A Year Out

Hey everyone!

I am back after a week and a half since last p-day, so its been a while.  A ton has happened here, lots of blessings and  miracles and more than I am able to write here in my email, but I'll see if I can catch you all up on some of the crazy!

So between last p-day I ended up being on 3 different exchanges. One with the zone leaders in our area and then the two others with Elders from my district.  For two of the three exchanges I got to stay back in my own area and just stick with my Hispanic people. I got to show them what its like to walk up to a guy on the porch and have him go cut up some watermelon for us and pull his couch cushions to put on our chairs outside and just talk to us and be super genuinely nice. Its always fun to bring people to a Spanish area, they are definitely super lost for a lot of the exchange, but the people always will practice some of their English they have to tell them that they will learn Spanish quickly, and most of them don't have the heart to tell the people they wont actually be learning Spanish. But none the less, there are just some great people that I get to work with and it makes the work a lot easier. Notice I said easier, not easy. As members our work will never be easy, we have lots of work to do.

So a quick update on Patty who I talked about a while back, so we stopped by her work this last week and she was there, so after her dropping of the map for like 3 weeks we finally got contact, and it went good, but then later on in the week we called to see how she was doing, and she didn't answer, then her cousin called back on her phone and told us how she didn't want us to keep bugging her or go over and teach and basically to leave her alone, so that was a sad day, but the work goes on. As missionaries its better to know straight up if someone is not interested that way we don't have to spend a bunch of time trying to get some way of contact.

Also another cool thing that happened this week, is I hit my one year out in the field! That is super crazy, the time as a missionary is all over the place, days can be weeks and weeks can be days, and next thing you know you are at a year and it all just goes so fast. So Ill include some pictures of a burning shirt for all you.

So like I said, we were super busy this week, we taught lots of lessons and found lots of new people, and so I cant really update you on them all, but I will share a couple of the blessings we had this week.

So first off at church we ended up getting 2 people to come! It has been insanely hard on my mission to get anyone at church, but then to have 2 come on one week was such a miracle for us to see, and not only that, but that day in our little branch it was like everyone decide to come! We had tons of inactive members there and a our investigators as well as the Hermanas in our branch had 2 as well, so the whole Sunday we had a very full meeting and it was super cool to see the blessings and the fruits of some of our hard week with tons of the people down here in Lakeville.

We had a super super solid couple of lessons with this couple here in our area this week.  So on Saturday we stopped by and just the mom was home, and we had our branch president was with us because he wanted to meet them.  So we had a lesson with just her since her husband was still working, but we talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and how it could help her in her life and with all her kids and the importance of gospel and peace in her life, how this could help her. That was such a good lesson with her, you could just tell she was actively engaged and asking questions and was intrigued by every thing we had to say, so that was a blessing in and of itself just to have a solid lesson and see how she just loved the message. And then the next day we were in the area and caught her husband outside just cleaning up some tools and fixing some, so we just popped over there and talked and helped, then he ended up clearing his truck bed and we all just sat and talked.  He shared a story with us that lines up almost perfectly with that of the Good Samaritan and so that was super cool and an amazing testimony that he has, so we hope to be able to continue working with this amazing family together!

Finally we had 2 lessons with this kid named Gotti, he has not been baptized, he is 13 now and so we have been working with him, their family is new in the area. His mom at first has been a little hesitant with his baptism not knowing if he would be "ready" but this last lesson we brought up the idea and they both said they wanted to set a date! So they decided on July 20th, so we are going through with it that day and they plan to have a pachanga after that with food and it should just be a great time, he is such an awesome kid and so ready and excited to be baptized.

So there  is my week and a half everyone, really busy, but because we gave our all and because of that, God sanctified our efforts and made them more effective than they ever could have been on our own. So learn to rely on God, he has promised us that He will help, but first we have to give Him our all and our trust, then we will see the miracles!

Love you all, have a great 4th of July!

Elder Pickering

4th of July Service car wash

1 Year!!!