I'm Dreaming of a Brown Christmas

Utah, who has "the world's greatest snow" had an ugly brown Christmas this year. Even Florida had a white Christmas this year. Needless to say, I'm disappointed in Utah.

But besides that, Christmas was Awesome! Elder Houghton and I visited a few families and played some football. I got to Skype home, after some stragegery and finding a plan B on the spot since our plan A Skype house failed. But it worked out. I got a lot of letters and packages, so for that, I thank you. During interviews, President told me I might be tied for the lead in package receiving in the mission. So for anyone who has contributed to that, I thank you. For anyone who hasn't contributed to that, there is still time :P

My Landlords, the Rogers are now checking up on the blog, and told me if I said anything else about the barn, I'll be sleeping out with the horses. So, I'll have to keep the barn jokes to a minimum. They did give me a SWEET Christmas present.

A home-made Dallas Cowboys quilt. Like I said, they are reading this, so I can't say too many good things about it, but it is pretty cool.

Our baptism on Christmas Eve did go through. It wasn't the smoothest baptism. (Aikyrea and her family showed up 30 min late, and we found out she's deathly afraid of water during the multiple attempts to baptize her) But it did go through, and she's a new member of Christ's church! :)




Elder Houghton, Aikyrea and Elder Pearson

 For the spiritual story of the week, I'm gonna use a story from the Denmark, Copenhagen Mission. This is a good one. There is a show out there called South Park. One of the creators of the show is an Ex-Communicated member of the church [mother's note - neither of the South Park creators is LDS - many of their friends growing up were LDS]. So a lot of the jokes are making fun of the LDS faith. There is one whole episode dedicated to making fun of Joseph Smith. Someone in Denmark watched this episode, was interested in the church, and got baptized! South Park helped convert someone! It's not really spiritual, I just thought it was a cool story. Well, that's all I have today, we're putting a big football game together today with a lot of youth. And when you have 19 wards, you have a lot of youth.

So Y'all have a happy holiday and a safe New Year!

Merry Christmas!



Former Elders Phelps and McCann who served in the Houston TX mission.  They took Elder Pearson and his companion out for dinner


This week has been crazy. Trying to get this baptism together, continue to find to have baptisms in the future, and still get lost every now and then. And apparently there's a big day on December 25th that's not helping with anything. But the work keeps moving along. We are getting more ward participation for Christmas Eve's baptism. I'm way excited for it.

We found the sweetest trailer park in the world. Chalk full of genuine Ogdenites. And I was really missing my first area too. We met a guy who was at least 450 pounds, about to lose his legs. A lady who's obviously on something who told us to watch out for the "dark people." Then she went inside because a 12 year old Hispanic girl was walking down the street. It was sweet!

So our area is all about the news here. Last week I talked about a plane crash a block from our dinner appointment. Well this week, a block from that there were a bunch of cop cars. There was a domestic disturbance. The husband went to jail for beating his wife. Later he got out, got drunk, and walked through the restraining order with a gun. Luckily she had a gun too, and wasn't drunk. He shot her in the arm, and she shot him to death. Happy ending I guess? Our area is sweet.

On a spiritual note, I heard about a sweet story. The Provo Tabernacle burned down this week. Everything in it was destroyed, except for one painting. A picture of Jesus Christ was burned everywhere except the part Christ is on. Here is the picture.




Remains from Provo Tabernacle


Yall have a Merry Christmas





Elder Pearson looking for love....



:P



The Texan missionaries serving in the Ogden, Utah Mission.

 It's been another week of greatness. This E-mail might be short. I'm in the Ogden Public Library, and the computers are slow and time is limited.

We are setting up a baptism for Christmas Eve. It's for Aikyrea. Her family got baptized a few years ago and now she's following their example. She'll also have her brother there, who she's seen once in the last year. So it's gonna be a great experience. Now we just have to convince people to remember Christ during Christmas and support her in this baptism, Which might be easier said than done, but we are working on it.

The family we live with are way cool. I enjoy working with their kids.

I got a call the other day from a former missionary in Lakewood ward, Elder McCann. He and Elder Phelps (also from Lakewood) are gonna take Houghton and I out to dinner tonight. I'm excited for that. That's all I got for today. The computer is kicking me off. Love yall

Deja Vu

My 2nd email outside the MTC I wrote about an experience I was going through. After I had been out and in the area for a week my trainer, Elder Shonk, got into a bike accident and went home. Leaving me as the missionary who knew the area the best with a companion that came down from up in the Idaho area.

Well, same song, 2nd verse. On Wednesday, we got a call from the big cheese in the mission. Some missionaries were not getting along up in Richmond, and an Emergency Transfer was going to take place.
Elder Williams went up there, and my new companion is Elder Houghton.

This is my 11th transfer and he is my 11th companion. It's not nearly as bad as it was my first week in the mission field, but it's still been a fun few days trying to continue to learn the 3 stakes with a companion who knows less about the area than I do. It's no problem, we're just going through a LOT more miles getting lost than we should be. Luckily I just got a GPS on Black Friday. It's helping out.

We are managing to continue to find more people to teach. Right now we have 2 investigators we just picked up with dates to get baptized on Dec 18th. That's been the exciting news for the week. That, and a plane crashed in our area! Yall might of heard of it. A plane crashed in one of our wards in our Roy stake. The scary part is a week ago I was in the house next door to the house that was destroyed, and we were eating dinner in a house one block away at 5... shortly before the crash. It's been crazy. We drove by when Fox and ABC were doing their coverage, so we might have been on TV for a sec?

Anywho, keep getting closer to Christ. I'm gonna keep trying not to screw up this area. Love yall

COLD



Elder Pearson and "his firstborn in the wilderness" - the first Elder he trained Elder Miller.

 This week has been sweet. I cover 3 stakes in my new area. One in Kanesville, one in West Haven, and one back in Roy. One of the wards in Roy is 100% made up of a trailer park. That's the whole ward.

My companion, Elder Williams had his license taken before his mission, so he's not allowed to drive. So I drove for the first time in over 14 months. It's been fun. The first night I drove was Tuesday night, the night of the most over hyped blizzard ever. It was just a couple hours of good snow and that was it. All our lessons canceled that night, but we visited a family. So my first day driving in a while was also my first day ever driving in snow/ice/ storm. It was fun.

We live with a family, but we live in their barn. It's pretty cool. complete with horses and all. It's been a bit of a change from living in a mansion to moving into a barn.



Elder Pearson's home for the next little while.

 Sunday morning I had my first fun experience in a car. There was a lot of snow on the roads, and I took a corner too fast. The car ended up in someone's front yard. The car stopped less than a foot of a tree, so I missed that. The car somehow maneuvered in between the telephone pole, street sign, and yard ornament. No damage to the car, thankfully. But I was able to hit the telephone box for the whole neighborhood. So, a few of our wards lost phones, lol. Everything is all good. And I get to keep driving.

On Saturday, I was able to go back to Layton to a baptism. Christian and Isaac were baptized.




Elder Miller, Bro. Brown, Christian, Isaac and Elder Pearson.

I literally spent the whole 4 1/2 months while in Layton trying to get these two kids baptized. So it was awesome to be able to see them take the steps to follow Christ.



Elder Pearson and Christian.

 While Elder Miller and his new comp were trying to get their program together, they had a sweet experience. They needed to pick an opening and a closing song. They couldn't think of any, so the missionaries chose the opening. Then Christian remembered his mom singing a song to them long ago. Their mother hasn't gone to church in years, but has been very supportive of them doing this. He had no idea what it was called. He just remembered the words: "Lead me, guide me, walk beside me" from years ago.

So "I am a child of God" was chosen as their closing song. It's amazing how the spirit works. How he can remember that from so long ago. The power that Hymns have is, I think, very underrated. They lift and inspire, and bring back good family memories.


Elder Pearson and Elder Williams quilting.  "Our landlord's wife told us we would get a hot wife if we knew how to quilt."