ELDER JOSEPH RICHARDSON - May 30, 2017 - Week 91: A Change of Plans

Hello everyone!

First things first,  my release date has been moved up to June 6th! I will need to have throat surgery the end of June so that other things can be set for my return to BYU in the fall.  It's been a fun and challenging ride! Thank you for all of your letters, love and support these past 2 years!! Anyways, on to the main letter:

This time around, I thought I'd give a brief description of each of our investigators.

First up are Sharon and Sharon, a mother and an adult daughter who live together with the younger one's kids. They are awesome people, and tons of fun to talk with, but they haven't been keeping their appointments! It's frustrating to have people who would thrive in the church, but deem themselves "too busy" to meet with us. So that's fun....

Another person we are teaching is a girl named Bella. She's pretty funny and has already completed the lessons, but she can't get baptized until her adoption is finalized. So we go over for FHE a lot, so she'll be ready when she can get baptized.

Another one is Thomas. He lives with his family in a trailer out in the boonies of Wittmann, and has been reading and praying, but it's been hard, as he is trying to improve their situation, which is taking priority over coming to church.

Finally, we have Sariah. She's 12 years old, and her parents are less active members. Sariah is just starting to get taught, but she's going to progress pretty fast. She loves dragons and is often playing a "How To Train Your Dragon" game when we come over.

That's the Missionary life for ya!

Keep Hauling That Water,

Elder Joseph Richardson 

ELDER JOSEPH RICHARDSON - May 23, 2017 - Week 84-90: I done messed up......

Hi everybody,

Sorry I haven't written a letter to everyone in a while. The last one
was 8 weeks ago! O-0 Whoops! Gotta get on it!

Anyways, things have been pretty busy and pretty good. I've gotten
transferred back to Surprise since I last wrote. I'm serving up in the
boonies northwest of the valley, up towards a little town called
Wittmann. Seriously, look up Wittmann, Arizona on Google Street view;
it's kind of ridiculous.

I'm serving with Elder Joshua Young, who is from East Tennessee. He's
a pretty nice guy, and we're meshing pretty well. We've had some weird
adventures recently, including finding an abandoned boat in the middle
of the desert. We also found a sweet shortcut along 219th Rd which
takes us to Wittmann in like 60% of the distance it would normally
take.

One weird thing that's been going around is a weird illness that our
investigators keep getting. Elder Young calls it the Double Dragon,
because it involves a lot of puking and diarrhea. Luckily neither of
us have gotten sick. Just cancelled lessons....... 😐

How's everything going with y'all?

Keep Hauling That Water,
Elder Joseph Richardson

P.S. We visited a spot out in the middle of nowhere where Toyota tests
their new car designs. Took a picture by the sign.

Tom and Debbie Pucci got Endowed!

ELDER JOSEPH RICHARDSON - March 28, 2017 - Week 82 and 83: Spring Break

Hey everyone,

This week was pretty good. We are continuing to teach mostly the same
people. We are about to  start teaching a mother and daughter who
moved over here from the Gilbert mission a week ago. They are pretty
excited to come to church and be baptized soon!

This week was spring break for the local school district, which wasn't
the greatest thing, because that means that everyone was out of town.
We still managed to have a good week though.

I spent a good amount of time on exchanges this week, which was fun.
Elder Stone, one of the missionaries in my district is pretty cool. I
spent all of Saturday with him, and it was pretty fun. We talked about
video games, which was awesome.

We visited with an inactive couple, and we watched a really good talk
by President Hinckley called "We walk by faith" that I really liked.
They also fed us "Barro's Pizza" which is a super good chain out here.

Also, the "Snake Story!"

So, while we were doing service at the temple grounds, the temple
grounds keeper found a gopher snake in the bushes. Elder Conover went
and decided to mess with it, until it started trying to strike at us,
then we left it alone because we thought it was a rattlesnake. A day
or two later, after finding out that it was a nonvenomous snake, we
were using a dirt road as a shortcut and we saw a stack of old hay
bales on the side of the road. Elder Conover decided that he wanted to
see if he could catch a snake, so he overturned a few hay bales and
found a small rattlesnake, which he promptly killed with a piece of
PVC pipe. We had a member look up how to skin it, and we deep fried it
that night. It was super boney meat, so it didn't taste too amazing,
but it was interesting.

Kind of a weird adventure, but now we've got a snakeskin trophy! 😋

(Meanwhile, I didn't get anywhere near either snake......)

That's what I've got for this week. Hope everyone is doing well!

Keep Hauling That Water,
Elder Joseph Richardson

ELDER JOSEPH RICHARDSON - March 15, 2017 - Week 80 and 81: The Things That Happened

Hey everyone,

These past two weeks have been pretty busy, and I apologize for not
writing last week.

We're still teaching the same people, but they're coming along pretty well.

Last Saturday, we poured a ton of concrete for a nonmember, and it was
pretty fun. Throughout this past week, we've gone back a few times to
help him with more stuff for his pool.

I was also able to go to the temple with Elissa, who took out her endowment!

The other interesting thing that happened was that our windshield on
our truck cracked randomly, so we had to get it fixed. It was weird,
because the crack just randomly appeared one day as we drove down the
highway. Then we went through the car wash and it spread like halfway
across the windshield. Needless to say, we got the repair guy fast!

Hope everything is going well with y'all!

Keep Hauling That Water,
Elder Joseph Richardson

ELDER JOSEPH RICHARDSON - February 28, 2017 - Week 79: Airplanes and Palm Trees

Hey everyone!

This week was pretty exciting. We met some new people, and we've got a
bunch of things going on.

I got to spend some time working on preparations for the new Mission
President this week. I'm going to be emailing with President Collins
before he gets here to keep him updated and help him learn how to use
the different online tools we have. I'm pretty excited!

The highlight of the week was the Peoria Pride service project we got
to go to on Saturday morning. It was a big community effort to clean
up and repaint some of the older houses in Peoria. We got permission
to gather four different zones together to all work at the project
together, so we had 60-70 missionaries all together. It was super fun,
and we all got to spend some time catching up with those we've served
with before. We spent over an hour hand painting the trim on each
house, so there was a lot of time to talk.

Things are going pretty good here. We're still working with that
family of four kids, and had a lesson with them on Saturday night. The
dad works as a mechanic at Luke Air Force base and we talked about the
military and all about the planes he works on. It was cool, because I
heard that Uncle Russ is stationed at Luke now, and I think he might
be being trained on the new F-35 planes they have over there. That was
pretty cool.

That's the bulk of the interesting stuff for this week. I hope
everyone has had a good February!

Keep Hauling That Water,
Elder Joseph Richardson

PS: we also found a cool place out towards the edge of our area where
they're building a resort. It was pretty cool!

Fun while doing Temple Service

Caves and Mountains

ELDER JOSEPH RICHARDSON - February 21, 2017 - Week 78: March is coming

Hey everyone!

This week has been really good. We have been able to get a lot done.

On Tuesday, we had exchanges. I was with Elder Holifield again, and it
was great. We were able to visit everyone on a list we got from our
bishop, and it was fun to be around him again.

Wednesday was Zone Conference. We talked a lot about the big
missionary broadcast, and how we can work better with the youth.
Afterwards, a bunch of elders in our zone went with us to a Mexican
place called Ricardo's. It was fun to sit and chat for awhile.

Thursday was spent starting up our new Zone initiative. We are doing a
"March Madness" competition based on asking for referrals and working
with youth. We spent time deciding on rules and the point system, and
I made an excel spreadsheet to track it all.

On Friday, we spent the afternoon filming some videos to share out to
everyone for the competition. It was frustrating because I had to
explain over and over how we needed to film a certain way so that we
could make a decent video. They wanted to do everything, including a
series of basketball shots, in one take on an iPad! With what little I
know of movie making, thanks to my friend Abbie Vance, I had to prove
to our Zone leader that multiple shots were better.

Saturday was a long day. We thought that I would be doing tech stuff
for President Griffin all day, but he got called up to Cottonwood for
the weekend, so it didn't happen. So we went out and did work instead.
We found this sweet cave up in the Lake Pleasant ward, so that was
cool.

All in all, a pretty good week.

Keep Hauling That Water,
Elder Joseph Richardson

All the Elders in our Zone.

We serve in the two west-most wards. Lake Pleasant ward is really big.

ELDER JOSEPH RICHARDSON - February 14, 2017 - Weeks 75-77: Lake Pleasant is actually pretty pleasant

Hello everyone!

Sorry I haven't written a full letter the last few weeks, but we've
been busy and it's honestly kind of hard to find time to write a long
letter. We stay pretty busy on PDays.

But anyway, here's what been going on.

My current companion is Elder Jared Conover, from Bentonville, AR. We
are having a ton of fun, and working hard. We are currently teaching a
family who are really progressing! They are the Newsons, and the
parents are both members, but they have four unbaptized children of
record, which means they are 9 or older but not baptized. We are
hoping to get them to commit to a baptismal date this week.

We are also teaching a 12 year old named Ross. His dad is a member
who's been less active, so he's not baptized. He also has a 7 year old
sister named Kimora (pronounced like Cumorah) who sits in on the
lessons. We've been having fun teaching them with cool object lessons.

I'm doing fine out here. Things are good. We went to a fun restaurant
called Fired Pie with a member this week. You get to build your own
pizzas and then they put them in their brick oven to cook. It's super
good and not too expensive!

Hope y'all are doing Great!

Keep Hauling That Water,
Elder Joseph Richardson

PS: Pictures!
A District Photo, Two of me, and one of Elder Holifield and the Pigeon he caught.

Pretty cool sunset picture, huh?

Elder Holifield is crazy.... but he caught a pigeon.

ELDER JOSEPH RICHARDSON - January 24, 2017 - Week 74: Everything under the Sun

Hello Everyone!

This week has been pretty good. It's not so cold anymore, so we got to
go out a little on bikes. On top of that, we had interviews with
President Griffin, which were super cool. But let's get down to the
nitty gritty.

Last Tuesday, we spent the morning helping a new family put together a
bunk bed and playground for their kids. The dad is an occupational
therapist, and he taught us some things to help us not get injured
when we're doing service projects. That was pretty cool.

On Wednesday, we spent the day in Sun City. It's pretty funny how
weird a city can get when there's no kids. People literally don't
leave their TV sets for Days sometimes!

On Friday, we had interviews with President Griffin. I'm really happy
with how I've been doing and so is President. He told me that I'm
going to be in charge of helping our new Mission President get all set
up and ready before I go home. I'm pretty excited. Our new President's
name is Sean Collins, and he is founder and CEO of Costa Vida, a
Mexican Restaurant chain. It'll be super cool to meet him.

That night, we had some members take us out to a Greek restaurant, and
I got a Falafel. Needless to say, I felt awful (just kidding).

The highlight of Saturday was the Regional Religious Freedom broadcast
we got to attend. It was led by Elder Oaks, and they talked a lot
about some of the issues that we see as we go out and proselyte.

Hope everything is going well for y'all.

Keep Hauling That Water,
Elder Joseph Richardson

A big working clock in Glendale

Some District meeting pictures. It was Sister Burkgren's last district meeting, so we did a mock funeral picture.

ELDER JOSEPH RICHARDSON - January 17, 2017 - Week 73: Friday the 13th

Hi everyone!

This week was interesting. My companion, Elder Holifield, had a pretty
bad week. I, on the other hand, had a pretty good one. But before I
tell about the Series of Unfortunate Events (which I hear is a Netflix
series now....), I better talk about the good things.

Today we took our investigator, Marcy, to the Mesa Temple Visitor's
Center. It was a really good way for us to present bunch of different
aspects of the gospel and just a short time. She is super solid, and
will be getting baptized on the 28th. It's actually really cool how
committed she is to that date.

Another fun thing was that this week, I discovered the wonders of
Costco Pizza. We had two different members give us pizza from Costco,
and it's actually really good.

On the other hand, Elder Holifield lost the back tire of his bike,
destroyed his iPad, and lost all his pictures, most of which happened
on Friday the thirteenth. So that was fun......

But, things move on, and we're going to keep on trucking.

Hope everyone has a good week!

Keep Hauling that Water,
Elder Joseph Richardson