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