Buzzcut Season

Another good week! So much happens but it's always hard to try to squeeze it all out into an email. Zone Conference was this week! We had some exchanges this week as well. One of them was with the Arabic Elders-so I got to hear some Arabic conversations and i had no clue what was going on. Big respect for the 5 or 6 missionaries here (the only ones in the world) who are called to serve Arabic-speaking. That's tough!

For our second exchange, Elder Clifford came with me in my area. He's an English missionary in his second transfer. We taught the Restoration to the part-member family we are teaching. Elder Clifford took a little bit of Spanish in high school. So, he taught the first point - Dios es Nuestro Amoroso Padre Celestial - then I taught the rest of the lesson. The mom was in tears when we shared a video of the First Vision with them, it was awesome! Maybe one of the most spiritual lessons I've been a part of.

We had our friends Claudia and Florentino come to church. In the second hour of church, there was a discussion about temples and doing baptisms for the dead. Claudia told us afterward that she thought it was weird and a little "feo" that we baptize and pray for dead people, since they are already "polvo", or dust. We had to explain that to her. It didn't put her off to much though, because she still invited us to Denny's after church.

Elder Stuart and I got buzzcuts this morning before we did an endowment session at the temple with Elders Montague and Bullock, and Hermanas Tello and Montgomery- all missionaries that I served with in the valley. Good day!

Con Dios adelante,

Elder Pettit 

Talk To Everyone

Hola a todos,

This area is awesome, there's so many people to find and teach here. We have some really solid people we are teaching, many of them are pretty close to committing to be baptized as well. We have been talking to tons of people in public. So we have basically lived at the parks recently.

We had a ward valentine's party recently, and we were "dressed" as police. Our job was to arrest people who weren't dancing, and take them to jail. Pretty fun night with tons of members and some non members as well. 

Elder Stuart and I did a training to our zone to help encourage them to talk to people. We have been really trying to get all the missionaries to try to talk to as many people as possible, and it's it's going well so far. If we don't open our mouths and extend an invitation to learn about the gospel, we are wasting our efforts. The companionship that talks to the most people gets to buzz our heads next P-Day, so look out for that.

Kids are so cool. We found a group of 3 kids at a park one day and have been teaching them after school. It's so cool when young kids are receptive to the gospel. One of the kids, Derek, told us he really struggles with stress from school and stuff. So we taught him how to pray and then he said a prayer right there. Super humble, super sweet. It's no wonder they say that to enter the kingdom of God, you must come as a child. 

While in a video lesson on exchanges with other elders, the person they were teaching told us he was going to move to Utah the next day to be with a girl named China, who he met on the internet ONCE. This man had a baptism scheduled for the next day but just dipped. So sad lol. He won't be able to hide in Orem Utah though haha.

Let me know if anything exciting is going on! 

Con amor

Elder Pettit

The 7 Week Shaft!

Hey everyone,

A lot has happened since the last email, I didn't even have time to write an email last week. I'll list off a few bullet points:

•We participated in the 175th anniversary of the Mormon Battalion's March into San Diego. I was part of Company D, and we got to hold shovels. Our "drill Sargeant" told us about 10 times that the shovels were basically worth more than our lives haha. They were apparently replicas that aren't in production anymore. Elder Christofferson, one of the 12 Apostles, spoke that morning and later that night at an area devotional. Saw my friend Albert there!

•I got transferred! The "7 week shaft" means I was only in an area for 7 weeks before getting transferred again, so I got "shafted". The only people Elder Mason and I wanted to say goodbye to (he got shafted as well) were Daphne and her mom, Veronica. So we went and said bye to them and took pictures with them and their dog, Nacho.

•I'm a zone leader now in El Cajón! President called me right as we were heading to a lesson and told me the news. My heart started pounding when I saw his call on my phone. He only talks to me in Spanish now, so when he asked me if I could do it, all I could say was "Si, esta bien," over and over haha. It's been good so far! My companion, Elder Stuart, is awesome. His Spanish is really good too. He only has about 6 or 7 months left. We are thinking about giving each other buzz cuts today.

•I interviewed a guy named Amadeus for baptism. Turns out he had covid a few days later, so we have been told to stay in "quarantine" since Saturday night. It ends tomorrow. So for our quarantine p-day today, we went to a park and shot some hoops. We missed the mission leadership council yesterday, so we had to watch it over zoom. 4 hours is a long time to watch a zoom meeting.. I'm excited to be able to actually do stuff again tomorrow!

•Before that though, we actually had quite a few lessons per day here! Missionary life is so much better when you have people to teach haha. 

Carry on!

Elder Pettit

Alma 29

"9 I know that which the Lord hath commanded me, and I glory in it. I do not glory of myself, but I glory in that which the Lord hath commanded me; yea, and this is my glory, that perhaps I may be an instrument in the hands of God to bring some soul to repentance; and this is my joy.

10 And behold, when I see many of my brethren truly penitent, and coming to the Lord their God, then is my soul filled with joy; then do I remember what the Lord has done for me, yea, even that he hath heard my prayer; yea, then do I remember his merciful arm which he extended towards me."