Happy Easter... yesterday

Dear Everyone,

What a wonderful week we had last week! We had the opportunity to celebrate the victory over death. Since being on the mission I have come to really appreciate our Savior Jesus Christ and all that he has done for us. The one reason why we, missionaries, are serving is to apply the atonement in the lives of other people and help them to come unto Christ. It is a wonderful process to watch. I now have an idea of how our Heavenly Father feels when we change our lives and we repent. He has an immense joy when we turn our hearts to him and we try to better our lives.

Well, it’s been an interesting week this week. We lost three whole days traveling and that’s always hard. We had a scheduled baptism this weekend that fell through. That was hard. We spent all day Saturday setting up the baptismal font and filling it up. The water was cold and we tried to heat up with one of those light bulb looking heaters to put in water. Yeah, that didn’t work. And once the time was getting close to the baptism, we went to house of Ines who was going to get baptized. Well, she wasn’t there and she left her cell phone in the house so we couldn’t get a hold of her. So we left the font and everything for Sunday to see if she was going to show up and get baptized but a member of the church passed by in the morning and she still wasn’t there. So we just decided to take down the font and try another time to baptize her. And taking out the water was kind of funny. We had to suck the water out of a hose. That was quite disgusting. Kind of frustrating but what could we do?!

I also had to give the Easter message in sacrament meeting and I talked about the Atonement. I read the story of the man who went into debt to buy something he really wanted. If you want to read the story, it’s in chapter 12 of the Gospel Principles book. I love that story a lot and this time it hit me a bit harder. I think everything in life becomes more meaningful as you get older. I am just glad that I can see this change in my life. We had a total of 15 people in church yesterday. We are going to try and get it above 20 next week. Little projects at a time. The branch president was out of town this past week so we did pretty well holding our own for a week. But with the branch president next week, we are going to do a lot better.

Well, thanks to all who wrote me last week and this week. Grandpa Packard and Abuelita, thank you so much for your letters. I really appreciate hearing from everyone. I don’t have much time, so write as much as you can before I’m stepping in your front door asking why you didn’t write me. Jaja. I love you all. Until next week…

Love

Elder Pickett