Our sister missionaries following a zone conference

 A tarantula coming up from the baptismal font!

Kendall's baptism day.

View of a location about 10 minutes from where they live

Jocelyn and Hernan.
 She´s 8 and he is 4.
They´re 2 of 10 children of a really sweet family in the branch. :)

Hermana Holmes & Hermana Peters

Ocean sunset

 

Nov. 25, 2014

Hello Family :)

I hope everyone is getting ready for Thanksgiving and making sure they are very very hungry for Thanksgiving Dinner, because i expect all of you to eat an extra serving of everything for me :) jaja chiste, but really. Eat a lot of food for me. :) Maybe somehow i will be able to taste it. For our thanksgiving dinner we will be making smores. Haha Hermana Holmes and i have been craving that lately so that is our Thanksgiving present to each other. :)

Also i was getting more bug spray out of my suitcase and saw my Christmas package and noticed that it said to open on December 1!!! Ahh im soooo excited :)

Anyways this week was great here in good old Costa Rica. :) first on monday and tuesday i was in San Jose. We had a conference earlytuesday morning so we had to go monday to be on time. So we stayed at some other sister missionarys apartment. First off, weirdest feeling there was waking up cold in the morning. It wasnt like the cold you guys have right now, but just like ahh a nice cool breeze. It was a tender mercy from Heavenly Father :) So we had a this multi zone conference and it was amazing. President Wilkinson is amazing and always knows just what to say. He taught us so many great things to put in practice and really just helped us all want to work even harder.   Apparently Costa Rica is currently the most succesful mission in Central America.  WOOT WOOT :) There was recently a conference for the mission Presidents of Central America, where the member of the 70 over this part of the world asked the mission presidents to double the number of converts that we are currently adding to the church.  The majority of the mission presidents began to stress and question if it was possible.  President Wilkinson replied, "Hagamoslo, Dame este Monte!" (Lets do it, give me this mountain) This is really how i want to be able to approach any taste i am asked to do. And so i am ready to climb this mountain and double our converts in the church.  

We had a baptism this past week of this cute boy named Kendal, he was so happy to get baptized and i was so happy to be a part of it. He was beaming that whole time of his baptism, and after he got up to bear his testimony and it was the cutest thing. You could just tell that it meant to much to be apart of this church. 

Also we have a baptism this weekend of a young women named Yenzel. This girl is very close to my heart and we have been working long and hard with her. She was a reference from a member and so many of her lessons were taught in that members home which was buenísimo. We had a fecha bautismal por 13 de Deciembre, but then felt that she was ready to be baptized now. We invited her last week to prepare for this coming Saturday and she said no, she wanted to stick with 13 dec because she was scared right now. We explained all the blessings that she can receive from being baptized and such, but she didnt want to change her baptism date. We asked her to pray about it, and ask her Heavenly Father about all this. She didnt say much more, but then yesterday we received a text from her that said Hermanas, i want to be baptized this Saturday. I know this that right there was not only an answered prayer for us, but also un milagro. Reading that text i was probably the happiest little red head these Costa Ricans have ever seen, but it was such a great feeling to see someone really receive an answer to their prayer, and want such an amazing blessing in their lives.

Random story about Yenzel, this past week she wanted to come with us to visit a member because they just moved and we didnt know how to get there and she did. So we start walking and its all good and dandy and then we get to a river. She starts taking off here shoes and walking through the water... Haha so me and Hermana Holmes follow here lead, both of just laughing and smiling, so happy to have our feet in water. Closest thing i will get to being able to swim here. Haha 

Update on my other investigadors... Gerald has been gone working all week so we havent seen him after all the craziness, but we have been calling him and he seems to be doing a lot better. We also found this cute couple this past week, Shamay and Andre and they are amazing. They took the missionary lessons like 4 years ago and were almost married to be baptized but felt too young. But now they are so prepared and we are workign with them to get married here in December and then baptized december 20 :) We also have this family of a member. Wainer, the member is an amazing member of our ward, now the Elder Quorm Presidnet, and his little sister is Karla, my first baptism. There two other sisters both arent members and neither is the mom so we are working with all of them right now and slowly but surely they are progressing and hopefully they can get baptized here soon. 

We had our primary program this past sunday and the kids did sooo good :) i was so proud of all of them, and for singing loud and proud in the program. I was like a proud mom and 30 kids after sacrament meeting sunday :) haha

And the big news for this week... WE ARE STARTING THE CONSTRUCTION FOR OUR NEW CHAPEL. Yep we have been talking about it for so long now, since i got here. And finally it is here and we will start builing the new chapel.  We will have our finally sunday in the church this next week and then we will be having it in this other building here in Santa Cruz until it is done :) i am soooo happy!! 

I am so grateful for the experiences i am having here, for the chance i have to learn and grow everyday to become the person that my heavenly father wants. I am so glad that i have a loving Heavenly Father who helps me recognized my weaknesses so that i can then turn into strengths. I am grateful for all of you, for my amazing family, and for the knowledge that we can be together FOREVER. I am grateful for the plan God has for all of us, and that i have a Savior to help me every step of the way I am so grateful for the amazing atonement, for the sacrifices he made for me, and for each and everyone of you. I love my Savior, my Father in Heaven, and i love each and everyone of you.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING  :)

Thank you so much dad. I love you so much and am so grateful for you. I will never be able to thank you for all you do. Yesterday we were hanging a mirror in our bathroom, and we didnt have a hammer, so went and got a rock and hammered that nail into the wall. Hermana Holmes after said, wow you have really good hand eye coordination. I said Yep it is all thanks to my dad :) and our long hours of working together in the garage. :) Thank you for teaching me not only how to use hammer a nail into the wall, but also how the live the gospel and love everyone no matter what. 

I love you dad,

Happy Thanksgiving :)

p.s.so from now on i will be emailing on tuesdays around this time. We had a meeting with president wilkinson and i guess they were having problems with missionaries and the time they spent emailing. so we all go as a district now and will be emailing together where the district leader can watch and make sure all is well. 

Nov. 17, 2014
Hello family,

How are all of you? How is the cold? hahahah

Well to start... i forgot to tell you all last week but i officially finished my training!! I'm a real missionary now :) hahaha so now we have an extra hour to work because we don't have to use that time to do training! it is really nice! And mom to answer your question, i do feel a ton better than when i got here, i have learned soooo much. but i still have  a long way to go to become the missionary my Heavenly Father wants me to be.  This week we used that new extra hour to search for a house. We found NOTHING. By the end of the week we were so drained and didn't know what to do. We had a fast and at the end decided that the answer was that we didn't need to move anymore. we talked to the lady the owns the apartments and she is going to do some things to make them more safe, and plus we feel a lot better there then anywhere else we looked. so i guess we should have thought about that in the first place to just secure the house we are in... but oh well. Haha so thank you for the prayers and support, and know that i am safe :)

And yes, our little church building had some vandalism last week. We showed up to work on the simi one day and there were 3 windows broken and part of the door. it was heart breaking, and a physically evidence on how hard satan is working. But here is the good news... WE WON THE FIGHT. We are now officially qualified to have a ward here in Santa Cruz!!!! :) :) We worked super hard in the simi this week, had the final men ordained to the Melchizedek and finally have the right numbers to be qualified for the ward!! We still have to do submit some kind of paper work and all this stuff that our branch president will be doing, but they said that hopefully aqui cerca we will have a ward. 

Thank you for your prayers everyone. Yesterday we had 7 people at our district conference ( like stake conference) 7!!! for the past 4 or 5 weeks we have only had 1 or many times 0. And our prayers were answered with people in the church. :)

Last night we had a very interesting experience...another witness that Satan hates this work. Our investigator sent us a message, urgently pleading for us to come as fast as possible. We came, and ended up finding an awful situation. Her husband was going through a very suicidal moment. We sang a hymn, prayed, and spoke to him, and miraculously helped the situation. That doesn't even explain the hundredth part of what we went through, but you can imagine. We were a little shaken as we left, so the elders met us at the church to give us blessings. I am so grateful for the priesthood. It is real. That blessing was another testament to me of the love my Father in Heaven has for me even though I am so imperfect. He knows me and He IS guiding me. Later, our investigator called us to thank us for everything. She said she knows we were angels sent at this time in their lives to help, and she spoke of a great peace and feelings that "words can't describe" that she felt the moment we started the prayer. We were able to testify that it was the Holy Ghost that she felt. It was a really tender and sweet moment. 

Oh, and after lots of searching and praying about finding a new house, we have made the decision to stay where we are. We are going to focus on finding ways to make it more secure...like fixing the locks on the windows. If the feelings to leave come back, we will start the search again. 

 i love you all :)

Love,

Hermana Peters 

ps i will send pictures next week! Have to go catch a bus for san jose right now!

Kaitlyn Clifford  was visiting the branch on 11-9-14
She is from Bountiful and sent us this picture and a sweet note
from Rachel telling us to keep reading our scriptures!

Nov. 10, 2014

Hello Family :)

Well this week was great! we worked very hard, and saw so many milagros. One of them was last Monday night. We were walking home from a noche de hogar with one of the families here and Hermana Holmes stopped to do an LPE, it was a family :) so we started to talk to them just the normal LPE stuff and then we asked where they lived, and they told us they lived in Estocolmo, super close to where we live! So we were both just like walking together and they were telling us about their family. They have 3 kids, ages 6, 4, and 3. so then we asked them how long they´ve been together and they said 5 months and the women, Keila, explained how she was married before, then got a divorce, and then got together with Gerald, the man. so we asked them if they were married or plannning on getting married. They looked at each other and smiled and then turned to us and told us that they had got married today!!! HOLLLY COW! So ya we both were like no way. this is a dream. But we continued to talk to them, and then asked if we could come by and visit them. They agreed and we gave them a folleto. 2 days later we went and stopped by their house. Keila had already read the whole folleto and loved it. So we started the lesson like normal doing some of the CCE points. We mentioned how whatever problem or trail you have in your life, this gospel and Jesus Christ can help you overcome that. Right then Gerald said "I have a problem." and he went on to tell us about an addiction he has had for 4 years now to a pain killer of some kind. He has tried many times to get over it but nothing has ever worked, but then he said " But i´ve never tried God before." Right then the spirit was so strong and Hermana Holmes and i were able to testify and promise that with God he can over come this, that with the power of the Atonement, and his faith, he can do anything. The spirit was so strong and you could see hope in this families eyes, a hope that i couldnt see at the beginning. they then both accepted to be baptized 29 of November, which we will have to push back because they didn´t come to church. But this was such a testimony builder for me to know that God is preparing people, even if it is in a different way than we think.

We went back and visited them again and the first thing they said was " are we allowed to get married in your church?" so then we were like werent you already married? and they were like yeah but we want to get married in your church. so then we explained a little bit about temples and when we told them they could be sealed for eternity, lets just say i have never seen happiness quite like the smile on their faces. They are amazing and so ready to have a life free from Geralds addiction. I am so excited to help them too :)

So like i said, they didn´t come to church. This was a heartbreaker for me. It is so hard to be sitting there, waiting and have them not show up. We usually go out sunday morning and bring everyone with us, but this sunday morning we had a meeting with President. Oh did i tell you guys the presidency changed?? well it did and it was actually great because our new president has such a drive and desire to help us as missionaries. Our old one did too, but this is like the whole new energy thing and i love it!! it the best feeling to have support from your branch. :) But ya we only had 2 investigators at church.. and we had 9 that we thought for sure were going to come. I was sitting there during the sacrament meeting praying soo hard for at least one because at this point we didnt have any. i was begging. pleading. just one please. Right then one of our investigators walked in which was such an answer to my prayer. I would have liked more, but i know that i worked my very hardest to get people to church, and that God has a plan for everyone and if they were supposed to be there, they would have been there. I am learning a lot about patience. 

Another lesson i learned this week is one  that i will never forget. We were teaching our seminary kids this week about 2 nephi 9. This chapter is all about the atonement, and ahh i have such a great love for it. But anyways while i was studying for this i had so many feelings about the atonement come to me. I remember times in my life when the Atonement was something more than just something that we talk about at church, but a real part of my life. I had such a great desire to share all of this with these youth. i wanted so badly for them to understand, but in the end, i think i was the one who came out with a better understanding of the atonement. For the lesson we decided to do the example with the push ups. One person has to do push ups for everyone for them to get a treat. But the thing is even if they don´t accept the treat, the push ups had to be done, and there were different amounts for every person. we forgot treats... haha but we started doing this example, and Hermana Holmes turned to me and said "Will you do the push ups?" I agreed and got down on my hands and feet. she started and turned to the first person and said "How many push ups does Hermana Peters need to do for you?" He said 10. so the fight began. And she went through and asked everyone. Luckily the cap was 10, but once we had gone through everyone, i had done about 65 pushups. I was sooo tired. I stood up and then Hermana Holmes said "10 more for me." this is when i had a tiny tiny taste how Jesus felt. Every single one of the pushups was sooo hard. i felt my whole body shaking. but i kept thinking of Hermana Holmes and the love i had for her. It was a love that i cant desribe, and it is hard for me to put it into words right now. But lets just say i have such a greater understanding now of the Atonement. 

We are working sooo hard for this ward too. We spent today searching for people here by the beach and getting rid of as many names as we can!! We are sooo close, i can feel it. i feel so honored to be apart of the work here, to be a hastening the work missionary, in Costa Rica, in Santa Cruz, helping these people get a ward.

Thank you for your love and prayers :)

I will be at the Tolmans tonight if you need anything ;) haha

Love,

Your missionary Hermana Peters

With Christmas only next month and with letters taking so long to arrive,  I thought I would send Rachel's mission address in case anyone would like to send her a Christmas card. The cost of a global forever stamp is $1.10. It takes one stamp for a standard letter to go anywhere.

Her address is:

Hermana Rachel Peters

Mision Costa Rica San Jose

Apartado Postal 249-2010

San Jose, Zapote, Costa Rica

Nov. 3, 2014

Hola Familia :)

First off, Happy Halloween :) hope you all ate a lot of candy for me. Haha Halloween here doesn't really exist so it was just a normal day here! 

      Hermana Holmes her companion says  "Happy Halloween! Fun fact: nobody celebrates it here. Some little kids asked Hermana Peters and I if it's true that the children go from house to house asking for candy. They made it sound like it was some fairytale story. It was so cute!"

Back to Hermana Peters -

My week was great, different but great. We received a message Wednesday night saying that we needed to be in the church at 11:30 the next day for a meeting with the Zone Leaders. So the next day we went and the Zone Leaders told us that for the next little bit we will be doing things a little bit different. Here in Guanacaste (a province, kinda like a state) we are pushing sooo hard for a stake, and the only thing we need now is for our little branch here to become a ward. There is a bunch of things that you need to become a ward, but the most important thing is attendance and priesthood holders. the way the determine if you can become a ward is they take the total number of members and then its some kind of proportion of that for how many priesthood holders you need and attendance at church. So we have about 600+ ¨members¨ in our ward, on our ward directory thing, and have about 100 in church every week. so in order to get this stake and ward, our job for the next 2 weeks or so is from 1 to 4 everyday we work on the Simi (i don't know what that translates to in English.. haha but its just like a ward directory. We have to go through and find who is active, who is inactive, who died, moved, things like that and clean out as many people as we can. So now everyday from 1 to 4 all of us missionaries here in Santa Cruz meet at the church and go through the simi. The past few days we just went through, finding the people we knew, and a couple times we had some members there helping. This week we will start going out and looking for people, and trying to clean out our simi so we can get this ward. Our goal is to have a stake here by January, and to do that we need everything to be ready the end of this month. 

On top of that we are pushing to get 20 baptisms in my district this month. That is about 5 every companionship... And at first i felt pretty good because we had like 14 people with baptismal dates. But slowly all of them are falling because no one is coming to church... And now we are losing 3 hours of working time... Plus we are getting to the point where we might need to drop investigators who aren't progressing. This kills me because the love i have for my investigators is a love i cant describe. I want to best for all of them, and so obviously i want them to be coming to church, and praying and stuff. 

Last night as i was thinking about all of this, feeling a little down about the day since we didn't have investigators at church all i wanted to do was to talk to you guys. Talk to my family about what was going on, and get some advice. But i knew i couldn't and in that moment, i realized that there was someone even greater waiting for me to talk to Him. So as i was saying my prayers that night i went into a different room, and poured out my heart to my Father in Heaven. I told him everything i was feeling. All my fears, all my doubts, and my worries, and how i felt so weak. I want to be the best missionary, but sometimes feel like my weaknesses are more than my strengths, and that i don't have enough power to do what im supposed to. As i expressed all these feelings, and then i just sat there. In that moment, i was overcome with a peace in my heart. I know that i was called here to Costa Rica for not only the good parts of Rachel, but also all of my weaknesses and shortcomings. My Heavenly Father knows me perfectly, and has a plan for me, and maybe his plan is different than what i want. And i know that i need to trust in Him.  I know that i am supposed to be here in Costa Rica, at this moment of my life. I know that i got called here because there are certain people i need to help, and that my Heavenly Father has it all planned out, and that he will make this happen like they are suppose to, but sometimes it takes a TON of faith to trust. Actually, all the time. I feel like every single footstep i take here takes faith. I need faith to know where to go to find those people, to know what to teach them, and to know how to help them come unto Christ. But i also know with my Heavenly Father, and Jesus Christ, ALL things are possible.

I already told mom this but here is the house update... We had everything ready to go to move into an apartment last Friday. It was this really really nice apartment for here, with HOT water and everything. The lady that was going to rent it to us and needed us to sign a contract. We needed the branch president here to do that because she needed a name and we dont know when one of us will leave and such. So the night before we were going to move, our president went to sign this contract and after he told us that this lady was going to make us pay more than we had to and that we were going to have light or electricity for a week and all the stuff. So he said it would be better to find a different house. We all felt that this was what we needed to do also. So once again we are house hunting.... Not fun.. but hopefully we will be able to find something soon.

Oh and also i forgot to say that we had transfers last week.. haha obviously I'm still here in Santa Cruz. Haha but one of the sisters got transferred..:( so we have a new sister and she is great! We will be having transfers again in about 3 weeks.. ya its a little different because of Christmas and i guess it is really expensive to have people fly home around Christmas, so we have a transfer in 3 weeks and then don't have another one for 8 weeks! So if me and Hermana Holmes make it through this next one, we will be together for Christmas and my birthday!! Pray for this :) haha

Well I'm about out of time.. but know that i love you all:) thank you for the prayers and love. I hope you know that it really does help. I hope everyone has a wonderful week and remember that I'm praying for you guys too! 

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Peters