LA again November 7. 2016

Dear Family,

     This week seemed to just blow by. It was fun though. We went to the LA Visitors Center with Martin and had a super good time. The Nash family took us, they are super awesome. Brother Nash drives aggressively and loves his horn, haha. It is rather funny to be in the car with him, but he is a really good driver. Anyway, at the Visitors Center we watched some videos that were super bomb. One of them was Meet the Mormons but the extended part, the part that you can only watch in Visitor Centers. We watched  the video on The Horseman. Pretty much he is a cowboy and made some references about how we are kind of like horses in the fact that we need to be submissive and trusting in our master. It was good. Mainly, the whole focus of everything that we watched was to help Martin realize how to get an answer whether the Church is true because once he does he is ready to go. He believes it all pretty much and he does what he needs to so he is on the right path. He is super awesome. And, of course, we got to drive through LA. We drove down Hollywood Blvd and saw all the stars on the side walk and went down some other famous streets. It was fun. We ate at some crazy place called Lala's in LA for dinner. I had a steak that just had so much garlic on it, for real so much garlic but what are you gonna do. 

     We had some members from our last area ( me and Elder Miuras area (Cerritos 1st)) take us to dinner and they ordered so much food. We went to a place called Panda Inn so it was Asian. There was 5 of us and they bought enough food for 10 of us, so much food, so much rice, ha, but we love rice. It is one of our favorite things to eat in the trio. Fried rice and pot-stickers, so good. That and this pizza place called Pizza Studio. We go there all the time as well.

     I also got a little sick this week. It was lame but we still worked and I feel fine now, just have a lot of boogies coming out of my face. I know that is exactly what you wanted to hear, your welcome:) 

     We met a guy named Steve yesterday and this man seems to do it all. He is a cook and a cyclist, and a photographer for USA basketball and he is a skydiving instructor, and he writes books on the Constitution and is into all that good stuff. He is a pretty interesting guy. I feel like when we see him again he will tell us some other things that he has done in his life. Some people, man. 

Well, I love you guys.

Love,

Elder Richards

Big Air October 31, 2016

Hey family,

      Today for Halloween we decided to do something a little different. We tried to go to a place called Big Air a couple weeks ago but we found out it doesn't open up until like 3 in the afternoon. We didn't have time for that so we went to Regular Sports. Llater we found out that we know a member that has a connection to someone who has a connection to the CEO guy of Big Air. So we called him and he told us that we could get in for free and we could come in at 10 and have the whole place to ourselves. Of course ! we took it! (Big Air is a trampoline park) All we had to do was clean their kitchen and then we could jump our little hearts out. It was just 5 guys. They had a lot of stuff there, it was super fun. Do some flips, play some dodge ball, and now I am soooooooo tired. Jumping on a trampoline takes so much energy. We also did some beam battling over a foam pit. I destroyed at that. Anyway, really fun.

       One of my companions was sick so we stayed in for a couple of days. For missionaries, there is like 2 things you can do if you are stuck in, study and sleep, ha.

     We had another lesson with our investigator Martin. He is so awesome, he keeps his commitments and he is super open. His friend/ boss / fellowship is Brother Nash and he is awesome. He helps him out with any question or thing he needs. We plan on going to the LA Visitors Center with him this week. We are really excited for him. All he needs is to get his answer whether or not the Church is true and he will be ready to go! He is super prepared. 

     I had a struggle morning the other day, we had a set that cancelled and then we went by a member to fill our tires with air. I filled mine up too much so one of them exploded. Then I went to the other tire to let air out before it exploded as well. So I use my pen to let out the air, and my pen kind of exploded and I got my hand covered in blue ink. Yeah, it was pretty interesting. I cleaned up and we went to the store, bought new tubes, I fixed my bike and we were off. Fun morning, ha. 

Love you guys.

Love,

Elder Richards

PP (Primary Program) October 24, 2016

Dear Family

     This week was the Primary Program. I was kind of excited to see what goes down. In the other Ward, a kid gets up to read his sentence and then at the pulpit dabbed. I wish I was there to see it. It would have been so magnificent. Apparently dabbing makes people go crazy. Once I saw a bunch of kids in a car and I dabbed as I walked by and the kid in the front seat literally just went koko for Coco Puffs, started dabbing at lightning speed and shaking the car. So lesson learned, do not under estimate the power of the dab.( if you do not know what the "dab" is, ask Ryan) Anyway, back to the Primary Program. This was a very quiet and just nice Primary Program. All the kids were super reverent and super good. No criers or whiners or kickers or screamers. It was impressive. I think the Primary Presidency bribed the kids, haha. It was nice. Missionarys like programs like this because a lot of non- members and less active members come and are able to feel the Spirit in the Church again. It's very nice. 

     We found a guy this week who is super prepared. We have a member named Bro Nash. He brought his friend, Martin, to church and then he told us to ask Martin when we could set up an appointment with him. So of course we pulled our planners and look at each other wondering if it's worth our time or if we can fit him in between the 100s of lessons planned that week... sike! thats the wrong number ! we went striaghtway to Martin and set up that appointment.  We went over to Bro Nash's house and had a lesson with Martin and it was really good. He tells us about how much of an example Bro Nash is to him and how much he wants what he has. Martin kind of had a health scare recently which made him turn to God. We are super pumped to teach and prepare him for baptism. He has a baptism date now and we are sure that he will be baptized. So that was really awesome, people are being prepared, especailly if members and missionaries come together. ;)

    We also started  working with a family that also is prepared. The Dad is a member but not active until recently he started coming back because of a few things that have happened in his life. His family is also coming with him too and none of them are members. The Mom has never gone to Church or really done anything like that so she doesn't really even know if there is a God. That's where we come in to help her with that, to help build her faith and also the family's faith. I'm pretty excited about that also. They seem really cool. 

Well it should be a fun week with all the Halloween stuff going down.

Love you guys.

Love,

Elder Richards

Well, I ran out of time so pictures October 17, 2016

Dear Family
Well, I ran out of time so pictures
 i love you guys :) :) :)

Goodbye Missionaries

sad stabbed basketball, haha

brand new apartment, super clean and super nice

back to bikes

life size Elvis in a creepy doll house, they are obsessed with Elvis

doing laundry

GA (General Authority) October 10, 2016

Dear Family

     This week was fun. We had a General Authority come to our mission. Elder Ardern is his name, he is a fun dude. He is just real bouncy and fun when he talks and lectures us. He and his wife would just play off each other really well and he was the same with President Patterson, so that was awesome. 

      We did some service this week that was pretty fun. There was this little trailer carnival going on and we manned some of the stations. My companion and I got the apple toss into bucket game for a while, then on to the darts for a min, then on some other random games. They were having a hot dog eating contest but since I was watching the games, I couldn't do it, sad day. Prob for the better because we had dinner right afterwards any way. 

      The crazy thing that happened this week for me was tranfers last night.  I just got into the area so we were pretty sure I wasn't going to move and neither was my companion because I am going to kill him, or be his last companion. We are both staying but the crazy part is that we are getting another companion. We are going to be a trio. But the craziest part about that is that the trio mate is Elder Miura! one of my former companions, the one from Japan. This is his last transfer as well so I am killing them both. So that should be fun. We spent the morning moving stuff around so Elder Miura had room. So its Elder Ellin, Elder Miura, and me now. I'm pretty excited. It should be fun. Just for extra fun we are also splitting the ward with another set of missionaries so there will be 5 missionaries in the La Palma ward, fun.

     Another fun thing was when we went over to our "sort of" recent converts' house. When we got there we noticed that he had a new toy. The new toy was a tazer. So of course I had to be tazed by it. So that is what we did. He got me in the leg. It was pretty interesting, haha, shocking and then it was just hot. I could feel just a hot circle on my leg where he got me, haha. Then they pointed us to there neighbor because they had apparently been going to Church, just not our Ward. We went over there and apparently the Dad is an inactive member who is returning and the rest of the family are non-members and there are trying to figure out if religion is for them. It is, they just don't know it yet. So we are excited about that.

I love you guys 

Love 

Elder Richards

The race against time October 3, 2016

Dear Family,

     At this moment I am in what you would call a race against time. Why, you may ask. Because when we got to the library all of the computers were taken except for the express computers. So that means that I only get 15 min at a time on this particular computer. I'm just not in the mood to wait a while for some one to get off one of the normal computers, so here we go.

     This week seemed really short because of Temple Tuesday, and also General Conference. Conference was fun, it's like a holiday for missionaries. Just for Conference, my comp and i bought a huge bag of candy ( 210 pieces) and we decided we would eat it all by the end of Conference. It didn't seem like that much but it was quite a bit of candy. At least we were awake during the whole thing, ha. But of course, we shared a little with others but we did finish it. We watched the first session at a less active member's house, it was pretty nice and of course they had to take us out to lunch afterwards. I really like President Uchtdorf's first talk. Of course all the missionaries were getting super pumped whenever they talked about missionary work of any kind. Or at least I get pumped.

We found an investigator this week. His name is Fernando. He is a cool dude. It was kind of funny how we ran into him. We have this racket ball that we throw around every now and then when we are just walking. This time I threw it in a funny way while walking past a park. The ball went into the park and so we then to retrieve it. When we went for the ball, we saw a guy and a girl just sitting on a bench in the park so we decided to go and talk to them. Inspired racket ball fumble because they were totally cool with hearing the message of the restoration and Fernando said that he would like to learn more and actually read the the book of Mormon. The girl had to leave half way through our lesson but it was still a good lesson. The Church is true.

      We had a really awesome lesson with a couple we have been teaching. They are a little hard to get a hold of but we had caught them one night and we just sat down and they just opened up to us after a little bit of talking and sharing. They really just told us their concerns and the problems they are having at that moment, so of course we opened the scriptures and shared some good old doctrine with them. The Spirit was really strong and they both told us about how they had just felt peace and so much better as we talked. We even gave them both a blessing of comfort afterwards which really made them feel the Spirit as well. It was just so awesome to be there and to help them so much. That's what the Gospel is for anyways, to help and uplift us.

I was just about to close my letter but then guess what, the computer shut off haha my 15 min were up apparently but bless the fact that it saves every now and then haha

Love you guys.

Love,

Elder Richards

The Sass Master September 27, 2016

 

Dear family, 

     We were able to go to the Temple this morning. It was really awesome, truly is the House of the Lord. So peaceful, I got to see my old companion, Elder Ashton, and some other peeps from my last couple of areas. So that was really nice. It's always awesome to go through the Temple. Covenants are very big deals, especially to God.

     On Sunday I got to meet The Ultimate Sass Master. We didn't have a dinner on Sunday, so we went by our Relief Society President's house, the Higgins. They are awesome. Pretty much at anytime, we can stop by and if we need something they are always willing to help. So we dropped by and they made us dinner. Their granddaughter, she is the Sass Master. She is maybe like 5 but she is full to the brim with sass. It's really funny, or at least it was funny to me at this moment. I'm pretty sure that those who live with her do not think it is as funny, ha. But she will just go off on you, she's got all the hand motions and everything when she is doing it. She didn't want to eat strawberries but then my companion was like, "Oh, strawberries are my life " (eats a strawberry in her face) then she's all like "strawberries are MY LIFE" ( then she eats like 5 strawberries in his face ) It was a really funny battle to watch.

     We found a lady yesterday. It was really interesting how it happened. We were just coming out of someone's house and there was an old man walking. So I start talking to him of course, then he tells me that he is not interested. But I ask him if he knows anyone that would be interested. Then he's all like, "well, my caretaker would be, she is very religious. So I continued to walk with the old man until we got to his house. Clara ( the care taker ) came out. It was really cool because she believes that the Book of Mormon is true and she loves us and all this good stuff. She just really understand the Priesthood and stuff like that. So we are super pumped to start teaching her. God loves us.

He loves you too

love

Elder Richards