Almost June! Weird...

Dear Everyone,

What a week! Just having some fun with my new companion and this past week was pretty fun. Full of work. We started off the week just visiting everyone. We visited some recent converts and there is one girl there that is not baptized. We challenged her to be baptized and she accepted. That was so cool to start off the week like that. That was on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we had to travel 6 hours in train to get to a meeting in Luján. So I did not get to enjoy 25 de Mayo like a normal Argentine. I did not get to eat locro or anything! It was pretty depressing because our branch was doing a big activity and we had investigators going and the mission wouldn’t let us stay to be with our investigators. It was frustrating but oh well. We got back at 10 at night on Wednesday. We were so tired. On Thursday we did some more work and that’s how it was for the rest of the week.


Elder Bravo y Elder Pickett

But this week I realized how big our area really is. We need bicycles but the mission won’t approve it for some reason. I think I’ll be asking again. Saturday night, we got busy making some crepes for our investigators. Yes, I learned how to cook something else. And I bet some of you are thinking, hey, I taught him how to do that… how did he forget? Well, I did and now I relearned how to make crepes. We make 40 of them and that took a long time. It took an hour and a half. We got to bed a little too late also that night.


Elder Bravo and Elder Pickett making crepes

Sunday morning we went to go wake up our investigator that has a baptismal date. She woke up and we gave them some crepes and we had to leave to get to church on time and they went in bicycle. We got to church right when a family of investigators got there. They hadn’t been to church in over 3 months and we challenged them to go this Sunday and they showed up. We would baptize them but the father has a problem with the word of wisdom and he said that no one in his family will get baptized until he gets baptized. Kind of a problem if you ask me. We have talked about it between my companion and I and we are stuck on what we can do for them. But we will keep passing by to see what the spirit does. So that is all that happened this week.

So I’m trying to read the book of Mormon completely before I finish my mission. I’m trying to finish it for the 3rd time on the mission. It has been so great reading it and enjoying what it has to say. I really like how in the first page of first Nephi, Nephi gives his testimony that what he is writing is true and that it comes from God. Just in the first 5-6 verses we know that at least one person believes in the word of God.

Well, I am going to rest a little bit so I can work the rest of this week. Have a great week everyone. I love you all.

Love,

Elder Pickett

Nuevo Compañero y Milagros

Hey Everyone,

What a week we had. It was a really hard week to work because we have been traveling so much. There were a couple of miracles that happened this past week. I will eventually talk about my new comp but first the miracles. So we weren’t able to work in our area for 4 out of the 7 days of the week. We have been in Ramos Mejìa and doing divisions and not getting a lot of things done.

On Friday we had an activity planned to teach the members how to make brownies. Well, no one showed up but while we were waiting my companion and I were watching one of the Preach my Gospel video when my comp told me something. He told me that President Benton called the zone leaders and told them that they wanted us to baptize this past weekend. Well, we had already waited for half hour and no one showed up and so I jumped up and said LET’S GO!! Well, we left and started basically running to go to two houses where we could get a baptism. We went to the first house of an eleven year old kid that has said that he wants to get baptized but when we prepare a day he gets scared and doesn’t want to. Well, he accepted for this past Sunday(yesterday). And yes, he got baptized yesterday and I got to baptize him. Then after we went to his house Friday, we went to the house of the lady that disappeared on us the day of her baptism like 4 weeks ago. We found her in her house and she still really wanted to get baptized so we set it up for Sunday also. So yesterday, Sunday, we had two baptisms and they were pure miracles. We did not have any other baptismal dates or anyone who could get baptized. And because they got baptized, we broke the mission record again for baptisms for the third transfer in a row. It’s been pretty amazing this past little bit.

Ok, now on to my companion. Well, my new companion is Elder Bravo from Santiago Chile. And yes, his name is Juan so that makes him Johnny Bravo… JAJAJA. And yes, he will be my last companion. Today is my cumple mes and so that makes it 20 for me.


Johnny Bravo - cartoon character

Saturday while doing divisions for baptism interviews, we got locked out of the pench because the lock got stuck and the key didn’t work. So we went walking around all day and not a single locks smith could help us so we were up a creek without a paddle. We walked around all day and we went to the church in the morning to get things ready for the baptism. While we were there, we called our ward mission leader who knows who to fix everything and he said he would help us. Well, we went and he tried to open the door and everything and nothing worked. And so he said to us that he had to break the windows on the door to get in. So he did. He broke one window and now we are windowless . Ok, it’s not as bad as I make it sound. The window is maybe 10 inches by 6 inches. Small small. But never the less, it was an event that happened this week.

This past week I have been impressed on the history of the church. It is a miracle on how it started. I have been reading in the book called Our Heritage. It is a great little book that takes you through the basic history of the church that we should all know. So that means I have been reading in the D&C. And I read in D&C 14:7 that tells us the greatest gift out Father in Heaven could give us was eternal life. Sometimes we forget how big that gift is. We sometimes look with our mortal eyes and not spiritual eyes. We have to think eternally and not in the now. Physical treasures we cannot take but the knowledge we gather here will serve us on the other side.

Thanks to all the wrote. Abuelita y Grandpa and Alyssa for your letters. The computers here are still funky so I’ll keep trying to send something of photos. I love you all and I will talk to you next week with week 1 with Elder Johnny Bravo… jaja

Elder Pickett

16/05/2011

Dear Everyone,

Well, as you can tell, I did not write last week. I had just talked to the family so I had nothing to write. But now I do have something to write. So happy belated Mother’s day to all mothers and non-mothers also.


Train to Buenos Aires

So this last week was an interesting one. We started the week last week with a miracle. We were sitting in the train with a very long trip almost done. We were one of the only ones on the train except for one family and some other random people. This one family was sitting behind my companion so I was looking at them the whole time. While I was observing them, I saw that the father of the family was a great man. I could feel that he really cared about his family because of how much he was playing with his children. I don’t know how to describe it but I just felt really good about him. Then next thing you know, while playing with his phone and stuff, he was recording his children and stuff and then he turns to us and says in his camera “these are the elders”. That surprised me a whole lot. He then turned back around to be with his family. I look at my companion and I tell him to talk to them and get an appointment with them. My comp turns around and starts to talk with him and thank heavens he wasn’t a member. He told us that he wanted to go to church with us and learn more because when he was younger, he had friends that would take him to the church to play some soccer and so he now has a family and married too and wants the best for his family. Well, he came to church with us on Sunday and he enjoyed it a lot. We are so happy for him and we have a lot of hope for him. He is one of those always happy people so he is going to progress well in the gospel. That was pretty cool.


Los Lobos train station

Friday we had an activity that my comp and I did for the branch. We focused on the worth of souls. It was a chance for everyone to get together and appreciate one another. We had ourselves a great time.

We are now in the last week of the transfer and the last week of my comps mission life. It’s kind of weird how fast it all goes. For now, things are kind of idol. This area is kind of slow so there isn’t a lot to talk about. But I like it because it is very chill. If I come home very laid back, it’s because I have been in the country for a long time. Well, I will leave it here. Thanks for everything everyone. I love you all and I’ll talk to you next week.

Love,

Elder Pickett

***Happy Birthday Grandma and Grandpa Packard***

Dear Everyone,

What a week!! It’s definitely getting very cold. Not very many things happened this past week but I’ll tell you what happened anyway. So we had some cool divisions where I went back to the city and worked with a cool Elder. Elder Bagley is his name and he is from Arizona. I was once again in the same apartment as my great friend, Elder Latteier. I can never get away from him and neither do I want to. He is a great friend of mine. When I got back with my companion, we just went around visiting people.


Plaza 1810 en Lobos

We are going to fast forward to Sunday. Sunday was horrible. It was one of those Sunday’s where you just want to be in your house snuggled up with some hot chocolate. We woke up to the wind blowing at like 30-40 mph and the temperature at 10 degrees Celsius. It was super cold. We were the only ones at church until 930. The branch president didn’t show up because he is in Paraguay and the counselors showed up late. To make a long story short, we had 10 people at church. And half of them came from the stake. A pretty depressing day.



Banco de la Nacion - sucursal Lobos

And to top it off, we went that same afternoon to go an event that we got a personal invitation. That event would be going to the church of the Jehovah’s Witness. That was something different. My companion and I sat there like fish out of water because we forgot our JW bible and Watchtower. No one told us of the materials we had to bring. And let me tell you, our hymns are much better than their’s... jajaja. So that’s how we spent our Sunday afternoon. It has been pretty hard being here but that is no excuse for us to get down. We just need to keep working hard.


Calle Buenos Aires y Salgado

I think I have already written a lot about trials and so you must all know by now that trials are necessary to grow. Well, there is something I need to learn from being here in Lobos. The people here are much more friendly than the people in the city. Being in the country is great. I wouldn’t mind living in Idaho..


Pintoresca Casona en Lobos

Since there were only 10 of us in the church, each of us had the opportunity to bare our testimonies. It was a special meeting for me because EVERYONE bore their testimony. And almost every single one was about Jesus Christ. How important is Jesus Christ in our lives. He is the center of the plan of Happiness. He is what brings about happiness. I am grateful for Him and all that He has done for me and the people that I am serving right now.

Thanks Abuelita and Grandpa for your emails. Also, thank you Dari for your email. And Thank you also Mom and Dad for your emails. I can’t wait to talk to you all this coming Sunday. I love you all!!

Love,

Elder Pickett

[Allen is still struggling to find a cyber that will allow him to post pictures. The pictures in this letter are from : InfoLobos)