Dia De Los Muertos

Hey everyone!

So I know I am back already after just a quick couple days since the last time I talked to you all, but these couple days have been pretty packed with some good things.  So this email may be a little shorter, but it will give you something to read.

So starting off, Friday was a pretty normal day for the most part, the best part really came later on in the day.  So we were going to eat with our Branch President and his wife that day, as we usually do with them on Fridays, but this week they had to head down to the cities. So they weren't going to be able to feed us and so the Hermana was pretty worried about how we were going to eat. So she called up her friend who is not a member and asked if she would have us over and feed us! We had talked to their family in the past, but work schedules made it hard to keep good contact with them. But we walked on over there and we were able to talk to the husband for the first time more than just at the doorstep, and as well as talk to his dad! We got to eat and pretty much all the time we could ever want to just get to know them and have them see that we aren,t just robots, but actually semi cool people. So it turns out that the father wants to get to know our church and now we will be going back to eat there more consistently! So it will be a good way to help them progress! And then they even had compassion on us and  drove us home to get our car since it had started snowing while we ate and left about an inch or so on the ground at the time.

So then on Saturday we had some more great experiences and blessings! First off it was Day of the Dead in Hispanic culture, so that was fun! We had some lessons set up and actually got to do some back to back which is always great! We got in this one door that we had met a while ago of this guy named Arturo.  We talked and had a killer lesson and he was super engaged the whole time and has strong desires to learn more about God. He gave us some Mexican candy on the way out and we just felt that it had already gone so well! Then later on that day, we had heard that the library would have some sort of Dia de los Muertos party and so we thought we might check that out and see what it was. We showed up about a half hour late and knowing the Hispanic culture that was perfect, they started right as we walked in.  Turns out that a ton of the Hispanics from the town all came! We knew quite a few of them, and they all knew each other and were just one big family. 

And then a little later when we were about to get food, because it isn't a Hispanic celebration without food, Arturo walks in! He starts introducing us to some of his friends, as well as some of the other people we knew did the same and it turns out this thing we had not really thought to much of turned out to be the best contacting and getting us into the Hispanic community that we could have hoped for! And we talked to Arturo another hour and a half after we had the lesson earlier, so he seems to like us at least a little. 

So that was the main excitement of the week, we had stake conference and I got to translate that and then we are back here at p-day. Hopefully you enjoyed those quick stories of here in Morris! 

Love you all and hope you all have a great week!

Elder Pickering