Someone You Should Know: Mitzi Peterson

In our Someone You Should Know series, we interview Faith members to help us get to know them, see how God is working in their lives, and make new connections within our community. In this episode we get to know Mitzi Peterson.

Meet today's podcast guest: Mitzi Peterson

• Automated Transcription

• Seth Weber 0:00
  Today on faith matters, someone you should know with Mitzi Peterson,
  
  Seth Weber 0:10
  I'm Seth Weber, and you're listening to faith matters, a podcast designed to help you think biblically in matters of the Christian faith and update you on matters of faith, Bible, church, you music.
  
  Seth Weber 0:37
  Well, it's a pleasure to have you here. Mitzi, I
  
  Mitzi Peterson 0:40
  am so delighted to be here.
  
  Seth Weber 0:49
  All right, tell us a little bit about your childhood. Where you grew up.
  
  Mitzi Peterson 0:53
  I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, born and raised there until I got married to Jeff, 30 years ago.
  
  Seth Weber 1:01
  Do you have any you have any fun memories from your childhood? Oh, so I
  
  Mitzi Peterson 1:05
  grew up in the same house. Never lived in a different house until I moved away. It was a beautiful English tutor. So we grew up we were mountain people. So we always grew up going to the mountains of North Carolina, which I was told later, when I met Jeff, that they were mole hills, not mountains, but I had never seen the cascade. So to me, it was a mountain and and to me, hearing all the stories about Asheville and the flooding in western North Carolina is very sad to me, because those are places that I grew up going to, so I have a heart for that. But yeah, so we always grew up going to the mountains. And as you do on the mountains, we had a place that we went to called Blue Ridge Lodge. Okay, one of us when my sister or I, because I only I grew up with just one sister, an older sister. She's two years older and lives in Glendale, California, one of us always had to sleep on the cot in the closet. And I don't, I don't know why. I don't remember why, but always, one of us had to sleep in the closet. So I'll tell you another story about my sister and I. One day, I was riding her by her bicycle. She, of course, had not given me permission okay to ride her bicycle, and my I had a poncho, and whenever my mom made 99% of our clothes okay? And one day, so when we spun around, the poncho flew up, and that was just the coolest thing. So one day, I'm riding my sister's bike down the road, and I was like, Oh, I wonder if that'll fly if it'll fly up, you spin around, like when I spin around, anyway. So I put my hands out, the poncho flew up, and it was really pretty. And then it flew into my face, and so I grabbed the handle bars and made a quick turn and landed flat on my face. Oh, no, sorry, yeah, I ended up breaking my bone my jaw, so I had to eat baby food for a couple of days. Oh, my goodness. I was six years old, so I was in first grade, and I had to take baby food to school. It was very that even though I was only six, I that I remember, and that was very just embarrassing to have to do that your sister lets you hear the end of that one. No, not even to this day.
  
  Seth Weber 3:13
  So tell me about what did you do after after high school,
  
  Mitzi Peterson 3:17
  after high school, I went to college. I actually was offered a volleyball scholarship to play at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, okay, but I turned it down because my mom taught there. Both of my parents were teachers. My mom taught nursing at UNCC, and my dad was a middle school history teacher. And then we had looked at East Carolina University, and they also offered me a scholarship. So I decided to take that scholarship. But when I got to school, they reneged on my scholarship. So I know, so I didn't have it so, but God, God is sovereign and all that he does, because if I had done if I had played volleyball, I just wouldn't had time to do the things that I ended up doing, which was being highly involved in Campus Crusade for Christ. Okay? I was told by my youth leader before I left to go to college that if I didn't get involved in Campus Crusade for Christ, I would lose my salvation. Okay, well, which I knew wasn't true. I knew he was just encouraging me to get involved in Campus Crusade, and I really appreciated that, because that was just a core part of my college career. I went to East Carolina University wanting to be a physical therapist, and after my first semester of school, I realized, yeah, I don't have the study habits and not willing to put the study habits into being a physical therapist. So I changed my degree to because of crusade. We had several hearing impaired students involved, and so we had interpreters. So I decided to be going to slap, which is speech language auditory pathology, okay? And I decided to go that route, because that's where the all the sign language classes were, okay. Then Then I helped interpret at Campus Crusade. And then my senior year, I changed my major. Drew again, again to psychology, because I just wanted to graduate and get out of school, and you have to take so many psychology classes for speech language. But while I was involved in Campus Crusade for Christ, and I met hope, Hughes and hope did not think I was a Christian because of what I was wearing. She totally judged me. She apologized later, but we got along anyway, because she was a graduate of the University of Alabama, real time, and so I got very involved in campus. She said, I went. Said, summer after my freshman year, I went to Panama City Beach, Florida, okay? And which was, you know, total difference from what I was usually doing. Used to going to the mountains, I went to, went to the beach, spent my summer working at a airbrush shop, painting, you know, with the it was art. So you would airbrush T shirts or airbrush license plates or things like that, okay, sounds like part of an outreach. No, no, no. We just had to have jobs while we were there. So during the school, during the week, we had a job, and then during the weekends, in the evenings, is when we did outreach, okay, okay. Then my junior year, I went on an overseas project to Germany, okay? And we camped that summer. No matter where we went, we were camping all summer long, and so we drove, and that was the summer after the wall fell. Oh, okay, so we were there when the Germanys united, so that was really cool. So I have pieces that we went to Berlin and I got to chop chip at the wall, pieces of the wall. I have an Eastern flag, an East Germany flag that one of the former students get, one of the students gave me, Wow. But so the first city we were in was Leipzig, and we were camping, and one night, while we were just hanging around the campsite, felt this rumbling and heard this rumbling, and we're like, what in the heck is that noise? Wow. So we walked up to the Main Street, and we saw the Russian tanks leaving. Oh, my goodness, East Germany. So we actually had to experience we saw all the money coming in and being changed from East German to German money. What a wild time to be there. Yeah. It was so cool, in fact. And so the last night that the East German money was could be used, we actually went to an underground bar and showed the Jesus film, and got to share the Jesus film with just boatloads of people, because they're spending their money trying to get rid of their East German money. It was, it was very cool. I'm I, I am privileged to be, you know, have been a part of all of that. And I just, I loved Germany. I loved the culture the summer after my senior year, but I went to Germany again. And so it was on July 4, we were having a party with the staff, the American staff that was there, and we just had a great night, great day, celebrating the Fourth of July. Course, we were the only ones having a party, because, for some reason, the Germans don't care about July 4, so we're just having a great time. And that night, I woke up in the middle of the night with just a whole bunch of back pain, I don't know, and long so long, long story short is I saw, we thought I was going to be seeing an American doctor. It was a German doctor. His English was fabulous, wow, until he got to the point where, so he's, I'm going to give you a shot, I'm going to give you some medicine, gonna give you some pills, and then I'm going to put you in a microwave. And I said, Okay, I'm not really great. I'm not like a fan of shots. I can handle the shots, pills. Okay, fine. You are not putting me into microwave. So apparently we are having a communication issue here, and we need to get this figured out, because you are not putting me in a microwave. So he leaves, and I'm rolling up my sleeve for my shot, and he's like, Oh no, you're getting a shot in the back. And I was like, oh, okay, I ended up getting six shots in my back. Oh, my goodness. And then he gave me these honking horse pills. They were huge that we were figured like, maybe 1000 800,000 milligrams of ibuprofen, maybe. And then he said, Okay, now the microwave. And I'm like, Okay, you show me what we're talking about. And it was just kind of a machine that shot microwaves out. Oh, weird. So I just sat on the stool, you know, and this, this machine was shooting things into me, and I'm going, Okay, God, you're in control of this. I hope this doesn't kill me. You know you're not supposed to, like, you know, like, look, stay close to a microwave. You know you're supposed to stay in the distance, because you're not supposed to get right whatever. God, you're in control. I'm I'm trusting you on this one here. And from that day on, I was flat on my back for the rest of the time. In Germany, I couldn't go out and share my faith. I hurt so bad. I did a lot of praying. I found a bookstore and was able to get some Calvin and Hobbes books to keep me company. I started getting traction treatment while I was there, okay, but the last day we were there, I was able to get up and go out and share my faith, and talked with a young lady who was just really struggling with her life. She was just at a point where she was just ripe, ripe and ready for the gospel, and we got to share it with her. And she accepted Christ with us at night that day. So God was just very sovereign in that. And so then after, after Germany, went back to school and graduated with my degree in psychology, and then had to go home and have back surgery. Oh, man, so I had, I call it spot a little less thesis, where one of my vertebrae was supposed out of alignment, and they said probably been out of alignment, probably since I was really young, maybe even nine,
  
  Seth Weber 10:59
  maybe when you fall off that bike. I
  
  Mitzi Peterson 11:02
  was a gymnast, and I could do things. I mean, I was really limber, and I could do things with your body. Your body's not meant to be in position. So
  
  Seth Weber 11:10
  tell me how you came to know Jesus in the first
  
  Mitzi Peterson 11:14
  place. So we lived in a neighborhood my parents, when they moved from Alabama, roll tide to North Carolina. They were looking for an area that they would raise their kids in, and they, you know, they would never move from, yeah. And so they found a house in Myers Park, which is the old, one of the oldest neighborhoods in North in Charlotte, and one of the most premier who so I grew up in a neighborhood with just a bunch of snobby people that I didn't get along with. I mean, we were not rich in any way, shape or form. My parents were both teachers. My mom made 99% of my clothes. We felt like country bumpkins. You know, living in this rich neighborhood junior high, I decided, You know what? I'm just gonna show my you know I'm gonna I'm gonna blossom, I'm gonna show who I am, show my personality and who cares about all these people that I go to school with, my mom allowed me to start picking my own material for clothes, my own patterns. Okay, so I had just some of the wildest clothes, and some of the people, some of the kids I went to school with, started talking about me behind my back and saying really mean things. And finally they started saying it to me and just telling me how stupid I looked and how I didn't fit in, and how there was no place for me in this world. And you hear it over and over again, and you can have a tendency to believe it, and so I did. I believed it, and one night, I took an overdose of pills, and it's truly by God's grace that I lived through it. So then one of my really good friends, I mean, I grew up in the church, but I never heard the gospel from the pulpit. I had heard it from our youth leader. But you know, when you aren't a believer, and you, even when you are and you get down in the dumps, you can sometimes not be able to look at the truth. And so she shared with me, my best friend shared with me again about Mitzi. God made you just the way you are. He knows every hair that's on your head. He gave you this personality. He gave you your everything about you. You are his. And so it was a result of her just talking with me and reminding me of who I am and who God is, that I pray to receive Christ when I was 13. So but even even now, as I'm a 55 year old woman and who has been a believer for almost 40 years, you can still hear Satan's lies, and you've got to have the truth. And so sometimes I know, as I've raised my children, and I work long hours on making this great meal, and my kids whine and complain and don't like it, and I can, I can start thinking, Oh, well, they don't like it. They don't like me. They don't I'm not a good cook. I'm I'm a nobody. And you know, you can go down that rabbit trail, then you have to find the truth, and you have to remember scripture, and you have to go, it doesn't matter what other people think the truth is, is that I'm a child of God, and he made me the way I am, and, gosh darn it, I have a good cook. Ain't that the truth? So the kids at camp Tell me, when your kids complain
  
  Seth Weber 14:33
  about food,
  
  Mitzi Peterson 14:36
  it's because they don't know anything about food. Your tastes are bad that I that's how I became a Christian. Well, thank
  
  Seth Weber 14:45
  you for sharing that. Yeah, did you end up going back to Germany with Campus Crusade?
  
  Mitzi Peterson 14:51
  I did not. I went home and I had my first back surgery. Okay? I started my master's in Christian education. I became the youth leader. I. At church and started volunteering with Youth for Christ. And the Youth for Christ leader asked if one of these bands that's associated with Youth for Christ could play at our church. So they came and they played. It was group called carpenters tools. As they came in, I was the contact person, of course. And this guy came in and I met him. His name was Jeff, and blah, blah, blah, I recognize that. No, I know. And so on, and so anyway, so I sat next to him at dinner. We served dinner for them. It happened to be spaghetti, okay? And I laughed the whole entire time. I sat next to him. I just thought he was the funniest guy and selling them some car problems I was having. He said he'd look at my car. He looked at my car, gave me some, you know, some ideas. So I talked to him, they left, and then I sent him a t shirt. I bought him a t shirt, Panthers t shirt, and sent him a note. I knew they were heading down to Florida, okay, and I had an address for him, and I just said, Thanks for looking at the car. I appreciate it. That was it. Yeah. A couple of weeks later, I got a t shirt, Germany t shirt from Epcot and a letter from Jeff. Oh, wow. So we started communicating back and forth through letters, just occasional Yeah, and then I had to have back surgery a second time. Oh, wow. And he called me. So this is the first time he called me. He called me the night before I had surgery. I laughed the whole entire time again, once again, while I was on the phone with him, he thought I found it later he thought I was crying. So, so I had my surgery. The next day, my mom stayed with me at the hospital. My dad left, then all of a sudden, my dad returns, and he's like, Well, you had some letters that you know I wanted you to have, yeah, and then I had a lot, a dozen long stem red roses from Jeff. I wanted my letters read to me, but I was doped up on morphine, so I couldn't read them. So I asked my mom if she would be willing to read them to me. The very first letter she opens because there were three letters from Jeff. Okay, the very first one was written on graphing paper and it was written in centrifugal like a spiral, yes. Oh, my mom was just so such a Jeff thing to do. My mom was so mad they were supposed to go back to their homes in June and do some fundraising for carpenters tools, because it was a nonprofit organization, they had to raise their own funds, like missionaries. And so he said, I'm not going to Spokane to fundraise. I'm going to go to Charlotte to fund raise, because he he never had a day off. He was constantly working on equipment or working on the RV. So in the meantime, he had people from the church that he had grown up in Hilliard Baptist. He had women from the church sending me long stem yellow roses, and he's sending me these letters, and I'm reading these letters to my pastor, and I'm trying not to read into anything. And he goes, Oh my gosh, missy, he's asking you to marry him. 11 roses had been sent. So I had decided in my brain that he was bringing the 12th rose and a ring. Uh huh. There was no rose when he got off the airplane, and there was no ring, and I was okay, but there's, there's something going to happen, yeah. So we stayed up all night, talking until like 3am and finally, like at 2am he just, he said, you know, he asked me. Said, will you marry me? And I said, Yes, and he goes, I did not plan this. I did not plan that I was gonna ask him gonna ask you to marry me. He goes. But I know you're the woman that God has brought to me. So the third time we had seen each other, we were engaged, wow. And three days later, we had our first date. Okay, but there was $3,000 worth of phone calls, because, remember, you had to pay for a long distance back then? Yeah, and that was me calling in from Charlotte at 11, when it was cheapest, and it was eight o'clock here. And it's not the way that we, you know, suggest most dating and marriages have. Is the way that God, God perfect perfectly, had it planned out for us. Yeah.
  
  Seth Weber 19:19
  So then how did you and Jeff end up here at Faith, Bible Church?
  
  Mitzi Peterson 19:23
  Okay, so we he grew up at Hilliard. He was he became a Christian at Hilliard Baptist. So when we got married, very godly man was preaching at the time, Doug Iverson, great guy. Doug Iverson left. They had another pastor come in, and basically, the church died. I mean, it was, it was dying, and Jeff didn't want to tear me away from the only family that I knew, because he felt like he had already done that once by bringing me here from Charlotte. Yeah. So he I did not unbeknownst to me. He was just praying that God would reveal to me that the that the church was dead and that we need. To leave, and he did. So we left, and we started looking at other churches. Now I knew Wendy Doherty from working with Wendy when, shortly after we got married, okay, and so I knew about faith. We visited a couple of churches, and then came back to Faith. Okay, so the first service, by the way, we went to John Smith was preaching, and he preached the whole book of Titus, wow, in one service. And we came out of John Smith, and we're like, what was that? What? But we still came back. So, like, I just
  
  Seth Weber 20:30
  had to pack a lot of information into a very short amount
  
  Mitzi Peterson 20:33
  of time. And yeah, exactly as much information as I can. We had only been coming a couple of a couple of weeks, and they had the member class, okay? And so we went to it, but Jeff and I had decided that we would talk about it and pray about it before we just, you know, before we actually signed membership. And Earl Dan and was our, our group guy, okay? And we went through the classes, and then we shared our testimony with Earl and Jeff signed the paper. And I'm like, What are you doing? Okay, I guess I'm supposed to sign the paper because I'm supposed to follow my husband. He's leaning following. So I signed the paper, and on the way home, I was like, Jeff, what you said? We talk about it. And he goes, Mitzi is the buy is the Bible? Preached from the pulpit. I said, Yes. He said, from what we have been told about, the children's ministry, is the Bible preached in the children's ministry, will they hear the Gospel? Yes. What else do we need to talk about? Okay, fine, so that's how we came to faith. Well,
  
  Seth Weber 21:35
  we're so glad that you did how we
  
  Mitzi Peterson 21:38
  are loving it here. How have you been involved in ministry over the years. That was a struggle for me at first, because Jeff is he knew his place immediately. It was worship, right team, while it was music ministry, yeah, and I did. I even though I sang and I led worship at Hilliard, that just wasn't where I felt led. And then also I had just had just had Seth. He was three months old when we started attending. I got involved in women's ministry stuff. Some I did the Titus two class, okay? And then I did I got involved in mops. I was a table leader, and then I became the leader of all the tables. Then steps down because we adopted autumn, or we had thought we were fostering autumn, and it just became too much for me. And I did some interpreting when we had a deaf lady here. And then I have done some signing of songs up in worship on the worship team. So I guess I have become a part of worship ministry, which is
  
  Seth Weber 22:43
  awesome. I will say, just as someone with a deaf daughter, that's such a blessing to have that in the church, we love it.
  
  Mitzi Peterson 22:50
  I love that I have that gift. I'm so cool. Very thankful for it. Now I am involved in nursery. I hold babies. Gonna
  
  Seth Weber 23:00
  hold my baby. I do. Don't hold
  
  Mitzi Peterson 23:03
  Louis. And any of you lovely young moms who have babies, please bring them first hour. We love holding babies. We got a great group of women who are in there that just want to minister to you guys. And then so for the past, I guess this is going on year three, I've been cooking for youth camps. Okay, I started this year cooking for college retreat also, and then I am also. I went through the Aspire, I guess I'm, I guess still going through it. I mean, because we just started leading the aspiring women's program, learning how to study the Bible and write our own Bible lessons and learning to handle God's word correctly. Wow, that's awesome. It's a big challenge. I told Jeff, my biggest anxiety of it is making sure that I am treating God's word correctly. Yeah,
  
  Seth Weber 23:58
  that's a big deal. Well, what has God been teaching you lately? I
  
  Mitzi Peterson 24:02
  think foremost that God has been teaching me that there is a season. God gives us seasons to do things. And when I struggled for a while with not knowing what what ministry to be involved in, God just gave me a piece about my season at that point was ministering to my family. That is a ministry? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that us moms sometimes don't see that. I think we look at ministry has to be within the church, something that is in within the church, and it is within the church because you are raising little ones. Yeah, up so and then, and now that my kids are older, I have that time to get involved in a deeper ministry that takes a whole lot of more time. And it's God's perfect timing, because, unfortunately. Like Jeff is out of town most of the week. He's working in Seattle at this time, and so when I'm spending 20 weeks, 20 hours a week or more on my lesson, I don't feel guilty that I'm taking time away from Jeff, sure, because he's not there. Yeah. I mean, I would love him to be there, but once again, it's God's perfect timing and being thankful for the things that we have. Yeah, yeah. So I think that's really kind of what God's been teaching me, is just that Be patient and know that maybe it's not your season to do something. So
  
  Seth Weber 25:38
  how can we be praying for you right now? Just prayer
  
  Mitzi Peterson 25:40
  that I prayers that we will do well at home while he is away, Autumn merely struggles with him being away. Be patient on God's season. If it's not his season to be here and he has to do something else and go away, you know, be thankful for whatever that reason is Yeah, and then just leading this Bible study. I've led Bible studies before. I've been a table leader many, many times before, but this is we wrote this. This is, this is our work. It's another whole level. It's yeah, it is, and that I that in leading this that, just that I can grow our ladies together, to love one another, to care for one another, and that that especially my week to lead is the sixth, the sixth lesson. So that comes into February. Okay, just that I'll have the closing 1520 minutes and that I will just wrap up my lesson well, and just that, that I will treat God's word
  
  Seth Weber 26:52
  well. Are you ready for the speed round?
  
  Mitzi Peterson 26:55
  I'm so ready. Bring it on. Well, guys, Alabama, you
  
  Seth Weber 27:06
  cats or dogs. Dogs all
  
  Mitzi Peterson 27:07
  the way, although we have a dog that acts like a cat.
  
  Seth Weber 27:12
  Dakota, nice, pineapple on pizza. Oh,
  
  Mitzi Peterson 27:14
  heavens no. Do you have any pets? Yes, we have two dogs. Favorite
  
  Seth Weber 27:19
  book besides the Bible, oh, the Illuminati. Favorite band. If I
  
  Mitzi Peterson 27:24
  don't say this, I'm in trouble, trailer
  
  Seth Weber 27:26
  park girls. Oh, trailer park girls, for sure, for sure.
  
  Mitzi Peterson 27:30
  Yeah, but actually, they're not playing anymore. So favorite, favorite current band. Favorite current band would probably be, I love third day. Third day, nice if you're talking non Christian. Love REM love the 80s favorite movie or TV show. Oh, my goodness, I love all the football movies. But I would really, I probably say my favorite of all time is steel night. Steel
  
  Seth Weber 27:53
  Magnolias. Best surprise gift you've ever gotten, Jeff asking me to marry him. If you didn't have to sleep, what would you do with all the extra time,
  
  Mitzi Peterson 28:01
  if I had my perfect body back, I'd be playing sports. I've had 12 surgeries in my lifetime back, no, no in my lifetime, shoulder, knees, toes, you know what? Maybe I think with all of my time, my spare time, and that would require me to be diligent and not looking at my phone, would be writing letters to people
  
  Seth Weber 28:25
  favorite place to eat out in Spokane. We love
  
  Mitzi Peterson 28:29
  Thai bamboo along with the cool ceiling. Yeah, yes, very cool ceiling. Well, thank
  
  Seth Weber 28:36
  you so much for joining us, Mitzi, you're so welcome. Faith, Bible, church, Mitzi is Someone that you should know.

Seth Weber

Seth is the Communications Director at Faith Bible Church and loves anything to do with design, video, audio and tech. He and his wife Kaitlyn have four children.

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