Man Eating Bugs!

Ryan was there in "Spirit" for Gotti's baptism and by phone!!

Hey everyone!

Second week down here in Morris and things are still going well.  We officially got to be able to move into Morris so we don't have to make the hour drive back and forth from Alexandria anytime we go to Morris anymore.  So that is a plus and we get a new apartment, so new stuff and a clean place. The only downside being that the cupboards are all clean too as of right now.  The nice thing about the moving in was two of the senior Elder Missionaries from the office came to bring us all our stuff, and then after we went on to Pizza Ranch, which is like a pizza buffet and ate our weight in pizza. They are both awesome people. Elder Gadd goes home in just a few weeks here and that will be super sad. He and his wife have been here since my salmonella days and just are the nicest people you will ever meet, but I guess we need to share them with their grand kids again.

Church was good this week, we had about 15 people total this week including us.  There is this English family that lives real close to where we meet as a branch, the dad speaks some Spanish, so they thought they would come check it out for a week, so we appreciated having them there. And as anticipated, Elder Johnson got asked to give a talk, and after we ended, the surprise lesson was thrown on me, got to love being a missionary in a small branch, they really are awesome.

Also as a side note, there are like these just massive bugs here in Morris. (And I don't want to hear any complaining about yall out in other countries) For Minnesota these things are massive, we are just expecting that pretty soon they will be big enough that people are walking them around like dogs on leashes.

So the work in Morris is really going well. This week we worked on building up our pool of people to teach and start working with people, so we found some people, taught some lessons and got things started, so hopefully in the coming weeks, more on the people that we get to work with.

We also had zone conference this week which was good.  Given that we are literally so far away from everyone, it took a total of 3 hours driving both ways to even get there.  So we stayed the night up closer with the zone leaders just so we didn't have to hit a 6 hour driving day, zone conference is enough sitting as it is. So zone conference was good, we were really grateful to be inside during the 116 degree weather that we were having that day outside. That is just crazy to me, on my mission we have a temperature range of almost 200 degrees, always keeps you on your toes.  

One of the things that I really liked during zone conference was something our President shared in his training.  He talked about the atonement that our Savior went through, but gave it to us in a different light.  First think about any covenant that we make with our Heavenly Father, whether for ourselves or vicariously.  Now every covenant we make is made individually, its not done in a big batch, each person either does everything for themselves or one person for one person that has passed. Everything is individual in the covenants and designs of the church in that way.  Now we are going to think about the greatest vicarious ordinance that has ever been performed, that being the atonement of our Savior.  Our president explained, that if all other ordinances and actions performed are down individually, why would we think this was done any differently? Now take that as food for thought.  

Obviously there is not way that our human brains can imagine or figure out how that would work, how He individual suffered and paid for all of our sins and trails, but if its done like any other ordinance, why wouldn't the Savior have taken time to pay and take upon him your sins and trials, at one point in time in that garden.  That being said, just imagine when we get to reunite with our brother Jesus Christ once again, I can only imagine that the embrace as He pulls us in, having suffered for every single thing that you will deal with in your life, that will be a moment of the pure love of our Savior and God, and then, we might understand and be able to try and understand all he went through in that Garden.

Well I love you all, hope you have a great week and remember the love that our Savior has for you all!

Elder Pickering

Also the kid I was working with in Lakeville got baptized this week! Yay for Gotti!!