Hey everyone,

This week was awesome full of really amazing miracles and it was awesome to be able to call and talk with all of you that were there. Christmas was awesome out here we had a great dinner with a awesome family who has a son out on a mission and while we were having dinner their son called from North Carolina. it was a great night we also got to spend time with this other really awesome family and they always have us over on mondays for lunch and they do our laundry. it was a really quiet few days at the beginning of the week cause of Christmas but at the end it went really well. one really cool experience we had this week was with a member we had dinner with. after dinners we usually do what we call "Power Hour" where we share a message about faith with the member we had dinner with and then we invite the to pray with us about a street we should tract or an area we should be in where we can find new people to teach. so we did that with a Sister in the ward and she actually gave us two people that we could go see. the first was not interested but the second we got lost trying to find, we drove to the apartment where we thought that the address said to go so we spent 20 minutes looking for the apartment number but never found it, then we found out that we were one complex over so we walked around to the other complex and this lady was just getting out of her car and so we started to talkto her. we found out that her boyfriend is a member and justflew back to australia and will be back soon, and before he left he gave her a Book of Mormon to read and she said she was about to start reading it. she then told us that we could come back in a few days and help her understand what is in the Book of Mormon. it was sweet that we got lost and then at the perfect time we ran into that lady and it was so cool to have that happen. we had another experience like that where we called the member we had dinner with the night before and aske if he would pray about some streets that we could go tract and before we had dinner with them we tracted a street named Wilkins, we found some sweet families on that street, but we did not finish the whole street. we ate with him and told them about it and he said he prayed and had wilkins pop into his head. it was inspiration. So... we had dinner with that member and he told us that Wilkins was one of the streets that he prayed about that randomly came to mind and so after dinner we went and finished tracting Wilkins and in total we found 6 people that said we could come back and talk with them again. isn't that nuts!!! God has great timing and really good at inspiring people to go to certain places. it shocked me so much when we found out that Wilkins was the street he picked for us to tract. the member himself was super excited and when we called and told him everything that happened he was way excited and was more than willing to come out with us to see  those people that we found when we got an appointment set up with them. this sunday was awesome too, we had a baptism and it went perfect. since the ward is working on trying to call a new ward mission leader we had to set everything up. i spoke at the baptism and the bishop baptized our investigator. oh yea the man that got baptized is named Wes, he is about 52 and was found way before i got her and he is a little slower but he is awesome. while we were teaching him we had to teach super simple, almost like teaching a little kid, but it helped me so much to understand how to teach simple and to the point. And at church we had a less active come that hasn't come in over 30+ years and she liked it as far as i know, she did have her sister in town who is active and that gave her more encouragement but hey she came to church it is a step forward. lately i have really reflected on goals (what a perfect time!) and how to set and plan goals out. i did realize that it is by goals that life becomes meaningful and worth while because they make us grow and move forward with life and that is where our progression in life grows the most. this quote in Preach my Gospel has become one of my all time favorites because it show the importance of Goals.

 

“I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.” – ELDER M. RUSSELL BALLARD

i am so glad for this time of the year and i am glad to set new goals and make those steps to become better not just once a year but every day. i love all of you and it blows my mind that i will be seeing all of you so soon. keep pressing on and always look forward into the great things that come in the future.

Love from

Elder Pelton