The maté is better on the other side!

Dear Everyone,

Yet another week on the mission and I am still alive. And this week also was a blah week because of some things that happened. I will start with what happened on Wednesday. So we get a call from our ward mission leader saying that a 9 year old boy wants to get baptized this Sunday (yesterday). His name is Lorenzo. Of course I was like ok… and…. And he says that he needs the lessons. Well, Elder González and I went right away to start teaching him. Now I have seen him at church every Sunday and I have never seen a kid with so much energy and so clingy to the mother in my life. Oh, and he loves to hit his mother too. Weird, I know. So we start teaching him and the mother was against doing all this. Ok against is a strong word. She just thought that he wasn’t ready to be baptized. And I had this thought in my head, And you have waited a year for…. What? Pigs to fly? She was very frustrating to work with. So we ended up teaching him everything and he already knew everything and I was very impressed. So we scheduled with him to have the interview Saturday morning so that way we can get everything prepared for Sunday for the baptism. But, for who knows what reason, when we showed up for the interview at his house, the mother was like ¨he isn’t going to be baptized. He isn’t behaving well.¨ And I was like ¨ni importa, él esta listo.¨ And she was like ¨no sé¨. So basically, he didn’t get baptized because his mother didn’t want him to. UGH!

Next story. We have had this fecha named Juan for the past month. A WHOLE MONTH! Well, we have been teaching him for awhile. He is also 9 years old. He had taught him everything and toda estaba listo para el 6 de diciembre. His dad is the one that was going to baptize him, but in one manera or another, he couldn’t baptize his son because of some issues. ARGH! We give them a month to prepare, they need two. Jaja oh well, that’s how it goes. So we HAD two baptisms for yesterday and right now I am still at zero baptisms for the area.

It’s ok. We had an investigator come to church. Her name is Susana and she is the most fragile woman on this planet. She is very, very petite. She calls me her ¨Angelito¨. Cute, no? Jaja my companion makes fun of me all the time for it. Oh, something really cool with her, we taught her the Word of Wisdom (La Palabra de Sabiduría) and asked her if she had a problem with any of the things on the list of don’ts. She had a guilty look on her face, which was funny, and she said that she smoked two or three cigarettes every night because she is so lonely. And so we asked her if she would stop smoking that day so that way she could get baptized and she said yes! She immediately stopped from that day until today. A whole five days! Doesn’t sound like big news but it’s a miracle. She is planning on getting baptized the 26th or 27th. But she is excepting everything and she is keeping all of her commitments so we are looking at a baptism at the end of the month. I am way excited for that.

And Friday we had zone conference which was fun. Teaching us how to do references and how to contact them with members and such. It’s on the Preach my Gospel dvd set if you really want to check it out. But we watch a section of the dvd and guess who was the member doing the referencing?? Remember Mark Bush in our ward back like 5, 6,7 years ago?? Mark and Susanne Bush I think? But yeah. It was really cool to see them on the video. Speaking of other people I knew that are in church publications, Abuelo Sill was in the Liahona. They had a little article commemorating everything that he done in archeology and in the church. It was really cool also.

Now on to the important matters jaja. For Christmas, I want everyone to think about questions they want to ask or things they want to talk about with me or stories that they want me to tell. I will think of some questions for you guys in general. I will tell you specifics in weeks to come but start thinking of questions now so that way I can answer them before you ask them. Make any sense? Hopefully. If not, ask the nearest adult, and if you are an adult, well… just kidding lol jaja. I’m just full of chistes.

I sent some pictures to my father again and hopefully everyone will be able to see those soon. Thank you to Mom, Dad (for a little bit), Abuelita y Grandpa, Grandma and Grandpa Packard, Tia Lina, and Alyssa for the letters. I really enjoyed hearing from all of you. If you sent packages, hopefully I will receive them tomorrow or the following week. Well, gotta go but I love you all and Hopefully all is well with everyone.

Love from a hot and sweaty,
Elder Pickett