WHOA! I Love the Mission.

Talk about crazy week! Well, the week started out very normal until Wednesday. I have the grand opportunity to be in a flash [note: a flash is an emergency transfer, I asked Allen what was the reason and he says that somebody in another area wasn't behaving]! I got put in Villa Celina. The mission had to do some changes a little early and so now I am in Villa Celina with Elder Shepherd. He is from Las Vegas and is a really cool kid. He has almost 5 months on the mission. His birthday is on August 9! So we are going to be celebrating our birthdays together. Oh, and Father, Elder Shepherd is a huge Battlefield 1942 guy and so it was crazy to meet someone else who is crazy like us.


(Villa Celina is located next to Ciudad Madero in the Aldo Bonzi Stake)

I am loving Villa Celina so far. Elder Shepherd and I get along so well so we are able to get a lot of stuff done. We have a lot of really great people that we are working with. I am glad I have this new opportunity to help people in another area. We have a lot of people that can be baptized really soon. We are just trying to take out [resolve] their doubts. Like last night, we had a lesson with a member and her non-member husband and he was asking really good questions about the Plan of Salvation and we were able to answer them. I was really happy about that.

(Aerial view of Celina and Madero)

We have a villa in our area. For those who don’t know what a villa is, a villa is like the projects in the US but more poor. Their houses are about the size of a bathroom and they have about 5 to 8 people living in that space. It is really humbling to see. Yesterday we ate with a family that lives in the villa and they gave us really good food. I could feel that they were giving a lot more than what they normally had. I felt very grateful for them. This place is changing my mission even more. The people here are very humble but sometimes we meet the people who aren’t so nice. The members here are very very nice to us. They help us out a lot with investigators and with references. Oh, another cool little thing, I am the pianist in the ward. I am so glad I can play the piano somewhat so that we don’t have to sing accapella.

In this short week here, we have seen a lot of stuff. Like Saturday was a Bolivian holiday and so we couldn’t go to that side of our area because it is just pure Bolivians and they all had a lot of alcohol. We had a lot of fun watching the parade for the holiday but we decided to leave when it looked like to be getting out of hand.

So we had a very cool experience happen to us Sunday. We went out Sunday to go look for some investigators to go to church with us. We went to four different houses and called them up also to come pick them up. Every single one of them rejected us. We were so bummed out because we didn’t have anyone to bring to church. We get to the sacrament meeting, which is first in this ward, and we just did everything as normal. After the sacrament meeting, one of the members comes up to us and says, hey this is my nephew and he wants to listen to you guys and probably get baptized. I can’t tell you how big of a smile I had on my face when he told us that. We went in the rain to go look for people and no one wanted to come but apparently the Lord already brought our investigator to church. I love the miracles that I see in the mission.

Thanks for all of your support in everything. I am getting really excited for my birthday because I am in Argentina!! I love you all. Stay safe this week.

Love
Elder Pickett