The day of rest August 15, 2016

Dear Family,

     So, to talk about my Sunday, Church was pretty normal, we had meetings before and after. We were at Church for like 5 hours. You know the feeling I bet. But after Church, we biked to another Church building so my District Leader could take me to Cerritos. Why go back to Cerritos, you ask? Because Debbie got baptized ! Debbie is the grandma to Jyssika. I don't know if I told you but like a month ago I went to her sister's baptism as well. It was super cool. At both baptisms, I gave a killer talk about the Holy Ghost. I could feel the Holy Ghost's approval as I finished, haha. A lot of people showed up for both baptisms and for one of my talks I said these words, " Nephi is the cat's pajamas". Yes, it was good. No particular reason why I said it. Maybe the Holy Ghost prompted me. Maybe not.  I just felt like it. But it was awesome to be able to be a part of that family's journey. It was crazy to think that I haven't been in that area for 4 months now but it was  awesome to be there to witness their baptisms. Both times I was super red because it is so flipin hot in that room! but all is well . After that, we got back and we ate dinner, then  hit the bathrooms, than planned for the next day. Fun stuff .

     Yeah, lots of fun stuff. We are trying to work with members, it's fun. But yeah we have been doing missionary work stuff. We picked a up a new investigator while she was walking her dogs. It was quite fun. We walked for a good while and every now and then we stopped at the Spiritual parts. It was pretty cool but she was Young Single Adults age so we had to pass her off to the Young Single Adult missionaries. She was all like, " I don't want other missionaries, I want you guys to teach me ". We are all like "same ". We would like to teach you but that is not the Jedi way. 

Love you guys 

Stay awesome 

Love,

 

Elder Richards

 

PS: in the pictures my face was red because it was super hot

SQUAAAA August 8, 2016

Dear Family,

     We have been trying to meet a lot of our members lately. It's been pretty interesting, it's fun to get to know the members better. We are doing this because we are trying to get our members to do missionary work. After talking to them, we found out that they actually have been working with people and their friends. It was really awesome to find that out because now we can help them with their missionary work, that is the goal anyway. We used to tract a little bit. Well, we didn't really do it until lately because we didn't have any one to go by. But then our Mission President came out and said that we need to stop tracting, it's not effective. There is a better way and the Prophets and Apostles have told us it's through the members. So, it was a slap in the face but a good one. So far it seems good.

        We ran into an "intellectual black man", his words not ours. He called us over while we were biking by and he was all like "hey man, you guys are great". This guy loves Mormons and Utah. He was going on and on about it. He's not Mormon but he says that he is "Mormon-ish". He gave us like a pump up talk about how awesome we were. It was pretty nice actually. But the best thing he said was at the end. He said " you know when people reject your message, just tell them this - you know we talked to an intellectual black man once and you might not convert and you might not read our scriptures and stuff but you might want to consider being Mormon-ish" " hahaha" and then he just walked off. It was pretty funny, he was a super cool guy, we don't know his name but we hope to find him later. He's married to a member so we are hoping to find him that way.

        The Harry Potter thing is pretty cool.

Love you guys

Stay awesome 

Love,

Elder Richards

The Cursed Tie August 1, 2015

Elder Ashton's Mom sent us matching ties. I asked if she could get sea foam green ties and just plain and she did. They are bomb

Dear Family,

     My bed isn't that comfortable but I'll live.

     Well, I will tell you the story of the cursed tie. I went on an exchange with my district leader. He told me that he would be willing to trade ties with me. So while I was looking through his ties, I found one that i kinda liked. It was a green tie that had criss-cross lines and then it had little sailboats on it. It was awesome. So I said " I like this one but I know you won't want to trade it". He said, " yeah, you can have that one" and I'm like, "for real?" "Yeah, you can have it but I should tell you that it's cursed" and so he told me of the cursed tie. Apparently he trained a guy who had this tie and one day his little nino (mission language for a trainee) decided to wear it. That entire day they got nothing done and no one wanted to talk to them.  So they decided that it was the tie that did it. After they got split up and for Christmas, Elder Roth ( my District Leader) got the tie and it had a sticky note on it. The note said "the curse is yours now".  After waiting like 5-8 months, Elder Roth figures, OK, you know this tie is fine. There is no curse on it. Do you want to guess what happened. Nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean that they didn't teach or talk or anything. Not even members would give them time he told me. That happened twice. So Elder Roth laid it in the box and hasn't touched it since, until I grab it. For that exchange, I decided that I was going to break the curse. After my shower, I decided to pray over the tie. So I did that and then I put it on. There was no going back. Either I broke the curse or now the curse was mine. That day I was determined to find a new investigator. and guess what happened.... we found a new investigator!!!! Take that one. And it was a YSA (Young Single Adult, a person between the ages of 18 and 30). That awesome because Elder Roth is one of the YSA Ward missionaries. So,I  broke the curse of the tie. Now it hangs triumphantly on my tie rack. I won but only with the help of God, of course. That prayer prob helped.

New Mission President and his wife, top right

      We had a meeting and we were trained. That meeting went on for 8 hours. President didn't give a hoot, haha. It was really awesome though, lots of good training. But the awesome part is what we did
after lunch. After lunch President was all like, "alright, now let's have the fastest game of knock out / speed that we can before we go back to the training. So we had 3 zones of 20 missionaries shooting hoops and playing knock out / speed. It was awesome. President won. I lost my voice because I was yellin and making alot of noise. I was so hyped about it. So fun.

     The work has been a little tough lately but we are still working hard and loving it.

     Love you guys.

Love,

Elder Richards