What an awesome week! First of all the weather was amazing all week long. There were three of four days right in a row that had clear skies with 70 degree weather! It was amazing to see everyone come out of hibernation for the winter, people actually do live in Pittsburgh haha. Last week I told you about Andre who we met as he was trying to pack everything up to move. Well this week we were able to take some time to help him and his family move and to get rid of everything they needed to so they could make the deadline they needed to be out by. It was cool to see how grateful they were. They repeated over and over again how we were an answer to his prayers. That is one of the greatest feelings I have been able to experience, when you listen to a prompting from the spirit and then realize that your listening and acting was an answer to someone's prayers. This week we have been able to spend a lot of time finding new investigators! I love seeing the hand of the Lord in everyday life. As a missionary if you will just go out and work, he will always provide. I have seen that time and time again. We were able to find some people who are really excited to meet with us this upcoming week. I am excited to see what other miracles will happen. We also were able to meet with Julia. She is doing great! We were talking about the temples and her working towards going there and she said that she wanted to go as soon as she can! She plans on meeting with Bishop in the next couple of weeks for her recommend. Yesterday we were on a team up with Brother Muñoz. Him and his wife just moved into the ward and they are awesome. During our lesson with Sister Jackson he asked her if we could sing some hymns with her and her family. She was like, "Man I don't sing!" Haha but we convinced her. After a couple of verses of the spirit of God, she was pumped about how good we sounded. Her 6 year old daughter, Precious, came in and we sang I am a child of God with her. It was really fun and it also brought a great spirit. As we were leaving precious ran out to us and yelled, "Thank you for teaching me how to sing!!" It was an awesome day. Thanks for all of the emails and support! The mission is going great and flying by way too fast. I love Pennsylvania with all of my heart, it is truly the promised land. Have a great week!

This was an awesome week!! We have really been praying and working with Julia and this week she was able to be baptized! It has been awesome teaching her and seeing all of the miracles that have happened and then being able to see her be baptized. I haven't met someone as prepared as she is. The baptism went great as well. She was able to sing "I heard him come" with her dad and it was really good. Her whole family was able to come even her grandpa and aunt from Utah, along with a lot of her friends from School so it turned out really great. She is excited to go to the temple so hopefully she can get there before too long!

After the Baptism Elder Slade and I were walking around visiting people and Elder Slade said, "I feel like we need to be an answer to someone's prayers tonight." I kind of brushed it off and didn't really pay attention to it. But that night we felt strongly that we needed to visit certain people but none of them were home. As we were walking up the street we saw some people outside so we went up to talk with them. Turns out they have a couple of days to move everything out of the house they are in. They had no way to move it all out by themselves and were praying to receive some help. They told us how much of a blessing we were to them. So we will be going back to help them this week. I was really humbled afterwards thinking about how in tune Elder Slade was with the Spirit. I just brushed it off but he was listening and we were able to be that answer to their prayers. It was such a great week, and we were able to see God's hand in so many different ways! Thank you for all of the support!

Elder May 

Julia's baptism (My arm is on the glass behind her, not around her!!)

Well it looks as though winter has struck Pittsburgh again! We got a couple inches of snow the other day... It was kind of sad looking at all of the blossoming trees with all this snow on them... But hey eventually it has to stay warm right? This week I was able to work hard with my new companion Elder Slade! He is awesome and he has a great desire to serve. It has been great going out and working hard every day! We had a zone training this week on finding new investigators and one thing we really emphasized is the effort of talking with everyone. We were out trying to get in contact with a couple of people and there was someone walking on the other side of the street with those big old headphones on jamming out. Well we decided we would just go for it and see if we could talk to him and he was actually interested and willing to talk to us. We taught him about the Book of Mormon and we even got a time to go back and teach him! So that was a really cool experience. Sunday we had another great lesson with Julia! She is so excited and after our lesson the member we had come with us said, "I have never met someone so prepared for the gospel before." And that is so true. We had a lesson on temples and doing family history work. President Hoggard who was with us has one of the most powerful testimonies of the temple. He lost his wife about 10 years ago to cancer. So when he bore his testimony of the temple the spirit just filled the room. Julia is excited to start working towards it! After Brother Olson, her dad bore an amazing testimony to Julia of this church and of Thomas S Monson. It was a rare experience. We are so excited for her baptism and to see her able to enter into those covenants. I am just so blessed that Heavenly Father allowed me to be a part of this experience.
I am loving Pennsylvania so much. After being here for 19 months it is a home to me. I love the green, the humidity, the cold, the crazy roads that have no rhyme or reason, everything! I truly know that we get sent to where we are supposed to serve. If I was asked if I could go back and have my mission anywhere in the world, I would choose right where I am at. I am grateful for the people out here. They have truly changed who I am. The Gospel is true and I am grateful for the happiness it brings to me! Thanks for all of the support! Have a great week!

This was a great week with General conference of course being a highlight! I loved the spirit felt and how encouraging all of the speakers were. We had the opportunity to see a lot of less actives and investigators this week with the help of a lot of the members. The work is going great here and we are seeing great things and miracles truly happening. Man it is awesome to be a part of. Have a great week!

This was one amazing week and it started with a pretty big miracle. On Monday we went to go see Julia. She has been praying a lot about baptism and if that is what the Lord wants her to do. Well the week before she was praying about it and randomly turned to 3 Nephi 19 and started reading out loud to herself. It is the savior talking about the importance of baptism and she texted us letting us know the awesome experience she had. We asked her how she was feeling about baptism and she said she knows the commitment it is and she wants to make the right choice. We testified that God answers prayers and that he would answer hers if she was willing to act on that answer. She said that was exactly what she needed to hear! Well when we went to see her Monday we talked to her about it again and she told us how she was feeling. She said that she has been feeling kind of greedy because she has been asking to know if the church is true, but she had already received her answer that it was. She said that every time she went to pray and ask, she already knew what the answer was. She then told us she wanted to be baptized and is ready for it! It was so awesome. She is going to be baptized on April 16 and she is so excited for it! Her Grandpa is even going to fly out from Utah to baptize her. The rest of the week was great as well. We have either dropped or been dropped by all of our investigators so we have spent a lot of time talking with people. On Saturday we prayed specifically that while we were out that night, we would be able to find someone to teach. Well as we were out walking there was a lady on her porch and as we talked to her she let us right into her home and we were able to teach her and her husband. It was so amazing to see that prayer answered. I have had so many powerful experiences with prayer and I truly know that God hears our prayers and he does answer them. Easter Sunday was amazing. Julia's whole family came to church! It was so cool to see them all there as a family. We went over to their house for dinner afterwards and got to play some games with them. It was a great Easter and one of the best I have ever had. I love this time of the year as we have the opportunity to remember the life of the Savior. The thing I am most grateful for in my mission has been the opportunity to know Him better. It has changed my life and I can't describe my gratitude for Him. I know with all of my heart he lives and one day we will stand before him again. I know this is his church and we have the opportunity to be a part of it. Thank you all for the support!
Elder May

Spring is here

Julia's family. Julia is the one in the middle by her dad.

Hey everyone! We had a great week. On Monday we went downtown to the church building. It is also the institute building so they had ping pong tables! So we got to play some pretty intense ping pong games. It was so fun, we were all sweating pretty good by the end. I'm not sure if it was because the matches were super intense or because we are all out of shape. We went on exchanges this week and Elder Ord and I were able to go together. He is an awesome guy and a great missionary. We were able to see a lady named Sister Carty. She is an older African American lady from Atlanta Georgia. She is so funny! When we went to see her, she needed help with a couple of things, opening two cans of tuna and moving her fish from one tank to a little bowl. Well I took the initiative to get the fish. I went in to scoop up the fish with my hand and she didn't think that I could get the fish with my hand so she said to hold on while she got a cup. I decided to try anyway and I scooped he little fish right up and plopped it right in the bowl. I guess I did it pretty gracefully because when Sister Carty saw me do it she started going crazy saying, "Oh my goodness, it's like he's an angel! Did you see the way he scooped that fish?" Haha I guess she liked the way I treated her little beta fish. She told us the next day that the fish doesn't like her anymore... I guess it got attached.
We were able to see Jiquelill this week as well. He had been praying for direction in his life and that he was willing to act on that as well. After that we showed up. He is a less active member and is a senior in high school. We stopped by his house and he wasn't home so we talked to his mom for a little bit. Just as we were about to leave he showed up. He said he had been out with his friends and he had felt like he needed to be home, so he ran all the way home and when he got home, we were there. This Sunday he was there for stake   conference and he said that he would be coming to young men's and church again this upcoming week. It has been a miracle. With stake conference I was also able to see a lot of people from the wheeling ward. It was awesome. I love those guys so much and I was so happy seeing all of them there. Maybe since I came back to this area president Johnson will let me go back there as well. Julia is doing great and has found answers to her prayers through the Book of Mormon. Her and her dad are awesome and it has been amazing to see what the gospel has done for them. Thank you for all of the support, have a great week!

Hey Everyone! Well this has been another great week! The weather has been phenomenal and there has actually been people out and about to talk to. We have been working a lot with a less active member named brother Rumpf. He hasn't been to church in years and we set him with a date to come to church of March 20, but he was determined to come this week. We had dinner with him on Wednesday and on Sunday he came to church! It was awesome to see him going around shaking hands with everyone there, even the ones he didn't know. He was so happy to be there and it was great to see. He has changed so much and is so much happier. It is amazing to see what living the gospel can do. On Tuesday we had zone conference. It was great to see President and Sister Johnson and to have trainings throughout the day. I am grateful for all of the missionaries out here. It is crazy how close you grow to all of them in the short time you have known them. We also have been working with a less active member from Jamaica. He has come to church the last two weeks now! Every time we go over he wants to have a sleep over and a pizza party. We have to remind him that even though we like pizza, after our missions haha. On Sunday we went over to teach Julia with brother and sister Kusuma who are both converts from India. We taught about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Kusuma's bore some of the most powerful testimonies I have heard. It was one of Those lessons where the spirit is just so powerful. We invited her to be baptized on April 16 and she said that she would pray about it. She talked about how she plans on being baptized, she is just a little nervous to take the next step right now. You can't deny the spirit that was in that lesson though and it had a really powerful effect on her and her dad. It was awesome. Well I just want everyone to know how grateful I am for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It has brought me so much happiness and I know it is lead by Jesus Christ. It is our choice to follow him. Thank you for all of the support.

Family friendly graffiti (once it was photoshopped)

Our new pet