"How many pancakes can I eat?"

Well hello family, 

how is everyone doing this week. It seems like it has been so long since i have emailed you guys, almost 2 weeks!! Holy cow. That is a long time.

Well this week has been great, today especially. We had the awesome opportunity to go to the temple today, it was just great. I love the temple, being able to go just lifts my spirit. Then what made it even better, Adriana and Tommy Gates got to go! it made it that much more special. I am so happy for them, and proud of how far they have come. They truly are inspirations to me.

Then after the temple, we went to Denny's. It was there that i was faced with a challenge. "How many pancakes can i eat?" The record for that Denny's was 12 and a bite. Set by an 11 year old girl. Psshhh that seemed easy. Just 12 pancakes. Well let me tell you what, that little 11 year old girl has an amazing talent for eating pancakes. I could only eat 11 and 2 bites. I am so full right now. Like its not even funny. I almost threw up like a ton of times. I am so full its just miserable. I don't know how she did it haha.

Well this past week was pretty good, i would like to share with you an awesome experience. Yesterday, I literally saved Elder Bischoffs life. It was incredible. We were out walking around in what is called "The Hole". The lowest part of Morenci. To understand this story, you need to understand that Morenci is built in layers. there is a layer of houses, then a short hill that works its way down to the next layer of houses, so its somewhat of an organized mess pile of houses. Anyways, to get up to the next set of streets, instead of walking all the way around, we made our own route up a hill of loose gravel. I almost fell once or twice but i made it up pretty easily, as did Bischoff. So first we were in the hole on Malachite street. After we climbed that hill it put us on Gila street. Well Gila is a pretty long street and we had to get up to Ash street which is 3 more streets up. So we took the shortcut, but this shortcut is a lot more intense. (on these hills, they pore cement down the hill to control the flow of water down the hill when the monsoons come). So there was one of these cement washes running from the top to the bottom. So i decided we should go up it. This wash is probably 50 feet long or so and at a 60-70% incline. I ran up it and because my shoes are so awesome i felt like spider man working my way up that wash, (it was sweet). Then Bischoff needed to get up. He tried and tried and could NOT get up this wash. His shoes are very slick. So after a few frustrating tries and a couple encounters with a thorny bush, he gets an idea. He starts climbing this thing backwards crab style, surprisingly, it worked. So he gets up almost all the way and then realizes at the end it gets even more steep, almost straight up, like a 90 degree angle. So i start asking him if he will need help and warning him of this angle, he said he could handle it but i was sceptical. He makes one more reach with his hand to progress himself up this hill and his feet slip! In a desperate attempt he reaches his arm up for help and i grab him, stabilize him and pull him up the rest of the way! it seriously should have been in a movie or something. It was so cool! It happened so fast and yet it was like it was in slow motion. It was cool. IF he would have fallen, or i wouldn't have caught him, he would have had some serious injuries. like Some broken  bones at least. It was sweet.

Other than that, things have been going relatively slow, not to much to report about this week. We had a zone conference this week, which was great. Our whole zone of like 18 missionaries. (smallest zone, biggest area haha) We had a bunch of trainings about Jesus Christ and learned a lot about him and his life. We watched a beautiful video of Emma Smith and her life. It was just great. Got me all teared up and stuff. so that was really great.

Well family, that's all i got for you this week. Hope all is well. I love you all so much!
Love, Elder Pierce