mountainous" where there are mountains, but it seems to be more flat than WV. It is a wealthier area - Christiansburg is a large college town. Virginia Tech is in Blacksburg, which is not even 10 minutes from our apartment. Our apartment is brand-spankin new! It is SO NICE. It's a basement apartment. Everything is definitely closer and shorter distances which is nice. We have a couple of investigators that live less than a mile away, so we walk to their house when we have them. Our brand new car is just like the one we had in Teays Valley, but its a 2013, and it's a bright sparkly shiny red. We named her Lucy. We get 1100 miles a month, and since we walk everywhere, miles aren't really a problem for us. YAY! (: our area is quite small...we split it with the zone leaders, who also share our ward."

"My new companion is Sister H.  She is pretty much like me...She is SO funny. She is studying musical theater, and Shower/bath nights at our house are Broadway musicals, and should require tickets. She is an INCREDIBLE singer! She played the oldest daughter in a production of the Sound of Music last summer.  She was in the process of auditioning to be the singing parade Belle at Walt Disney World before her mission.  It's not terribly difficult to live with a companion that sings as much as you."

"So there is a less active sister in our ward that has a MASSIVE GARDEN! She loves getting the sisters help with it, so we get to go over weekly to help her weed and plant - reminds me SO much of home, it is the BEST! We do our service with her at night, so the first night we went over there, we were out saying goodbye, packing up the tools and such, and she pointed over to an open area in her yard, and said "watch"...and there were FIREFLIES! It's firefly season, which makes me SOOOO SO SO happy! They are so magical - so I look forward to gardening with her every week. Pictures of the Garden to come! 

That's all - I have been noticing so many tender mercies in my life right now - my companion is amazing, we have a dishwasher and a washer and dryer in our apartment, and everything is so close to us. It is truly Zion here in Christiansburg."

 Elizabeth, her trainer (left) and her new missionary (right) on transfer day.

The family in her first area that introduced her to strum sticks gave her one. She is so excited. Her aunts think she is having way too much fun but that is Elizabeth. She just loves life.

Movin' On

"June is finally here, And I have some great news! I am being transferred this week to train and double-in [both missionaries are new to the area] with a  new sister. I found out I was training on Friday of last week. I am being transferred to Christiansburg, Virginia! I will be there for two transfers. . .. I am opening an area, which means new apartment, new car, new companion, new area book, new people to work with, and a new adventure, which means more pictures (: " I'm not sure but it sounds like she is excited. I did a little research and Christiansburg is about 170 miles from where she is now. The town is about the same size in area as Riverton, UT but has a smaller population. The population in Hurricane was less than 8,000 and the population of Christiansburg is around 22,000.

One of her investigators is moving to Washington State. She says once she gets settled she will ask for the missionaries again. "She still has a desire to be baptized and talks about it all the time! We are excited for her! So, because of the transfer, I am packing. The apartment is a disaster, probably about as bad as my room at home (We have been doing some sorting and we are using her room as the holding area. Her dad sent her a picture of it.) Getting rid of a sister and getting ready for a sister is tricky and messy. The weather here has been really nice lately- lots of sunshine. The storms out here have been pretty wild, but luckily we haven't had one in a while."

Not one but two possible baptisms

Sorry about the delay this week. She didn't get to email on Monday because of the holiday. They go to the library to email and it was closed on Monday. She was allowed 30 minutes to email on Tuesday so I didn't get much. Today I got a letter in the mail.

Her big news this week is that they have 2 investigators with baptismal dates in June. One on June 15 and one on June 29. She is so excited! Unfortunately next week is transfer week so she may not be around to see them. Next week she won't email until Wednesday because of transfers. She asked that anyone who is planning to mail her something this week send it to the mission home which is the address on the blog.

This is a quote from her letter, "Today, the 27th, was my click day, aka my mission birthday! I'm officially 3 months into my mission. Wow, time has sure flown. I've been told regarding my mission that long days turn into short weeks, and long weeks turn into short months, and long months and transfers turn into a very short year and a half. Luckily, I'm only 3 -- I've got a TON of mission ahead of me."

My aunt and uncle live in the stake she is serving in. Their ward served the missionaries lunch at their zone conference last week so she got to see them. She loves randomly running into them.

Happy Rainy Monday!

"The weather this week has been insane. It has been raining everyday since Thursday. When it rains here, it pours. AUtah sprinkle is a heavy humidity here. A Utah rain is a WV sprinkle. A Utah pour is a WV rain, and when it floods in Utah, it pours here and usually it's the pouring kind of rain. I always think of the Wizard of Oz when it rains here. The wind goes insane, the clouds get super dark and super thick, and the thunder and lightning go crazy. The lightning gets super close, since the clouds settle in between the hills, and so the thunder gets really loud at times. It rains for hours at a time. They say it rains everyday all the time in Seattle- they haven't been to WV... My companion and I still question ourselves - Where does all that water GO?! It rains, and it rains, and it rains. (♪ and the rain rain rain came down down down...) As a matter of fact, it's raining, er, excuse me, POURING here right now. When you drive, the windshield wipers are on full blast, and it's still very difficult to see. One foot out of the car, and you've fallen into a pool. It's pretty great (: But the rain makes everything SO GREEN here! We drive a lot of backroads, and you can't see anything but trees. It's so beautiful! I am SO thrilled that the magnolias are coming out. The buds are on the trees, and they're getting ready to bloom. When the humidity wave hits in a couple weeks, they'll be in full bloom, and I am SO excited"

"We picked up a new investigator. She's about 50, and she is SO ELECT. She hates her church, how they "vote" everyone into their positions. She hates that she doesn't know where her tithing money goes, and how they do tithing at her church. She LOVES the BofM, and she says that every time she reads, she feels God never tells her that it is wrong. She has read the intro 4 TIMES. We can't wait to see her testimony of the Gospel and the BofM grow and flourish into a beautiful lamp that will guide her friends and family to the gospel as well."

As you can tell, the rain hasn't dampened her spirit.

Mother's Day Phone Call!

It was so good to talk to Elizabeth yesterday! She sounded so good and so happy. Because of the phone call, she didn't have a lot to say in her email today. Hard to believe, isn't it? Here is a little bit of her email.

"I look forward to your letters!! It's like Christmas getting mail as a missionary. Empty mailbox days (air-mail days haha) are kind of hard, and super disappointing. I forgot to tell you! Yesterday our investigator that is praying about a baptism date, we overheard her talking to the relief society president  after church about how she is picking a date right now, and that she should be getting baptized soon!! Me and Sister J are really hoping we have at least one baptism together, considering we only have three weeks together left. We are so thrilled for her! I can't wait to see her again, and teach her."

I finally got her to email me a picture of her trip to Hillbilly Hot Dogs. This is her with her companion. To read more about her experience, see the post for April 8.

Sister C from Riverton and her companion also enjoyed Hillbilly Hot Dogs.

Slow Week

She didn't have a lot to report this week. I'll just give you a quote from her email.

"We had stake conference yesterday, and it was so weird, they broadcasted it, and so 64 different stakes out here had it at the same time, and President Uchtdorf, Sister Wixom, Elder Hales and Elder Gay of the 70 spoke. It was like a mini general conference haha (: Elder Uchtdorf's talk was amazing, actually the whole conference was just incredible, but Elder Gay talked about conversion in our families- and he started out by talking about a relative or someone he knew that was a direct descendant of Jedadiah Morgan Grant...that really got my attention!(That got her attention because she is also a descendant of Jedadiah Morgan Grant.) I learned a lot about conversion and how to help our family members out here. It was a really neat conference!"

One of her investigators is close to accepting a baptismal date but her husband is leaving town for awhile and she wants him to be there so it is on hold. They had to drop another one of their investigators because he was high when they went to teach him and he wanted to marry them. It was a bit awkward. She ran into another relative. She is getting to meet relatives she's never even heard of before.