Selfmade

So what I did with this group email was just kind of write the highlights at the end of each day and have it act as my journal/ weekly, so hope you all enjoy, better than nothing right?

Well it started off with a good p-day. Elder Soderberg and I were feeling crazy this morning and decided to hit up this place called CitiTrends. Basically as it sounds it is the best store in the world and we definitely "were not" the only white people in the store. We ended up both picking up a cheap kind of just crazy over the top shirt to be our p-day ball shirt. And you know, we have to have comp unity, so we just ball up together looking fly now. We also had a really awesome first lesson with this lady who has been wanting to join a church. She had some stellar questions and it all went well, we will be seeing her again later on this week. We have had a lot of success lately getting in doors and meeting new people, it's been a huge blessing.

Tuesday was a good time as well. We have a lesson weekly with this guy we are working with from Columbia. We eat lunch with him and a member family every week and he is just a good guy, he has great values and is super great. Right now we think he is just curious and figuring things out, but we will keep up the hard work and hopefully all goes well. We also do a service every once in a while called FMSC where we pack food for them hungry children, so that iss pretty chill usually. We also had a lesson with Cristian, and then his mom walked in, along with this new guy and the new man just was a downer. He went right off on how we cant repent, so after dropping the spirit pretty hard, he walked out of the house until we left haha.  So gotta love those time, you just cant "quote" scriptures and not expect us to defend out beliefs, so good times. And finally tonight we had a lesson with our man Gregory from Venezuela who we met In the laundry room, so we had another laundry room lesson with him and he said that he is down to get baptized! So we will see him later this week and follow up on that. He basically teaches us, it's awesome!

Wednesday
Today was pretty chill, literally and with the work. We had pretty much every lesson that we had fell through, but it worked out. We started service at a new food shelf here and just went and helped out there for a little while, nothing all too crazy, we've been through the loops before. We did have a lesson go through tonight with this lady named Suzie. We always have super good lessons with her, it's all about helping her realize that action is required for her to feel of the truth and to learn and grow. Also she knows a lady that I taught in Lakeville, so small world! And tonight we are starting exchanges with the Hmong elders which should be good!

Thursday
Today was the rest of Hmong exchanges and it wasn't really anything just over the top special. It was a lot of English teaching, but just to some Hmong people, so I actually got to be involved quite a bit which was good. After exchanges and I was back with Elder Soderberg we had a lesson in the evening with this family we have worked with for a little now. The mom is a member but none of the rest of the family. And so we talked a lot about spiritual experiences and got the mom involved in sharing those things, and only two of the kids were there tonight, but after the lesson we were able to set a date with them and they and the mom were way excited. So it was a cool chance to see them make that and feel the joy themselves.

Friday
Today we were out on the bike grind, and that was an adventure. We are low on miles and so we are taking care of those resources. It wasn't terrible cold, but it was all icy and slushy and we were almost hit a few times, so always fun. We had a lesson with this family, and we did a good Restoration lesson and also showed a video of Jose Smith because they had the same kinds of questions as him about why there were so many churches. It was super awesome and they seem to have a lot of potential, and their son too is super interesting in praying and finding out about God. Also we started doing some service at salvation Army here, so that's just a classic.

Saturday
So our second day of biking here, and man has it gotten to us, we are very consado as they say in Spanish. We started another new service here, called "caring for cats" so basically when we are not preaching the gospel to the world, we have some solid services set up. Today we had a few lessons that went great! One with this lady Juliana who we teach English and the gospel and she is going through a lot and is trying to get a new job so that she can have Sundays off too! So we are way excited for her. Also we had a lesson with our man Gregory and went over some of the plan of salvation and retaught some of the Restoration and he is still all in and should be coming to church tomorrow he said, so we are way excited for him.

Sunday In St Paul is always a good time. Our man Gregory came to church, but the only thing is he was about 2 and a half hours late because he couldn't get to church. When he came we went to the English part because he still wanted to go to services so we went with him and he did pretty good english wise honestly, so that was a good time. He is awesome. We then ended up finding a fair hit and had lots of good success, found 3 or 4 people today and got in a handful of doors to teach, that has been a great blessing to have success and blessings like that. We have been working hard and really seeing the blessings from it. We have a handful of people progressing, and always are finding through more!

Elder Pickering