Hey, I don't think I'll get transferred this week but I just don't know. It sounds like the whole mission might get shaken up this transfer just in time for the new mission president.. But I don't know when you should send a birthday package, I would wait till next week and then I'll be able to tel you if I'm still going to be here or not.
It got up to 103 degrees today. It's hot! But its bearable. I guess I'm just getting used to the area.
We are teaching more people from out of the country than Americans. We are teaching a guy from Iran who just finished the Book of Mormon and a family from Sudan and a guy from Vietnam. It's hard but I think we are doing pretty good considering they know hardly any English. The guy from Iran owns a rug store and he makes really nice Persian rugs, we just committed him for baptism on the 25th. He's kinda lonely right now because his family is visiting Iran for the summer but he wants us to teach them when they get back so they can all come to church together.
We have had some really awesome things happen this last week but I don't have time to talk about them because its not preparation day, the library was closed yesterday for memorial day so i gotta write while on dinner break.
That's cool that the parking lot at Kelly's Canyon collapsed haha, maybe the rest of the mountain will change shape and make it more of an expert mountain.. haha yeah right..anyways I'll write more next Tuesday cause I don't have a lot of time right now..
anyways love ya
elder ritchie
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
More on Baton Rouge
Yep, I got transfered and nope, wasn't expecting it, at all. Tranfers weren't even supposed to be for another 3 weeks and then we got a call out of the blue from the president.
Well, you will have to stay in touch with my families for me and tell them I'll miss em, but I'm gonna try and write them. They weren't excited I was leaving at all, especially little Chelsie.. but they were doing really really good so I hope everything keeps going smooth for them. I found out they are kind of a legendary family around the mission because it was my first door I had ever tracted and our first contact after getting double transfered into a newly opened area and they are SO solid and they wanted everyone they know to have the gospel. They were sharing it with everyone and have found a bunch of family and friends for us to teach. Not to metion they lived on Ledend drive, haha.
But we are teaching a bunch of people up here. We are teaching a refugee family from right below Nepal how to speak English and a little bit about the gospel.. we are also teaching a man name Richard who is really nice and super humble. We found a new investigator the other day though that looks really promising and we gave her a Book of Mormon and I talked to her the next day and said she really like it so far. We have quite a few people with baptisimal dates up here but I'm not sure how many are actively pursueing it.
I don't think I need anything for my birthday and its right after transfers so I wouldn't send a package for a couple days after so I can be sure of were I'm going to be because I dont know if im gonna stay here or get moved just yet.. haha anything is possible.
It's different here in Baton Rouge, it's not as nice as Chalmette, even though Chalmette was destroyed they are building it up nice. Here there are alot more poor people in big apartment complexes that are really run down but it's nice to be in a somewhat normal ward again haha! There is actaully a normal church building and not just a multi cultural room that acts as the chapel that gets split into gospel doctrine gospel principles class and the priesthood and relief society. I got a new companion and he reminds me of Brock Byington so much they could be brothers. Our apartment is the nicest one in the mission. It's huge with 2 nice bathrooms and it's just down the street from the mission office. We live with two Spanish missionaries, one is from Preston.
We had kinda a slow week though we had a hard time getting people to meet with us, but we did have a really good sunday to make up for the week.
Well, you will have to stay in touch with my families for me and tell them I'll miss em, but I'm gonna try and write them. They weren't excited I was leaving at all, especially little Chelsie.. but they were doing really really good so I hope everything keeps going smooth for them. I found out they are kind of a legendary family around the mission because it was my first door I had ever tracted and our first contact after getting double transfered into a newly opened area and they are SO solid and they wanted everyone they know to have the gospel. They were sharing it with everyone and have found a bunch of family and friends for us to teach. Not to metion they lived on Ledend drive, haha.
But we are teaching a bunch of people up here. We are teaching a refugee family from right below Nepal how to speak English and a little bit about the gospel.. we are also teaching a man name Richard who is really nice and super humble. We found a new investigator the other day though that looks really promising and we gave her a Book of Mormon and I talked to her the next day and said she really like it so far. We have quite a few people with baptisimal dates up here but I'm not sure how many are actively pursueing it.
I don't think I need anything for my birthday and its right after transfers so I wouldn't send a package for a couple days after so I can be sure of were I'm going to be because I dont know if im gonna stay here or get moved just yet.. haha anything is possible.
It's different here in Baton Rouge, it's not as nice as Chalmette, even though Chalmette was destroyed they are building it up nice. Here there are alot more poor people in big apartment complexes that are really run down but it's nice to be in a somewhat normal ward again haha! There is actaully a normal church building and not just a multi cultural room that acts as the chapel that gets split into gospel doctrine gospel principles class and the priesthood and relief society. I got a new companion and he reminds me of Brock Byington so much they could be brothers. Our apartment is the nicest one in the mission. It's huge with 2 nice bathrooms and it's just down the street from the mission office. We live with two Spanish missionaries, one is from Preston.
We had kinda a slow week though we had a hard time getting people to meet with us, but we did have a really good sunday to make up for the week.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Surprise Transfer
Hey, I got transfered, I'm in Baton Rougue North now!
I spent all of Monday on the transfer van from 8 in the morning to 6 at night because we had to make a bunch of stops and pick and drop people off.. but i had to come up here because we had 5 missionaries who were waiting for visas get them and leave the country, so they are all leaving. So they sent me up here since we had four missionaries where i was and it can be run by 2.
I'm sad i had to leave chalmette i loved it there.. but i have had harldly any time to be in my new area because of riding the van and we had zone confrence yesterday. It's not going to flood here but we drove through some areas that were just starting to flood since they opened the Morganza spill way. It hasn't been opened in 40 years and poeple built their houses in the spill way and flood plain so it is going to flood them out. The area I'm in now is a good area, it's not New Orleans but I'll get used to it.. I wasnt expecting to get transferred at all, we were just having a normal day and then we got a call from president saying elder crane and I were getting transfered out of chalmette.
My new address is:
11999 Longridge Ave. #1105
Baton Rouge LA 70816
I spent all of Monday on the transfer van from 8 in the morning to 6 at night because we had to make a bunch of stops and pick and drop people off.. but i had to come up here because we had 5 missionaries who were waiting for visas get them and leave the country, so they are all leaving. So they sent me up here since we had four missionaries where i was and it can be run by 2.
I'm sad i had to leave chalmette i loved it there.. but i have had harldly any time to be in my new area because of riding the van and we had zone confrence yesterday. It's not going to flood here but we drove through some areas that were just starting to flood since they opened the Morganza spill way. It hasn't been opened in 40 years and poeple built their houses in the spill way and flood plain so it is going to flood them out. The area I'm in now is a good area, it's not New Orleans but I'll get used to it.. I wasnt expecting to get transferred at all, we were just having a normal day and then we got a call from president saying elder crane and I were getting transfered out of chalmette.
My new address is:
11999 Longridge Ave. #1105
Baton Rouge LA 70816
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Email after Mother's Day Call
hey again,
It feels like i talked to you just yesterday... oh, it was! this week was kinda slow compared to the last couple i think people aren't as nice when the weather starts to get hot. It's still in the 80's most days but I'm pretty sure we got above 90 yesterday. But its been rain free for two weeks and everyone is complaining about a drought. It's probably good there hasn't been rain because the water is really high on the levee. Haha, I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "i drove my chevy to the levee but the levee was gone", made me laugh a little cause it was funny but after talking to sooo many people about loosing everything, not so funny anymore. I saw an epic lizard fight while door tracting the other day and i got it on video, I'll try and send it to you next week to see it and see if you can put it on the blog, it was hilarious they just circled each other for a couple minutes then it went down.
Our investigators are going through some rough times right now they can't stay on the path, they keep going back to their old ways and then they will come back to us and then they will go back to their old ways again so we are trying to help them as best we can, but it all comes down to their desire. We have met some other good people that are really interested but they all have been out of town and we haven't got to see them. So we are hoping we get to see them this week.
Love Elder Ritchie
It feels like i talked to you just yesterday... oh, it was! this week was kinda slow compared to the last couple i think people aren't as nice when the weather starts to get hot. It's still in the 80's most days but I'm pretty sure we got above 90 yesterday. But its been rain free for two weeks and everyone is complaining about a drought. It's probably good there hasn't been rain because the water is really high on the levee. Haha, I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "i drove my chevy to the levee but the levee was gone", made me laugh a little cause it was funny but after talking to sooo many people about loosing everything, not so funny anymore. I saw an epic lizard fight while door tracting the other day and i got it on video, I'll try and send it to you next week to see it and see if you can put it on the blog, it was hilarious they just circled each other for a couple minutes then it went down.
Our investigators are going through some rough times right now they can't stay on the path, they keep going back to their old ways and then they will come back to us and then they will go back to their old ways again so we are trying to help them as best we can, but it all comes down to their desire. We have met some other good people that are really interested but they all have been out of town and we haven't got to see them. So we are hoping we get to see them this week.
Love Elder Ritchie
Monday, May 2, 2011
New companion and a really good week
Hey,
My new companion is from Mesa Arizona and this is his last transfer too, so I keep getting put with the old ones. We don't have any other people in the apartment but we got a call from some that were getting transferred to our area and they are getting here later today.
We have the students from Tulane in our ward, all 5 of them that are members. Our ward is about 120 people, depending on the week, there are always conferences in New Orleans, so there are always visitors I've meet a bunch of people from Idaho Falls. When the BYU basketball team was here one of the players dads was originally from IF.
We do have a zone conference coming up but I don't know if its going to be anything really special but the one I did was pretty good.
Guess what, I've officially lost 20 pounds since I've been here. I went from 204 after the MTC to 184 as of today... 20 pounds in six weeks.
It's been a different week this week with transfers because everyone but me left the apartment so its been ALOT quieter which is good and bad. I have definitely gotten a lot better at being a missionary than I was 6 weeks ago. I basically got to do everything because my companion was new to the area. I got to set up all the appointments and introduce him to everyone it was a good feeling to be able to make a smooth transition from transfers.
It has been so awesome to work with our new members, they help the gospel spread like wild fire. T's sister-in-law was in town this weekend and she brought her to a crawfish boil we had in the park (which was amazing by the way, they can really cook down here) but her sister in law, A, was pretty curious in the change in T. and her family. So she wanted to know what did it and wanted some for herself so we invited them to a lesson we were having with another investigator, J. and we taught about the plan of salvation and they LOVED it and said it makes so much more sense than any thing they had heard. So A. came to church and loved it and her kids loved it and they said they cant wait to be members in a text to T. last night and that she was going to look up the church where she lives in Mississippi. I get to call the mission president tonight and give him the referral because she and her kids are so interested and so solid.
It's been a really good week, I got to give a really great blessing to an investigator struggling to quit smoking and drinking and she is doing it but wanted as much help as she could get. She said after the blessing that the weight has been lifted off her chest so i hope everything continues to work out for her.
There are so many things I could say but I don't have the time to say all of them so that sufficeth me for now... haha! But take care of Idaho for me, I miss everyone!
love elder ritchie
My new companion is from Mesa Arizona and this is his last transfer too, so I keep getting put with the old ones. We don't have any other people in the apartment but we got a call from some that were getting transferred to our area and they are getting here later today.
We have the students from Tulane in our ward, all 5 of them that are members. Our ward is about 120 people, depending on the week, there are always conferences in New Orleans, so there are always visitors I've meet a bunch of people from Idaho Falls. When the BYU basketball team was here one of the players dads was originally from IF.
We do have a zone conference coming up but I don't know if its going to be anything really special but the one I did was pretty good.
Guess what, I've officially lost 20 pounds since I've been here. I went from 204 after the MTC to 184 as of today... 20 pounds in six weeks.
It's been a different week this week with transfers because everyone but me left the apartment so its been ALOT quieter which is good and bad. I have definitely gotten a lot better at being a missionary than I was 6 weeks ago. I basically got to do everything because my companion was new to the area. I got to set up all the appointments and introduce him to everyone it was a good feeling to be able to make a smooth transition from transfers.
It has been so awesome to work with our new members, they help the gospel spread like wild fire. T's sister-in-law was in town this weekend and she brought her to a crawfish boil we had in the park (which was amazing by the way, they can really cook down here) but her sister in law, A, was pretty curious in the change in T. and her family. So she wanted to know what did it and wanted some for herself so we invited them to a lesson we were having with another investigator, J. and we taught about the plan of salvation and they LOVED it and said it makes so much more sense than any thing they had heard. So A. came to church and loved it and her kids loved it and they said they cant wait to be members in a text to T. last night and that she was going to look up the church where she lives in Mississippi. I get to call the mission president tonight and give him the referral because she and her kids are so interested and so solid.
It's been a really good week, I got to give a really great blessing to an investigator struggling to quit smoking and drinking and she is doing it but wanted as much help as she could get. She said after the blessing that the weight has been lifted off her chest so i hope everything continues to work out for her.
There are so many things I could say but I don't have the time to say all of them so that sufficeth me for now... haha! But take care of Idaho for me, I miss everyone!
love elder ritchie
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