September 23, 2013

September 23

Hey how is my favorite sister Connie lou (Tyler’s nick name for me since I read the forgotten carols every year).

I hope things are going great I am sure you are busy with school and everything. Hey I got my birthday package it is sweet or as some people say around hear "its bangin" I don't quiet know what that means but I have even heard members say it so I think its ok to say.

So this week has had some cool things happen. However I feel like I am not doing as much work as I could be doing. Oh well Ill just continue to do all I can do.

  So this week I had a fun bike experience I was riding my bike and kind of wiped out. It wasn't super horrible or anything but I could have gone without it. So me and elder callister were booking it home, and we passed a member that we like, who just had gotten out of the hospital a couple of days earlier so I turned around to say high and wave to him or whatever and elder Callister had the plan to stop and talk to him.

I guess our brain wave wasn't working so anyway I ended up barely nicking him because I turned my bike once I saw him and after that kind of whipped out and skidded on the pavement on my back and on my shoulder.

So I just have a scrape on my shoulder. I was wearing a helmet and everything so it was good. And my backpack took the biggest blow. So my favorite adventure REI bag has a small hole in it and so does one of my white shirts. So I get to work on my sewing skills. Good thing Maranda the best sister, sent me some sewing stuff, she must of had a good feeling of what was going to happen to me. Oh I also love the sweet purple argyle socks I got in my birthday package.

We have a new district leader Elder Jorgensen from Salt lake area. He seems pretty cool and I like him. He's a good guy and a hard worker.

   This week I’m pretty excited. I'm going to try to help Sol to quit smoking. I have been reading the churches 15 step program and it seems pretty cool and works in 7 days. It has some things I have never herd of before like drinking grapefruit juice and taking a lot of vitamin c because it helps get rid of the nicotine out of your body and also helps prevent the bells that smokers have from going off that trigger the desire to have a smoke. So I am pretty excited and I hope and pray that everything will work out well.

This last week hasn't been the most effective I think in some ways but then again it was great. We didn't teach a lot of lessons. But there were some cool experiences we had. Like we wanted to go and find this one persons house who we meet with and wanted to hear more but didn't give us his address and then one day we weren't going to go to one of our investigators who we have been teaching and we went and the guys friend was there and told us his friends address.

Another day we were walking find some people who the missionaries had taught before, but stopped coming. Well on the way to their houses we meet several people who were members and knew about the church and wanted to come back and even find the missionaries. And another day that week we met the dad of a recently converted person who elder callister hasn't seen for like over 7 weeks. So In a way a lot of cool things have happened even though we didn't teach a lot of lessons and things like that.

  My Spanish is also getting pretty good. And I can communicate decently with a lot of people and even can joke around a bit and show my personality even though I’m speaking Spanish.

However everyone’s Spanish is a little different, a lot of the people on the streets we meet are Dominican and Puerto Rican. And they speak differently than others and at church we have a mix of a lot of places. Like Mexico and Guatemala and Ecuador and Columbia and a chunk of Dominicans and some Puerto Ricans. I still am practicing learning and deciphering if a person is Latino or not when I am on the streets. A lot of times I have started to speak Spanish to someone who looks like they could be Dominican or Puerto Rican and they end up being African American so I guess that could use more practice. Well that's the life.

Oh they are making a lame change for all missionaries in the world I will tell you about. They are having us get rid of our backpacks by the 1st of January so I will get to use a girly shoulder bag instead. How lame. How are you supposed to ride a bike with a shoulder bag? What kind of missionary image is that? Missionaries with their cute shoulder bags who get out of a nice car and pull out their I-pad. I hope it isn't like that in Brazil.

Well I love you and everyone so much I tried to make this message more general instead of to you and my fan club. Oh by the way do people even read this and do you know who?

well I love you and will talk to you later. Love Always elder Richardson