June 21 & 28, 2010

Elder Pierce, Ethan & Elder Sorensen

So...sorry about the mix up last week, it wasn't my fault. I typed the long email and hit send then logged off. I didn't realize that there was an Internet problem and it decided not to send it. SO i DID hit the send button but it just didn't feel like working. So other than that how is everyone else doing? I hope everyone is doing good, Thank you all so much for the little surprise in my package, I'm working on responding, i will do it sometime this week. Well aside from that things are going great over here. Ethan, the guy who just graduated and is going into the navy, is going to be baptized this Saturday at 6 o'clock. He is going to have his best friend Eric baptize him. Eric is preparing for his mission so it should be a great experience for all of them. Then we are also working on their other friend Katie Biddle, she is not as excited but is still progressing. We are going to set her a date for this next 2 weeks, cuz she has been to church twice and is really happy when she goes, and whenever we go and teach her she never lets us leave without setting her a reading assignment. So we are working on her.

June 14, 2010

Sahuarita Zone

Self Explanitory

Hey family, this email aint gonna be to long. I was trying to figure out how to upload these pictures and i finally figured it out. So anyways. this week has been great. We definitally got a lot of work done. right now we have been teaching alot of lessons. So things are great.

I would like to share one story with you. We were having a lesson over with Ethan at the Householders. We were planning on teaching him the Plan of Salvation. it was so cool because instead of just teaching Ethan, he brought 2 of his non member friends! score. So in total, me and elder farmer (district leader-exchanges) were teaching 9 people. 5 of which were The house holders, 1 another member, and now 3 investigators...this is like a missionarys dream. To have your main solid investigator bring his friends. it was tight! anyways we were teaching the plan of salvation adn things were going great, i got to use my spongebob flow cahrt pictures and they loved it, cuz they were all 18 and it just worked perfectly. Well we teach him and it all goes great and we get to the kingdoms section and i like to do this thing when im teaching to take a vote. I was like "so by the raise of hands, who wants to live in the telestial? its a nice place"...crickets..."who wants to live in the terestial??? glory of the moon! come on its really nice"...at this time the crickets were even quite..."who wants to live in the Celestial with our heavenly father" every single one of them raised their hands. This is where i went spiritual mode. And it just happened. I told them to turn to 3rd nephi 17. And I read verse 1-3. in this section, Jesus Christ is teaching the people and he declares to them. "my time is at hand" now I asked Ethan, If Jesus Christ was sitting right here telling you everything I just told you, would you believe him.  And he said "ya of course."  Well then I explained to him, "that even when Jesus Christ was teaching his people, he told them to ask their Heaven Father."  Jesus Christ himself told them the exact thing we tell you to do. Don't take our word for it, ask your Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ that this is the plan he has for you. To Live with him again." it was just so spiritual and powerful it was amazing. I had the audience in tears...along with myself. it was one of the greatest lessons I have been a part of ever. Sure enough, all of them were there at church the next day. I know that the spirit testified to each and everyone of them that the Plan of Salvation is real, it is a true plan of happiness. No other joy could ever inhabit by mind than the fact that I will be able to live with my Heavenly Father again, as long as I live worthily and return with honor. I love being a missionary. Seeing the change that Happens to people it just wonderful. I love you all so much. sorry its so short, it was the pictures fault. haha

Elder Baradoy with Anna

pictures:

1.Sahuarita zone!!!

Baptism with David & Mia

2. Self explanitory haha

3.Elder Baradoy with Anna

4. Baptism with David and Mia

June 7, 2010

HELLO everyone!!!

How is it going? it's going good over here, just doing the work you know? Things are going really good over here. The work is progressing very nicely. Things are going a little slow in 1st ward but in 3rd ward, the work is booming. We have 3 investigators we are progressing towards baptism. One of their names is Ethan. He has just graduated from high school and has joined the navy, but he went to the temple open house and had a very spiritual experience, so he talked with his friend (member) and asked if there was someone he could talk to about the church. So we have been teaching him inside a members home and things have been going great. He went to Church yesterday and said it was pretty "legit" haha. so things are looking good. we have another lesson set up with him for tomorrow and he has been reading the B.O.M! and praying about it. He is a solid guy.

May 31, 2010

Hello family,

Not much to report on this week, the work is still pushing forward its just starting to slow down this week. For 1, we pretty much baptized most of our investigators and 2, the stupid holiday weekend is making people want to like celebrate and go out of town...seriously? its makes it tough, but we are still pushing along. As you may know, Elder Baradoy got transfered and now is serving in las cruzas, new mexico. he is a zone leader up there now. My new companions name is Elder Sorensen, he is a good guy. He has been on his mission for a little over a year now. He is a good teacher and is kinda cool. We get along ok, not like best friends or anything, but we are cool. Hopefully as the transfer continues we will start to become better friends. I guess cuz we have only been together like 5 days now, we still got 5 weeks together so lets hope. haha.

It was really cool the past couple of nights. We got to go on exchanges with the stake president down here. His name is president Hardy, he is a really spiritual guy, not as cool as Pres. Teshima though haha. We also got to go out with the Ward mission leader and the Elders quorum president the next couple of nights haha, so we had to make sure we had appointments to impress all of them haha. but it all went good. We had some good lessons and good drop bys with all 3 of them. Had to keep the trust of the ward growing.

Man, not much to say this week. Sorry guys. I feel bad. nothing really good happend...well, there was this one thing. Maybe the second week i was out here, me and Elder Baradoy gave a blessing to this lady named Sister Sterges. She is a snow bird and was visiting from like Michigan or something. Well they call us a couple days ago and she is like, "well we are leaving for the summer and we have all this food,  do you want it?" and of course we said yes. so we were driving over there expecting maybe like a box of food...wrong! She gave us 3 big boxes of food. There must have been 4 tbone steaks, 10 pork chops, a rack of ribs, hamburgers, new york strip steaks, I mean, all kinds of food, ice cream, pop tarts, it was seriously a blessing, it was totally awesome. after we hauled it all outside, i looked at Elder Sorensen and I was like "you know what this calls for?...a jumping high five!"  KACHOW!!!  It was tight.

Well thats all i really have for this week, i love you all so much, and thank you so much for everything you do for me. It really helps me, well I love you!

Elder Pierce

May 30, 2010

Hi Cindy! Hope you're having a great weekend. Just wanted to write you and tell you that 

your son is doing an awesome job. Shane (my husband) just came home and said, 

"I can't believe he's only been out 6 weeks! He's running it like he's a senior 

companion...I literally forgot that he's so new." We're so proud of him! He and Elder Sorenson are doing a great job together. I attached a picture of 

them. You are too cute. You sound just like my mom. On our first day of high 

school, she and her friend would get their diet cokes and wait outside in 

the van during lunch time to see if theycould see us. That would be so hard to 

have him so close...so tempting..!

Anyway, have a great weekend! Love, Kylee

Shane, Maylen Elder Sorensen & Elder Pierce

Elder Pierce from Kylee Thompson

HI Cindy,

Shane, Maylen, Elder Pierce & Elder Baradoy

My name is Kylee Thompson and my family lives here in Sahuarita, AZ where your son is serving. My husband is the ward mission leader and so we get to spend lots of time with the missionaries. I remember when my brothers were on their missions, my mom missed them terribly. She likes to have all of her chicks in one nest! So I just wanted to write you and tell you what an outstanding missionary your son is. We've seen him from Day 1 and he's been so ready to work. His funny and easy going personality has been a great tool to relate with the investigators as well as the members. He's been so willing to do whatever is asked of him and his enthusiasm is contagious.

May 24, 2010

WARNING WARNING

Due to the sheer awesomeness this email contains, i advise those that can't handle awesomeness to skip reading this email and wait for next week...