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