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

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