Feliz Año Nuevo!

Ice carving . . .

Ryan is still plugging along this week.  He is surviving the cold even on his bike and doing his best to work hard.  I felt like a winner this week when I received a mother lode of pictures.  Ryan explains in his email to me the reason for so many, and I am not complaining.  It is important for missionaries to find ways to break up the monotony of the days.  If looking for murals helps him continue working faithfully then I am all for it.  Plus I love the pictures!!

A small portion of my email:

Hey Mom, I am glad you have enjoyed all the pictures, I figured you would. And maybe that helps make up for my lame emails as of late.  Hopefully they have given you some laughs and smiles and all that fun stuff through the week.  All the pictures of the murals are all throughout the city.  They are everywhere, so me and the other Elders in my apartment decided to start something.  Our apartment complex is called The Murals, so we are all going to take pictures of any murals we see and then cover the wall with all our pictures of us and the murals. We will make it a tradition for future missionaries and we think it would be pretty sick.  And, hey you benefit too from all the pictures you will get out of it! Yeah that habenero pepper was something else, it was crazy hot.  But I feel like I handled it pretty well over all.  Everyone else was freaking out and dying and like going crazy, but I was fine in like a few minutes and was just chillin like a villin. 

Group Email:

Bienvenidos a la email de grupo de Elder Pickering. Si no los quiere estés emails.. los siento, todavía van a recibirlos. 

Hello everyone, don't worry, I survived another week here as a missionary in the Minnesota Mission.  

So the start of this week was new years, and some of our members invited us over to this little like small house thing they rented out for a party with a bunch of other ward members for New Years.  It was way fun, they had some ceviche and lots of other yummy yummy food.  It is so fun to have some people to be with to celebrate the holidays as a missionary.  We also got really introduced to being a true hispanic at the party, because they brought out some habanero peppers for all of us to try.  Its a tradition for all the missionaries here to eat one.  (Video will not be included, but my mom has it if you are so curious to see how I handled it like a boss)  But yeah, that gained me some respect for hot peppers, and then I really feel like I just lived it up on New Years Eve as much as you can as a missionary who has to still be home at 9:30. 

We also got introduced to another Hispanic tradition yesterday that was a lot of fun.  Its the Roscas de Reyes.  Basically they get together for a nice meal and to be all together, so already this was great for us.  Then they have this big like ''O'' shaped cake/sweetbread and you all take turns cutting your piece out that you want to eat.  And hidden inside of  this cake are a bunch of little plastic babies, in ours there were 7.  And basically if you uncover one of these babies or have one in your piece, you are responsible for bringing food for the next party get together that is held on Feb. 2nd.  And I was lucky enough to not get a baby!  So I get to just partake in the food without the effort twice!  There were a total of 4 missionaries that did get babies, so this will be an interesting next meal that is for sure. 

We had a really on fire lesson with our most progressing people this week.  The spirit was so strong and we were able to relay the importance of all that they need to be doing and hopefully kind of start a fire in them that drives them to do more and more.  We also started teaching them English because they have only been in the states for like 4 months and want to learn.  So I got the pleasure of becoming the teacher this last Wednesday and will now get to do that every week.  It definitely helps me feel better about my language when I remember what it is like starting completely fresh off in a language.  So that is a good opportunity to serve them and help follow up with them through the week and remind them of all they should be doing. 

Man, it was the first week of 2 hour church, and it was weird.  It went so fast, but really was good.  And I bet missionaries all over are excited to tell investigators that now we only have 2 hours and it will sound a lot easier to swallow for all those we are teaching. I just want to encourage you all to really go along with this new program and do all you can to get the most out of it!  Do your studies and your prep work and you will see the blessings that come from this inspired program.  It was given to us in this time and this age for some reason or another, it is just up to you all to find why and find your purpose in it.

I hope you all have a great week this week! Love you all!

Elder Pickering