Holy Frijoles!

Hello!

Man what a week. A Lot happened, but I think that the crowning event was Thursday night from about 5:00 pm - 9:00. We had three meals in the matter of four hours. And they were all Mexican. Which means spicy. 

So the first of the three course each meal was our actual dinner appointment with this member, Maria, and her investigator sister, Juana. These two ladies crack me up. But Maria loves to cook and she's a great cook. Just like with all Mexican food, they find it necessary to add an unnecessary amount of spice to everything they make. Even if it's already spicy. So what we had for first dinner was 1/4 plate of refried beans, 1/4 a plate of Cajun rice, and then 1/2 plate of two Chilean peppers which are about the length of your hand and then where stuffed with cheese. So when I cut into the chili and see cheese ooze out my first thought is: Wow. That's a lot of cheese. And I like cheese so I'm thinking that this isn't gonna be spicy. Wrongo. Juana tells me: "Juero, es un poco picante." It's a little spicy. (Juero means "White Guy") Yeah, okay, it's just cheese. I needed to believe her. I take a bite, and holy cow, fire erupts in my mouth. My tastebuds have no idea what is going on. My mind is screaming: WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME. I swallow the fire cheese pepper and it burns down my throat. Oh boy. This is gonna be an adventure. "¿Estás bueno, Juero?" Is it good, white guy? Maria asks me. "Sí, la comida es muy rica." I tell her. She smiles proudly then walks back to the kitchen. I feel a cough coming up and fight it back and Elder Pardo just starts laughing at me. As I get to the close of this meal I realize that I just have one more bite of this volcano chile. I can do this. As I stab the beast with my fork, I see a seed fall out of it. Oh, just one seed won't hurt, I think as I bring it up to the mouth. As I bring it closer to my mouth, I see that this is the hang out place for all of the seeds. There was literally twenty in this one spot. I said a prayer of help. I put the chili in my mouth and painfully take a bite as spice and heat consume my mouth. This is just painful. What do I do? I start singing a hymn in my head. It helped out a little bit. I conquered that beast and said my fork down satisfied. Then Maria out two Enchiladas covered in red sauce next to me. That was fun too. 

After that we had an awesome lesson with this guy, José and his wife. They had a lot of questions for us, ranging from the plan of salvation to the Restoration. So that was pretty awesome. Then they fed us some home made tamales. They were pretty good except for the beef on the inside was smothered in Cajun pepper powder. 

On the way to the next appointment, all I wanted was a salad. As we walk in we see they're cooking huge slabs of meats and then I see salad and pasta salad too. Oh, thank heavens. This is the most American Mexican food I've ever seen. My prayer was answered. The salad and meat where both so good. Then I got to the pasta salad. Turns out that this was loaded with Cajun pepper to add flavor too. So my mouth was treated with more. 

But I love it out here. The people are amazing, members and nonmembers and always happy to help us out. Our time here on earth is short, I'm beginning to realize that. So we need to make the most of it. Live for the Lord and always find ways to serve him through serving others. Always remember the Primary song: "I am a Child of God" because it's always true. No matter who you are or what you do, know that God is there, that Christ is there and the He loves you and wants to help you. 

The Church is true, the Book is blue, and God loves you.

-Elder Pearson

P.S. We contacted the killer black dog beasts house. The family is awesome and the dogs name is Scooby. I love this dog to death. 

1. Scooby can give handshakes!

2. We met this guy who was cutting meat for Thanksgiving with a woodcutter

3. This families house that we went to had a slide in their house that went down to their basement so obviously I went down it

4. We had a snowball fight with all of these kids in a Trailer Park

Snow, "Coincidence", and Baptism

Hello!

Man, what a week!

So first off, it snowed this week. What? That's not supposed to happen. I was on Exchanges with Elder Cruz from Mt. Pleasant and he's from Florida so he was pretty excited. I mean, I thought it was cool but totally random. We had an awesome exchange. So we went up to the members house for dinner and this like 14 year old girl opens the door, smiling, and then this look of horror comes across her face. She turns around and yells to her brother: "Hey! Is mom home?" To which we hear: "No" The girl turns and looks sheepishly at us. "Why?" We hear the brother call and then we hear footsteps as he runs up to the door. Look of horror crosses his face too. They then explain to us that their mom isn't home and that they don't have any food for us. But did that stop this awesome family? No! They're the best and gave us two breadsticks, half a stick of butter, and seven Wontons to eat as we went about and did the Lords work. It was awesome! I love the members so much. :)

But Elder Cruz wanted some more food so we went to this restaurant place, Biggies. Super delicious. As we're ordering, this group of like seven Hispanic kids walk in and we start up a conversation with them. They're hilarious. They tell us that they're not members but that we're still pretty cool. One of them said: "I'm surprised you haven't started talking to us about Jesus yet!" To which we laughed, and then stated our purpose. They told us here they lived and told us to stop by another time. 

Well that was on Tuesday and flash forward to Thursday. I was on Exchanges again with another elder, Elder Spencer. As we're driving to go to the trailer parks, I feel like we should visit this teenager that we're teaching, Edwin. So we stop by his house and run into his twin sister outside and who else is there? Low and behold it's the teenagers that we met at Biggies. What! That's sweet! So we talk to them and they say that they talked to their mom and she wants us to come over for dinner some night. Well, that sounds awesome! So after that we go to the trailer park to find this kid, David. We knock on his trailer and hear: "Pasale!" (Come in) so we do and there's this nice Mexican lady who sits us down and then gives us homemade burritos. My mouth was on fire, but hey, sometimes you've just got to smile and swallow and push the tears of pain back. We struck up a conversation with her husband about Jesus. This conversation was in Spanglish. He's learning English, so he was practicing, im learning Spanish, so I was practicing and Elder Spencer only knows English so he was throwing that in their too. He was talking about how you don't just serve Jesus for two years, but forever. So we talked to him about Enduring to the End - trying each day to become better. I personally love this principle of the Gospel. Trying each day to be your best. It gives me so much hope because I know I can become the best I can through Jesus Christ, my Savior. But this mans name was Ignacio. As we're getting ready to leave, there's a knock at the door, wherein an Adult, stay at home missionary, Sister Christensen, enters. She goes around and teaches English. Well, this is awesome! She's teaching these people English! The Lords timing is a beautiful thing. Things don't just happen by "coincidence." And this principle I'm about to illustrate, cause wait, it gets better. 

As we're getting ready to leave again, this Hispanic lady barges through the door. I know this lady. She's a Catholic Preacher and me and Elder Pardo were teaching them. We recently took a break because they said that they wanted more time to study the Bible. But here she is! She's talking a million miles an hour. I look over to Sister Christensen to translate. Apparently, she crashed into our parked car. Again: What? This is so awesome! So we go out and all it was was a scratch but it was nice of her to tell us. So she leaves and I'm just standing there dumbfounded seeing the hand of the Lord in all of this. We just happened to meet the Biggies kids, we just happened to be in the same house as Sister Christensen teaches, and The Preacher Lady just happened to crash into our car. No, nothing's happenstance. It's all Gods hand. 

We had a baptism this Saturday for Susana and her daughter Roxanna. I've only come into this picture of her being taught right at the end, but it's amazing to see how the Gospel has helped her and her family incredibly. She's a single mom with seven kids, but she knows that this is the best step she can take for her family. It was a very beautiful and sweet service. 

I love this work. I love my Savior, and I love all of you. And God loves you too. Just know that. :)

--Elder Pearson

1. Soccer Bros (they're all gonna be famous one day)

2. Snow

3. Baptism

4. Selfie with a horse eating my shoulder