Día De Los Muertos Event @ La Colonia!

Hello!

This week was very up and down, we had TONS of success with finding new people to teach, and we taught some awesome lessons. We also had some days that just felt like we were taking L after L! Overall it was a pretty solid week! I gave a talk in sacrament meeting too!

We got to go to the temple again, this time to do baptisms for the dead. Super cool! Tons of other missionaries were there setting up Christmas lights around the temple grounds. There I saw Elder Montague, my trainer! 

There was a huge Día de los Muertos event going on at La Colonia Park! It's actually a super cool Mexican holiday where they honor and celebrate their family that have passed away. There were lots of little memorials set up, like the one I'm posing in front of in one of the pictures. We talked to a lady who was standing in front of the one she set up for her family. She told us she used Family Search (the church's genealogy data base used for learning about your family history + used for doing temple work) to research her ancestors for the memorial she was making! It's super awesome that people can use that to help learn more about their ancestors and learn more about where they came from.

We went on a hike today with our district, then we played pickleball with the sisters. I hit the 5 month mark yesterday, 19 to go!!

Elder Pettit

Rule 12

Hola a todos,

We had a pretty good week! We still don't have a ton of solid people to teach, but we are getting there. We've been finding lots of people through street contacting, visits, and (the most effective so far) putting out English flyers around town and just asking every Spanish speaker we if they have interés en aprendiendo español por gratis! We just teach English to people for free, then share a spiritual thought and scripture afterwards! Then we try to see if they're interesting in learning more about the gospel!

We had a couple awesome lessons though, two of them were with our friend Luis. Super awesome guy. 

A couple of the pictures here are with Arturo, a guy who got baptized a few weeks ago. He's the coolest member, let alone convert, ever! We had a lesson with him one morning because he wanted to talk about how frustrating it is that none of his friends want to hear about the gospel! We were like, yep, welcome to missionary life Hermano! Lol. He brought us tortas, which are really good Mexican sandwiches. 

We had some exchanges with older Elders in our district this week. Because of this, I got to teach two lessons with the English elders. It's definitely a different experience than teaching in Spanish! 

I pet a cat we encountered in the street (Rule 12 of Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life) while visiting people. You can't really tell in the picture, but the cat is super super fat because it was super pregnant!!

Another week under the belt! Time seriously goes by so fast these days. Gotta enjoy each moment before it goes!

¡Espero que tengan un buen semana!

Nos vemos,

Elder Pettit

Temple Session!

Bueno!

Another week in the bag! Time goes by so fast haha, sometimes it's hard to pick out interesting or exciting things that happen each week.

We've been trying really hard to get to know all the members here, which has been great. The sisters also gave us a ton of names and numbers of people to contact, ones that haven't been progressing much with them. So we've been making lots of calls and sending lots of texts to people! Great Spanish practice!

We woke up at 4 am this morning to go do a Temple Session at 5:30 in the San Diego Temple! Super awesome! We took some awesome pictures outside.

Not a whole lot of exciting things to write home about this week, just steady improvement each day as we continue to try to get things popping! 

 

I'll drop a spiritual thought for this week since the email is pretty short. 2nd Nephi, chapter 24, verses 16-17 say (this is Nephi quoting Isaiah by the way):

16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and shall consider thee, and shall say: Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms?

17 And made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof, and opened not the house of his prisoners?

For context, this is talking about what will happen after Christ returns and once Satan is bound. We will see how pathetic Satan really is. We will see him in his sorry and weak state and think, "Man, I really let this guy cause me so much pain and take so much control over my life through tempting me to sin? This dude? Really?"

I'm reminded of the Wizard of Oz. Once they arrive to the Emerald City to meet the wizard, they find out it's not a magical, larger-than-life wizard. It's just a dude with a microphone and a few tricks, bent on deceiving others to gain power. Satan is the same! We know that in the end, the curtain will be pulled back, and he will lose. We know which team will win. The decision comes in choosing if we want to do what it takes to be a part of Christ's team!

Have a great week!

Elder Pettit

¡Semana Uno En Encinitas!

Hello,

It's been a pretty crazy week! Encinitas is so different than the Valley! It's been good so far though. The first few days were crazy because we didn't have a working working sim card, which meant no calls and no wifi. That made things difficult.

There's also not nearly as much Spanish speaking people here. We are much further north, in a pretty rich area. On my first full day here, we helped a family in the branch move out. They lived in this hugeee house. One of the pictures I'll send is the view from their 3rd story window.

We didn't have much food this week. Last tuesday when we got here, we didn't really have any money, so we could only buy rice and beans. We forgot salt and pepper, so we ate rice and beans seasoned with hot sauce, and pepperoni that Elder Jones brought with him from his last area. We all decided that it wasn't good, but also, "It ain't gross". That's our new standard now for food haha.

My two new comps are Elder Cook and Elder Jones! Elder Cook is 2 years older than me. He's jacked! He spent 2 years in a coast guard academy playing football. We both came out at the same time. It's so funny to hear him talk in Spanish. He's just this huge guy, super friendly, saying stuff like "Amigooo, como esta??" In a super deep voice. Elder Jones has been out in the mission for about a year, but he's basically been in English work his whole mission. 

We went to English class with the sisters here who have been popping off in the branch (like 3 baptisms in the last month or something), and there were a record 10 people there! We broke off into groups at one point to help them learn some stuff, and I went with two guys named Arturo and Albert. I had a conversation there with them for about 30 minutes, all in Spanish! And then after the class, while Arturo was waiting to have his baptismal interview (he's one of the 3 the sisters have helped towards baptism, Albert is one of the others), I talked with him for another 20 minutes or so, all by myself! My companions now think my Spanish is really good haha, so I've been promoted to "honorary senior companion for Spanish" by Elder Jones. 

General Conference this past weekend was great! We listened to 2 of the 5 sessions in Spanish with some of the people the sisters are teaching, along with Albert and Arturo. I didn't get as much out of those two sessions haha.

We've been trying to build a teaching pool from scratch, since we are "opening the area". I want to start things off right here and get things popping! So, we have just been searching all the parks, beachs, Mexican markets and restaurants for Spanish speaking people! As a result, I've taken a few pictures of the sunsets from the beach haha. 

Let me know if there's anything exciting going on in the world or in your lives! 

Have a good week!

Elder Pettit