Oct. 18, 2011

Hey family! What a pleasure it is to email you again. Sorry it was not yesterday like it should have been. But we got together with another zone and had a big football game. Good times.

Well this last week definitely had its ups and downs.

I will start with the down. This last Thursday, we had things set! We had appointments set up, we had great plans to visit with our investigators and other people we were working with closely. Well Thursday morning started and it seemed to be a great day that started normally. We were pretty excited for the upcoming day. We made 2 visits and after that it went down hill. Every visit we tried, we got shot down hard core. Not one person wanted to talk with us and we were pretty down on our luck all day. We tried to see many different people but things just did not go our way. We stopped at this park after a few exhausting hours and just asked ourselves "what are we doing wrong?" and we did a self analyses.. We discovered we were being obedient to every rule and there was not much more we could do. We were just having a rough day. But we kept pushing on. We went and visited more people, we contacted people on the street and even while they were fishing, but we didn't have much success. Overall it was just a tough day. BUT we endured it well. I think The Lord was trying to teach me a valuable lesson that day. No matter how obedient we are to the commandments, we are still going to have challenges and obstacles we must face. But as we rely on the Lord we will be able to endure all things.

Then on Saturday was our reward. We had the opportunity to be a part of Reymundo's baptism. What a great experience that was. The spirit was so strong in that room, everyone felt it, I guarantee. A member of the ward gave a wonderful talk on both baptism and the holy ghost. Then Reymundo stepped into the waters of baptism. And I don't think I will ever forget this. After he was baptized he came out of the water and just laughed. And if you knew Reymundo like we do, it would crack you up, because it made me laugh haha. He is such a funny kid and really has had such a change of heart. It has been such a blessing to know him and help him come closer to Christ.

Well I love you all so much. Remember what a critical part Jesus Christ has in all of your lives. He is truly the savior and redeemer of the world.

Elder Pierce

Power Animal? Last 4 Transfers..

Hello family.

It is a pleasure to email you all yet again. Things have been going really well lately. This last week we have seen a lot of success. The Lord is truly blessing us in these times of diligence. A new transfer has officially begun and Elder Blake and I are staying together. I have hit my last 4 transfers. That is really weird to me. Just thinking about how long i have been out here serving the lord compared to when I first arrived in the mission field really trips me out.

I have a few good stories for you this week that I will hopefully have time to type them to you.

How great is my calling!!!

Hello family.

Today is a wonderful day to be alive.

Sorry to get this email in a little later than it should be. Yesterday we went hiking for our p-day activities expecting to back around 10 or 11 sometime. When we actually ended up getting off the mountain around 2:30 or 3 o'clock. We took some unfortunate wrong turns and ended up having to turn around multiple times. It was exhausting. But we are alive and well.
Things have been going really well as of late. Elder Blake and I have been working a lot on our finding efforts here in Sahaurita 1st ward. And we have been finding some decent success. We are making a lot of plans primarily to focus on the Part member/ in active families we have found and plan on getting into their homes and getting work done. A couple of the less active families that we have been getting to know better want to have us over for dinner and then hopefully the message of the Restoration will emerge. Work has been getting done for real around here lately. I would honestly say, that i think being put with elder Blake has been one of the best things that has happened to me on my mission.

Some of the main work we have going right now is with a young man named Reymundo. He is getting baptized on the 15th of October. His family got baptized a few weeks ago and he wanted nothing to do with it. But after their baptism, he had a complete turn around. He is fully committed to living the gospel of Jesus Christ and wants to follow his example by being baptized. The Family is already making plans to go to the temple next year sometime. And also, the mom of the family works at circle k and has already shared the gospel with her co-workers. That is a true conversion to the gospel. The strength of the testimony of any member of the church is represented by their willingness to share the gospel.

General Conference was awesome! Anyone agree? There were some incredible talks that were given. One thing that i particularly loved was one someone stated That his mission was not the best 2 year of his life. But it was the best 2 years for his life. How crucial these two years are in my life. They are setting a foundation for the rest of my life to come. The testimony I gain here will be the back bone of the testimony I have for the rest of my life. I love being a missionary. Someone yelled at us the other day "Don't you punks have anything better to be doing with your life!!!" and I though about it for a second and yelled back "NOPE!!!" This is the most important work anyone can ever do in this life. Bringing souls to Christ. Their savior. How great is my calling!!!

Family, you are awesome. Thank you for your love and support.
Love, Elder Pierce

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