Mission Update from San Diego

A few more notes from the MTC  - The week we arrived,s there were 54 Senior missionaries and 300 young Elders and Sisters.  The MTC is very organized and we were inspired by the Senior Missionaries going all over the world and the young missionaries learning languages and headed to incredible places - indeed the gospel is flooding all nations!
One Elder I met was on his 4th mission at the MTC. Elder Makai is in charge of greeting and loving and encouraging polynesian Elders and Sisters arriving for training from 20 different countries. He works the lunch room and the other gatherings and he always returned my smile with an even bigger one.  I included a pic of his infectious smile - my DNA test does not show any polynesian genetics but I really gravitate to my cousins through my connection with Jacob(Israel) through Joseph!!!

This first week in San Diego has been fast and busy!  Training, orientation, service projects, meeting with members and military members, attending two ward sacrament meetings and outfitting an apartment.  We have 5 military relations senior couples assigned to the many Navy and Marine installations here in San Diego.  There are another 18 Senior Couples that are assigned to the San Diego Mission to work in the wards and branches.  There are Elders and Sisters speaking 8 different languages in the branches and wards in the mission.
Spanish, American Sign Language, Farsi, Arabic, Mandarin/Chinese, Swahili, Haitian Creole, and English.   The Senior Missionaries assist the young Elders and Sisters in each of the branches where a different language is spoken. 6 Seniors work in the office -( two of them are single )   We are still learning names.
The Mission has 220 missionaries which is a lot for our Mission Leaders (President and Sister Rascon from Houston Texas) (see pic) Yet since we are new they found time to take us to dinner this week.  They are sooo busy! and sooooo awesome!!  They have a huge assignment!!! 

We feel very welcomed everywhere we go - and the California drivers are way more courteous on the side streets than I expected!   But on the Freeway you better be moving at speed!!

We are looking forward to meeting more individuals and strengthening them in the gospel of our Savior.  With the San Diego Temple renovation complete the open house has been announced and it is easy to give folks pass along cards that invite them to the open house.  Sister Peterson is very good at this!  One maintenance worker at our apartment said " I have to ask - the rumor is that guy on top of the temple blowing the horn is made of Solid Gold.  He now knows his name is Moroni and he is announcing the restoration of the Gospel and the coming of Christ - He put the open house card in his wallet.  I told him I would get back to him on the Solid Gold question :=) 

The Military Service Members love to collect "challenge" coins - So far we collected one from the Star Stake President and one from Military Relations instructors (from Salt Lake) at the MTC.  see pics of one side of each,
Learning a lot and loving it!  Looking forward to Easter! and General Conference!
 
Elder Jeff Peterson and Sister Tammy Peterson

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