4-22-13

Hey Everybody!

So this week was surely something special!

We had a baptism!!  Steffanee is a 19 year old who was dating one of the bishop’s sons a while back.  One day she just was curious about our church so she called the bishop and asked if she could attend our church to see what was what, so she ended up coming for 5 months straight!  And then she wanted to meet with us, so naturally we met with her!  It was awesome from the first lesson to the last!  She just soaked in the Gospel like a sponge!  It was awesome!

So this week also we taught a man named Michael!  How we found him was a kind of funny story!  We were getting new phones so we had to switch the contacts over from one phone to another.  You can only switch 300 contacts, and we had 394.  So we went through all the contacts that were former investigators who just didn’t get deleted from the phone and called each and every one of them.   If they weren’t interested or didn’t answer we deleted their numbers, but if they were interested, like Michael, we set up an appointment!  Anyway, we show up to his place and we start teaching the first lesson.  About halfway through I had the feeling that I needed to invite him to be baptized on May 25th.  So naturally I resisted a little bit, but the thought was there and I couldn’t deny it.  So yeah at the end of the lesson, we tacked on a little bit about baptism, and I invited him to that day.  And he said yes!!  It was the best feeling ever to have listened to a prompting and follow through with it, and now he's working toward baptism!! It’s awesome being a missionary, I love it!

Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Pickett

4-15-13

Hey Everybody!!

So I had a really stinky experience this week!  But it turned out good in the end!  Somewhere between appointments I stepped in a doggy landmine :*(  But we didn’t notice until we were on our way home!  We had a little extra time so we decided to just start walking and clean off the shoes, well we walked for about half an hour and NOBODY was out in the streets, which is strange for Kelso!  Anyway, just as we are about to get to our car there is a lady unloading rocks from the back of her car!  So naturally we stop to ask her if she needs any help.  She didn't but we did talk to her for about an hour about the Gospel and it was awesome!  We'll definitely stop back again sometime!

Transfers this week were pretty great!  It was strange because my new companion has been out 22 months, and so he had a lot of stuff to unpack. But even though it took a little bit, as soon as he was done we hit the pavement!  It has been a great week of workin hard! My next transfer is the day Robby goes into the MTC  awesome!

We had an awesome lesson with a part member family last night!  The mother has 2 daughters, and she let one of them get baptized, so now we have been seeing them all pretty regularly.  This last night though Patsy (The mother) was there!  And she was really cool and nice, she has had some problems in the past with drug abuse and whatnot, but she turned to Christ about a year ago, and now she's engaged to a Baptist pastor and doing really well!  We had a great lesson on modern day prophets though, and it was just a really awesome lesson! 

I hope you all have a wonderful week!
Love,
Elder Pickett

4-7-13

Hey Everybody!

Wasn't conference THE BEST EVER!?  I was so happy to have it finally be there, and then in a flash it was gone!!  But yeah I really loved it and learned a lot that I needed to, I hope you did too!

So we have transfers this week!  And I am getting Elder McCaw’s!  I've served around him a decent amount of time out here, and he will be leaving at the end of this transfer (So it’s looking like I get another one here on top of this one) so yeah it'll be great to be with another experienced missionary again!  And now because of that it is looking I will be in the Washington Vancouver mission!  Crazy stuff!

So how it’s working with all the new missionaries is kinda cool.  I have covered multiple wards for 12 out of my 18 months here, so with all the new guys we have been splitting areas like MAD, it’s great because soon every single ward will have their own missionaries, and the work will be that much faster! It's great with all the greenies though because there is a ton of "greeny fire"  because they are so excited for the work, it kinda makes everyone else excited and we can really feel it hastening, we are having a ton more success this year and it has been awesome seeing the actual shift in the missions attitude!

So everyone we have been working with has been progressing very well. We have Stephaney being baptized April 20th, and Jake is preparing for May 18th, so it will be a wonderful transfer for us!

I hope you all have a wonderful week!
Love,
Elder Pickett

4-1-13

Hey everybody!

This week has been really really good!  ( Just like every week I've been out here)

Easter was fantastic!!!  So normally the weather up here is dreary with a very high chance of rain...  BUT yesterday it was 75 degrees, and not a cloud in the sky!!!  It was so cool!  We have to drive for a little bit to get to one of our church building to attend sacrament, and it was an awesome drive with all the green trees and shrubs, but also having the sun out. Oh my it was wonderful!

This past week has been CRAAAAAAAZY!!!  Wednesday we had a lesson with Jake.  He's a super cowboy and he's getting married to a girl in the ward!  And he's looking to get baptized in May!!!  It was an awesome lesson, and he is so wanting to learn that we're and our 3rd way through the lessons with him!  And he still loves it!  Every week he requests something different, and it is awesome having somebody who just says, you know this is what i wanna learn about!  I mentioned his book of Mormon challenge last week, that's still goin strong and we are doing well with it.  He's currently in the Isaiah chapters of 2 Nephi so that's really great!

So i have come to love tracting up here!  At first it was a little crazy, but now it's more like we just have to go with the flow and try to share anything we can! (Sadly theres a lot of drug use in this area)

Anyway i hope you all have a lovely week!
Love,
Elder Pickett

3-25-13

Hey Everybody!

This week waaaaaaas AWESOME!!!!  We have had some really awesome experiences!  We were tracting in Castle Rock, and we tracted into an older lady named Rosalee!  She was way cool, and an awesome painter!  We started talking religion and she was really interested in why there were so many different Christian churches, and why wouldn’t there just be one.  Well that’s probably the best question anyone can ask us!  We gave our answer in the form of teaching her the restoration, and giving her a Book of Mormon, she was pretty excited to read it and find out what it has to offer her in her life!

We are having great success with Jake, one of the people we have on date for baptism!  He is doing awesome and him and his fiancé are getting married this may so he can get baptized a week later!  He is awesome, and we have set up a book of Mormon challenge, that he finishes the whole thing by his wedding day!  It'll be awesome when he does!!

Another person we have on date is Stephaney!  She is AWESOME!!  We taught her the Plan of Salvation last night, and she understood it and enjoyed it!  The thing is this is usually the longest lesson, but for her it only took 30 minutes to get it all down!  She will definitely learn more about it later, but she has the surface level down already!

That was our week, it was great, I hope you have a good one too!
Love,
Elder Pickett

3-18-13

Hey Everybody!

This week has been fantastic!!  We reached whats called the "Standard of Excellence" Which means our area had enough lessons, and enough people talked to to be an "Excellent" area!  It was great!

This week we had an awesome lesson with a man named Jeremy!  He has been in-out of jail his whole life, but he's finally ready for a change.  We taught him once and he was so excited about the gospel our first time with him we set a baptismal day of April 13th!!  We taught him twice this week and both times we went over the Restoration!  It was awesome how the spirit was there, and it's pretty much a miracle of how we found him!  Before i got here, Elder Florence and his previous comp. were tracting and found a Less active guy named Shawn, we've been visiting shawn about once a week, and then we showed up and Jeremy was there!   He had just got out of jail, and was trying to figure out how to use a cell phone, so we helped him out a little then had a lesson.  It was great! Shawn and his family (wife and two kids) took him in so he wouldn't just fall back into his street life!  It is awesome and i'm so excited for him!

In preparation for the upcoming General Conference, our mission president has issued a challenge of reading about 15 chapters that deal directly with the Atonement, and t has been amazing as i have started to do this (We just got it on friday) that i could learn so much from just a few simple chapters!  I sometimes, or most of the time, have a pretty knowitall attitude but its really humbling to think that i can learn something new every time i study scripture!

Thanks for everything, i hope you have a wonderful week!
Love,
Elder Pickett

3-12-13

Hey Everybody!!

So this week was... how you saaaay.... Awesome!!!!!  We had some really neat experiences and yeah.  The best of all was a new investigator named Stephany!  She was dating one of the bishops sons a little bit ago, and has been coming to church for 5 months, unbeknownst to the missionaries!!!  well we went over to bishops house for some brushetta and a lesson!  At the end of the lesson we had an awesome discussion about how the Holy Ghost confirmed to her, in the lesson, that the Book of Mormon was true!  It was so great, and we set a baptismal date with her for april 6th!   We are so stoked about her, and she is so stoked about the gospel, its the best thing ever!!

We've had some crazy experiences up here, there is this investigator named Jake, he's an awesome guy!  He's atotal cowboy and he has a business where he takes care of other peoples horses and stuff!  Well he is engaged to a girl in the ward and they are getting married this may!  It's way awesome because his investigation started when she said she wanted to be married in the temple, but eventually he found his own testimony so he is way excited for his upcoming baptism!

Thanks for all the support and prayers!
Love,
Elder Pickett

3-5-13

Hey everybody!!

So this place is CRAZY!!!  Kelso is pretty much like a suburb of a place called Longview, which consists of 40,000 people.  Kelso though has just over 4000 people!  So I cover that ward that consists of Kelso, and another ward which is called the Castle Rock ward.  Castle Rock is a town of 2000 people up further into the mountains; Mt. St. Helen is in the ward borders so I can say I served on Mt. St Helens haha.  It's amazing how much work there is here!  We are teaching a bunch of part member families and it has been great getting to know the people here!  It's sad because my 2 wards attend separate building so we have to switch off which ward we go to, so we don’t get to know the members very well, which is sad :(

We've had some pretty neat adventures here!  WE may have got chased out of a community and almost hit head on and stuff but we're doing good and nothing can stop the work from progressing :) I'll have to tell you those stories when I get home!

There is one investigator that is way cool and way solid, his name is Jake.  He is engaged to a member of the ward and is excited to get baptized pretty soon!  We had an amazing lesson with him about covenants and what they mean and how they can bless his life.  What is really cool is he already has an eternal perspective, because both he and his fiancé talk about how they want to be married in the temple, and it is really awesome just feeding his want for knowledge rather than trying to convince him these things can bless his life!

Well that is my week!  Hope you all have a wonderful day!
Love,
Elder Pickett

Hey everybody!!

This week is transfer week, and I am leaving Vancouver :(  I am headed up to a little town called Kelso, it's gonna be awesome!!  My new companion, Elder Florence and I came out together!  So it’s gonna just be 2 old men hangin out doin work!! It’s weird because our 17 month mark is the day after transfers.   Elder Stucki is training now so that’s way exciting for him!  He always thought he would never train, but me and all the missionaries here have been teasing him that his greeny call (The mission president calls and asks you to train, it’s called a greeny call) was coming and that he should get ready, when it actually came he was kinda freaking out and didn’t believe it for a couple days!  It was awesome hahaha


This week I had a way cool experience on exchanges, I was with another Elder and he is notorious for being sick at all the right times... So this day at 7:30 he says he wants to go in because he feels sick!  So I was debating it and I asked if we could just go try one more person, we haven't got in with them in a couple 3 weeks. Well he said we could try 1 more so I happily did, and we got in!!!!  It was a great visit and they got along very well, we set up another appointment (I won't be here though :( but that’s life) and it was an awesome experience for both of us!! 

The church is making 58 new missions.  Here in my mission, in July there will be lots going on. Depending on where I’m at in July I could be in another mission!  The new missions up here are Washington Federal Way mission, Washington Vancouver mission, and Oregon Salem mission. All of them take a part of the Washington Kennewick mission!  It’s awesome to be a missionary, where ever the Lord puts me!

So yeah that sums up my week!  I do need a new SD card so I can send you this one, its waaaaay full!!!
Love,
Elder Pickett

Hey everybody!!

So this week was just as great as last week!!

I had an awesome confirmation of the power and authority that God has granted me to do this work!  So there is this family here, and they are having a hard time with everything.  Two weeks ago they shared with us that they didn't think they could pay tithing and all of the bills and we talked a lot about that and the blessings that come from it.  Well, we didn't commit them to pay their tithing, I guess in fear they would say no (Not proud of that one...) but we were talking to him this Sunday and he said he is waiting on a call for a job that he interviewed for, we were super stoked to hear that.  But the best part was he told us that after that lesson he realized he needs to do it all Gods way in order to get help from God.  So he told us that they paid their tithing!!!  That was the best thing ever because it proved to us that when we follow the spirit and teach with him as our third companion that miracles happen, hearts are softened, and God is allowed to work miracles in people’s lives.  We have an appointment with them tonight so we will see what happens!

So that was like the big story of the week!  Elder Stucki and I  had a wonderful valentine’s day!  We had a super romantic lunch with our district!!  (It actually wasn't romantic at all, and I’m learning to love sushi, so yeah...)  And then we worked all day long, which was really fun!

So there’s one thing I need to tell you about the people of Vancouver. They CRAVE the sunlight!  This past Friday, and today have been sunny days.  And the parks are PACKED.  So naturally we decided to go walk through the parks and talk to everyone!!  It was great!!  And on our agenda for today, we have..... Park tracting again!!!!  It’s going to be a wonderful sunny day :)

Hope you all had a wonderful week!
Love,
Elder Pickett

Hey Everybody!

This week was so good!  My Mission President E-mailed me last week, and I’m just gonna quote what he said!

Elder Pickett, Thank you for your letter. As I was preparing the transfer, I worked under the impression that you should be transferred. Then I received a solid impression that you two should continue serving together. Let me know how it goes. There simply must be something you or Elder Stucki must learn from the other or find, teach or baptize. Let me know by the end of the transfer what it is. We love you. President

So that was my letter back from him, it is so cool thinking that he could feel specifically that I was still supposed to be here in the Couv! (Vancouver) And I’m pretty sure, not entirely, but pretty sure I’ve figured out why!

So this lady Roby I talked about last week, she is having a rough time.  She is living with a family in the ward, because she got out of a bad situation and needed a place to be!  So we have been teaching her for the past two weeks, and this week she accepted an invitation to be baptized on February 23rd!  She is awesome and we are so excited to see her make that commitment to the Lord!

Another cool experience is with Justin, a soon to be New Investigator!  We were tracting at 8:30 and found out that obedience pays off!  So we knock on a door and a guy and his daughter come to the door!  He introduces us as the LDs missionaries to his daughter before we can even say hi, and he goes to tell us that he would love to talk to us, and he went to the open house of the Omaha Nebraska temple!  We set up an appointment for Wednesday at 1, and we are way stoked to talk to him and his wife!

Well that was my exciting week!
Have a good one!
Love,
Elder Pickett

Hey everybody!                                                                                           1-22-13

So this week has been soooooooooooooo good!  Elder Stucki and I are staying together!!  (First time I haven't had a companion switch during transfers since my trainer!!!!!)  I am super stoked for it too!  He has been out just 3 months less than me!  So we both know what we're doing and it's easy just to get down to work!

Speaking of work!  We have been doing toooons of finding these past couple of weeks!  It has been pretty successful!  People tell us to come back every now and again! One guy who told us to come back was named Thelton!  He is legally blind and can't read very well, so when we talked to him and gave him a mormon.org pass along card, he thought we were Jehovah’s Witnesses and said we could come back.  About twenty minutes later we were walking back and he was taking his dog for a walk!  He saw us and yelled for us to come over to him, and he told us he thought we were JWs but when he read the card and found out we were Mormons, he really wanted to talk to us!  We've been by a couple times, his dog bit Elder Stucki a little, and we're excited to start teaching him! (as long as that dog isn't in the room)

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

Hey Everybody!                                                                            January 15,  2013

This week was sooooooo great!!!  Austin (I know I talk about him all the time but he's the most interested/ progressing investigator right now!) came to church this week!!!!  It was awesome!  I was on exchanges when they committed him to come so I didn’t even expect him to chow up, but then right after the prayer he walks on in!  We flagged him down and he came over and sat with us, he may have fallen asleep a little but that’s okay!  (The talks were on family history, not the most engaging for a 17 year old)    Sadly he didn't stay for 2nd or 3rd hour :(  it would've been way good for him though!  It was all about how we get close to our Father in Heaven!

A cool story happened in Washougal!  So I mentioned earlier I left the area I’m in to go on exchanges... Well I went to this tiny little town called Washougal!!  It is way cool, and way up in the mountains/forests over here!  So I was with my zone leaders Elder Mitchell, and we had an appointment to teach a lady named Melissa!  It was an awesome lesson, and she is super cool!!!  She invited the missionaries back because she "wanted the Lord back in her house" and when we left she said she could already start feeling it, and she was super excited to read the Book of Mormon!  The best part (people don't usually like when we tell them they need to be baptized again) was when we invited her to be baptized (You invite on the first lesson every time now!)  she was like, "Yeah I guess since the priesthood was gone, the guy who baptized me was just a guy...  Yeah I’ll get baptized if I find out this is true."  It was sooooooooooo cool that she understood apostasy so easily!

Well that was my awesome week!
I hope you have one too!
Love,
Elder Pickett

Hey Everybody!                                                                               January 7, 2013

We had such an amazing experience on Saturday!  So in another ward in a different stake, the elders were teaching a lady named Emily.  She was super excited about the gospel and they put her on date for baptism on January 5th, so last Saturday!  The Sunday before rolls around, and they find out that she lives in Fairway Village ward!  (Where I am serving)  And they introduce us to her and we taught her a few times this past week, and then she was baptized on Saturday!  It was probably the best experience I have ever had in my life!  When she was baptized she came out of the water laughing/crying and it was really cool! 

We're still working with Austin and it is still going way good!  This week we watched the restoration video with him!  He was having a really bad day with some of his friends and a lot of high school drama and whatnot!  But when he left he was a lot more chill and calm then when we showed up, it was awesome to see the spirit work on him and calm him down!

Last week we did something super awesome!  We went to Multnomah Falls!  It was an awesome hike and the big waterfall is about 600 ft.!!!!!!!  The one mile hike took about an hour though!  It was pretty much straight up!!!  The picture is on a lookout thing that extends over the falls a little bit, I was far away from that end though :)

We have interviews this Wednesday too!  I can't wait to just be able to talk to President Greer!!  It's always awesome and it always gets me re-pumped up about doin work!!  It's gonna be a really awesome time!

Sorry about the crazy random e-mail today!
love,
Elder Pickett

Hey Everybody!!

So this week was sooooooooo good!  We've been working with a less-active lady lately, her name is Tiffany!  She is super cool and we always enjoy going over there, this week was especially cool because her husband sat in when we were there!  His name is Don and he is a non-member!  It was awesome talking to him and getting to know him a little better (he really hasn't sat in on anything yet so it was awesome hearing his religious background and finding out where exactly he is coming from!)  Well he is pretty interested, but is afraid of getting too far into the Book of Mormon, because his family really doesn't like us :(  We'll keep working with him though!

Quick update on Austin!  His little brother sat in and now we are teaching both of them!  Awesome little tid bit!  We are gonna go back and hopefully find a day for their baptism!

Christmas was such a wonderful day, kinda like the BEST DAY EVER!!  It was great Skyping home, and getting Christmas cards from all of you!  Thank you so much for everything and all the support!

Well time is getting short,
Love,
Elder Pickett