Elder Jason Riches

Week Forty: Out with the Old, in with the New [April 30, 2018]

Hey Everyone,

This week was mostly trying by people and seeing if they were still interested. There where quite a few people we dropped and found some new people as well. Here were some highlights of the week.

Transfers were on Tuesday. I said good-bye to two of my companions (Elder Jarman and Elder Baker). My new companion is Elder Mills and he's my first companion who has been out for less time than I have. Being senior companion isn't as weird as I thought, although I am still getting used to the driving aspect. We started the transfer by trying to introduce Elder Mills to some of the members and the people we're working with. While walking to one of them we had a homeless man stop us and basically tell us his life story, at least I think that's what he was telling us. He was kinda hard to understand.

We talked with Judy for a bit trying to finish getting the paperwork for her baptism done. We talked with her a little bit about family history. When we meet with her next we'll talk with her about going to the temple and we're going to see if we can get her there before the transfer is over.

We were going to see one of our investigators and we met a guy named Ben who told us his path to finding God. It was a pretty cool story. Basically he didn't have much religion in his life until he felt a prompting that he needed to preach the gospel. He spent a few years fasting, praying and reading the scriptures until he got to where he is now. His story was pretty inspiring, but I don't know that he has much potential since he's a preacher, but you never know.

We decided to go by a less active named Dale. He was very friendly and we talked with him for a while. Near the end of the conversation he said that we were the first missionaries he'd seen in over a year! He was open to us coming back and sharing more with him which should be good.

There was a lady we met while walking to a potential investigator. We helped her carry some groceries and talked with her for a bit. Apparently she's a member and wants to come back to church!

We did some service for some potentials named Alice and Dan. We helped them with some yard work like cutting grass and cleaning their gazebo. They bought us In-N-Out for lunch. When we asked if we could come back and share a message he avoided the question which made it pretty obvious that he isn't interested