Week 9 (Nov 16, 2015)

First of all I cannot believe it is almost thanks giving and then
right after that it is Christmas. It's getting colder here so maybe
I'll get some snow for Christmas. Sister staker is getting use to the
cold fast here haha it's so cute how she bundles up😀.

Monday- we got sent on a goose chase to go find a less active. The
address didn't even exist so we decided to knock on some doors. We
knocked on one and got two new investigators. It was awesome. Then we
had a lesson with Chris and Jan came along. She is so helpful as she
takes care of the children's needs so we can teach and be effective.
He wants to come to church and to a baptism we are having this week. I
know if he comes to it he will feel the spirit and hopefully want to
get baptized in December as planned.

Tuesday- we got a phone call during our studies and it was a less
active named Pam. She lives on the street as Josh and Erin and Duran.
That's how we found those people because Pam wasn't home a month or so
ago, so we went tracking. Long story short. We gave Craig our card and
told him to give it to her and give us a call. Two months later she
finally did! She said she wanted talk to we rushed over there around
noon and had a brief visit with her. She needs a lot of help and we
just don't know how. We told her to come to church so she could talk
to the bishop. We were so excited she trusted us and called us. We saw
Kassi after and had a great lesson with her. We read out of the Book
of Mormon and had a great discussion on the chapters she had read. We
also talked to her about the restoration. She said she felt goose
bumps as I recited the first vision. It was really cool! She said she
was coming to church on Sunday! Then we saw Kelly. I feel so terrible.
We do not know how to help her. She is so off and on with her mood and
all she does is cry. We try really hard to help her see how God and
Jesus Christ can help us all through anything we are going through but
she just won't really listen to us. She has a very difficult time
seeing the good and happy things in life, which makes her very
depressed all the time. I break for her, try to comfort her and help
her. Her lessons are just a mess and I leave every time never knowing
how to help, but knowing all I can do it pray for her and have the
faith she will make it through to get to the temple. We saw sister
Sosa and her family (part member family...part investigator). We asked
if we could come teach all of them and they said yes. We also had a
meeting with the bishop and got a lot organized and we are excited
about the things that will be happening in the future in this Ward. I
feel we are so effective in helping our ward function properly as
missionaries haha. It's because I come from such a wonderful, well
organized and constructed Ward. We are suppose to teach 5th Sunday to
the youth so sister staker and I are so excited! There was a problem
with the people in primary not getting a chance to be apart of the 5th
Sunday adult class. We simply proposed the youth take the first hour
and then the adults take the second hour watching the primary. The
Ward council thought we were geniuses haha it was funny!

Wednesday- we obviously worked really hard but we didn't do much good
to the point that I want to share. We had zone conference and had a
great training on how to do a good church tour! I cannot wait to be
able to do one in the future. We saw some people and I had a couple
"come to Jesus talk" which is basically trying to figure out if they
want us to still come over and if so how we can help them. I got the
negative side of that and we had to drop two people. Not by our
choice...it was their own. We saw Jim Davis and he said he was coming
to church. We wants to bring his whole family, but if they didn't want
to come he was coming without them no matter what. I am excited to get
him back on the path and hopefully get him coming to church every week
and hopefully in the future to the temple!!

Thursday- training takes a lot out of me every day. Trying to remember
everything and making all the decisions is draining. I am excited to
help sister staker see she can play a big role in this work even
though she is so new, but I can be more effective at it. We have both
decide to go through our area book and clean it out. We are calling a
bunch of people from the past to see if they want to be taught again
or if they are even interested. It is a lot of work, but it will be
good for us, especially because it is helping me see our area better.
We tracked today and found two families and one other new
investigator. It was so awesome! I am excited to go back and teach
them! Then we had a lesson with Tamra and sister edgel came with us
because she is her visiting teacher. She killed it during the lesson.
She got Tamra to open up and really just communicate with us. She is
an amazing lady and we all set up a time to go next Friday and help
Tamra with her field! I get to machete again!! Then we went to see one
of our investigators we met on Monday. His name is artist. I told him
we would get along just fine because of his name haha. We had an all
over the place lesson with him. That was my bad because I asked if he
had any questions and he jumped to the word of wisdom ones...I was
like ohhhh good one sis rich. Anyways it was still good. We laid a
good foundation to go back and really teach him. He is married and has
two really cute kids. He said he would come to church in a week from
now. We also saw Carl tonight. I put the ball in his court and told
him we were there to help, but we needed to know how we could help
him. He said he would think about it.

Friday- Today we called and organized all the people in our area book
some more. It was so time consuming. We had a very effective weekly
planning though. We saw Huda today alone with none of her kids. We had
an awesome HTBT and set up another time to come back and teach her and
then teach her kids. She said she would come to church so I am praying
really hard she will still be able to go in two days!! We tried to
also see Pam today, but she wasn't home. We have been trying to meet
with her again because she will text us these really sad and
depressing texts so we are very worried for her. She won't answer us
and she wasn't home. We walked over to Duran's and had a brief chat
with him. He said he would come to church and that we would talk on
Tuesday about why he was MIA. I have realized that even though you put
your investigators on date it does not mean they will get baptized. I
didn't really think about it that way until now, so that was a little
sad for me. I just keep learning every day, more and more. It's
incredible! Something funny: I feel like 1 nephi 1: 7 every night
before I go to bed. The spirt can really drain you especially when you
are trying so hard to keep it in some lessons or bring it in. I am so
grateful to have the spirit with me constantly as a guide, but I do
collapse when I get home because I see so much each day. Just a fun
similarity and I find a lot every day. The scriptures are really all
about missionary work! Ha I love it! We also had our ward missionary
training on how was can make our gospel principles class more
effective for our investigators because this class is for them and not
for us. It was a spirit filled training and it just rocked. The spirit
totally taught. It was not me. We should all keep in mind how simple
the gospel is and how we like to complicate things. We ourselves are
investigators having to remember the things we know to be true and
learn daily from the spirit. It's humbling to realize, God was not
kidding when we said we need to become like little children. It's
awesome to be deep doctrinal intelligent, those people are awesome. I
am not one. It is cool to see the power that comes by simple things
and how strongly the spirit is present when we teach and talk In a
simple manner. The spirit can connect to so many more people. We
decided to do as alma 6:6 taught and we are all praying together each
day at a specific hour for the list people we have come up with. We
all fasted yesterday and I feel like our ward missionaries are being
united together and to the work which is awesome, because this past
week we had a lot of drama between all of them.

Saturday-  wow this day was a rough one. It still ended on a high note
gratefully!! Davey canceled on us which really sucked. He said
specifically when we could come by and see him and again at the last
second he dropped us. When I see that boy he is going to get an ear
full....just kidding. But really though. We went and saw one of our
new investigator families. Her name is Erica. Her husbands name is
Andrew and they have two super cute boys. (They are little don't
worry). She wants to take her kids to a church close by, and she is
curious about our religion. They just moved into their home a couple
months ago so they are super new. We had a small get to know you
lesson and shared a spiritual thought. Erica said she wants to come to
church on Sunday. Her husband and her do not share the same opinions
when it comes to religion, but Erica shared with us that she really
doesn't care. They really all have such a sweet spirit to them, I know
the dad will be able to see how his family will change and he will
fallow in their path. We went to Betty's next. We did a puzzle with
her grandson and tried to talk to her about religion. She told us she
thinks religion won't help her in her life right now. This broke my
heart....I wanted to ask her if she thinks her God, her father, the
creator of all she has would not help her through life? She really
didn't want to talk about it so we have decided to not go over for
awhile. Hopefully she will miss the sweet spirit we bring and have a
desire to find it for herself. We got a distress text from Chris and
everything just fell apart. We ran over their with brother Collins.
His friend We had died from overdosing on drugs. We tried to talk to
him but he was not there with us. He was much farther away. His is
defiantly depressed and we told him when he was ready to talk to us we
would be there. I was almost in tears. The feeling in his home, was
dark and cold. He is mourning, but he is also not seeing the clear
picture of what the savior can do because we went through the
atonement. We are praying that this event will send him in the right
direction and not the complete opposite. Time will tell.  A guy in our
ward call us and give us a referral. We decided to stop by. She is an
awesome lady with two kids as well and a husband. She said that when
she and this member started talking she just started crying and said
she would come to church! We set up a ride for her and everything and
we were pumped. We had 14 people say they were coming to church by
Saturday night. My mind was blowing up. I couldn't imagine 14 people
that we teach being at church with us. 6 of them being investigated
and the rest less actives.

Sunday- ah well just like all you missionaries probably know in
reality some of the good things are just too good to be true. We had
our two new investigator families bail last minute and we had some
that just didn't show up. On the positive side Kassi (I), Steve Dimick
(LA), Jim Davis (LA), the Adams (LA) and brother Sears (LA) came to
church. I was one happy missionary. The Huda texted us and said she
didn't have any gas to make it to church. We quickly grabbed the
butler creek elders and got Huda a ride. We sat with her family and
the elders during their sacrament meeting. At one point her 1 year old
had to go out. Sister staker and I took him to the nursery where he
could play so Huda could listen. The elders were in charge of coloring
with the other two kids. They also sat in primary with them while I
was in our missionary correlation and sister staker was in gospel
principles with Huda. It was chaotic day for sure for us. We didn't
leave church Until well after 4. All of us were exhausted, but we had
gotten Huda and her family there with a good team effort and that was
all that mattered.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week! Keep doing what you all do best
which is.....keep finding the joy life's journey brings and keep
preaching the gospel through mouth and example!  You all are AMAZING!

<3 Sister Richards