Merry Christmas

How is everyone doing? This has been a fun week.

We had a kid baptized, and I got to confirm him. It was pretty cool, he's a good kid.

Transfers are tomorrow and Fairbanks is leaving. I've never met my new companion, but his name is Elder Henke and I hear he's hard to deal with and bi-polar. But it'll work out. It'll be a fun transfer :P

I'm ready for Christmas. We aren't allowed to watch movies anymore. Even though most missions are allowed to watch movies any p-day, we can't even on Christmas. So kinda bummed about that, but it'll still be an awesome Christmas.

We went to a baptism for the sisters and had to fill the font as they were starting it because whoever was in charge forgot. And a font takes about 2 hours to fill. So while they were singing and giving talks a lot of us were filling trash cans full of water and filling the font really fast. It probably wasn't as warm as they'd like, but we got it filled in time.  It was really fun.

We had mission conference this week.  That's when all the missionaries in the mission got together for a day. We had a talent show and a couple elders and I did a rap song/dance thing about the word of wisdom.  It was hilarious. We kinda winged the whole thing.

We get to teach a youth lesson every other Sunday at a members home.  We did it this week on the true meaning of Christmas and Christmas miracles.  It was a really great lesson. We talked about a guy, Ed, who we're teaching.  He's living with his his girlfriend and they each have one kid. One is 5 and one is 16 months old. He'd been looking for work when we started teaching him, found a job working on an assembly line, and just lost it because he didn't report an injury that he didn't think was an injury at first.  And he's an ex-convict, so nobody wants to hire him. He had enough money to either pay bills for the next couple months or buy Christmas for his two kids. After the youth lesson, a bunch of kids came up and were all wanting to know what they could do to help. Because of these kids, there's enough money to get them Christmas, and we've gotten hold of the president of the the company that fired Ed and he's going to see about hiring him back. Talk about a Christmas miracle. It's amazing what these kids have done. They know the true meaning of Christmas. I'm amazed at their charity and desire to help others.

This is going to be an amazing Christmas. I hope everyone has a good Christmas and remembers the true meaning of it. Helping others and being with loved ones. Best wishes for everyone.


Elder Pearson

Merry Early Christmas

For starters... sweet scripture. Everyone Check out Zacharias 5:1-2. it's at the end of the Old Testament.

This week has been amazing! For starters, about 14 missionaries went Christmas Caroling... which ended up as a big snowball fight (my first) it was so fun. And we knocked on one guy's apartment door. He didn't open the door but told us to leave. sS we started singing really loudly. The guy was constantly yelling at us through the door to shut up and go away.  It was pretty funny.  We forced some Christmas spirit into him.

Then I made my first snowman. All by myself. Fairbanks wouldn't help me, but i made it. It's huge. He was pretty good. Taller than me.  I wasn't able to make the picture cd last week[which is how we will move pictures back and forth after the memory card fiasco], but I have my camera and will make it next week.  The thing wasn't working to make the cd today.

So awesome story this week: Fairbanks and I stopped by the first person I baptized. His name is Garrett and he's a stud. He's 11 and already talking about serving his mission. He's the biggest impact I've made in Utah by far. I love the kid. but we hadn't finished our new member lessons.  So we stopped by to set up the appointment for the last lesson.  This should of taken place 6 weeks ago. But the spirit had other plans for us.

We stopped by Friday and Garrett's aunt, Jen, was there. She just moved in with them. She has a 10 year old daughter in Texas who has recently been baptized and was glad to meet us. She wanted to take the lessons to learn a little about what her daughter, sister, and nephew believe. I know that it was only because we stopped by at that time much later that we were able to set up a lesson with her.

We had our first lesson on Saturday. The spirit was really strong and she was crying. She read 3Ne 11, which we gave her Friday to read, and loved it. After the lesson she asked for a blessing because there might be cancer in her kidneys. We gave it to her and that only brought the spirit in stronger.  We saw her at church the next day and, while walking into Sacrament meeting (which is last) she told us all she wanted to be baptized... and was thinking next week. I know that when we work hard for missionary work, the Lord puts people that are prepared in our path to teach. This is what happened.

On a sad note, I want everyone to pray for Morgan Grebe, who has 32 blood clots. I know that through faith and prayer she'll overcome this adversity. Pray for her and her family. Also, pray for Jen.

For Christmas, I want letters and picture from everyone. Anyone getting this email. I'm reminded with a scripture, Alma 60:5-6 "... Yea, Great has been your neglect toward us. And now behold, we desire to know the cause of this exceedingly great neglect; yea, we desire to know the cause of your thoughtless state."

Just kidding... but not really. :P


Don't forget to pray for Morgan and Jen.

Elder Pearson

December 8, 2009

So it's cold. I'm gettin used to it though. Faribanks and I run to the high school to work out every morning and it's about 13 degrees out then.  The coldest it's been that I know of is 5 degrees. I heard it snowed 5 inches all over Texas this week. Crazy!

Word on the street is Texas barely beat Nebraska. And Alabama slaughtered Florida. Everyone up here wants TCU to play Alabama so it'll make the mtn west look better. Appearently they're impressive. It's killin me to not be watching football right now. How can they expect me to miss Texas playin for the National Championship? UGH. But it's all good.

We get to watch another movie today, cause our mission got over 200 baptisms for November. I think we're gonna end up watchin Narnia. Not my fav, but it's still a movie. Tomorrow is offically my 3 Month mark. This is flying by.

So funny stories for the week. At a ward Christmas party there was this guy that looked like an evil wizard. He wasn't dressed up or nothin, just weird. He grabbed my hand and put a zip-lock bag in it with what looked like drugs. He told me it was a home-made candy made out of potatoes... weird. Then he kept waiting till i ate one. It was wayyy sweet and disgusting. Tthe rest of the night he kept giving us food and we kept throwing it away when he wasn't looking. He was tryin to be nice. Then at Testimony mtg a lady, who's son just went on a mission to Africa, went up, and read his first email, which was just him complaining about everything. It was akwardly funny. The bishop told Fairbanks and I later that he wasn't gonna let her up there for a while.

So I gotta end with good stories. We had our baptism last Sat, which was awesome. I didn't get to baptize her, her friend did, but I did confirm her. After she got baptized, we convinced her to bear her testimony, which was a hard thing to do. As she did the spirit flooded in and she was crying. It really reafirmed my testimony about being in the right place for certain people. She was my first baptized person who I taught from the beginning. She said that if it was any other missionaries teaching her, she wouldn't of gotten to this point. It's cool that things work out that we were able to work so well with her. I know that I was sent to the Terrace for this reason.

So at the baptism, I took some pics... and left my camera at the college institute. We went back a few hours later and it wasn't there. I was pretty mad. I was not thinking many good things. I had already lost my Oakleys I bought right before the mission and my first memory card with my first 4 baptism pics got messed up. so I was not happy to lose my camera. Elder Fairbanks kept telling me I'd find it, but I wasn't hearing it. After an hour and half of pouting I remembered what's really important and went to work. After dinner that night we got a last min call from one of the ward mission leaders asking if we wanted to go to an institute Christmas program thing. After we got permission, we gladly accepted. As we were taking our seats in the large auditoriom, the man right behind me looked at me, shook my hand, and asked if I'd lost my camera. He found it and recognized me from the pics. He gave me the info to get my camera and went down to the stage. He was the music director.

Someone explain to me why the choir director was sitting in the audience right before the program, exactly in the seat before me. And how he remembered me, out of all the pics in my camera, and would spot me in the massive audience, at a thing we wern't going to be at. Explain that without the obvious true reason of God's hand in all things, little and big, in our daily lives. It really is amazing how much he cares about our little unimportant things and works things out for us. All we need is faith.

December 2, 2009

(Ryan playing laser tag on p-day)

Happy Late Thanksgiving! how was everyone's? Mine was amazing. Fairbanks and I wnt to this awesome family's house, the Dumas, that he knew from serving in the area before, at 4 am. They're not in the Terrace, but the next area over. A bunch of missionaries showed up and went into the theatre room. We watched Forever Strong. It was a pretty good movie, but it was about rugby. It's so popular in Rtah and outside the country.

Then we chilled at the house for a bit until we went to this gymnastics place and messed around there. After that we went to Thanksgiving dinner, where the Cowboys game happened to be on, and watched UP at those members home. It was hilarious. Great movie. Then we went back to the Dumas' and had dessert, talked, and watched Elf to get into the Christmas Spirit. All in all, great and tiring day.

How was everyone else's Thanksgiving? It's been a long while since we've had a baptism, but we're having one this Sat! And i'm probably dressing in white to do the actual baptism. I'm excited. The person who's gettin baptized made all the changes she needed without hesitating. She knows without a doubt it's true. And it's all because of General Conference. But ya, really exciting.

Another guy we're teaching looks like a modern day Porter Rockwell. This guy is awesome. Long black hair, tated up all over. Served like 5 years in prision. Served in the Marines and he told us all the ways he's killed people. I can't wait to baptize him, lol. He just needs to know it's all true. And he's got a dog that has a head bigger that any person. and it probably weighs about twice what  do. I love going over there.

He gave me a pretty crazy stat. He said about 51% of everyone in prision in America either grew up, or got caught in Ogden. This place is awesome.

So all the missionaries in our zone went out to Morgan to help the missionaries out and find a bunch of new investigators for them. My companion for the day (Elder Cowan) and I stopped at a member's home and they told us about everyone in the area. He told us about a 60 year old guy who hadn't gone to church since he was 8. He said if we could set up a lesson he'd take us both out for free Prime Rib. We later had to go back and inform him he owed us some food. The old guy was awesome. He had a cowboy type home and was hilarious. I'm just jealous I don't get to teach him. That's about it for this week. It's been a great week.

Those of yall who write me, keep it up. Those who don't, start.


Love ya,

Elder Pearson