"Thank you for My Challenges"?

Hello family,

Not to much time this week, we kind of had a long start to the day, didn't get the chance to email right away, but no worries.

Things are going OK over here, things are still progressing quite nicely, so we are just planning on keeping up the work. I will let you know of a cool miracle we had the other day. We taught David Gomez the plan of salvation, which went really well. You could definitely tell he was feeling the spirit, he just kept repeating and saying how good he felt, and was just like, this is what i want! Well at the end of the lesson, it came down to us committing him to live the word of wisdom...I'm not sure how it happened but it did. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Well we go over there yesterday, and he was like "you guys will be so proud of me, i was cleaning out my fridge to fit all my groceries in there, and i had 4 beers left...so i dumped them!" I was just like SWEET!!! it was so awesome. You can already see the changes that he has made in his life, and how much the Lord is beginning to change him. It is just great to see and to feel.

Then we also had a sweet experience, 2 weeks ago was stake conference here by the way, i don't think i mentioned that last time. Well anyways, we had an investigator come to it who's name is Britton. He is an 18 year old kid who has a pretty rough life. Well he came and really enjoyed it, then he came to mutual that Sunday as well. After mutual, we sat down in one of the class rooms with him and we had a powerful lessons where we committed him to baptism. It was an awesome lesson. I know Britton is a good kid, if he would accept the gospel and allow it to influence his life, i know he would be able to overcome the situations that he is in. He is in my prayers for sure. I know if he would just allow the atonement of Jesus Christ to play a role in his life, it would change him.

A really cool experience i had in my personal prayers the other day, it was after a pretty rough day, where we had nothing really going on. Our plans fell through and no one wanted to talk with us. During the end of my prayer, i said, "thank you for my challenges" i finished my prayer and then i was like "wait a second, thank you for my challenges?!?! why would i want those???" Then i laid in bed and thought about just how important our challenges are to us. We need to go through all of our many challenges and trials in life so we can be stronger for the next. I know I'm not strong enough to do this work. To be a missionary for my Lord. To literally go out and share the gospel with these people. I KNOW I'm not strong enough, but i know the lord WILL make me strong enough. It is only through the Lord that these things are possible. It is only through him that we will be strong enough for the trials and tasks ahead of us. I trust him. I know i will be ready for whatever he has next for me.

Love, Elder Pierce