06.05.2012 "Interesting First Week With Elder Piena"

Hello Everyone,

This last week was a decent week here in Harrison with Elder Piena. It's been a little interesting though. It's our week off from having the car, and so we've been biking around quite a bit. Last weekend was also pretty rainy, meaning that we got soaked on Friday and Saturday. Best of all... well, remember I mentioned that Elder Porter and I went fishing last week? Well, I didn't have time to mention that we were walking through a particularly swampy part of the lake shore to get to another side of the lake to fish. There were a couple times when I stepped onto unsolid ground and sunk in up to my knees, and almost lost my shoes. Elder Porter, however, tried to jump to a patch of what he though was grass, but turned out to be just some floating moss. He sunk in down to his waist, and unfortunately had both his camera and the phone in his pocket at the time. His camera seemed okay, but the phone was having problems. Later on that day we stuck it in rice and tried other things to dry it out, and by the next morning, is somehow started working again.

Well, Saturday night it stopped working again, and this time it looks like it's for good. So we've been phone-less for a couple days now, and we're working on trying to get another one sent to us, but it may take another day or two. We have almost no way to get ahold of people now, so it'll be interesting!

Elder Piena is a nice guy though. He's from Henderson, Nevada, which sounds like a suburb of Las Vegas. He's always lived in Nevada, but his family is Hawaiian, and they all have Hawaiian names. Elder Piena's name is Kaola (like Crayola without the "r"). He's a little quiet, but it should be good serving with him.

I got to go fishing for a few minutes yesterday in a lake behind the house of a member we were doing some service for. I was lucky enough to catch a 16 inch bass, which was a decent sized fish and the biggest I've caught yet! I'll include a picture with this email, hopefully it goes through. I filleted it myself (I learned how from Elder Porter) and I'm going to eat it soon.

I'm also including a picture of a baby squirrel that walked up to us when we were in the yard of a member's house at a dinner appointment. It was really cute, and wasn't afraid of us at all, even when we tried to scare it! I had never seen anything like it before. We all took turns holding it, and we fed it crackers and played with it a little bit.

One thing that I love about a mission is getting to help people and see them grow spiritually and see the blessings from living the gospel of Jesus Christ and keeping the commandments. I am also so blessed to be able to keep learning more and more about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and what His work is, as long as I've been out here. Something my mission president told me and that I've thought about a lot lately is about how all we have to do in this life is be obedient and follow what the Lord commands us to do (Abraham 3:25). It's really comforting knowing that. We don't have to be perfect, and the Lord knows that we won't be, but we can repent and move forward and keep becoming more like Jesus Christ. I love the Gospel, and the more I learn about it the more it amazes me, and the more I realize how much the Lord really has done for us to help us. I know that it's true, and that by following it we can enter into the "rest of the Lord" (read Alma 13:12-13, 28-29), which is to find the peace and purpose in this life that Heavenly Father wants for us (D&C 59:23 and John 14:27). There is a really good article in February Ensign about that called "Enter into the Rest of the Lord". Read it when you get the chance!

Love you all, and have a great week!

Love,
Elder Trevor Casper