Hello everyone,
This week has somehow felt long and short at the same time. I've only
been here a week and a half, but it feels like a lot longer. I'm
hanging in there though.
Last Tuesday, we visited the English's house for dinner. We had
nachos, but the fun part came afterwards. They showed us this game
called Bean-Boozled, which is essentially a spin off of the "Bertie
Bott's every flavored beans" from Harry Potter. Essentially, there's a
spinner and whatever color of jelly bean it lands on you have to try.
Each color has a chance of being a good flavor or a gross one. In a
weird hazing thing, I had to do it three times. I got all bad ones:
Dog Food, Toothpaste, and Skunk spray. The skunk spray one was super
nasty, and my mouth started to smell really bad. I had to go wash my
mouth out because we had a lesson with an investigator right after. Of
all the days to forget my Altoids!
On Thursday, we had a thing they call Mission Tour. It was essentially
a long meeting with some general authorities, Elder Foster and Elder
and Sister Montoya. It was a good meeting. Elder Foster talked a lot
about "the vision" of missionary work, along with the three levels of
missionary effectiveness: 1. Missionaries to all the work, 2. Members
help missionaries, and 3. The missionaries help the members teach
their friends and neighbors. It was also cool because I got to see
part of my MTC district again.
I've also been reading a lot from Jesus the Christ by Elder Talmage. I
really like the format of the book, and am really enjoying it.
Saturday was a really good service day. We helped our host family, the
Jennings, with their "burn day". Those who've never been to the West
may not know this, but burning things is really limited out in the
desert most of the time. Because it's so dry, forest fires are a big
worry. The Jennings got a permit to burn for one day, so they have
been cutting down trees and bushes, clearing out their property little
by little for a few weeks. On Saturday, we helped them burn all the
dead plants and weeds in a big bonfire. A friend of their's, not a
member, brought his tractor over and helped push the gigantic piles
into their fire pit chunk by chunk. I was in charge of the hoses, and
kept watch so that nothing else caught fire.
After we finished with the burning, we went over and helped one of
investigators, Brother Paul, in digging out his creek. He has a big
ditch that runs halfway around his property to channel the water when
it rains. However, each time it rains really hard (like 3-4 times a
year), the ditch gets partially filled with the darts the rains
loosens upstream. We went and helped him with shoveling out the dirt
so his house won't flood when it rains this week. It was actually
kinda fun, as I ran his wheelbarrow back and forth while his son
smoothed the dirt into their driveway, which also gets hit hard by the
rain.
After that, we got cleaned up and attended a baptism for an
investigator named Clay that we share with another pair of elders. He
was originally being taught by Elder B, but is going to be attending
the local YSA ward. His baptism was great, and really spiritual.
There are quite a few widows and nice old ladies in our ward, and we
got to go and visit two of them this week. On Tuesday, we visited
Geraldine, a nonmember that Elder B and his last companion, Elder
Timm, helped to clear the yard of in the past few months. She was
super nice, and we sang one of Elder B's songs for her. She also
taught us how to make amazing fried chicken, which we are attempting
to make for other elders today.
The other one was Sister Wellington, a spunky lady who, in her words,
"talked our ears off". She was really nice, and I really enjoyed
getting to know her.
Now, I suppose I'm supposed to talk about the lessons I taught a bit.
We taught Debbie about the plan of Salvation on Tuesday. She seems
really interested in where exactly different people go after this
life, especially good non members like her favorite preacher from her
past church. We might need to go over it again in more detail next
time.
Well, I think that's about it for today. Feel free to send me
questions and such, as I'll be on and off till 6pm tonight.
Keep hauling that water,
Elder Joseph Richardson
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