ELDER JOSEPH RICHARDSON - September 15, 2015 - Week 3: In The Field!

Hello everyone!
I'm in the field! I have been assigned to the Prescott Arizona Zone
and the Williamson Valley ward. My trainer is Elder Belenacagi. He's
from Fiji!

Real quick, I wanted to talk to about the last day or so at the MTC.
We had a fairly heartfelt set of goodbyes on Monday, as half of us
shipped out for Phoenix while almost all the rest shipped out the next
day. Poor Sister Hurst is the only one from our district still at the
MTC! She has to stick around another week for Visitors Center
training.

We had some pretty good times at the MTC, and I'm definitely missing
all of them. But, the work must go on. The six of us going to Phoenix
reported to the travel office at 3:35am on Tuesday, and they started
the long process of getting like 300 missionaries out to their
missions. After a bus ride, two trains, then finally our flight, we
got into the PHX airport around 9:30. President and Sister Griffin met
us at the baggage claim and took us to the mission office for a bunch
of paper work. We met all the senior missionaries who run the office,
and learned a bunch of mission policies.

Later, we went to the mission home and had lunch and hung out for
awhile, until it was time to see some more training videos. I bought a
"Hymns made easy" book at the MTC, so I practiced and played some
hymns on their piano. Sister Lewis sang along, and encouraged me to
play more and more. She says she doesn't sing, but she has a really
great voice. After watching some videos on bike and car safety, we had
a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, which was amazing!

Wednesday morning was transfer meeting. There I met Elder Belenacagi
(Bah-lay-an-than-gi) and our district finally had to split up. Elder
B. had a lot of trouble pronouncing where I was sent from, and still
thinks it should be pronounced Arkan"sauce". Something interesting
about our mission is a metaphor about Arizona being a "Thirsty Land"
and we work to bring it the "Living Water." I just thought that was
cool.

I was also surprised to get a big box from Mom with a bunch of food
and stuff. She sent me a two pound bag of Twizzlers! :P Also, Mom, you
are aware that missionaries aren't supposed to chew gum, right? I
don't know what to do with the big packs you sent me! :P

After that, we got a ride up to Prescott with the Jennings, which it
turns out we live with. We live with them a few miles outside of
Prescott. That night, we taught my first real lesson. Turns out that
the guy, Brother Roberts, was about to be baptized! I already have a
baptism! (Not that I did much) We also had dinner with the Stearns,
and older couple who are called to the family history center. We had
spaghetti (again :P) and Sister Stearns expounded on to horrible path
our country is going. She was the first of three different occasions
that people talked about that.

Thursday night, we taught another man with a baptismal date, Clayton
Mills. He's going to be baptized on the 19th into the local YSA ward.
We also visited a less active family, the Prongers, who are hilarious!
They joke around a bunch and seem totally ready to come back to
church. They fed us Papa Murphy's and I told them about Uncle Tony and
his job.

On Saturday, we had Brother Roberts' baptism. It was a great little
meeting, and he got up and bore his testimony at the end. Then he and
his family took us out for pizza at a place called Rosa's Pizzeria.

On Sunday, we went to church, which was great, but what was really
cool was that we went and visited a referral we got, Debbie. Turns
out, she has a super close LDS friend and referred herself! She has
studied the church a fair bit and even watches BYUtv and General
conference occasionally. We taught her about the restoration and plan
to teach her more on Wednesday. :D

One thing that I was not prepared for is the sheer amount of downtime
we have. We spend 3 hours studying each morning, then go around and
sit to teach. I kinda expected it to be busier, but things are going
pretty well.

By the way, the way P-days work out, I'm allowed to send and receive
the whole day until 6. I am also allowed to check my email whenever
and wherever all week. However, I can't reply until P-days. So, feel
free to send me things whenever you like, and I'll get and read them
pretty quick, but I can't reply till Monday's.

Keep Hauling that Water,
Elder Joseph Richardson

P.S. How's my tag line, Mom?

ELDER JOSEPH RICHARDSON - September 4th, 2015 - Week 2: MTC Still

Hello everyone!

At the end of another week at the MTC. I ship out early on Tuesday the 8th, so we're coming to the end here.

Second half of Friday, August 28th

After doing our laundry and writing to y'all, a couple more things happened. I ended up buying a good camel-back Water bottle, so I'm much more prepared for the heat. We also learned about the TRC (Teaching Resource Center), where we teach investigators for practice. I think most are just members who are faking, but it's still cool.

Saturday, August 29th

On Saturday, we taught an investigator named Violet Williams (Who's actually just our teacher, Sister Bertoldo). It was really cool, and we've already got her reading in and praying about the Book of Mormon.

A fun story: Elder Schick drew a picture of Christ and wrote Jesus next to it. Pretty soon, we all added fun drawings around it like a croissant saying "Frenchie approved" with a french flag, and FDA approval sticker and a sun calling Christ a "cool cat". I know it's a tad irreverent, but it was fun, and we kept it respectful.

Sunday, August 30th

On Sunday, we had a power packed day. We had an awesome sacrament meeting, then a temple walk, then a priesthood meeting. We also had a district meeting, which our Branch President, President Laney, sat in on. I couldn't help but watch him, as he continually wrote relevant scriptures on the board as his counselor taught. I think he used to be in a quorum of the Seventy. He really knows the scriptures! I also got to participate in the MTC Choir. We prepared to sing "Lead, Kindly, Light" at the Tuesday devotional.

Funny story: Due to the construction on the MTC, the alarm in our building kept going off. Through a weird twist of circumstances, a BYU police officer showed up to check it out. Elder Wilcox made friends with him super fast. We found out that he's 60, named Wayne, and is a member. Elder Wilcox even took a picture with him!

Monday, August 31st

We had another great lesson with Violet Monday morning. She had a lot of questions, but we were ably to simply explain things, and she learned a lot. However, we had a lesson with a new investigator from the TRC that night, and it was hard. I don't really know what went wrong, but the Spirit just wasn't there... Both Elder Dwigans and I felt really bad, and made a commitment to do our very best in study and planning so that we could do better next time.

Tuesday, September 1st

Happy September! The big event on Tuesday was a Devotional by Elder Oaks. I was in the MTC Choir and sang "Lead Kindly Light". Elder Oaks and his wife spoke about teaching by the Spirit, and Elder Oaks shared some "Teaching Tips". Afterwards, we had a District follow-up, and discussed how we felt that his talk was straight from God for us. I really felt the Spirit at that meeting.

Wednesday, September 2nd

We had a double whammy of awesome Lessons on Wednesday. Violet is learning about the Plan of Salvation, and we finally caught Brandon's attention to Christ by reading 3rd Nephi 11 with him. He said he felt something special while we read, and I'm pretty sure that's the Spirit! Elder Dwigans and I are still getting along great. I also am apparently very sweet because I offered Sister Hurst some of my band-aids after she ran out. So that's a thing! :P

Thursday, September 3rd

Thursday was super long! We had a thing called In-field Orientation, which went on for 9 hours!!!! (well, with an hour lunch break) They did a play on working with members. It was kind of a spoof on the Best Two Years and Sister Haws played the local Primary President. She was super funny in it, and gave the Bishop a Gold Star for being reverent. We had another Lesson with Brandon, and he was really feeling it, I think. He seem to accept what we told him about God's plan for him.

Friday, Sept 4th (Today)

We've had a good start to the day. Our district went and did and endowment session at 7 am today. It was really great, but it was the same video.... I wanted to see different one :( It's alright though. We've also done our laundry already, which was good. Umm, so yeah....

Another weird/funny story that's gone on this week. We got a new teacher instead of Sister Badham on Monday because of the BYU year starting. His name is Brother Pliler, and he is really cool. He's apparently also very attractive, according to Sister Lewis. Later this week, Sister Lewis said that she wanted to marry him after her mission. Apparently she plans on sending him a letter to propose later on in her mission..... kinda weird. Here's hoping nothing goes wrong/weird with that. (I don't think she's serious, but who knows?)

With Love,

Elder Richardson

ELDER JOSEPH RICHARDSON - August 28, 2015 - Week 1: The First Half Week

Hello everyone!
My P-Days are on Friday here, so, here I am. We got our snailmail for the first time today, and I loved getting a heap of mail!

I am loving the MTC so much. My companion is Elder Dwigans and he is awesome. A tad scatterbrained, but great. We are getting along famously, and hoping to get to work together in Phoenix, as he is also going there.

I guess I'll dive into my report of the week thus far now:

Wednesday, August 26:

After a fun lunch at Thai Village in Provo, Melissa and Hyrum dropped me off at the MTC. It was a whirlwind first few minutes, as they got me my badge, my meal card, books, and other stuff. I then got to meet my district and one of my teachers, Sister Badham. Our district is great! We've got some really awesome sisters who I know will do well. The other elders are pretty great too. We've already had some amazing gospel discussions. We then had a big group meeting where we taught some (admittedly fake) investigators as an about 60 missionary team. It was really cool, and I loved the spirit there. Elder Dwigans was on fire in that meeting. He is so ready to serve!

Thursday, August 27:

My first full day! We accidentally woke up late, because I set my alarm for 6:30 pm by accident. Luckily, Elder Carter, our District leader checked the clock at 6:52! The food here is pretty good, so we were sad that we had to rush breakfast. We then had a class with our other teacher, Sister B. (I forgot her name!!!). She taught us about the fundamentals of teaching the gospel. It is really cool how they mix specific instruction with the spirit. That night, we had another meeting about how we can love people like God loves them.

Friday, August 28:

Today has been good thus far. We were up on time today! It is P-Day, but we still had class this morning. We learned about the Doctrine of Christ. We then did some role playing to help us with our teaching. I was paired with Sister Hurst. She helped me a great deal in trying to relate well with investigators. At Lunch, Elder Wilcox accidentally spilled a bunch of ketchup on his shirt and tie. Luckily, it's laundry day, so we are washing them for him.

Robert and Alison, I loved hearing the little stories about Abigail and Emily. They are so cute. Thanks for the counsel, Robert.

For reference my district consists of 5 companionships:

Elder Dwigans and I

Elder Carter and Wilcox

Elder Christensen and Schicks(something like that)

Sister Hurst and Miyazaki(she doesn't look Japanese at all)

Sister Lewis and Haws

Hey Mom, will you send me Melissa and Hyrum's email addresses? I forgot them.

With love,

Elder Joseph Richardson

SISTER MELISSA RICHARDSON -- COMING HOME! DEC 13, 2014

DECEMBER 13, 2014

Melissa flew from Jacksonville, FL to Dallas, Texas (where she took off her missionary tag) and then to Shanghai, China! Mom and Dad met her at the airport and then she was released by President Dyer of the Shanghai District.  Then they headed to Suzhou to greet the rest of the family!

ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON #102 -- MAY 4, 2015

ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON #102 -- MAY 4, 2015

This week was a little bit rough. But it has some great stuff too!

Most importantly, Brother 蔡 Cai is going to get baptized next week! He figured out a deal where he can keep coming to church once a month until he can pay off his debt, and then he'll be able to come every week again! He's planning to get baptized on May 16th, which is also my last Saturday in the AnKang ward! We're obviously really excited for him and for 

Our ward here has a lot of less-active members that we meet with regularly. Last week, 5 of them came to church! These are a lot of the people that we've spent a lot of time teaching and working with in the past few months, and it's really rewarding to see them coming to church!

We ate dinner with some of the YSAs in our ward again on Saturday! Pictures attached!

On Sunday, we had another great lesson with Brother Liu (the one from Canada I mentioned last week). We taught him the whole plan of salvation, and he commented about how logical it was. That's something that I've discovered more and more every time I teach it - that the Plan of Slavation is so logical and so merciful. It's been interesting how my perspective on that and other things has changed so much on my mission! I guess teaching it gives us a deeper understanding that grows and grows as we teach it more and thing about it more.

Well, it was a short week, so I've run out of things to say. So here's a scripture that I read this week that I really like!3 Ne 5:13 Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his word among his people, that they might have everlasting life.

Yup. That's it for this week.

Add oil!

Elder Richardson
任淳楷長老

ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON #101 -- APRIL 29, 2015

ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON #101 -- APRIL 29, 2015

Well, I feel like my letters are getting shorter and shorter, but in a little while I'll be able to tell you the full version of the story in person, so just ask me later!

An update on 蔡海山 Brother Cai. He went to the courthouse yesterday, and they told him that he would not have to go back to jail! Hooray! We actually had Jonny (who is a lawyer) come with us to look at his papers, and Jonny said that the courts made a mistake, and Brother Cai should be okay! So that gave us a lot of confidence coming up to Tuesday. Unfortunately, they still stuck him with a big fine, so he might not be able to come to church on Sunday for a month because he has to work to pay it off. We are confident that he will get baptized, but it'll have to be in the Lord's timing and not necessarily in ours!

We had a great miracle on Sunday. We went to visit a Less-Active member at Zhou Ba's house, and met a new friend 劉永章. He came from Canada, and he spent the last month in a Buddhist Monastery in TaiNan before coming up here. He found Zhou Ba's room for rent on the internet, and we met him about a half-hour after he got there. He's studied almost every kind of religion there is, he even met with missionaries back in Canada, but he said his job was too busy there for him to commit time to reading the Book of Mormon. But now he's got a lot of time, and we hope that we will be able to teach him all we can before he returns to Canada in two weeks! We had a hour lesson with him yesterday where he asked question after question about the Doctrine of Christ and we were able to answer all of his questions from the scriptures. It was awesome. He's originally from Mainland, so I also get to practice listening to a mainland accent so I don't get culture shock next month!

We also had a great lesson with a Brother Wang. I don't think I've mentioned him before, but we finally got to have a lesson with him when he wasn't drunk. We found him because his mom flagged down missionaries in TaiZhong and said that her son really needed help. And he does. He drinks a lot, and he also chews betel nut which is a nasty (but unfortunately legal) form of opium that gives people gum cancer faster than smoking. The first two times we went to visit him were kind of scary. He likes us, but the first time we went he punched through a window, and the second time he flipped a table over, but this time he hadn't been drinking, and he said he felt really sorry for what he did. I think he's got a sincere desire to quit somewhere down in there, and he just needs a lot of love and prayer in order to get there. He promised us last week that he would not drink the day that we have an appointment with him, so we think that is a good start!

Last week I also went on exchanges to XinDian with Elder Greenhalgh. We visited a member who is a professional 古筝 (Chinese harp - like the kind we have at our house) player. Elder Greenhalgh convinced him to play for us, so he gave us an amazing concert right in his house. I had no idea how cool it sounded when it's played right!

Last week we also had the mission tour with Elder Gong of the Seventy. He taught us a lot, but unfortunately I was translating so a lot of it whizzed past me. Translating is a hard but rewarding service; it was probably my last time for a while!

We went to the temple this morning! It was amazing as usual!

That was the important stuff that happened this week. I'll try to keep better notes so that my letters aren't so short!

Elder Richardson

任長老

Me and Elder Davidson at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall

Elder Winnie is ready to 傳教！

Elder Davidson is a little scared of the water, so he bought a GINORMOUS water bottle instead.

My new favorite snack from the 7-Eleven!

ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON #100 -- APRIL 20, 2015

ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON #100 -- APRIL 20, 2015

Well, this week had some ups and some downs.

Probably the most disappointing thing was that Brother Cai told us this week that he won't be able to get baptized on Saturday. He has a huge desire to get baptized, but one of the courts in Taiwan told him that he might have to go back to serve another jail sentence for a crime a long time ago, so he won't be able to get baptized this week. We hope that he can get the sentence postponed or removed so that he can still get baptized. Please pray for him!

But there were still some cool things that happened this week.

Wednesday night I did a fun activity with my English class kids. We all drew and cut out plates and forks and spoons and then a bunch of different kinds of food. All of the kids had to say the name of their utensils and put them in the right place on the table, and then they had to say "(name) please pass the (food)" in order to get their food. I'm not very good at teaching kids, so usually it is pure inspiration that gets me through English class!

The best part about this week was that we got to go to the temple on Thursday! We went with Jonny and did baptisms with him. He told us afterwords that he felt really good and didn't know why, but we knew. The next day we had a lesson with him where we talked about the temple and told him that he's gotta go find a wife and get married. He was ok with that.

Friday we went to MuZha and had a mini "Tsunami" for the sister missionaries there. They just opened up a new area, so they don't have any investigators yet. Our whole district went there and went street contacting for the whole afternoon to find them some new investigators!

Saturday night, it started pouring rain, but we had to get to an appointment so we just started riding! We both got soaked, but after you are already wet, riding in the rain isn't that bad!

Sunday night we spent awhile at 周爸‘s (Zhou Ba's) house. We had a lesson with Brother Cai and then Zhou Ba cooked us some super delicious dinner.

Well, this weeks email is kind of short, but it was overall a pretty good week! Tomorrow we have a "mission tour" with Elder Gong, one of the Area Presidency, which should be fun!

That's it for this week!

Add oil!

Elder Richardson
任長老