Hey!

Hey Family,

This last week was a tough one, but a great one as well. I would say last week was a week that helped me learn and grow a lot in my testimony of this work. When appointments fell through, we just got out there and worked hard to find new people. A big thing in the mission used to be TTI's, Teach, Testify, Invite. We used to have the expectation and goal of talking to 20 people every day. In December when Elder Evans of the Seventy came, he asked us to do away with it. He said it was not an efficient or inspired tactic. So, we as a mission quit keeping a record. Due to that, the number of people we talk to daily has plummetted. This just kind of chokes up the rest of the line for our key indicators. Well, Elder Faldmo and I decided that we are going to begin keeping track personally, even though we will not be reporting it to anyone. It has been a great blessing to our area. We have found 6 new people to teach, 5 of which I would say will progress quite well.

When I arrived in the area, no one was progressing, coming to church, or had set a goal for baptism. Now, we have two people with a baptismal date and another two that have began to come to church. Though the week was difficult, we were very blessed with many miraculous opportunities to invite our brothers and sisters to do things that will bring them closer to Christ.

Last P-day in the evening, we taught Maria Rubio --- friend of hna. Batrez. She had come to church the previous sunday and loved it. We taught her about the Restoration and just got to know how she feels about God. It went so well and the Spirit was there. Hna. Batrez bore a lot of great testimony and I felt prompted to invite Maria to be baptized on May 14th. She willingly accepted the date and Elder Faldmo helped her know that she must read, pray, and come to Church to be able to meet that goal. I think she really enjoys the fact that she feels so cared about when she is with members. We pay a lot of attention to her and she is slowly opening up. The sad thing is that she was not able to make it to Church yesterday for reasons unknown to us. She is great though. The only scary-ish thing is that she has something haunting her and we said a prayer over the home, but apparently it only worked for a short time. We may just need to use the priesthood in this situation. I am pretty interested to see what happens there.

The other man who is preparing for baptism is named Margarito. He is a veteran of the Vietnam war and recently suffered a stroke. He speaks english as well as spanish and the only issue that because of the stroke, he is not able to read. He too has a date of May 14th for baptism. We may hand him off to the english elders because that may suit his needs a little bit better.

Thursday was an interesting day. Not a whole lot happened until the evening when I went to stay in the Hospital with and Elder who just had surgery on an internal absess. He spent the whole 3 hours I was there on the toilet trying to go to the bathroom for the first time in a week. His name is Elder Thomson and he is my district leader, but he has been in the Hospital for about a week now. Things are looking better, but he is going to have to take it easy for a while. It is apparently a pretty serious surgery that he had.

Yesterday was AWESOME! Milton Valle from Honduras came to Church and if it were not for the members, he would have never made it. He needed a ride because we cannot give rides in the mission car. Our ride for him cancelled, but when Hno. Rangel showed up, we asked him to pick him up and he did! Milton loved Church and even tried to sing the hymns. Let's just put it this way, Hispanics can not sing. But anyways...he loved church and the Guebarra family took him home. I think he felt love and I thin that he felt very welcome. More importantly, I think he felt the Spirit.

Also, we found an AMAZING family. The mother is Alejandra Martinez and she talked to missionaries once 15 years ago in Scottsdale. She found Mormon.org and asked for them to send missionaries over. Wow though, what a family. They are so prepared. We knocked the door, her 17 year old son Ivan answered and she invited us in. We spoke and got to know one another. They are a very well to do family who is 100% legal, travels the world, and loves God. They are very busy, but looking for a Church. I hope so badly that we can help them feel in their hearts that they have found the truth. I am so excited!!!!

As for the Mother's Day phone call, I have no idea how that works. I am pretty sure that we will find out fairly close to that day, and it is still a ways off. I love you and miss you mom, but I have a lot to do here. I am sure our Zone leaders will tell us the details as it gets closer.

On Saturday evening we went to the Easter Paegant. All I can say is that the Easter after my mission, we are all coming back here for it. It was amazing and so beautifully done. It is something that I think everyone in our family would love. The Spirit is there very strongly and it is pretty incredible how well it is accepted. The exciting part was the protestors outside. They were handing out pamphlets and even gave one to me. They quoted the King Follet Sermon and other deep doctrine from Church leaders and tried to prove it wrong. It truly goes to show that so many people base their beliefs on what the bible says alone and not what they feel in their hearts. I felt pretty good as nothing the flier contained shook me at all. It just showed to me that I have been blessed with a much more profound testimony than I had recognized.

It was a great week. I loved it. I am glad to be here in Phoenix. I love you all and pray for you! I know you are all being blessed as well as myself! Keep being the best family ever!

With my love,

Elder Pearson



(posted by Maddy)