Praying for teaching ideas

Hey y'all,

I had a really good Easter my first Sunday in the Denham Springs 1st Ward. I think I've served in almost every first ward now, I've been in New Orleans First Ward, Baton Rouge First Ward, and now Denham First Ward. I don't think there are any other firsts that I know of!  I still haven't been to a branch, in fact, I've never been to a branch in my life! I've had group meetings in Abbeville but never been to a branch, kinda weird for here.

Denham is a really nice area, it is by far the cleanest and wealthiest area I've been. The ward seems really strong as well, I  don't have to worry quite as much about a crazy meeting when you have new investigators show up. There have been some different things in other wards I've been in haha!  

I decided I'm getting a puppy when I get home! Oh yes, I got the package, we have been enjoying the jerky you sent.

We had a couple less actives at church this Sunday so that was really awesome and we had a potential investigator that is a member's girlfriend. He is one of the coolest members too, he is a musician and singer. He's an older guy that wants to throw an investigator and recent convert concert that we are trying to set up.  We are pretty pumped about that! He actually has a Grammy award too! So we might be able to get a pretty big turn out, we are going to try and get every one from our zone and the Baton Rouge zone in on it so we can have a lot of people show up and have the mission President and the Stake President here talk and then have a concert. It was awesome how we came up with the idea, I've been trying to come up with new ways of finding investigators because we had Elder Bednar and Elder Clark and the head of the proselyting department come to our mission and basically throw down on tracting and say there are so many better and more productive ways to find people to teach through members and activities and less actives and part member families. So we have been praying to find some good ideas and we were over at his house and he brought up that he had done investigator concerts in the past and would like to do another one. That was an answer to our prayers. We had a councilor from the stake presidency in our ward arrange a question and answer session about Mormons meetings,  he is going to invite families from his neighborhood and we are going to show some Mormon Messages and talk about what we believe and then let them ask any questions. I have just been super grateful this past week for the answer to prayers because the trickiest part of missionary work is finding people to teach.

  

So, my companion and I made a cold drink tower, I'll have to send you a picture soon. I forgot my camera so I can't today but I think you will be pretty impressed and probably a little grossed out, we ended up drinking over 20 gallons of soda haha! We are going to turn it into a castle soon!

I need to get my licence renewed here pretty quick or I'll have to get a Louisiana license haha! I won't be an Idaho citizen anymore if I do that, and I think I'll get even less intelligent if I have to get a Louisiana license.  I'm already loosing my vocabulary and annunciation haha! It still just boggles my mind how weird people talk down here and how different it is in every area I've been from Chalmette and their Southern Brooklyn style accent to Baton Rouge and their Southern Ebonics to Abbeville and their Cajun French and Thibadaux was a mix of New Orleans and Cajun and here in Denham, I'm still not sure what it is but its almost hillbilly cause its more woodsy!

Well, love all y'all,

love elder ritchie