Off to the Fair

Hey everyone, hope you all had a great week this week! 

I am gonna try and get this quick email out here because today we are going off to the Minnesota State fair. The huge one they put on every year, so I wont have much time to email, but I am gonna type fast and get you as much off as I can.


So starting off the week we did our weekly service at a Food-shelf up in Alexandria, and a truck that comes with a bunch of food came that day, it comes once every few months. So we helped unload load after load of canned goods and rice and all sorts of foods. So we got a second workout that day and helped out there. Its always super fun to do service and just get down and work, become a part of the community and make a difference in peoples lives that way. It is an awesome way to get to know people as well as reach into their hearts and help them feel of God's love for them.


So the next day we had the zone leaders down in our area for exchanges for the day. They are officially the first English missionaries to have made their way down to Morris and see our apartment and participate in the work there for the day. I got to be with my new companion Elder Pugh along with one of the zone leaders named Elder Murphy.  He was also my zone leader for a little while back in Lakeville, so me and him have a good time together, and we got to have a switch up for the day. So us 3 went out and got to work. We got to do some good ol finding and Elder Pugh got his first tracting in. Elder Johnson isn't so keen on going finding or tracting, so it was super nice to be able to do some of that work and get the area building up, because nothing happens as a missionary until you have people to teach. So I got the chance to take Elder Pugh to tract some of his first doors, and he got plenty of his first rejections of the mission. Its not the easiest or most fun way to do missionary work, but we ended up the day with someone new to teach, Diana from Nicaragua, and so we will hope that goes well and are excited to have someone else to work with!


Now to keep up with the craziness of the work, we had zone conference this week as well. So we had to drive on down and do that trip and stayed with the zone leaders a second night, but this time in their apartment. Its always weird to see a bunch of missionaries and all that after being so far away from all them. You get to see people and how much weight they have put on since you have last seen them haha. But zone conference was good, Sister Barney our mission presidents wife threw down on peoples' cars and apartments for not being clean, and thank goodness for that, there are way too many missionaries who just like don't know what the term cleaning means, so I hope that this will lead to less having to deep clean apartments when I first get there, so Sister Barney is the MVP of the conference.


Also we got in with a guy that we have worked with for a while this week! His name is Dangel and he used to have a date set and we would see him at church all the time, but he started a second job on Sundays and it all just went downhill and to us he fell off the face of the earth. But since he lives close by we have continued stopping by and this week it paid off! We got in and had the chance to catch up and hopefully we can have some more consistent lessons with him again, so that was exciting and nice to have that contact again, so this next week hopefully all goes well with him too!


Also we have invented a game here where we mix soccer and tennis and have been playing that sometimes for exercise time and just making it fun, and so far I have been the reigning champ here in Morris, so if anyone is wanting to take up a new sport when I am home, I can show you the ways.


So that has been our week, nothing super crazy, but keeping on doing the work. Today should be a blast and maybe will lead to some more pictures this week. There is just not near as much to take pictures of out here in the middle of nowhere. But enjoy this picture of a baby bird that hopped up onto Elder Pugh's shoe and he got to enjoy the experience of being a Disney princess for a minute.


Love you all and hope you are all doing great!


Elder Pickering