Success September 19, 2016

 Dear Family

    Let me tell you about Mario. Mario is kinda like a lot of people we run into but not, at the same time. I will tell you how our interaction went and what was going through my mind at the same time. We go by a former investigator's house named Mario and when we walk up to the door, we notice that the front door is open but the vader door is shut. So we say "hey".  Then we see someone get up from the couch and walk to the door and he says "HAPPY FREAKY FRIDAY". We notice that both the people didn't have any shirts on but I couldn't tell if they were wearing anything else either. So in my head (oh sweet babies, don't be naked when you answer the door). Thankfully he wasn't naked. That is just what my mind put together with the greeting and what I saw, haha. But he was a very nice guy, a few tattoos on his chest and a very uneven mustache and shaved head. But he asked us, "so do you guys believe in Jesus?" "yes, He is our Savior" came the reply. Then he continued " the King of kings." " yes. " " the Lord of lords." "yup ."  " The Lord Omnipotent!" " yes that one" " the beginning and the end." at this point in my head I'm like ( yes we are talking about the same Jesus !) haha, but he was a really big talker, he would just talk your ear off. But like I said, he was a super nice dude so it wasn't bad. It's just your legs get tired of standing in one place for a really long time.

    This Sunday we had the lesson for High Priests. In my opinion that is the easiest class to teach because you just ask a question and they will just talk about. It's great. Our lesson was on something that we, as Elders, have a lot of experience in. Our lesson was on Saving Marriages:) you have got to love it. So we just talk about it for a little and then had the guys discuss it. It was off the talk by President Utchdorf, In Praise Of Those Who Save. It's a good one.

     The thing that I have been learning more and more about is the idea of success. I may have already told you but when President Patterson came into the mission, his first training was on Success. But not how the world views success, but how God views it. In the world, if you do not hit a certain quota or accomplish a certain task then you fail. Like with sales, if you do not sell a certain amount of something then you are fired and replaced by some one who can, even if it is not in your control. But God looks at success in a much different way. If you look in the scriptures, you will find many examples of this point. For example, when Alma was kicked out of Ammonihah because no one would listen, in the world view he was a failure. But God talked to Alma and said these words " blessed art thou Alma". God measures success by these two things, Effort and Desire. If you look in Jacob 5, you will find many words that illustrate this. You will find words like "prune " dig " and dugged" that describes effort, and you will find other things like their disappointment and phrases like "perhaps that we might" which shows desire. When you have that true desire, you will feel a little sorrow because people aren't making the choices they ought to. ( this is pertaining to missionary work) But there is something you wont feel, that is discouragement. You will feel that way because you truly care for the people but you will know that God is pleased with you. "blessed art thou". Why is it this way, because God honors agency. It's is a really cool subject you might to study it in your free time. But this is what I have been learning and trying to apply. Now the work is a lot better knowing that as long as I have that desire and effort, even if people say no, that is not the end. We will try and try again because we love them. That's what the people need to know, as we always do everything to share the Gospel, is that we love them. And they will feel that.

I love you guys

Love

Elder Richards

Primary is fun September 12, 2016

Dear Family,

     This week we did a few fun things. First I think I will talk about Primary (Church children's group covering ages 18 mths to 12 years old). This week for Church we asked the Primary President if we could teach Sharing Time. She said "of course and that is really funny that you asked because this week is on missionary work!" It was destiny. We prepared for it and then it came time. It was really fun to sit in Primary again and to sing the songs and to do the opening exercise with them. The kids are funny. They had it combined that week (the older and the younger group) so we had senior primary and junior primary at the same time. Our little lesson for Sharing Time was pretty good. We had their attention for like the first 10 minutes but then their attention span started to wear thin, haha. We watched a little video, Fishers of Man, described by kids, video is on lds .org. Those videos are pretty fun you should watch them. I also recommend the little, Mormon belief videos they have. I liked them a lot. But yeah, back to the Sharing Time. We were supposed to have 15 min but for some reason they gave us like 30, haha, so we were trying hard at the end to keep them settled, used the sticker approach.

     We went to a senior living home this week to sing to them. A lot of them were Vietnamese, so they would sometimes try to sing along in Vietnamese. It was 4 sister missionaries and my companion and I. We sounded pretty good sometimes. We sang and we sang, it was fun. The hymns can be really nice, calming and also powerful at times. After we sang to the group, we went by a few rooms and sang to people so it was nice. But sometimes the forgot how to sing a song, so that was funny because we all just give each other a look, then give up on trying to sing that hymn and moved on.

     I have been thinking, some of my letters have just been about the things that go on during the week but this time I would like to tell you something I learned, a little more Spiritual note to the letter. Lately, as I have had some struggles with certain things, I have notices that something I figured I could do was pray. Now that sounds really basic and obvious but at the same time, I feel that sometimes we forget that we can really pull the powers of heaven to help us when we need it. So, I was kind of frustrated about something and on my wall there are a ton of pictures of Jesus with a ton of quotes. While I was upset and kind of down, I just looked at the wall and the picture I looked at was of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. The thought came to me to just pray, but at the same time I didn't want to pray because I was just kind of mad. But as I continued to look at the picture, I still got the impression. I decided to do it anyway. It was a good thing. I just kind of talked to God about things and asked for help. You can feel a little peace as you do. So if times are rough, did you think to pray? I think we all know it, but do we actually do it. I know that it does help, because Jesus has suffered all those pains and afflictions and everything else so that he could help us. But we have to let him, we have to pray and repent and be humble and I know that it can help in any trial. So that was something that kind of stood out to me as I thought about this last week.

I love you guys

Thank you for everything you do, you guys help me a lot

 

love

Elder Richards


A picture is worth a thousand words.   We tried to re-enact this picture that is in the Church.

True Story

Baller.....September 5, 2016

Isn't he a cute one :)

Dear Family

  Being in the La Palma Ward in Cypress is fun. It is right next to my old area in Cerritos.  It is just on the other side of the street but it's alot different. For my first week, I felt like I have watched more movies then usual and I have also played more basketball than usual. We have a movie night played here. We watch a Church movie and the members can invite their friends to it so they can do their member missionary work. Hasn't been too effective but we got a few people there, only like 2 but we will take what we can get. Then we watched Meet the Mormons with some less active members so that was fun. And don't worry when I say we watched movies, I mean Church movies like Meet the Mormons and Mountain of the Lord, stuff like that. Then with basketball, we wake up every morning and just play ball hard with a couple of other companionships for like 45 min to an hour.  It's pretty fun. But another basketball experience was we knew that there are a few kids that found out how to get into the building. So some member kids let a bunch of their non member friends in. We decided that we would go over there and let them in and we would play some basketball with them. There were like 20 kids there and only like 2 of them were members so we talked to them. Well we balled out for a little in our pros clothes then I sat on the side lines and talked to the kids while the my companion played more ball, haha. I got to know the ones sitting down and he was getting to know the ones playing, haha. It worked out. A few of them were Muslim so I learned some new things about Muslims, pretty neat. The dudes were pretty cool. At the end of the night we had a game where it was the Elders verses the other peeps. We had 2 companionship's there and another member kid on our team and we beat them pretty well, haha. It was a good game but of course we won.   

     The area I came into is pretty good. We are working hard to make sure this investigator of ours is ready for Baptism by Oct 8. So that's really awesome. Her name is Wanda, her only problem is that she works on Sundays and she is basically on-call all the time. She's a nanny, and she works for a couple of doctors in Huntington Beach. When they go in, she goes in. but she is super prepared so that's awesome. 

     Well things are pretty good here, my companion Elder Ellin is a fun dude so that's good. 

I love you guys 

Love 

Elder Richards

The time has come.......August 29, 2016

Dear Family

     Well, the transfer is over and the news is in. I am leaving Huntington Beach. I am now going to be in Cypress, La Palma ward. My companion will be a guy named Elder Ellin. It should be interesting. I am pretty sure I will be killing him [this is missionary terms for someone who will be going home] because he only has 2 transfers left. Should be fun. 

      This week has been one of those weeks. But it was all good because we did some good things. We stopped by a guy that has been inactive for a while. We tried earlier but we couldn't get past the gate. But this time when we rolled up, he was in his garage. He was just a super cool guy. He had a little rough past but he has turned his life around. Now he is married and has a little baby girl. He was telling us about how he wants to get his baby blessed and he knows that he should have come back to Church. He told us that he has actually been waiting for missionaries to come by, he was praying for it he said. And now we finally caught him and he knows Heavenly Father is helping him get back on the right path. So that was super awesome. 

     Also another good thing that happened this week is that we finally saw our recent convert again. He has been all over the place for like 2 months but we talked to him a couple of nights ago.

      Well, I am a fat kid in someone else's body.  I just love eating ice cream and brownies, I really love those 2 put together now. I like mint cookies n cream milkshakes. It's so flippin gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood.I just love dessert thingys. I bought ice cream sandwiches last week and a couple weeks before that i bought a ton of Popsicles and some Creamies ( utah thing) and a bucket of ice cream. Oh and don't forget pie, pie and ice cream are just like scrumptious.  

    I love you guys 

Stay awesome 

and please tell me at what point and where Princess Leia says "scruffy looking nurf herder". Please tell where they say that line. Like where were they and what were they doing 

Love 

Elder Richards

heellooo....August 22, 2016

Dear Family,

     Well, to be honest it was a rough week but we did have a super miracle on Tuesday. We stopped by these members house on Monday but they were busy so they told us to come back the next day, so we did. We showed up and we get into the house and we start talking to this guy named Brian. Turns out Brian is not a member and he just moved in just earlier that day. Brian is a super cool guy with a little bit of a rough past. we were talking to him and he apparently had one lesson with the missionaries before he moved and he is reading the Book of Mormon and started going to Church! We even heard him talk to his girlfriend about getting Sealed in the Temple. It was super awesome because he is super ready. He is ready to learn and he does things. He is already a good chunk through 1st Nephi and the family he is staying with is helping him so that is super awesome. These are the kinds of things we missionaries pray for all the time, and it happened. He didn't show for church so that was lame but there are some things going on with the family so I'm pretty sure he had a good reason. But it was still awesome because, like I said, we have hit a bit of a rough patch and now we have a super good investigator. God loves us, ha. We brought up baptism and he was totally cool with it. It is just so good.

     The other  day I sat down, chillin in my shorts and I look down at my legs. I just flexed as a joke but then I was surprised with the appearance of nice looking leg muscles. That's pretty nice. I had my companion come over and give them a feel. He was impressed of course. Anyone would be but my guess is that i will be put in a car again and lose all that muscle. But I will it while I have it haha, jk, it isn't that deep.

     I met this woman the other day and she apparently is going to be serving a senior mission in Cincinnati. I don't know her name, haha, but she is good friends with the Mission President. I thought that was neat.W e had a good talk about it. She said that she is going to a rural part of the mission though.

Love you guys 

the Church is true 

Gordon B Hinkley was a prophet 

Love, Elder Richards

later update:  the sister coming in is actually from Lehi, Utah but she was in Huntington Beach visiting family