Week One-Hundred!:  Beginning of the End [June 24, 2019]

Hi Everyone! 

It's been a pretty good week! The final transfer began Tuesday and so far it's off to a decent start. 

Tuesday we were finally able to meet with David again! He's had some difficult challenges in his family recently, but he still wants to make a change in his life! We taught him about prayer and discussed what it is, as well as what it's not. 

Wednesday was Elder Pack's birthday! He's now 22 (same as me!). We did get a good scare from Dizi though, She called us saying that she couldn't meet because her arm hurt really bad all the night before and into the day. She didn't want to go to the hospital since she didn't want to stay overnight so we prayed a lot for her. 

The next day we tried by some people and arranged to go and give Dizi a blessing when her husband got back. We didn't hear from her for a while and no one answered our calls. We found out eventually that she went to the hospital. Later on in the evening we went by and saw her. Apparently she had a blood clot in her arm. She's doing better now, but she gave us quite the scare. 

On Friday we had our first district council of the transfer. It's a much smaller district than the last one, but not bad. A lot of the people we tried by weren't home, but we did get to have a lesson with Jason. At the end my companion was saying that he wanted to try something called baloote (don't know if that's how it's spelled or not) which is a premature duck egg. Sister Woolsey got excited and they might feed us that the next time we go over for dinner. We'll see! 

Saturday we had a pass off lesson with the sisters where we taught a guy named Jake. He had some pretty interesting beliefs that I can't say was something I'd ever heard before, but he was a very nice guy and was open to meeting with us again. 

Last night we were out and about as usual and we had decided in the morning to go by someone we were teaching. Sure enough she was there, and in talking with her, we found out that she had to turn herself in to go to jail the next day. This was something we knew would happen, but we didn't know exactly when. We shared a scripture and got her info so missionaries can visit her in prison. We both thought it was pretty remarkable that we caught her on the last day we possibly could! 

That's it for me! Hope you have a wonderful week! 

Elder Jason Riches

Week Ninety-Nine:  All Roads Lead...[June 17, 2019]

Hi Everyone! 

I ran out of time to write this week so I'll update you on everything important next week. I'll give a quick transfer update though. I'll be finishing my mission here in Camarillo with Elder Pack. It's pretty crazy since 5 transfer areas are pretty uncommon as are 3 transfer companions (at least in this mission).

I guess all roads have been leading up to this moment. It's my goal to finish strong. It's crazy to think that this next transfer will be my last. 

Wish me luck! 

Elder Jason Riches 

Week Ninety-Eight:  Running Out of Time [June 10, 2019]

Hi Everyone! 

I sorta ran out of time to write this week so I'll have to make this a quick one. 

Earlier on this week we had a lesson with David on the sabbath day. He enjoyed it and we're trying to schedule a time we can give him a tour of the church (last week didn't work) so hopefully we can do that this week. 

Wednesday the only noteworthy thing that happened was teaching Dizi. Thursday we had our Zone Conference (those are always good). One of the big things I took out of it was we need to do better working with those we teach and involving the members in what we do. 

Saturday we had a lesson with someone we're working with named Eddie. Usually it's hard to keep the lessons focused, but this time he seemed to be more interested in what we had to say and it was a pretty good meeting. 

That's pretty much it for tonight. We tried going by the people we met last week, but they weren't home :(

Have a great week! 

Elder Jason Riches 

Week Ninety-Seven:  The Blessing of Missionary Work [June 3, 2019]

Hi Everyone!

This week there were quite a few of our lessons that fell through, so in some ways it was a slow week. However, it was not without blessings! The biggest one came on Friday. We were trying by someone I had found in the beginning of my time here just like any other time. Last week we had gone by and the husband had told us to try by sometime this week in the evenings if we wanted to catch both him and his wife. Sure enough, they were home and they invited us in! We talked with them for a bit and got to know them. Apparently they've talked about looking into our church and they like the whole family aspect of our church. She also has a lot of members in her family. We shared the message of the restoration with them and they were open to us coming back and sharing more with them. They have a Book of Mormon and they said that they would read it and pray about it! By the way their names are Chis and Jessica.

The day before this we had an exchange with the zone leaders. I was with Elder Goodman which was fun since we served around each other a lot at the beginning of our missions (we came out the same time). I also found a street called Jason Place which is the second street I've found that shares my name on my mission. We actually ended up finding someone who was interested on that street!

The only other notable thing that happened this week was we did a lot of service. We helped someone move into their new place, tried to remove part of a palm tree stump and today we moved a chair. 

That's all I can think to mention this week. Hope you all have a good one!

Elder Jason Riches 

Pictures

1. Elder Goodman and I

2. Me by Jason Place