Just another week wearing the badge

Just another week wearing the badge... smashing through walls and attending sacrament meeting in shorts and seas of unnamed celebrities in yellow tee shirts and then cap it off with and awesome lesson after an exhausting weekend and a long drive in sweaty dirty slightly moldy clothes..

 

Well we had another weekend of service down in Laplace gutting more houses.  They are wrapping it up down there, well missionary wise anyways, it was our last time helping out but members will still be working and volunteers are still coming in. It was really cool though getting dirty and helping people that needed it very bad.  We got to have another sacrament meeting in a gutted out church and in shorts and bright yellow tee shirts, it's weird and almost to comfortable to be sacrament meeting but the spirit is still there so its all good and the hymns were sounding excellent because 500+ men and a few women singing hymns about service while they are doing service really brings the spirit.

 

Right after lunch yesterday in Laplace we had to head out and make the 4 hour drive to Alexandria because we had a lesson with Jade and Sherry, it went really good. It was really reverent for how many kids were there, the member's house where we taught at have 6 kids so we were a little nervous but it went really well. They are really solid and really want to work to get baptized. Sherry has had her prayers answered in the past about it and he daughter said she will work on praying and getting one but that so far she really feels good about it. So we are basically focusing on teaching the daughter and its kind of a refresher course for the mom because she has had the lessons before. They committed to be baptized on the 27th of October so if all goes well there should be three baptism on that day.

 

So yesterday I go a little freaked out because Elder Rennie the noob that we live with came up to me and said "Happy 19 month mark!" and I was like "Wait! What? No its not!", then I looked at my watch and it was! I didn't even realize it time just keeps going faster and faster. When does Erica come home? It's in November right? And Eric gets home next month, and then everyone in our ward will becoming home like Shawn and Zack and Jordan! When did Shawn leave? November or December? And how are all of them doing? I haven't ever heard anything?

 

Love y'all, have a good week!

 

love elder ritchie

Some things in September

We had another good week here, we haven't been down to La Place again but we are going to go this coming weekend. We couldn't get a ride down there this weekend because all out members went the week before.  

 

We found out Nick is planning on getting baptized in October now because of scheduling with his work and girl friend, so it will be the last week in October. 

 

We haven't been able to have a real lesson with Sherry and her daughter Jade because they got sick this weekend and had to cancel but we found out from the member that they are already talking about baptism and wanting to get baptized. The daughter has been going to seminary every morning and we decided to go play some early morning basketball today and poke our head in seminary and she was there again and she was paying attention! Her friend that is a member was saying that she loves seminary and is excited when they pick her up at 5 in the morning and the member was like  - how are you so excited!  We found out the mom actually has a testimony as well because we were talking to the members and they were telling us about the last time she was really investigating and she was really praying and she got an answer about it and then she was like, well I want the missionaries to come over today if its really true  - and she waited and waited and then 9 rolled around and nothing, but at like 9:15 there was a knock and the missionaries were there and she was super excited but said they would have to come back the next day and she would tell them why she was so excited. But she ran into some people that anti-ed her and talked bad about the church after so she kinda got away from it, but when she was talking to the members she was saying she wishes she would have stayed with it and gotten baptized. So the members were really excited to share that with us and in turn it made us really excited.

 

There are a couple other investigators we have where we have kinda hit a wall and were not sure where to go cause we have taught them everything and they are living basically everything just not sure if they want to join yet. But one of them just got to Alma and is still reading and praying but Eder Smith and I are convinced she has a testimony, she is just working on conversion which is good and she doesn't realize she has a testimony but when we had her teach us the restoration she taught it like she believed. She just had a really hard time with her feelings and especially expressing them, but it will come.

 

That's awesome Josh is wants to get his papers in by July, who knows maybe he will end up in the south too.

 

I'm still waiting for more pictures of Genevieve.... I get a book about my dogs and then I have a niece and i get like 5 pictures in an email....

 

Anyways, love ya

 

love elder ritchie

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

Hurricane clean-up video

No letter from Sam this week, just a link to what he's been up to.   

    

Mormon Church helps clean up in LaPlace after Isaac
       

After the hurricane

Hello, sounds like a crazy week. That's good that nobody got hurt in your wreck mom and that it was just the trailer that took it all.

 

Well I experienced my first hurricane but we didn't really get hit at all it kinda missed us somehow. I'm not really sure but it sounds like down around New Orleans got hit pretty hard. We might get to go down with a clean up crew from our ward this weekend, we will go if they get a call so we are hoping that will happen. We were on lock down Wednesday and most of Thursday but it wasn't terrible, there are 4 of us in the apartment and then some other missionaries in our district came from Marksville because there apartment isn't in a great place and we are on the second floor. We hardly got any wind or rain when the hurricane passed over, we actually got more rain the day after.

 

Well everything is still going well with the investigators, Nick is still just working on a date, we showed him the prophet of the restoration movie last night..

 

Not a whole lot new down here though kind of a slower week because of the storm but our zone was really blessed to not get affected very bad.

 

Well, tell all the Sederbergs hi for me and that I wish I could be there for the funeral.  I'll sure miss seeing Aunt Brenda, she was a very special person.  You will have to tell Maria I make sure and look for her every time I watch the choir. I've found her in a couple videos like the pioneer day celebration.

 

Well I best be going, have a good week

Love y'all.

Love Elder Ritchie

Answers like flecks of gold

Sounds like you had an eventful week. That's really sad about Todd dying but that's really cool about Gandpa getting sealed to his parents. I was looking at the family search website and trying to figure out the Ritchie lines a while ago because grandpas dad wasn't sealed till 2005 so that was kinda surprising to see. Wish I could have been there for that one.

 

But we had an awesome week, I got to go explore Many and it was cool. It was all hills and trees and we were right close to the Texas border and you start to feel like your not in Louisiana anymore around there. Even here in Alexandria is alot different than I'm used to but its great.

 

So we had a lesson with Nick on Friday after he had just flown in from Omaha and we were talking to him about how it is going and he was still reading and praying but still unsure and the lesson was on the law of chastity which went really well and he said it made alot of sense and that he would live it but that he was still working on his answer and almost seemed sad that he hadn't got an answer yet because he has been working at it. So we talked to him about how answers come slow sometimes and that it like finding a ton of gold flecks instead of nuggets which are rare and uncommon. But on Sunday we were standing in the foyer or how ever that's spelled and Nick came and said I need to talk to you guys, and me and Elder Smith kinda looked at each other a little nervous and didn't know what to expect as we followed him to the relief society room but when we got in there he got a giant smile and so did I and he started to say after he read last night he prayed and asked if the Book of Mormon was true and if Joseph Smith was a prophet and if Thomas S Monson is the prophet and he said this feeling of extreme happiness came over him and he just smiled all night and couldn't sleep and he even called his girlfriend and had to tell her he said he was going to call us but it was too late so he had to wait till that morning. So he is really excited about getting baptized now and he was worried about what his family will think because they are Catholic but he said that everything usually works out for the better for him and that he knew it was true so it wouldn't matter and it would all work out and maybe they would be able to join. So that was an awesome miracle we were able to witness this week! He said he is working on a day to be baptized, he wants his girlfriend to be able to make it down here for it so he had to talk to her about that.

 

I'll try and get a picture of my boots, they are sweet! These computers don't let me put my pictures on them to send so I'll work on it.

 

Elder Ritchie

Speaking Southern

I like Alexandria  a lot! It is really different than alot of my other areas but its really treating me well. We have some really good investigators that have been a real blessing to work with. Nick is doing really well, he came to every session of stake conference, he was at priesthood and the adult session on Saturday and the stake president started talking to him after priesthood and asked him if he was and elder yet and he was like, no, I'm not a member and it kinda took the stake president by surprise. It was pretty funny. He also came to a baptism that was night before priesthood session for a lady that came back into the church and her grandson that got baptized. He went to more of the meetings than most members and he really seemed to like them. He is just working on getting a date picked for baptism and still continuing to get work on his answer, but he says he is pretty sure at this point.

 

Our other really solid investigator, Jen is also doing well and she came to the baptism and then the adult session and general session of stake conference. We had a lesson with her and her aunt who is the member and they made us tin foil dinners because they asked us what we hadn't had in a long time that we love and we started talking about camping food and we decided on tin foil dinners. And we also had dinner and entertainment, we had asked Jen and Sister Compton if they would be willing to teach us instead of us teaching them and they agreed, so Jen ended up making a power point on the restoration and then after tin foil dinners and peach cobbler we had them teach us. It was a really good learning experience for both of them and they said it made them learn alot because they had to prepare and really know it because we asked questions but they did really well and said they had a hard time covering such a big topic in such a short amount of time. ha ha! They said that it made them appreciate us a little more ha ha! We have alot of help with our preach my gospels and we get to do this all the time too.

 

We also had a lesson with some new investigators yesterday that actually just had their first baby a few days ago. the assistants spent the night with us after our zone conference on Friday and we had lesson so they just decided they wanted to go tract a little bit and they came across the family and set up a time for us to stop by. We went yesterday and taught them a lesson, well to the husband anyway, the wife was busy with the baby, but he seemed very interested and asked alot of good questions and said he really wanted to learn more and he was asking about the South Park play on Broadway ha ha, and he figured it wasn't really accurate.

 

Well I'm not going to lie, I'm not the greatest at making my bed, I have the top bunk right now and I struggle to make it but we are a pretty clean apartment and if not making a bed is the worst part about my apartment I think we are doing good.  (I have a friend who is a mission nurse in California and she writes that the missionaries apartments are terribly dirty, so I've been nagging from a distance - marie)  Well I got to go to Mississippi again this week and see more hills. We went to Natchez and it was sweet because its right on the border and the border is the Mississippi  River.  On the Louisisana side it's all flat and on the Mississippi side it's hilly and there are cliffs and it was cool because they  didn't even need a levy! On the Louisiana side you drive up on to the bridge and then over the river and the other side you can actually just drive straight onto the bridge and you can actually see out aways because of the lookouts over the river. I get so claustrophobic sometimes here just not being able to see anywhere and there are no land marks and if there were there are usually trees. But its not as bad here as it was in Denham, there are solid trees there and its still green as it gets here. It's been pretty dry this last week, we have had rain but not alot. It's actually in the 70s and 80s the last couple days so it has been really nice.

 

Well, I'm going on an exchange to Many (pronounced nanny with and m) Louisiana pronunciation is crazy!  Guess how this city is said "Natchitoches" (nack-a-dish)! And my speech is just getting more and more Southern. I said ax instead of ask the other day and didn't notice till my companion said something.  And I said are we going to go "make some groceries"!   It's finally getting to me!

 

Well that's all for this week

Love y'all

Love Elder Ritchie