Working with the Members and Happy Birthday Wishes!

Hey, sounds like we all had a good week of eating fish. I got to go to my first crayfish boil of the year. We went to a boil with the Nichol's football team and the coaching staff right after we watched the 3 point and dunk completion the football players and the coaches had. I had forgotten how much I love crayfish.

We had an awesome sacrament meeting, we had the two couples that we have been teaching come it to church on Sunday.  We actually went and woke them up just to make sure they we coming, but we did it in a nice way, we made them some breakfast so it was a little easier to get up, haha!

I got Sullivan's letter but I haven't been able to write back yet  because I haven't had any time on preparation day.  Right now I'm actually in Kenner, we had to go to a leadership training meeting, the stake president wanted our impute on how the priesthood leaders could better use the full time missionaries.  The New Orleans zone leaders and we got to get up and give suggestions and tell them how we can help them do missionary work. We just had Elder Clarke here from the Seventy and he basically told us we shouldn't have time to tract and that tracting is at the very bottom of our list of things to do, and that members are the key way of finding people to teach, and that we are teachers not finders.  So we are going through the phase of trying to figure out how to best mesh with the units and the members. We need to remember that we belong to one church not two.  We often act like there are two churches, a members' church and the missionaries' church, when it's really just one. So we need to be working together more than we have in the past.

Anyway, I'm going to try and write Sullivan today but I'm not getting back to Thibodaux until Thursday because I'm going one an exchange here in New Orleans until then, so if I don't get to tell him, make sure you tell him happy birthday for me!!  I can't believe he's going to be twelve years old!  Tell him that holding the priesthood is awesome and to read his scriptures everyday, it makes a difference! I'd love to send he and his sisters a package for his birthday, I have a giant garbage sack full of Mardi Gras beads!

Speaking of birthdays, give Aunt Dena a big happy birthday shout out from the bayou, she's the best!
 
Love , Elder Ritchie