Teaching through texting

Hey, we had a really good week this week! We received a refferal from the office lady that was about a lady that was reading the Book of Mormon and loved it and really wanted to come to church. This was Friday when we got the refferal. So, I called her and she said that she was at the Baton Rouge stake center and met a member and he was the one that called the mission office. She wanted to meet with us Saturday and come to church. After that she sent us a text asking what she should read from the Book of Mormon so we just told her to start from the beginging or where ever she was reading.  Then she went on to tell us how she has studdied religions all her life and had never been religious because she has never felt any of them were right, so she just keeps studying she said she was spiritual but not religious. Then she got a Book of Mormon somehow and someone told her to read it and she has loved what she has read and she said she has never felt like she has about a church and that she knows it was true and her insides were leaping for joy. Then she went on to tell us she wanted to get baptized and asked us what she would have to do to be baptized and she told us that she had repented. So we told her that we can talk about how she can get baptized when we meet with her because this was all through texting haha! But we weren't able to meet with her on Saturday because her best friend that she normally borrows her car (she is 39 by the way) said she wasn't going to be her friend anymore if she goes to that church and she can borrow her car if that was where she was going because we were going to have the lesson at the church. We had a dinner appointment with a member family out by where she lives that we invited her as well but she said she wasn't as comfortable with that yet because they would have had to go pick her up and take her back so she didn't  want to impose. But she said she would come to church the next day. But before church she texted us and said that she didn't realized it was going to be such a big deal joining this church and that people are ignorant for judging what they had never studied so we told her that Satan would stop at nothing to keep us from hearing the truth and she could atest to that. But she told us how she had just finished 1 Nephi and she was talking to us about it and asking questions about the brass plates and who the Jaredites were and told us some scriptures that really stuck out to her so she is doing her best. and we have just been trying to help her out. She actually thinks its only me when she texts because I was the one that called her at first and so she is always saying "Thank you so much Mr Elder Ritchie, you mean so much and I'm so greatful for what your doing to help me", and we have told her that I have a companion named Elder Hausladen too haha! But we haven't been able to get across that we share the phone even though we always use we or us instead of I or me.. haha!  It's just different for people to grasp the concept of two people sharing a phone.

But we are hoping to meet with her so we can help her out and see where she is so we can get the members to help her out. She wanted to meet with us today but we said we couldn't and she said Wednsday would work for her so we are hoping to see her Wednesday!!!   So keep B. in your prayers that it will work out cause she really wants to join the church! 

So it has been an exciting couple of days and you can't ever say that texting didn't acomplish anything! haha! I've always joked with my companions about teaching someone through texting and how it would be kinda cool, didn't think it would ever happen. But I'm hoping we don't have to anymore.

Oh mom, I told that story about your friend paying her tithing and two of her houses going up for sale right afterward to a recent convert that we think had been stuggling with tithing because her husband isn't a member and possibly gives her a little bit of a hard time for doing it.  It meant alot to her, so it was pretty cool. She got baptized 8 or 9 months ago and she is around our age and found out that her mom that lives in Kansas is going to get baptized  the 30th of this month so she really wants to take the temple prep class that's about to start so she can go through and get sealed to her parents a year from now because he dad is already a member. There is also another recent convert family that just attended the temple prep classes that is about to go and a bunch of other also, so our ward is doing really good right now. Oh, and M. the former less active we have been working alot with went to girls camp as a kitchen help and has talked to the bishop and wants to take the next temple prep classes that start in July.

So I had a dream I went to Lake Powell with y'all last week and I had to wear my white shirt and tie the whole time so I couldn't swim, it was weird. Even in my dreams I think I've completely forgot what its like to be a regular person. When we are going to play basketball or something and we stop somewhere and people don't give us different looks trying to figure out who we are is really weird cause then your just another person to them.

No one would beleive me you can buy Tony's (our favorite Cajun seasoning) outside of Louisiana, but its offical its at walmart!  Haha! Cause everyone asks me if I will fill my bags with Tony's when I go home and I'm always like, no I have it at home already.

Tell Josh to say hi to the rougers and Steve for me.  And have him tell Franz that if I was there I would boss him around because I have a year on him.

Well, that's about all I have this week!

Love y'all,

love elder ritchie

Don't be bragging about your bland food!

Another good week! We got to help with an eagle project and watch a show by a guy that we have been working with to help him get to the temple. He played for a high priest group social so we got to go watch him play, he can play like 10 instruments he even had a steel drum that he would play it was pretty sick. Oh yeah, transfer calls were last night and I'm staying here again so this will be my second longest area so far and I'm staying with my companion so he will be my longest companion. I'm glad I actually get to stay with a companion for a while now I's been getting new ones.

It sounds like Lake Powell was fun, I don't feel to bad because I got to go twice the year before I left and then the year before that when y'all didn't get to go, so you caught up to me I think so it was only fair.

Oh, on my birthday we didn't do to much, just went to church then went over to the Tolberts, he is in the stake presidency and he loves missionaries so he found out it was my birthday at church so he said we didn't have a choice, we were coming over. He is actually the reason my companion stayed with me this transfer, he put in a word with my mission president and told him we needed to stay here together. We heard from the assistant that he was going to go but then President Wall said President Tolbert would kill him if he did, so he got to stay here. That's revelation with some help, haha! Elder Murphy from Idaho Falls goes home this week and alot of Spanish missionaries I've been able to serve with, Elder Christiansen and Killpack, two of my favorites.  It's getting harder and harder to see people leave but there's not to many more that have been out longer than I have. That's one of the weirdest parts of a mission, when all your friends go home and the new guys have to step up to the plate.

By the way how is Erica doing? I haven't heard anything in a while.

Well, we had a little bit of a break through with someone we have been teaching, he started reading and says he knows its true now we just have to help him act on it. It's gonna be a tough one with his situation but we know he can do it if he has the Lord's help. We had a packed sacrament meeting on Sunday, we have started taking the sacrament meeting attendance of the units we are in to help track real growth and we saw around 40 more people than average and there was over 200 people in the chapel, it was really cool to see a packed chapel!  Hopefully we can work on making that the new average and getting all the people that don't normally come make it out and get them some gospel in their lives.



My Apartment in Denham Springs




My Apartment Building



Oh, happy fathers day dad! I didn't send a package I forgot to tell you that Cajun Pow sauce in the last package was for you.  I was going to send you some swamp seeds too, they are sunflower seeds  boiled in a crawfish type boil but they are a little spicy.  If y'all are having a tough time with the Slap Your Mama I don't know if you can handle em! Oh and by the way, mom where did you always get the Tony's we always had from??  I always tell people I had it growing up because they rave about it down here and they say people come here just for to buy it  or they take it to people when they travel. So where did you get yours cause I tell people I had it back home and it blows their minds and I never know where you got it...Walmart?? haha!

Oh and you don't have to be bragging about your (bland) bottomless bowls of food :) on the house boat, you don't even want to get me started on food.... cause if there is one thing people can do down here its cook and it's not even as good as it was over in Lafayette, so don't worry about me missing the Lake Powell food. I actually had a delicious gumbo last night at the bishops and I even had potato salad to throw in it! Yes, gumbo with a scoop of potato salad in it is amazing!



Sam with "non-bland" food



The Scent of Sagebrush

Hey, yeah! I got the package and my favorite thing was probably the sage brush, when i smelled it, that's probably the most home sick I've been on my mission. Good job mom, you got me! haha! I'm planning on trying out the shoes today.

I'm in Baton Rouge, my old stomping ground, it's weird to come back to an area where you served and to think about all the memories, It makes you miss that area and the people. I'm right across the street from my Iranian friend's rug shop and we saw him out side when we drove up so that was awesome.

We had some good lessons this week, got some instruction on how we can use more visuals in our lessons too. Kind of like how they used to use the old flip charts, we aren't using it like they did but it was just an idea with some of the phamphlets they have that works really cool so we are pretty excited to go try it.

We got to watch a guy named Cactus Jack do a fireside on Friday, that was pretty good, we were kinda hoping he would have sung more than he did though he talked a lot. But he had just come from Idaho Falls. Cool.

Anyways, that's sweet your going to Lake Powell, send me some pictures or some thing. I have some from my birthday i need to send but i don't know if I'll be able to do it today, I'm kinda crunched on time and gotta get running.

love y'all
love elder ritchie

Last week of 20

Yes, I'm still 20 but my this is  my last week of it.  

 

This week was a little slower than last week but it was still good. We had stake conference so we went to alot of meetings because they asked us to go to all of them.  We had a older couple that has been less active show up to church. We had a dinner with them and they showed up to stake conference so that was sweet and a couple other less actives we have been working with were there.  It was a really good stake conference, it was all about temples the theme was "an invitation to exaltation".  

 

We have had a couple of set backs with investigators this week, one got in a wreck and can't meet with us right now and another has been sick. So we had a week of less active work. We met with one that was way cool, he showed us a Mormon rap he made called Mormon Souljers,  it was sweet! He used the  Book of Mormon Stories tune in it. I'll try and send it so you can hear it.  he also showed us his car collection and wants to take us golfing, so we are going to really love working with him.

 

We even had a member of the Seventy, Elder Gibbons, come this week and talk about how one of his friends used golfing to spread the gospel by taking his nonmember friends and the mission president to play a round of golf. He said on the 14th hole he would tell the mission president beforehand that he should ask his nonmember friend if he had ever invited him to meet with his missionaries and then the non member would say no and then he told the mission president to look at him and he would then ask his friends if he would come meet with him and the missionaries. So we are hoping that we can get members to do things like this also. The major thing that Elder Gibbons tried to help us understand is that this is not our mission, this is not the Louisiana Baton Rouge missionaries mission, that it's the ward members' mission and they should be excited to get people to learn and not be able to stand the thought of their non member friends not having the gospel and that it is easy and fun to share the gospel.  He said we shouldn't worry and that its not our responsibility for our friends to become members but it is our responsibility to invite them and show them how much of a blessing it is. He said there is almost nothing better for families especially for kids than to have friends learn about the gospel in their home. 

 

Well that's all for this week, we are going fishing in Albany today with a bunch of missionaries.  So hopefully we'll catch some. They say they have caught a bunch of catfish and turtles and even a few gators. The gators come and eat the fish when your fighting it, then your fighting a gator but they always break off right before you get them in because they start to freak out and they don't actually get hooked. 

 

Well love y'all

love Elder Ritchie

 

The Hills of Mississippi and Other Things

On Memorial Day we went on an adventure, it was pretty sweet! We went up to Mississippi to a place called Tunica Hills. Yes, I got to see hills for the first time!!  We hiked down a ridge to a creek bed and there were rocks and boulders and waterfalls and hills!!! Oh, and did I mention HILLS!! You still couldn't see very far cause of trees and stuff, but it was nice to be able to walk up hills and feel an elevation change. We went with the 1st councilor in our stake presidency who lives in our ward and a bunch of other companionships from our zone. We got to stand under some waterfalls and I found a spider the size of my palm, it was alot like the ones we found at Sheep Falls a few years ago that were giant. I was crawling through a tunnel in the stream and got through it then Elder Rawlings was going through and this giant spider almost crawled up his leg.  This was right after we had a zone conference where our mission doctor came and talked to us about bugs and how we need to stay away from them.  He showed us a bunch of bites from brown recluse and black widow spiders. But it was one of the best preparation days I've had, getting out and actually hiking on hills. It was probably about like hiking half way up our Iona hill but that's pretty giant for here, especially with the heat.

Missionaries at the waterfall at Tunica, Mississippi

We caught an Alligator Turtle

We have another general authority coming this weekend. We have a leadership meeting with him on Friday and he might be attending to our stake conference.  I'm still not sure, but it's an Elder Gibbons from the Second Quorum of the Seventy, not an apostle but they are still spiritual giants that are always good.

Well, we had a good week this last week.  We found a new less-active that we are working with who recently returned from Iraq. He is the former bishops step son. We got word from the bishop to go visit him so we made our way over and sat down and talked with him and found out that he still has a testimony and was able to pray and read on his tour and it helped him out alot he said.  But he has been out of church for a long time now and hasn't been able to get the drive to come back.  He knows its true, he  just struggles to keep at it.  We left him with 2 Nephi 32 and told him to read it and he did so that was a start and hopefully we can keep working with him.

Oh, I gave a talk in church on Sunday, I almost forgot. It was on obedience and I told the story of my golf ball in the eye experience at Eric Forbush's expense.  I talked about having a broken heart and contrite spirit and being broken like a horse and not just the Godly sorrow that comes (similar to what Eric was feeling) but also that being broken means we are trained and we learn that there is no other option than obedience.  I used Nephi and his life, how he went and did what the Lord commanded and just had that obedience ingrained in him. I talked about how both books he wrote end with him talking about obedience. The first one is the last two verses in the first book of Nephi and in the end of second book of Nephi he said "I must obey".  He had it truly ingrained in his heart. It was probably the best talk I've ever given. ha ha!  I talked first and went for like 23 minutes and I didn't even get through alot of what I had.  My companion said he was praying that I would go longer than the 15 minutes we were each given because the night before he timed his talk and said it was only 5 minutes long.  When I sat down by him on the stand he just said thanks because he hadn't told me about how he was praying I went long, he said it was answer to his prayer.  But that clock shot by freakishly fast!  Everyone loved the golf ball story, especially a bunch of the young men. haha!

Oh, we pulled a joke on one of the bishop's counselors this week. There is a joke around the ward that brother Ferrel is nicknamed the "hammer", Especially in the meetings we go to he is always referred to as the hammer.  So we got a Thor hammer, there is a long story that involves a crawfish boil and an inside joke and some exceeding curiosity on his part. Anyway, we went over to his house on Sunday because he was sick and ate with his family.  Right before we left we pulled out the hammer and gave it to him and it was like a little girl just found out she got a pony for Christmas!   I thought he was going to scream! haha!

Elder Hausladen and I have earned some serious street cred with our bishopric and ward leaders because we ate our hearts out at a crawfish boil/pool party/young men's and young women's activity last Wednesday. They had over 200 pounds of crawfish and they invited us to go (and no, we didn't participate in the pool party).  They were worried they had way to much food, but we pounded them down and then in the last pot they made they added a full jar of Cayenne pepper and we weren't even phased.  We actually liked it even more!  haha! My hands and lips were on fire the rest of the night but it was fun and there were a bunch of nonmembers that the youth brought  that we hopefully can get some leads on.

I found out this week that a kid that we found and started teaching in Abbeville got baptized this week!

Well, that's about all I have time for today... love y'all!

Love, Elder Ritchie

Fishers of Men and Perch

Hey Family,

 

Had a good week this week! Found someone new to work with that has actually been to church the past two months. He is a member's friend and he says he likes it much better than the Catholic church he usually goes to, especially the testimony meetings and how you don't have to knee down over and over again. He graduated the year after me and his member friend graduated the same year as me.  They remind me of how Peter and Dylan are always together. He said he wants to keep coming to church and that ever since he started coming, his mom who is going through chemo therapy has been doing really good.

 

I got to go fishing for the first time on my mission this week. A member of the bishopric has a pond right behind his house and he invited us over and we threw the cast net out and caught some little perch. So I finally got to fish a little bit.

 

Our other investigator named K. has been doing pretty good, she hasn't made it to church but the last time we were over there she had read to 1 Nephi 9 and said she was learning a lot about faith.

 

We also had a really spiritual lesson with M. this week, she is the one that has been coming back to church. We talked with her about faith and repentance and she was able to open up and describe how she has been able to feel happy again. Over the past couple of months she has been coming back to church she has been able to feel like all the problems of her past have been erased. She said she struggled with organized religion for a long time but now she was able to feel what it was all about and know that God was really there and that he loves us. She then went on to tell us about how she is just worried about her younger brother and how he is where she was not to long ago and how she wants to help him and his wife to feel what she has felt.  She was curious to what the best way to help him out was, so we just told her that prayer and being an example to him is the  very best thing to do if he doesn't want to listen.  She said that being and example has already helped because he commented on how she is so much happier than she used to be and she was able to tell him  little bit about why.

 

Anyways, that's just a little of whats going on down here.

 

It was good to talk to you all last week.

 

love y'all,

 

Love Elder Ritchie

Good things come after a flood!

Hey, so I never know what to write after I just talked to you so I'll keep it short I guess.  We had a really good week, we were able to find some new investigators, one called our mission president and said that he needed some support and help with everything he was going through. He has been out of a job and needed God.  So we have had a couple lessons with him and he is really thinking about baptism and if he is ready to make that kind of commitment in his life. 

We also started meeting with K. and her friend K. last Monday and taught them the restoration and gave her a Book of Mormon and when we came back two days later she had read the first couple chapters and started telling us about  how Nephi killed Laban and took the brass plates back to the wilderness.  She had also read a pamphlet we left with her and she said she wanted to still do the questions on the pamphlet and look up all the scriptures. She has been doing really well!  Her friend K. sat in on a lesson and he was interested too.  We are going to meet with them both again tomorrow.  Hopefully we can get them to church this next Sunday, they said they wanted to come yesterday but they weren't able to make it.

We moved apartments early this morning. We took our beds and couch to the new place a couple miles down the road. We actually live in our own area now which is going to be really nice and the members are excited because they won't have to drive so far to go out teaching with us or to pick us up for stuff. I think it will be a lot better for the work because it will give us more time and we will be able to focus more with only two of us in an apartment.

Well I can't think of a whole lot else that I can tell you that I didn't tell you yesterday. I think I told you about flooding the apartment before we even lived there. That was a pretty funny experience to have a couple of inches of water in your brand new apartment but we got it all fixed we just happened to open the vacuum right before and sucked the water and dumped it in the sink.

Well I think that's all!

Love you all !

Love, Elder Ritchie