Crispy Drawers - 01/19/15 (Glen Carbon, IL)

Dear Friends and Family, 

I was not able to get online to write yesterday because of Martin Luther King Day, and all of the libraries were closed. So we caught word that the City Museum which is closed on Mondays, was in fact open yesterday. So us and the East St. Louis Elders hopped on the Metro train and went across the river into the city. We spent pretty much the entire day hanging out in Downtown St Louis! 

The City Museum is incredible, for anybody that doesn't know what the St Louis City Museum looks like, you need to look up pictures of it! It is more of a mass scale playground than an actual museum of art and artifacts. You just climb through re bar and concrete all over the building. There is just so much to see and do there it is incredible! But I am very sore today... 

Tuesday we had Zone Conference at the O'Fallon Stake Center with the Cape Guirardo Zone. Cape Guirardo is the Zone right to the West of us across the Mississippi River in Missouri. Then we are in the O'Fallon Zone which is the first zone in Illinois. Anyways, we had a great conference with a lot of great trainings and discussions! President Morgan talked about our New Mission Baptismal Goal for the Year 2015! This year our mission has set a new goal of 453 Baptisms!
(Alma45:3 "I Believe"). It is going to be a great Year for the St. Louis Mission and for the Church in general! 

Wednesday we went on exchanges with the East St Louis Elders. Elder Bell worked up in Glen Carbon while Elder Johnson and I worked down in East St. Louis! We had a great time riding the bus and Metro everywhere all over the city. People are nuts there! We were on the Bus, and Elder Johnson caught some guy reaching in his pocket! The man denied the whole thing, but still asked for money anyways... Haha! Despite the cold temperatures, several distant gun shots, and being talked at by a drunk guy, I had a great time down there! I even learned how to bake a darn good Apple Pie! I will be testing out my newly found baking skills in the coming weeks!

Friday we also had quite the experience up in Glen Carbon! We were sitting downstairs in our kitchen. We had just cooked us up some lunch and we were getting ready to do some planning for the week. About 10 minutes into our meal, we hear a loud beeping... We stop and look at each other as it continues.... "Do you hear that?" So we get up and walk to the front our our apartment. Then we look over and see smoke starting to poor down our staircase! We both run upstairs and see that the middle desk drawer of Elder Bell's study desk is totally in flames! We start looking for stuff to put it out with and a couple glasses of water later the flames were gone! But the smoke was still pretty heavy, so we opened all of our windows to let the upstairs clear out! 

After about an hour everything was pretty much cleared out, and we started looking through the drawer that was on fire. Everything in the drawer was pretty well ashes, including a whole box of envelopes and papers. But There was a Preach My Gospel book in there that looked like it wasn't even touched, so that was pretty incredible. The Flames also burnt a hole through the top drawer, but everything is good now! The only problem was getting rid of the smell! We had to wash all of our clothes and stuff. despite using a whole can of febreeze there is still a slight burn smell upstairs. But we had apartment inspections today, and they never said anything so I guess we did a pretty good job at getting it cleaned up. The Mission does know, and everything is ok. Elder Bell and I have no idea how it would have started though... I am just glad we didn't go out to lunch, because I thought about suggesting that we go somewhere! Little did I know, if we had done that we probably would have come back to our apartment not actually being there! 

So all of our investigators are doing well, we are still working on getting them to progress! Our top investigators are all not doing good health wise. Stephen is going in for surgery today to get his kidney looked at, then Lupie is having breathing problems, but we are still teaching them and trying to figure out ways to help them and get them to church! We thing something good is going to happen soon!

Well I think that is all for this week! I hope everyone has a great week and I know that if we need help it is there. I have been thinking lately that God, being all mighty and the supreme power of the universe has asked us to address him as Father.. Because he is our Father, and he loves us and wants us to be happy! He knows our wants and desires and he wants us to succeed. He has the game plan for each of us, we just need to follow him and Jesus Christ. 

Peace on the Streets,

Elder Chase Peterson