Hey Everybody!

This last week was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good!!!

We had another lesson with Austin, and it was a pretty typical lesson.  He sometimes tries to get off topic and talk about video games and what-not, but this week he didn't do that at all!  It was awesome, because then after the lesson he volunteered to give the prayer!!  It was the first time he's prayed in front of missionaries and it was so strong and just awesome!  The lesson we had with him was reading from Alma chapter 32, which is the one that talks all about faith being a seed and how faith isn't a perfect knowledge (We chose this because he had a question of why can't we just see Christ and know he's there) So yeah it was awesome, and he even invited his little brother Gage to sit in on the lesson!  Usually Gage just goes to the other room and plays video games, but this time he wanted to read with us!  It was just pretty much and awesome day!!

Last Friday we had our Christmas zone conference!  It was so cool and at first we talked about 8 gifts Heavenly Father has given us and it was an awesome training!  The gifts were:
1. Christ and the Atonement   John 3:16
2. The Gift of the Holy Ghost   1 Nephi 10: 17

3. The Plan of Happiness   Alma 12: 25 

4. Angels   Alma 13: 24

5. Agency   2 Nephi 2:  27

6. Assurance   D&C 84:88

7. The Temple   D&C 109: 22

8. Assurance that our offerings are acceptable    D&C 126

It was just like the BEST THING EVER!!!  It was great, got to see a lot of friends and it was all good!  Then as the WKM (Washington Kennewick Mission) Christmas tradition we watched Brave, the Pixar movie about the Scottish princess!  It was way good too!!

I hope you all have a merry Christmas!!
Love,
Elder Pickett 

Hey everybody!

So this is transfer week!  Elder Shuman will be going all the way over to the tri-cities!  He's going to a ward called Candy Mountain ward!  It's so cool!!  I am staying here and getting Elder Stucki to be my comp!  He's a great guy from Ogden area I believe!  I've served around him, but now I get to serve with him!  It's looking to be an exciting transfer!

So this week we had an awesome visit with a man who was in the army!  He is a member of the church but lost his faith due to some tragedies he saw in the war.  He was an awesome guy and has sincere desires to find his faith again, but it's hard for him to get past what he saw over in Iraq.  We have a return appt. with him in a couple of weeks and I am super excited to see this man again.

A cool experience we had this week was being able to help set up our Christmas lights!  We got to go up to the top roof and hang off the edge to put the lights into their places!  It was a pretty scary but really fun experience!

I hope you all have an awesome week!
Love,
Elder Pickett

12-3-12

Hey everybody!

We have had a totally insane week!!  I'll start with the craziness and end with the good stuff!

So there is an apartment complex in our area that we do a ton of work in, it's called The Fisher's Mill.  Well on Friday we go there and see a cop driving around (which isn't too unusual) but when we turn the corner, there are 12 cop cars all lined up!  We walk past them and there are a bunch of cops chillin with their helmets on and big guns out!  So it turns out there was a lady hiding in her apartment, but they couldn’t just go get her because she had her kids in there or something!  So we get outa there for our dinner appointment, but as we're leaving this giant truck pulls around the corner, and turns out they needed to call in the swat team!  Well we had an appointment a couple hours later, and we go to the Mill and the situation is still going on!  It eventually got resolved after our appointment and all is good!

On Saturday we got called to help with a move, and the people who called said there was a non-member there who they wanted us to see.  To be honest we thought they may have just been baiting us into helping with the move, but we helped out anyway, it is kind of our job.  The lady moving in came over from Portland, and she had a friend who has been down on his luck and has been staying with her for a little bit, and he is SUUUUUPER interested in the gospel!!!  We taught him the Plan of Salvation last night and everything was awesome!  It was an amazing experience and we definitely felt the spirit!

I hope you all have an awesome week!
Love,
Elder Pickett