WEEK 5 [August 28, 2017]

One month down, twenty-three to go. As time goes on it feels more and more like I can do this! This week has been pretty basic, but I do have some cool experiences. I went on my first exchange this week...and also my second. My companion is the district leader so I will end up going on quite a few this transfer. Funny story though. On my first exchange we met with a sister who was baptized this last Saturday. We asked her if there was any service we could do for her. She said no but later on she found something interesting for us to do. She pointed out a box on her refrigerator and told us that it was the ashes of her son's cremated dog. She didn't want it anymore so she wanted us to take it and not tell her what we did with them. We decided to give it to my exchange companion's (Elder Shumway) companion, Elder Hales. It was also funny because when we met up to exchange again, he got really exited about Brenda's gift to him. We also met with a guy who seems interested in our message! He also ended up giving me a bike!!! It's really cool to see how nice most people are. It's given me a new perspective on people. There was also a lot of service this week. we moved a TV cabinet from one member's house to another and then preceded to take the second member's TV cabinet to Goodwill. We also spent a good portion of Friday helping a sister in the ward move.

The coolest stuff happened on Saturday during my second exchange with Elder Sneider. We visited with a potential investigator for about two hours but weren't really able to teach a lesson; however we talked about the word of wisdom and when I explained why we should't drink coffee and tea he said it made a lot of sense! We challenged him to start reading the Book of Mormon, so I'm hopeful that he'll do that. We also got two new people we will start visiting!!! One is a less active who wants us to come by today. The other is someone who wants us to come and give her husband a blessing. She says that she used to attend church and now wants to come back! We also helped the Hermanas blow up balloons. There was one of those long balloons that no one could blow up so they let us keep it. After a lot of hard breaths I managed to get it blown up but I didn't want to carry it around so I put it in our car. As I was walking away I heard a loud POP! Apparently our car was too hot :(

That's my week. Next week were supposed to have a heat wave so that will be "fun".

Thanks for all the love and support.

Elder Jason Riches