End Of The Year!

I hope everyone had a good Christmas! I don't have much time to write this week so just enjoy the extra pictures haha! Some highlights:

•We had a Christmas devotional where our mission president, the San Diego Temple president, and a general authority 70 spoke. I and some other missionaries sang La Primera Navidad for a musical number

•We went carrolling with some members and other missionaries

•On Christmas Day we tagged along with the Tagolic elders to a Filipino member's house for dinner. They had a straight up whole cooked pig on the table, it was wild lol. We also sang some karaoke Christmas songs there lol (you will enjoy the picture of Elder Mason singing his heart out)

•We went to the temple again this morning!

•We had a lesson with a little girl whose mom is an inactive member. We asked if she wants to be baptized and she said yes. Very cool!

2022 is right around the corner!!

Have a good week!

Elder Pettit

¡Feliz Navidad!

¡Hola!

First week in Bonita Vista went pretty well! My new companions, Elder Mortensen and Elder Mason, are really fun guys. Elder Mortensen (we just called him Morty when I served in the same area back in the valley) is really good at cooking and doing just about everything. He started his mission one transfer after I did. Elder Mason is awesome, he's such a pure kid and he's so funny. He's leaving to his originally assigned mission in Guatemala at the end of this transfer (Feb. 1st) which is too bad. Elder Mason is only in his second transfer, so once he is done being trained in this mission, he will go to a different one! His mom is Guatemalan too, so that will be cool for him to serve there. He's a bit of a different kid, but Morty and I love him. As missionaries we do "roleplays" every day, which we use to practice our teaching skills and street contacting. We spent 30 minutes practicing talking to people in public, and we spent most of that time teaching him to walk confidently.

We did a food distribution service for about 4 hours one morning, RIGHT by the Mexican border next to Tijuana. The group I was in had the job of loading milk into the cars, we were the "Leche Boys". I was paired with Elder Poulson. One car pulled up, with two older Mexican ladies inside. They saw us, and Elder Poulson heard them say "Esos muchachos son muy guapos!" That made us feel good haha.

Our apartment looks way sketchy on the outside (and in the laundry room haha) but the inside is nice.

Well, it's been a good first week here in the new area. Things are going well so far! I hope everyone has a good Christmas. Remember to focus on WHY we have Christmas instead of WHAT we get from Christmas, and I can promise that you will enjoy it more!

¡Feliz Navidad!

Elder Pettit

¡Adios A Encinitas!

Hey everyone,

 

I got transferred! I left Encinitas, now I'm in Bonita Vista, down in a place called National City. It's so much more ghetto here. Encinitas was so nice haha. I'm in a trio again. This time, I'm finishing the training of another new missionary who came out last transfer, and I'll be District Leading. Exciting stuff, this is only the second time I've been transferred, I forgot how jarring moving to a new area can be haha. I think Elder Jezik is prepared to lead the area after I leave, he's a good kid.

 

The last week in Encinitas was pretty good. We had a branch Christmas party with a live Mariachi band and tons of good food, tons of tamales. We were able to get some of the people we are teaching to come to the party. They loved it and all the members which was awesome! 

 

We also had a cool experience visiting contacts we had in our Area Book. We knocked on a family's door and they invited us in. We chatted with the grandma and the rest of the family for a while about life and the gospel and then she asked if we wanted to stay for dinner. They fed us and then sent us home with a big bag of food too. Pretty crazy haha! 

 

We took Albert, one of the recent converts in the Encinitas branch, to Chick-Fil-A yesterday because he had never tried it before! He's just a pure soul haha. 

 

Christmas is coming soon! I hope everyone is doing well back home. Let me know if anything exciting is going on in your life or in the world! It'd be awesome to hear from you guys.

 

Merry Christmas

Elder Pettit

Ilumina El Mundo!

December already!

Another good week. On Saturday night, we had a Spanish Christmas Devotional concert in San Diego. My companion and I went and sung in a choir with tons of other missionaries. It was a lot of fun, I got to see a ton of missionaries who I served with before. 

We got a free Christmas tree from the thrift store we volunteer at (also where the lightsaber pictures were taken haha). Christmas is in the air down here! There's no snow or anything, but when you remember the reason for the season it feels very Christmasy. The church has been doing a really cool #LightTheWorld campaign on social media this year. It's a really uplifting way to spread joy online, I'd recommend checking it out if you haven't already seen any of the posts! Just search the hash tag. For yesterday's Light the World prompt, I shared a picture of our family cutting down our own Christmas tree. Albert, one of the recent converts here (who I gave my tie to a few weeks ago) replied to it and said "wow enserio amigo?!" He thought it was just crazy, so that was pretty funny.

I have 4 Christmas ties, and I've decided I'm going to wear only those until Christmas. 

The transfer ends next week, so I could get shipped somewhere else a week from today, or I could stay and finish Elder Jezik's training. Not sure yet!

Here's an excerpt from Jesus the Christ, a book written by an Apostle. He is talking about a woman sick with disease who had heard of Christ's healing powers. She believed that if she touched His robe, she would be healed. She did, and she was!

"True, her faith had already been in part rewarded, but of greater worth to her than the physical cure of illness would be the assurance that the divine Healer had granted the desire of her heart, and that the faith she had manifested was accepted by Him."

How cool is that? 

Have a good week! 

Elder Pettit