Another toe nail gone!

I have been getting really tired really fast. i think i need to eat more, so today was the day when we are supposed to buy stuff so i was with another American shopping. this is the second time I have been with him shopping and i didn't make the mistake of shopping hungry but i still bought more food then is necescary and i was not sure how much money i had but i still have more than enough for the month as well as alot of food.
 

we have been working a lot with the wife of our convert and well she was going to get baptized in two weeks but she has a few problems, the main one is she does not feel ready and the other is that she is not ready. so we are going to try to keep teaching her. she really likes to listen but she has a hard time rejecting the life she had before.

If every thing works out OK we are going to baptize a lady that has been listening to the missionaries for over 25 years.  she has a really strong testimony about Christ and she loves to read every thing that the church publishes.  we took her to listen to a general authority speak and that changed how she received our lessons.

But apart from those two people my area is kinda slow right now every one left on vacations so we are trying to contact more people but i have yet to find any one in the street who is genuinely interested. but eventually we are going to find more people to teach just not quite sure were or when. ok, maybe the girl that just walked in, she is the sister of our friend who owns the internet café. her mom was member but then rejected every thing and there is a lot of problems. but yea, i am going to try to teach her again.

Um, other things that happened, I got another toenail ripped out and my comp got told he needs to eat healthier.

have a good day! bye!

This is graffite that i pass when i am on the way to the mission head quarters i have always wanted to get a photo of it but i dont have time so i managed to get a pic while we were in a bus. 

No transfer yet!

Well, i feel really good right now just slightly hungry.  we had the changes and guess what! i didn't leave my area! that means I'm  going to be 7.5 months here and 4.5 with the same comp but its fine i really like this area and i am not sick of this comp yet, i did catch my self arguing with him for no reason once.  so i need to not do that.  

 

we started to talk with more people in the street, its fun! i learned a bunch of different ways to start talking with people so that helps a lot. my favorite is to contact the people who have dogs cause it always gives me a reason to talk to them.

 

It's been a really good week though. i did not have a new agenda so i got stuck using pieces of paper and i got really sick of it cause i never had room to write what i needed to. but we are teaching a lady who has had contact with the church almost her entire life, her brother is the secretary in our ward.  we taught her a lot! i like to teacher her cause she really applies the things we teach, she just was not quite ready to give up her other religion but she said she would get baptized.

 

 we are working a lot with the family of the guy we baptized about two weeks ago.  his wife likes to listen but she needs to start applying the things we teach in her life. its really funny to see how different her husband is from how he was before. 

 

well that's it for now have a good day to all and to all a good night. 

Elder Ritchie.

 

Faith by Actions

This week was really good, i have been getting really tired but its not much of a problem, just every lesson right after lunch i feel like just laying down and sleeping. i tried it once but as soon as i sat down i felt like i wanted to do some thing.  

 

we had interview with the president YEAH i think i passed i got done in less time then every one else i didn't cry and i still have no idea if i am going to leave my area tomorrow or not.

 

YEAH thats right we have changes tomorrow and i wont know if i am leaving or not until nine tonight. our mission is a little bit different than most other missions. our whole mission had a conference with a seventy and we could only go if we had an investigator or a new convert. we took an investigator and a new convert. but there was not enough room for the missionaries so we all were in the temple visitor center.  its quite suprising to all the investigators to see all of us together.  

 

we played  futbal again today and like always i won. it helps that i keep getting put on the teams that pass me the ball and i then kick it and it goes in.  but YEAH i got a lot of goals with out having to run much or actually work that hard so i am happy.

 

As for the work right now, well there is work just allt of it involves looking for people who are not home.  i am slightly negative about not being able to find the people i want to teach and my companion says were is your faith! i had to think for a second  then i realized i was about to say some thing i have almost never said, "I have faith".  i never have liked saying it, and so i didn't, i said we look for these people every day that is my faith.  actions are the greater part of our faith, every one can say i have faith, or i believe.  its those that don't need to say i have faith that truly have faith. you can just look at them and in every action they do you can see that they have faith.  this is the kind of faith i am trying to develope.  where i will never have to explain my faith to any one they can just see it.   yes i know i have to explain my faith to people that is part of being on a mission but you understand what i am trying to say.

 

Well love you all. 

wow i messed up more then thirty times just trying to write  the line above. 

Elder Ritchie

Celebrating the Fourth of July

well, well, well

 

i feel great just in case any one wanted to know. 

 

we had divisions today and i went to the other area that aparently is one of the most dangerous in our mission but i never noticed any of it. i thought it was a really good area and all the people seemed really nice a few a bit nicer than i like, but still its not like they are rude. i had an awesome 4th of july, i was not working, well, at least not in a potato field. i did not go and eat a hamburgur like we planned cause we ended up eating tacos  with our investigator and that was after i ate a huge bfast.  when i got back to my area the other elder would not stop saying how much he loved my area and i could not figure out why but eventually i found out they contacted a bunch of girls by beating them in a game of futball.  so yeah, i missed out on that. but i am not really sad about it, just a little.

 

our investigator who wants to get married is having alot of problems with his wife, mainly she does not want to get married right now.  he can't get baptised unless they get married and his daughter really likes the lessons and is talking with her dad about baptism and stuff and she is only ten but her mom has plans for her first communion.   we are trying to talk with her but she is refusing to talk with us right now. i think we will  have to wait untill after their daughter finishes this before we can teach them more. 

 

we baptised a girl who i have been teaching for over 5 months, she had problems in her family before so we were not able to get her  baptised but every thing finally calmed down so we started to teach her again and we baptized her on Saturday along with granddaughter of a less active member.  all we had to do for them was invite them to church and they started to be active.  

 

well, right now we were told by our president to mark a BOM in a special way i started doing it before he told us to cause my comp was doing it and i thought it was a good idea. i got a different color for faith, repentance, baptism, the holy ghost, endure to the end, prayer, Christ, and atonement.  i found out so far the when ever it talks about faith that it always includes some thing else never just faith. and it talks a lot more about Christ then i remembered. 

 

well that's it for now 

 

Elder Ritchie

He can hear again!

good news, i can hear again!

 

well, I'm having a hard time remembering what we did this last week.  it was over a week not being able to hear out of my right ear and for a day i could not hear our of either ear. so i was kind of sad for a while. but i got my ears flushed out and now i can hear again. 

we had a zone conference with my old zone and my new zone it was really good.  we talked about how to use the book of Mormon to teach as well as a bunch of interesting information about the book of Mormon. we were challenged to give away a book of Mormon by the end of the day and we completely forgot about it, and as we were walking home we ran into a less active member who is starting to come back and her friend and we gave her a book of Mormon we did not have much time to explain any thing about it so i hope the less active girl remembers enough to explain the book correctly to her friend. but when we got back to the house we remembered the challenge and we did it with out even realizing it. 

 

we visited an investigator that i had three months ago and we talked with a friend of hers that was there she said she is a member but is really inactive and we tried to get a time when we could visit with her but she said she does not live here but her mom does and then she said where her mom lives and i recognized the address and her mom does not actually live there but her brother does and he was an investigator before they divided my area so i know every one in her family from different things. her brother is a mechanic right out side our house, we say hi to him almost every day. her other brother was my investigator and we found her parents one time selling popsicles. her sister works in the store and we tried to talk with her one time.  the funny thing is we had no connection using the other members of the family we just kind of found all of them and realized they are all family. but sadly none of them want to take the time to talk with us. 

 

we went to the temple visitor center with our investigator and his family.  his wife before did not really want to listen to us but after the visitor center she said she really liked the idea of an eternal family and she is thinking about baptism but first she needs to get married before they can get baptized. the good news is this time i don't think there are any problems with divorce. 

 

well that's it for now have a good week every one 

 

Elder Ritchie

General Conference

Well, we had conference.  i tried to understand as much as i could but i really did not understand nearly as much as i wanted to but as long as i don't get frustrated with it i am doing OK.  when i get frustrated. i stop progressing in Spanish.

 

my comp got sick last week so we had to go to the doctor.  he ate some bad fish.  this has been my 6th time to the doctor i think, but never for me and i am always the one who is the most sick. i know why, its cause my mom who is a nurse has always told me you are fine, give it a few days and you will get over it and that has always worked for me.   it never occurred to me that other people go to the doctor when they get sick.

people are weird.  but he is fine now. and we need to start working again.   

 

last week felt like all we did was visit people explain what conference was, tell them when it was and if they had time we would give a lesson but not many of them had time so we had really low numbers.  i am pretty sure all the less actives we invited that actually said they would go didn't really go. i even bought sticky notes and wrote the times on them and put them in really noticeable  places in their houses. they were florescent orange. but they still have their choices and excuses. i really enjoyed explaining how i felt that conference was like receiving 10 more hours of scripture and who wouldn't want to see Moses speak or some one from the bible. then i said we have the same opportunities as the people who lived in the times of Moses to listen to a prophet who speaks as if from the mouth of God. it really got me excited for conference but it did not seem to work for our less actives.

 

well,  that's it for this shpeel if shpeel is really a word. i think it is.

 

 well, love you all,

 

 Elder Ritchie

 

PS:  i have my voice back and i can talk fine again. i think i liked Uchtdorf in the priesthood session the most.  We got two investigators to go. they really liked it. 

 

PSS: i just downloaded all of conference to my mp3. i got a new speaker cause the one you sent uses batteries and i want one i can charge. plus its like five dollars to buy a small speaker here. i still need a new watch.

 

i was thinking about sending a packege then i decided to save the money and buy stuff for you guys, how would you like a fake watch or really fake any thing? they got it really cheap here. my fake pocket watch works really good if you want the day to only last 5 or 6 hours.

 

thanks for raising me how you did even though the other day i did find a scripture i thought i wanted to share with you it applies to mothers who leave their children alone, but then i decided not to cause i really did love how i was raised. and apparently it worked fine cause i am here on a mission and i am kind of a normal person. then again i don't think it mattered exactly how i was raised, i would still be the same as i am now.

 

 i keep getting asked what i am going to do after my mission, i used to say i wanted to be a mechanical engineer, then i started saying i wanted to teach high school. i have always had a lot of respect for high school teachers and i think if i was teaching the right subject i would really enjoy it plus you get the summer off, all holidays off, and you feel like you are helping society some how but who knows, i could do whatever i want and the problem is finding what i want more.   

Loosing Your Voice Changes Your Accent

well, i had a plan about what i was going to write but then i read a letter from my sister in law Rebecca and i did some thing that i have not done for awhile (ya i am kinda crying now) but both her and her new baby are doing good from what every one has told me. and now i can't remember a thing i was going to say to every one.  

 

OK this week i was really frustrated cause i got sick and i wanted to rest and get better but i wanted to do other things more and then because i was sick my voice changed and no one could understand my Spanish.  i would always try to say some thing during a lesson but after i was done talking every one would just stare at me like i had just said every thing in English. then they would look at my comp and expect him to have understood what i had said. he didn't but he can tell what i wanted to say and he translated a bit for me.  today my voice is almost back to normal.  I still don't have the same accent i had before but it is coming back fast.  we don't really have anybody here who is progressing that much, we have people who complete all the reading we assign them but they don't want to go to church or commit to do much more than read. then we have people who come to church who we can't commit to do anything or they all have really busy schedules and we only get to talk with them once or less than once a week.  

 

we keep running into material from the Jehovah's witnesses. they keep giving it out to our members and the members want us to look over it for them. my comp explained a few thing about them to me cause i really did not know that much and he has taught a few of them. i just keep telling people to respect them cause we want to be respected as well. 

 

i went to a really spiritual baptism on Sunday it was in a different church building and the other elders thought i have a really good singing voice and the wanted me to do a solo. NOT. they need some one to play the piano and I could do that a little.

 

the baptism was of a woman who's son was shot a few months ago, he was the only member in his whole family and over the months since he was shot his whole family has started to investigate the church and they were all baptized at different times. his mom was the last one i think. not to sure about the details cause its not in my ward. but over half of their ward was there and we had over 12 people who did not have a place to sit. 

 

well that's it for now, love all you people! this church is not true because of all the funny little things this church is true because its from Christ.  and the only way to know this is to have it confirmed to you by the spirit. all the interesting little details are just supporting the fact that this is Christ's church. 

 

Elder Ritchie