Week 8: TV Service [September 18, 2017]

Hi All,

Not much has happened since the last email but I have a few things to share.

We stopped by one of our investigators just to follow up and see if the appointment we made was still a good time to stop by. We ended up helping her get rid of her old TV and setting up her new one. One cool thing she said when she answered the door was "You guys always show up when I'm having a hard time." It was fun helping her and when we were done she gave us girl scout cookies and said that she would come to church. On Sunday when we showed up she was outside waiting for us. When we went inside there were a lot of members that said hi and gave her hugs. I felt that she knows more of the ward than I do.

Amar has kind of slowed down. He told us that he likes our church, but doesn't like that we don't use the cross and made it clear that he won't give that up. He also doesn't seem too keen on giving up tea. 

Aside from that not much else happened. We have someone named Kim Williams we're seeing and she's going through a really hard time. Please keep her in your prayers.

Talk to ya next week!

Elder Jason Riches

Week 7 [September 13, 2017]

This week was pretty slow. A lot of our investigators have been pretty flaky with us so we don't know what will happen with them. We were able to give two blessings this week and both of those were pretty spiritual. I had my birthday this week as well. I'm 21 so I can now legally drink (not that I will). Someone asked me how old I was and when I said 21 it felt really weird. Just like in the MTC I am the oldest Elder but there's a Sister who is older than me. I'm even older than the ones who are leaving soon! 

We had a zone conference this week with two members of the Seventy. We had Elder Wokolo who replaced Elder Hamula and Elder Schwitzer. It was a very spiritual meeting with lots of great moments.

Every one here is excited about the upcoming General Conference. They say that Conference in the field is amazing.

Not much else happened. Thanks for the thoughts and prayers.

Elder Jason Riches

Week 6 [September 4, 2017]

Burgers Again!?!?

This week was pretty slow but it had some good moments. On Tuesday I got to have interviews with President Nakken. We had interviews at our apartment so we were cleaning a lot on Monday. I'm really glad that I have a cool mission president and mission mom. One of my concerns about a mission was that I would have a super strict mission president like my mom had, so I'm glad to see that that's not the case. 

The really cool stuff has been with our new investigator Amar. I don't think I've mentioned him before so I'll give some background. Amar and his brother Besin are referrals that we got from the Hermanas in our district. We met with Besin first and told us that we could usually find Amar in the park. We tried that but with a million people in the park and not knowing what he looked like we decided it wouldn't work. The next day we were walking around and we Offered a picture of Jesus Christ to him and he started talking with a Syrian accent. My companion asked if his name was Amar which startled him at first but we explained that his brother told us about him. We talked and he said he would be interested in coming to church and that week he came! (At this point he wasn't even and investigator). This week we had our first lesson with him and he says that he wants to get baptized when he knows more and he's wants to live the word of wisdom!!! The only challenge is the language barrier. He wanted to know how long before Joseph Smith the Book of Mormon takes place and I told him several years. Apparently that was bad wording because he now thinks that it takes place seven years before. But he like the church and how friendly everyone is (he came again this week! ), and he really admires Joseph Smith! I can't wait to see how he progresses.

I thought in coming on a mission that I would eat healthier, but a lot of people down hear like to get fast food so it feels like I have burgers like every other day! I hope I don't end up getting sick of them by the end of the transfer. 

That's pretty much it for this week. Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers!

Elder Jason Riches