Sprained Ankle and Pictures!

I sprained my ankle playing basketball pretty good on Monday and I can hardly walk right now and it's all swollen and all black, it looks gross. I had to rip up a T-shirt to wrap it up for a day. Hopefully it gets better cause I can hardly walk and the new mision president gets here tommorrow or Friday.

We went to a baptism last night, President Woods baptized a man from China. It was really good! We got D. there and he loved it. It was good to see the President get a baptism in his last weeks too. Oh, and afterward he came over to me and put his arm around me and asked me if I was ready, and my gut just dropped and I said for what, and he told me I'm going to be training this next tranfer most likely and if not this one the next one. So I'm kinda nervous about that but it will be cool having someone that doesn't know anything.

Make sure I have enough on my debit card, send me an email with the amount every once in a while just so I know cause I need to take 50 dollars out for emergencies like hurricanes. Everything is going good other than I can't walk!

Some pictures for you!

The Cantrell Family in Chalmette. Sam's first experience tracting and first baptisms.

Sam at the Baton Rouge Temple

Sam and companion in Chalmette just before being transferred to Baton Rouge

Note from the Mom: I saw this picture on Tammy's facebook page and commented on the lighting, she told me that "It's God's light!"

Happy Father's Day

Happy Fathers Day yesterday dad!! I don't get why we call on Mothers Day and not Fathers Day... doesn't make a whole lot of sense.. but I think it's because in the scriptures when Lehi is so calm when his sons were gone and Sariah was freaking out and murmuring (nagging) haha!

We had kind of a rough week this week, we had some really good lessons but decided everyone with a baptismal date needed to kind of start fresh so we took away all their dates except D. from Iran is still comming along really great. He is loving it! We just have to see when his family will get back from vacation in Iran because he said they will want to be baptized with him... We are still working with most of the rest them but just gonna have to wait some time.. We were really hoping to baptize P. this comming Saturday but he hasn't come to church enough. I think another lady we were teaching in Chalmette got baptized last Saturday, I talked to President Woods in an interview at the mini-going-away zone confrence we had for him and he said she was turned in and it looked like everything was going to go smoothly but I havent heard yet.

I'm going golfing with the office elders today so we will have them find out (one of them is Elder Murphey from IF). tell both grandmas and grandpa thanks for the birthday cards and if you write a letter sometime I could use some stamps.

Now he's 20!

Yeah, i got my birthday package. It was good, I like the jerky its keeping me awake while i study. I've been reading Jesus the Christ and I'm about 200 pages in and nothing puts me to sleep better than that. I read it for a half an hour and the Book of Mormon another half an hour and it make reading the Book of Mormon so much easier cause it uses such big words. But i understand its a lot better than i thought i was going to. I finished the Book of Mormon for the second time while on my mission two weeks ago and now I'm going slow through Nephi to get a little more in depth. Oone cool thing I really liked was the scripture in 1 Nephi chapter 2 where it says "and my father dwelt in a tent" i kept trying to think of why he would put that in there it was kind of a lame scripture but the more i thought about it the more it made sense to me that he put that in there because they came from riches and were from the sounds of it a very well off family and then they left to the wilderness and had nothing but a tent. And that scripture just shows the obedience and humility of Lehi because he was so willing to leave and dwell in a tent.. reminds me of dad. He would be willing to give up his house and go dwell in his tent.

Well everything has been going really good here in Baton Rouge, we had a stake conference this Sunday and it was really cool to be around that many people that were members and not missionaries. It felt kind of weird though because that was the most white people in one place I've seen in a while... oh we got lost on my birthday it was a cool vacation, we missed our exit and ended up on your side of the Mississippi in Port Allen haha which is out of our zone... oops, I wasn't driving so I was just laughing the whole time. It's cool going up on the bridges because they are so tall and it's one of the only times you get to actually see the city.

We are still meeting with D. our investigator from Iran and he is loving the church! He has been meeting with the Jehovah's Witnesses for a couple years now and he said it was good cause he got to learn about Jesus because he is new to Christianity.
But he said he knew it wasn't really what he wanted and it was his first step to being a part of our church. He had a date to be baptized in July but he want to wait for his family to get back from vacation in Iran so they can be baptized with him because he has been telling them all about it over skype. But i was thinking the other day and we might bring this up him getting baptized before they get home so he can baptize them when they get here, I think that would be sweet.. well that about all I got today but tell Collin good luck for me and that he can do it and its worth it!

Staying in Baton Rouge

I'm staying in Baton Rouge! I wish i was at Lake Powell with ya'll, I want to go swimming so bad its been in the hundreds this last week almost every day until yesterday.. but then we finally got some rain and its cooled down a little bit but its starting to get more humid.

But I'm staying here, I was kinda nervous I was going to get transferred again I didn't wanna leave all the people we have been teaching.. We had a lady come up to us the other day and said she wants to join our church... so we have started teaching her but its going to be kinda hard because she doesn't have a car and kind of lives in the projects so she can't ever come to church. We started teaching a 14 year old from California too, he is living with his grandma and he's an awesome kid that's been through a lot..we got our transfer calls last night and we are all staying in the apartment except Elder Rawlings who is from Preston.

I got a letter from Erica the other day and a "dear elder" from Dena. They were awesome! Erica sounds like she's doing good with everything other than the language was a little tough. Grandama and grandpa do need an older dog but I'm not willing to share mine, you can give them Mercy.

I'm not planning on doing much for my birthday. There's not really much to do, we might do something on preparation day today but that's probably it.

Oh, i made a delicious roast yesterday in our crock pot, we have a family dinner once a week where one of the companionships cooks. It was soo good! A roast and garlic bread.. My companion and I are having a race to see who can lose 20 pounds first, I think we are going to lay a pair of new shoes on the line.. Well I don't know if i have to much else to say just I'm kinda jealous your at Lake Powell.. especially when it has been extremely hot here.

Well, love you
elder ritchie