Happy Halloween!!

Hey everybody!

So first off Happy Halloween! Hope you all have a good day today, and eat a lot of candy, but not too much candy! 

So for those of my fans that were just feeling so lost without that weekly Monday email from me, here it is, our p-day got changed to Halloween that way we are not trying to go around and bugging people on their holiday and confusing them why we are knocking at their door.

So I'll just kind of explain some of the big things that happened this week since it was a lot of time to try and cover in one email. So first off, this week I hit 16 months in the mission. So that was super crazy, the time just keeps on flying by whether I want it to or not. It is crazy to think that I am one of the older missionaries out here now.  Also it has gotten quite cold here these past few days and it got me a bit sick for the last couple days, but we just pushed and worked on through it, that is about all you can do as a missionary and I am on the uphill now!

So towards the beginning of the week we finished helping move the one lady that I talked about in my email last time. Thankfully we had some help with the zone leaders here since they were with us for exchanges when we did that.  Her new basement apartment smells like an animal died in it, so we exercised our lungs as we would take a deep breath outside, and then try not to breath until we returned back, and somehow we all made it alive! If that is the reason I got sick or not, who knows, solo Dios sabe. 

We also got to have interviews with our Mission President this last week.  Which means we also got to have a district council in person rather than over Facebook which is always a fun time. We got a good little district out in this middle of nowhere part of Minnesota.  Also in interviews and talking with my pres, it sounds like he will be letting me stay another transfer out here in Morris, there is still 3 weeks to transfers, but it sounds like I got another 5 weeks after that as well, so that will keep up my pattern of 6 months in all my areas of the mission so far.

Another fun thing this week, which will include some pictures, is that we made a bunch of Halloween cookies for our branch! We delivered two plates to every family and invited them to share the other plate with another family and participate in sharing the gospel in a simple way such as sharing love and being a light to others.

And the last little update of some of our people, we had a few solid lessons with some of our people here.  We have this guy Samuel we have been working with lately, his family is still down in Mexico and a lot of his wife's family is members of the church! So he has somewhat of a history in seeing the church in his life! He has been progressing bit by bit and is such an awesome guy. He has put baptism as a goal for himself and so hopefully we can help him work towards that! Also this lady named Angela this week we kind of re-tracted into. She used to live in this house with another family that we work with, but unfortunately the previous missionaries never made her the focus. Well apparently she moved out, and now as we are knocking an apartment building, guess who answers, it was super weird and caught me off guard, but then we had just a super solid lesson with her! We have lots of hope for these two wonderful people!

And there you have it you got to partake of some of the best parts of the week here, we are having a good time and working hard as usual, that way we get to participate in all the blessings the Lord has in store for us!

Love you all and have a great Halloween!

Elder Pickering

We are Part of a Drug Cartel??

Hey everyone! 

This week was a good week here, we got tons of work done and saw some really sweet blessings! I am not going to try and explain every little thing day by day, I don't want to bore you with all the little details.


So we will get right into it here!


So for our good ol Salvation Army service adventures this week, I know its been a while since you have heard one from there. We had to help make a little cabinet thing to hold pictures, but the only material and all we had to work with was a wooden filing cabinet. So we had to take it kind of apart, use pieces we broke off from it, and make a nice ghetto little picture frame holder. Needless to say, we killed it, if you are going for ghetto. At this point we still dont even know if they are just going for the ghetto look or that is just how it ends up, either way it leads to some stories for you guys in the email. Now I know you are all done reading since the Salvation Army story is done, but don't worry, more crazy things happened this week!


Now the real stories all come from Saturday, man it was quite a day. So we had some lessons set up that went through from the very beginning of the morning! We finished our study and got right into a lesson pretty much, and turns out on Saturday we had a total of 4 lessons, which may not seem like a ton, but for our new area and working on building a teaching pool, it can be a challenge.  So that was just a killer day for us to be that busy, more details on the craziest lesson to come. 

So also in between lessons we went to help this lady move from one apartment to another one across town. So we met this lady knocking apartments and she answered her son's door and basically we talked and gave her our card and told her to call if she ever needed anything. Well given the fact that we are helping her move, she needed help and called. So immediately we get in and her apartment was just a nightmare. We realized that a whole TV show type remodeling would be needed and we were in for it. So that is all chill, but then she tells us about her son who has a drug problem and all her life issues, basically blaming it all on other people. But in packing up some of her house, we realized that for sure there isn't just one drug problem in the family... We are sure that plenty of "good times' with substance and drug use goes down in that house. Also given that every box we had to pack stuff was an alcohol box, it was kind of sad. But basically we are pretty sure by helping her move and pack up and whatnot, we may or may not have helped with like the biggest drug trafficking here in Morris... I got to say, I figured that if I would ever be accidentally helping move drugs it would be with some like high end mob boss or Mexican mafia type deal, but nope, just some old lady with a evil little dog.


Now that was just the beginning of the crazy that was Saturday. We had a lesson set up for the end of the night and it was for this new family so we were super excited to get in and get to know them. So we are talking to this couple and it is going super well, we are hitting it off and they are a super awesome family, but then it begins. This lady's brother walks in, he is maybe late 20s, but immediately starts telling us that we are wrong and trying to bash us and tell us we don't know our doctrine and just lots of silly stuff to say. So basically he is giving it all and Satan is working real hard to take the spirit out of the room, and he was doing a good job and we could not get a single word in, and it was a wreck. So I was just looking for any spirit to lead me in what to do, and what hit me was that I needed to do something bold. I thought about it, thought it was pretty crazy, but we went for it. When I was finally able to get a word in, I pretty much just said that I wanted us to kneel and pray. We would all kneel there and pray for the spirit. If during or after the prayer they didn't feel anything at all, then we would walk out of their house without anymore questions or anything. But if they felt even a particle of faith or spirit working in them, then there was a reason, a God given reason for us being in their home. So we prayed, I followed the spirit in this prayer and the feeling in the room was incredible. There was a spiritual behemoth that had entered the room and we knew everyone could feel it. The brother who had continued and would not let us get a word in before, could not say another word against us while we were there that night. He was purely docile with some subtle tears in his eyes. And we talked and we set up a time to come back next week, there was a reason for us being there.


Now whether they choose to follow their feelings of the spirit or not, there is some good lessons to be learned here. One being, if we feel even that particle of faith or hope of the spirit, it is then on us. There is a reason for that particle of the spirit, and if its a good feeling, then it must come from God, there is no other option. And second, brothers and sisters, sometimes we need to be bold. When the spirit works upon us in such a way that we know what we need to do, then we need to follow that prompting at all costs. We need to be bold and go out of our comfort zone, because guess what, when you are on God's side you cannot lose, but nevertheless, we are in a battle, well more like a war. The war between God and righteousness and Satan and sin is real, and every single one of us is not only enlisted in that fight, but we are on the front lines, and if we chose to ignore those promptings, we may lose a crucial battle and lose space in our hearts, or the opportunity to save one of our brothers and sisters. 

So when it comes to the battle against Satan and sin, BE BOLD!


I love you all and hope you have wonderful weeks!


Elder Pickering

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Hey everyone! 

So this week was a super solid week! We had some super cool blessings and whatnot, so I'll kind of give you the highlights of the week, I wouldn't want to bore you all.

So one day this week we decided to go out to a neighboring town to do some finding, so we figured that we would bike on out to save some miles and enjoy the last little bit of good weather at the beginning of the week.  So it is about a 10 mile ride to this neighbor city, and Elder Pugh was so hyped to get on the bike and feel like a real missionary as he said.  So we get going, and lets just say 4 breaks later and his wobbly legs we finally made it haha.  He realized biking isn't always just super easy, but we made it and got some good finding in. He knocked on all the nice peoples' doors and the Hispanics, and I just so happened to get all the angry old ladies, "devil worshipers", and naked people answering the doors, so that was something else. But overall we got some return appointments and had some good success and enjoyed the weather while we could.

Another cool miracle this week is we got this referral, but we had not been able to get good contact with him because of the situation, but we got a call last minute from his mom saying they are in town, and that she is a recent convert herself. So we were able to establish contact and get a plan to work with him and we are excited to see his progress!

Also we had zone conference this week as well, nothing super crazy there.  We got some flu shots while we were there. And I had to give a training seminar. I figured I would slip under the radar my whole mission, but that did not work out, but the training went well and hopefully people learned from it.

So we also had another day of mainly all finding on Saturday, and we actually had lots of success, we got tons of return appointments, and were able to find our Hispanics out here in Morris! So the work here is growing.  Its taken some time and some hard work, but we are able to see Gods hand every step of the way.  He loves us and would do anything to bless us and all of His children.  As missionaries we are just lucky to take part in that first hand and help build His church on the earth.

Also the reason for the title of the email, we have had our first snow, so even earlier than last week, gotta love it!

Love you all!

Elder Pickering

"Our trios down to two" Round 2

Hey everybody! 

Things are still going strong out here in Morris and like the subject says we had transfers this last week and once again our trio is down to two.  So I get the chance to work with Elder Pugh still and finish his training out here which I am super excited for and we should have a good transfer here coming up!

So to start off the week we ended up dropping Elder Johnson off a little bit early and so we were down there in the cities on Monday and Tuesday.  Tuesday we had the chance to go down to Lakeville and do the service there that I did for 6 months.  It was super fun to go see everyone  and just have that again. I also got to see Elder Hulse, my last trainee, and he actually got transferred and will now be the closest Elders to where we are, so our adventures will just have to continue! 

Then Wednesday we got to go do service at a food shelf in Alex which we do about every week, and it turned out to be super busy that day and a bunch of random food came in.  It actually turned out to be a huge blessing because we got to get a lot of food from there, and for conference I had committed to bring some sweet pork and sauce. So many of the ingredients that I needed came into the food-shelf, so a small tender mercy, but the Lord is aware of the small details of your life.

Kind of random also, but we also set up a branch group on Facebook here in Morris, and its just super cool how technology can influence and grow the church and work at an increasing rate. Don.t be afraid of your tools, but use them!

Also its official that we are going to be in the local newspaper here this next week! We will be getting interviewed and then put in. The people at the food-shelf here in Morris think we are so cool that we would just leave our families and learn another language to spread God's word that they arranged for it all, so super cool and they think we need more publicity!

And the rest of the interesting weekly stuff fell into watching general conference! We had the awesome chance to listen to our Prophet and Apostles and hear the words of our Savior through their talks.  We got to watch the Saturday session with an English family here and we ate lots of food and cuddled with their Dogs and got spiritually uplifted, so all around win. And then when we watched it with the branch between the sessions we did a little potluck thing and got to talk and eat and grow as a branch, so lots of good things going on here.

So this weeks email wasn't all too interesting, a lot of just getting all ready for the transfer and getting some stuff done, but good things to come this transfer!

Love You All,
Elder Pickering