Sister Pierce is Called to Serve: Another Day in the Life of Missionary Work...

Well, to start off, I forgot to tell you that I had an authentic Japanese meal last Sunday! That means I tried raw tuna!! Yep. I'm being a missionary and trying new things!...even if it slightly scares me...hahah but, it was pretty good!!! And we also ate with chopsticks the entire time! Talk about being adventurous! Luckily, I know how to eat with chopsticks, and Last Friday I was able to remind myself how to use chopsticks. We had a ward talent show, and I went up to do an eating contest with using chopsticks to eat grapes and blueberries. That was hard, but super fun!! :) haha

Anyways, we had a lesson with Shiva last night! It was kinda awkward because he's just a couple years older than us, and we walked over to a pizza place so he could have dinner, and it felt like we were on an awkward first date..........awkward... We wanted to get to know him, but we also wanted to get our purpose across so he would know what we do and that we weren't there to hang out. While we were teaching him the restoration he asked us some really good questions, (such as, if you sin without knowing you've sinned, have you really sinned? and When christ came to earth was he like a scapegoat? or are prophets like scapegoats?...something like that...) and it was amazing how we were able to answer all of them! (I believe that's one reason we go in twos. So we can help each other answer tricky questions that med students may ask..haha). But it was also amazing how we were able to answer the questions he had with the gospel. Every question (for the most part) can be answered with the gospel! So cool!! I knew that was possible, but when you have to put your gospel knowledge to the test, it's great to know that the gospel has truth and you can rely on it to answer the questions people have. So sweet. Unfortunately, Shiva turned out to not be very interested, but at least he was able to learn a little more about our beliefs and have some questions answered!

Alex is understanding the Book of Mormon so well!! It's amazing how much the Lord has been preparing him to learn about the gospel. Although he's still smoking, he's living all the other commandments! So that's a plus! We're still trying to help him stop because at the moment, he's waiting for the Lord to work a miracle on him to have him stop smoking, but he hasn't been putting forth any action to try and stop himself. He's so funny. He told us that he feels guilty pretty easily, so we should work that in when we visit with him, but that wouldn't be very smart. haha we actually saw him Saturday afternoon and challenged him to not have another cigarette for the day, and he said he would do it if we didn't eat for the rest of the day. Ugh...he got us there because at that moment I was starving and I was not ready to do that (especially since fast sunday was the next day). he got us good. It was actually good to be put in his shoes for a second and realize how hard that challenge waould have been without any notice! I obviously wouldn't have been able to do it! haha But we challenged him to do it all of Sunday -- a 24 hour fast like us-- and he said he'd do it. We haven't heard from him at all since Sunday morning because he threw out his back, so we'll see what happens when we see him tonight!

I hope you all have a great week!!! :)

Keep P.U.S.H.ing!

Sister Pierce