Cleaning up after Isaac

Hi Family,

 

We got to go down to LaPlace and do some hurrican clean up service this weekend. We got to tear out sheet rock, rip up floors, and tear out cabinets There wass about 3 feet of water in most of the houses we worked on. We even got to have a Sacrament Meeting down there on Sunday in our work clothes and bright yellow Mormon helping hands shirts. We had a crew of 8 missionaries on Saturday and Sunday and we knocked out 4 houses. We gutted them and took out just about everything up to about four feet high. It was a really cool experience to help the people there, they were really impressed with how quick and well we worked and very thankful. One lady we helped said she couldn't figure out where her church was and why no one had contacted her and that she was going to look into ours and see what its all about because we obviously know what we are doing. It was really cool to see how the church responded so quickly and how much work they have done. Missionaries from our mission have been working all week there. We don't get to stay all week because we are to far away, but we will probably get to go down again this weekend and help again and maybe the next weekend as well if it is still needed.. After about a week with everyone that had been working, we helped with over 200 houses and probably getting close to 300.

 

We also had a good week this week in our area, Nick figured out that he will be planning on getting baptized on the 29th if everything goes according to plan with his girlfriend coming down.  We were able to meet some new investigators last night that our elders quorum had talked to before the storm, he was helping her with her generator and he answered a question about a child that had died over 20 years ago and had been troubling her ever since. She said she had talked to lots of churches about her child and they had never been able to answer and make her feel good about it till then. She came to church this past weekend, we didn't see her because we were in LaPlace but we went to a member's family home evening last night and they told us to come and meet her and her 14 year old daughter. We found out her daughter had even decided to come to seminary because she was friends with one of the members of that family that was her age. So those were some pretty big miracles going on this week.  It's been cool because all the people in LaPlace were so grateful and kept telling us we would be so blessed for helping them and we could definitely see some immediate results! It was awesome!

 

You should send some more pictures of Genevieve.. real physical pictures like in the mail or did you forget you could send mail to me??

 

Anyways, take care!

 

love elder ritchie