Monday

Mom,
     I know I promised a big letter this week, but The branch president called me before a little and told me that at the nearby supermarket thing they are having an American stock week. Which means they might have peanut butter and other delicious things! So I will be keeping this one short!
     We had a great week! We met with one of our investigators, and we are trying to see how much work we have to do to get him to believe in Jesus Christ. We think we may have found the answer however. He flat told us, "If you can convince me that there was a need for Jesus to die for our sins, then everything else you have told me about your religion will make sense. If Jesus was the son of God, then after he died there would have been a need for a restoration. And everything you have told me will just make sense."
So, now we just have to figure that little part out! :)
     Also we are meeting with a really nice family! They are a family of 7 with 4 sons and 1 daughter. (Sound familiar?) They belong to a faith called Unification. It basically is a belief that all Christian churches are good. they believe in a lot of the same things as we do, but there are of course major differences. They claim to believe in Joseph Smith however, and that he did receive the authority from John the Baptist to finish baptizing the world. That is what they say the mission of our church is. To baptize the whole world. He says we are making a pretty good effort.
     However the highlight of the week was this last Saturday  We had a baptism! Marinella is a 18 year old girl that had her first lesson about 2 months ago. She has accepted everything and she made instant friends in the Branch. We had quite the adventure preparing for this baptism though. We had to travel to Varna on Wednesday to pick up the baptismal font. We left at about 2 o'clock and arrived in Varna at 4. We got to the church and there were some Elders there to help us take it to the bus station. The font is in 5 large cloth bags and altogether weighs maybe 300 pounds. so we took 2 separate taxis and went to the bus station. We got there and bought some tickets and went out to load onto the bus. Now you are probably thinking of some big bus like a travel bus or maybe a school bus. Don't. These are called in Bulgarian микробус which literally means micro bus. I have seen motor bikes with more trunk space than this bus. So the bus driver told us we can't get on and that we have to go get our money back. So now we are left standing in the middle of the bus station with 5 huge funny looking bags and the other 2 Elders had left already. We had no idea what we could do, because we have to get home with these big bags!
     I decided to call the zone leaders in Varna and ask them what to do. Elder Barber told me he would call the train station and find out when we could leave from there. The next train turned out to be at 6. we had a half hour to get all of our stuff to the train station on the other side of the city! So we called the other Elders back and they by some miracle had not actually left the bus station yet. We jumped in a taxi and got to the train station and bought our tickets and jumped on and the train left. The train was actually very nice and we had a compartment all to ourselves. About an hour into the ride we found out that the train actually takes 4 hours to get into Burgas. So we were going to miss our curfew by an hour and a half. NICE!
     So about 3 hours in the train makes another stop to let some people off, but this time it stopped for longer than usual. after about 3 minutes a lady walked by the window and started yelling that the train for Burgas was on the other track and that we were going to miss it! Me and my companion looked at each other and knew what we had to do instantly. We put on our coats and picked up our bags then pulled out all 5 of the bags for the font in about 20 seconds. I don't even know how it was possible. and we ran to the other train. I jumped on first with 3 bags and my companion threw 1 up and then jumped on. The second he had pulled up the second bag, the train had already started to move and the door was just hanging wide open. It was super intense! We almost got left in some tiny city in the middle of nowhere at 9 PM!
     After that we made it home safely and everything was okay. And we had a Beautiful baptism on Saturday and me and my companion sang a duet of  Where can I turn for peace. It was really good and I have a recording of us doing it before the baptism.
     Well I hope that was a long enough letter for you this week! Give my love to all my brothers and my Sister and all my friends and all the people in the Ward and to all the other people I know! and maybe that I don't know but they know me!
Love,
Elder Petersen


P.S. I have not yet received my package, but this week when the assistants come they will have it.