Officially, 18 Months....

Hello family.

So quite an eventful week we have had.

This last Saturday was a big one. The Jones family, primarily Dylan, Gracie, and Sage Jones were baptized. It was such a cool experience. The Jones family really helped me in my mission and it truly was such an awesome experience just to be able to teach them and get to know them.

Well also, I have officially been out for 18 months. Wow that is weird to even think about. I'm 3/4ths of the way there. And let me all tell you, I plan on this last 6 months to be the best ones yet. I am not going to quit, give up, or make dumb mistakes. I love being a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I intend on making him more proud than I have ever done before.

As of right now, I'm serving in Sahuarita 1st ward. If any of you remember, this is where I started my mission. 18 months ago when i was trained by Elder Baradoy. It is super weird being back in this town again. Seeing all the people I taught and baptized and to hear about the people I found that progressed, or stopped investigating. Its so cool. I have another chance to find those that I missed the first time around. I'm so thankful for the Lord for him to give me this chance.

Well, i love all of you, i look forward to emailing you on Monday this time. Take care everyone and remember who loves ya!

Elder Pierce

Sept. 18, 2011

Hello family. Its good to email you yet again. This week has been a relatively slow week unfortunately.

For 3 days of the week we got stuck inside for most of the day. We had a lot of apartment renovations that needed to be done. We had to have our carpets cleaned. We had to have the tiles all along our shower get replaced after they caved inside themselves. And then our air conditioning broke. And to top it all off. We have had some of the most intense monsoons and storms i have had on my mission. I'm talking about things like hail, flooding, not being able to drive. The whole 9 yards. It was really cool to watch but not so good to do missionary work in.

So we had a cool miracle happen to us though. We were just out and about working, doing our missionary work thing. When we get a call from a member we didnt recognize and I talked to them for a moment. Found out they were a Recent convert from Sierra Vista. We talked for a while and found out that she wanted us to go and see her mom who is now intrested in learning more about the gospel. The reason this was such a cool referral, particually for Elder Barner, is because this woman who lives in Sierra Vista, Elder Barner served in her ward and was over at her house quite frequently trying to teach and baptize her husband. So he has had a major influence in this womans life already and the life of her family. So now he will get to teach her mother as well. It was just ironic and cool how the Lord takes care of his children. And his servants. He knows what is best for all of us. He loves and cares for us.

I love you all very much.
Elder Pierce.

ps. it was super weird not being spritually uplifted by my good ol' buddy Elder Moore this week. Love ya bud. Proud of you!

Happy "21st" Birthday Elder Pierce

Hello my wonderful family. Boy it is great to be alive. It is great to be serving the Lord too. Life is just great right about now. How wonderful.

Well this week was wonderful. I had a AMAZING birthday and amazing pre-birthday (Saturday). But overall this last week was really cool.

A quick story i would like to share with you. We got a referral from an online source from Mormon.org. and we decided one night to go follow up on it. Well It turned out to be a little to late for them so we were told to go back the next day in the afternoon. So that is what we did. At first we didn't know how solid it was going to be but we had hope. And another plus is that they had BIG dogs. About 3 or 4 of them. So we prayed we wouldn't get eaten when we went back. Well we went back the next day and it turns out this family is just awesome. The mom is a member and they have tons of family friends that are members. They actually know someone who just got back from a mission as well. So we went over there and we taught a young man named Cameron, he is 17 and he was super interested. He kept saying how he just felt that something was missing in his life. That he needed a more fulfilling aspect to his life. Well that's just what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for! haha.

So he loved everything we were telling him. He accepted every commitment we left him and we are meeting with him again on Thursday. He is really cool. Elder Barner and I bonded with him really well. Everything i didn't know much about (cards, magic, things like that) Elder Barner knew about. Then things like football, sports, video games i could connect with. It was just really cool to see how much the Lord truly does know his children. His missionaries and those trying to find him. He knows us all equally and individually.

I love you so much family.

Love Elder Pierce

Bad News

Hello family. Bad News. I was working on my email to send to you guys, but I accidentally hit discard instead of send. So, this will now serve as the email I was going to send to you.

I will briefly sum up the past week in a few sentences.

The past week has served Elder Barner and I with much success. We have been able to find and teach many new people and invite them to enter the waters of Baptism.
Our Best progressing investigator attended church with us on Sunday and she has, because of attending church, become that much more excited about being baptized. She has fears of being the "outcast" when it came to church, or being the new person that no-one knew. She is doing great!

Then during that same day at church. A man and a woman approached me and informed me that they were new and needed to be taught missionary lessons. THAT was really cool. They both wanted to be baptized. It was sweet.
Well my hour is up. Talk to you next week!

Love, Elder Pierce