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