So this week was a really good week!

So on my birthday, my comp got sick in the morning so he slept in and I just hung out in the basement and read this book that my member recommended, it's called the Peace Giver it’s really an amazing book and puts a new light on the atonement that I had never seen before! I would recommend it to everyone!

After he was feeling better we went to dinner, and that was great, they fried up some of the best potatoes I've had, and had some really delicious pork roast!  After that we went and visited a really cool family, the McKrackens!  They are both 19 years old and married with a baby!  She has been a member her whole life (not very active but still a member), but he wasn't until last November!  They're super cool, and our age so it's great to visit them and help them out when we can!  So that was the working day of my birthday (still no cake).  After we got home we were just chillin, and my comp has the phone, and he keeps getting texts so I’m thinking, that’s weird.  Then he randomly goes upstairs, and then comes back down holding to boxes, so I got my presents on my birthday!  We went upstairs and cooked those mini browny cake things, so I did get some cake on my birthday, so that was cool!

On Saturday, that was a recent convert whose family was moving to a different part of the area, so we volunteered and got signed up to help.  So we show up and they're all out back taking a quick smoke 'n coffee break before work, but when we showed up we all started on it, aaaaaaand 2 full U-hauls, and 7 hours later we finally got home!  I'm still exhausted!  The worst part was my allergies, or possibly a cold or something, had been annoying all Friday, and then it just got worse during the move, so I was helping out and feeling sick and stuff, but hey! It was tons of fun so yeah!

You haven't told me about the cheesesteak thing, where is it?  And is it better than Spiritos?

Well that was my week in a nutshell!
Have a good one,

Love,
Elder Pickett

Hey Everyone!

Trust me, I don't think I will ever forget my birthday week!  There is an awesome non-member family here who are always excited to see missionaries.  They were asked to feed the missionaries once 8 years ago, and never stopped!  We can go there just about any time, and they have 5 big bowls of candy out on the table for us and the neighbor kids.  They will be taking us out to McGraths fish house this Wednesday as a celebration of my graduation into the 20s, it should be a good outing! 

There is a 14 year old girl in our area who is named Kennedy, and she is getting baptized on the 4th of August!  It has been an awesome time meeting with her and finally setting a date for that to happen!  We are super excited for this to happen and now that it finally is we are really stoked for it!  She is an awesome girl and she is way excited to be baptized, and her mom wants to be baptized but we have to settle some things out first.  She has had a lot of health issues and we are trying to find out how to get her to church, or baptized without needing to go to church, because she literally cannot.  They are an all-around awesome family, and they are die-hard chargers fans who used to live down off of vista way!!

We had a mini missionary this week!  A 17 year old kid who came out with us Thursday and Friday from 8AM to 930PM, his name is Dylan and he is a really great guy!  We had a lot of fun going around and teaching people! 

Have a good week!
Love ya!
Elder Pickett

Hey everybody!

So Hazel Dell ward has an annual tradition of having a 4th of July breakfast on the morning of the fourth!  It was a smashing success with 160 people there!  It suddenly became less successful on Thursday morning when the strawberries took their revenge out on half of the ward!  Everybody got sick and had a bad day after 4th.  And at ward council we heard alot about it.  It was pretty funny because neither I nor my companion got sick so we had nothing to be mad about!

We had dinner with Sis Adams sister last night, and their family is super awesome! 

We had to go in on the fourth so we didn't get to see any cool shows, but buying mortars is legal here so everyone and their mother has their own private show which wasn't a terrible thing but we couldn’t see very well from our backyard haha

It’s pretty warm where I am, basically just a normal San Diego summer. Its temple p-day so it’s on Tuesday, and I got to go to the Portland temple, which was awesome!

There is an awesome opportunity we have this week to receive a "mini missionary" he is a 17 year old guy from Vancouver north stake!  We will hopefully be able to take him through all the aspects of missionary life such as teaching lessons to investigators, less actives, and even members!  He will be with us for 2 days, but he will go home and sleep there at nights which is pretty good since our beds are not of the best quality.  I wish I could have done this before my mission!  It's definitely an awesome opportunity for us and him! 

Sorry about the short E-mail today, I'll have awesome stories next week!
Love,
Elder Pickett