Elder Jason Riches

Week Fifty-seven: A Week of Miracles/A New Area and A Very New Companion [August 27, 2018]

Hi Everyone!

My last week in Lompoc was pretty miracle filled. Monday night we went by an old potential and he ended up letting us in and telling us he only had ten minutes. We ended up staying for an hour and taught him the plan of salvation, and gave him a Book of Mormon. He was pretty open and told us we could come back. Our appointment is tonight so pray that all goes well there.

We've also done a ton of tracting and we've been able to find quite a few people, two of which actually talked with us for a good while, but one seems much more interested than the other.

The first one was named John (I think) His front yard is covered in statues, as is the inside of his house. I don't know that I've ever seen so many statues in one place before. Also instead of normal lights he had blue ones, which messed with me once we walked back outside. He used to be from Idaho so he has talked with missionaries before. He shared with us some of his interpretation of scripture (mostly Revelation) and talked about the second coming. He knows what the scriptures say pretty well, but his interpretation of them is pretty off. An interesting thing that happened though is that shortly after he let us in his door bell rang. It ended up being two of his neighbors across the street. Both were pretty young (the girl maybe 19 and the boy 12?), but we found out the girl actually went to BYU Provo for school and she isn't a member! We thought she was going to be super solid and that a baptism was on the horizon, but when we tried by her house and asked her she told us that she wasn't really interested and had already heard most of what we believe

The other person we talked with seems more solid. His name is Alden. We initially were going for a restoration lesson, but we ended up talking about the first two points more as well as prayer and how Heavenly Father blesses us in our afflictions.

We were able to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ to Mayra who we have taught once before. While we were talking about baptism we invited her to be baptized and she said yes! The only problem is she told us her husband isn't open to her coming to church so that will put a hindrance on things. Keep her in your prayers that her husband's heart will soften.

The Friday before transfers President Nakken and the Assistants call people to tell them if they're in leadership. I haven't received a call except for the times when Elder Hansen got the call he was training and Elder Kopaunik got his zone leader call. Other than that Friday's have been pretty silent...until now. I got the call that I will be training this next transfer

. It's also weird because I'm the same age (thirteen months) as Elder Hansen was when he trained me!

We met a guy named Boo (yes, that is his name). He has looked into different religions before, but wants solid evidence as to what is true. We talked with him about faith and referred to Alma's analogy of faith being a seed (he was gardening), but then he turned it on us and asked us if we would start praying to Allah to see if that might be true. Let's just say our response of no made him think we are closed minded. He said we could come back, but warned us he has lots of questions.

When I first got my call saying that I would be serving in the California Ventura mission I was curious as to what it would look like. I wound up looking at lots of pictures and videos of Ventura, but so far they haven't been very helpful until now because...

I'm going to Ventura! While I'm happy to be there I'm kinda sad that I didn't get to spend more time here. I've met lots of good people here, plus I'm not super thrilled about whitewashing into an area again, but it should be fine. President also lives close (if not in my area) so I may end up seeing the Nakkens more.

I'll send some pictures later. Wish me luck as I go into this new week!

Elder Jason Riches