ONE YEAR!!!! That is correct, Ryan has officially been Elder Pickering for one year. And what a year it has been. So many highs and lows, so many trials and blessings, so much growth and tender mercies. In some ways I have felt every minute that he has been gone. And yet, in others it has flown by as I have watched my son become a man and better person than he was before. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
He recently shared this letter with his Grandfather to read at our family reunion. It is beautiful and sums up his feelings so well. So I will share it here as well:
Hey Everyone from up North in Minnesota. It is a little sad that I won't be down there at Bear Lake for the reunion this year. That has always been something of good memories while growing up, something that I always look forward to attending. So I hope you all have a great time there, with minimal brownies stolen this year, haha. (A long time inside family joke).
So the work here in Minnesota is going super good. I am enjoying the work and am happy to be here. It wasn't always like that though. As I am sure many can attest to, the mission is one of the hardest things to do. You have to leave all you have and go to a new place with new people. You live with someone random 24/7 and you are kind of just thrown in to it all. And as much as you wish, missionaries are not just these perfect beings. We struggle, have hard times, and have times of less work. But something that I have learned here is that the amount of success, the amount of happiness, and the peace and joy you find, is all up to you. I have really been able to lose myself here in Minnesota, and as I do my best to just forget my selfish desires and work on why I am here, those are the best days.
We get the opportunity as missionaries to go out and spread the blessings of the Gospel that we partake of every day, and that is something special. When we really take note of what we have and the infinite amount of love that the Lord has for each one of His children, it gives us more desire as missionaries, but also as members, to share what we have. We are part of a very special day and age with the restored gospel on the earth again, and I feel very blessed to take part first hand in the gathering of scattered Israel, and help everyone get the chance to hear this gospel.
Love you all,
Elder Pickering
Group Email for the week:
Hey everyone!
Back from another full week here in Minnesota, the work here right now is really just going well and we are loving it down here in Lakeville!
So I got to go on another exchange this week, pretty much my life now here is just exchanges and going to new areas and with new companions one day at a time haha, but it was good. This was the first exchange this transfer where I actually got to stay in my own area and have Elder Hulse go experience English work. Needless to say when he came back after that, he was just that much more grateful to be in our area and be working with our Hispanics, they are just a people that we love!
We also had zone conference this last week, and man those meetings can go so long sometimes, we had to be there at 9 in the morning, and we didn't get out until 4:30, so lots of training and learning there. We had someone come to give us kind of a reminder on our driving because our mission just has some learning to be had in driving. So he came here and just called people out and just really helped and reminded everyone about their driving, and don't you worry, I got out of there unscathed.
We also helped this family move this week. It is a family that we found from our weekly service and they just expressed worry for their moving, so we offered to help, and Elder Hulse and I pretty much killed it! So the amount of furniture and dressers they had was just incredible, and they only had 1 U-haul truck, but we put together any tetris skills that was there between us two, and we got everything that they had in the truck. From multiple tries, to stacking to squeezing, we made it work, and when they came out because they were going to go get another truck, we pretty much blew them away. But man the humidity has started here, so we killed it, but we felt it heat wise as well. But yeah if anyone is ever looking for two strapping young men that can tetris a U-haul truck like no other, I know some guys.
So the pictures you are going to see attached are from our pachanga of a dinner appointment we had here. So we showed up to this house, and we see them around the side of the house, and so we go on out with them. They had the massive umbrellas set up with tiki torches and the grill was all fired up and so already we were just off to a good start. Then while the food was cooking, they told us the tramp was set up now, and they had set it up for us, so they got a kick of us in our white shirts and all jumping around on a tramp. And then after dinner, he pulls out these bows and arrows that he just got and wanted to try out with us. We asked him, like where are we supposed to shoot, and he just pointed to this tree behind the house. Sadly, none of us are quite Robin Hood, but we hit the tree a couple times, and went searching through the forest way more times for the arrows, but that was such a fun dinner.
Okay, now for the reason you all read, the cool experiences that happened. So last week, I don't even remember if I wrote about it, but we moved this china cabinet for this member. We were picking it up from just a random person in our area, and we talked and they were just nice people and invited us to dinner before they move, so this week we had that dinner. It was us and our Zls in this area, and we went and had a barbecue outside. It was them and a couple of their neighbors, they were just having a fiesta and we all talked and they were awesome people. They are all just good friends in this little part of the street and its awesome. We ended up sharing a quick like 5 minute Restoration lesson with them and bore testimony afterwards, and at the end, multiple of them agreed to have missionaries come and meet with them in the future or arrange times to meet. Although it wont affect us because they aren't Hispanic, I was able to meet my first just genuinely Minnesota nice people.
This week we were also to have a few super solid lessons! There was this one lady, Sandra that we were planning on dropping, because during the last lesson we had she was like napping and not engaged or really careing. But we went in and had just a do or die lesson and the spirit was strong, and she ended up sharing a lot about whats going on in her life and it was super solid. She didn't want to set up another return appointment just yet, but you could tell that she had felt something different. And right after that we thought we should stop by this lady we had lost contact for a while because her work schedule had just changed and made it hard. But she was home! She expressed having baptism as a goal and wanting to work towards that in time and then she ended up feeding us after and then setting up 3 return appointments just then. That was a super blessing of the right time and just stopping by that day, and then watching as the spirit worked in her throughout the lesson. And finally we had a lesson with this lady and her son, the son was 14 years old and so we related him to Joseph Smith, he only spoke English and his mom only spoke Spanish, so it was like a super fun Spanglish lesson and the kid seemed super interested. He was engaged and answering and super excited to get his own Book of Mormon, so we saw some super miracles as we worked and then the Lord and the Spirit worked through us.
Well hey love you all, hope you enjoy that record length email, talk later!
Elder Pickering
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