2 Years Ago Today...

Hello All!

My first week in Pasadena went well! We taught a few lessons and we
have a few progressing investigators. I've met a few of the members so
that was good, considering it was conference weekend. Not too much
happened this week.

Cool thing, two years ago today is when I made the initial decision to
serve a mission! I am so thankful I heeded the prophets call and am
out here serving others and helping them find the peace, joy, and
happiness this gospel has brought me! I love it!

Monday we were in a trio because one of the sisters in our zone is
training so she came with us. It was fun. We saw a lady on the bus who
I talked to in Azusa back in January! She remembered me and it was
really cool! It is SO rare that we ever see the bus or street contacts
ever again! So it was meant to be.

Tuesday we had a lesson with J. We picked up his girlfriend/fiancé
as a new investigator do that was good! We just followed up on his
commitments and helped give him some guidance. That night we had a
ward missionary party thing where we got together with some of the
ward missionaries and talked about our investigators and our needs. It
was good. One of the sisters is from Oakley so that was fun to talk to
her about Kamas.

Wednesday we do service at a food pantry. It was really nice to help
the people around here. I don't know Chinese and a lady was saying shi
shi, shi shi to me and I learned that means thank you! Then we had a
lesson with our investigator B. She has a baptism date for later
this month. Sadly she just moved to Covina on Monday and so she will
be getting baptized and taught there. Our one baptism date
investigator moved...but she's fun.

Thursday was district meeting. Our district leader is elder justensen.
He was in my MTC district! It's fun to serve with him now. We talked
about the importance of baptism. We did some facebook, after and I
added a lot people from this ward. Then we had a lesson with J. and
M. We planned on teaching the restoration but they didn't have
much time so we shared a scripture to help them make some decisions
about moving and jobs and that somehow lead us to talk about the
temple. It was awesome! I love teaching people about the temple. They
want to go on a trip soon so that'll be fun! We'll have to set them
with a baptism date!

Friday was Sister Walkers birthday! Sadly we didn't have enough of
anything for me to make her a nice breakfast. We went to the church
and did weekly planning. That took a few hours! As always. Then we
went to teach A. and A. Sadly when we got there he had just
left and A. normally just sits in on our lessons with him. We
ended up going to a members house for dinner and that was fun. We got
good cake from Porto's. So good!!

Saturday was conference! I loved conference! It was so good! We just
chilled at the church in between sessions and had lunch and studied
some. Then after conference we went out to teach. We stopped by
grandma and grandpas. An elderly couple in the ward who asked us to
call them grandma and grandpa, super sweet! Their last name is the
Kohnle's. We ended up having dinner with them and did service after.
Then we had a lesson with another investigator. Her name is J.
She's really nice. She hasn't been keeping commitments though. But it
was good we invited her to conference and talked about what is was.

Sunday was more conference! However it went by wayyy too fast! I loved
it! We then went and picked up G. as an investigator. He has a cool
story. He was in Hawaii on vacation and in his hotel room in the desk
there was a Bible, Koran, and Book of Mormon. He ended up going to
about.com and started typing in a lot of questions about God and
angles and stuff like that and it all took him to information about
the Mormons. So he read it and they kept referencing the Book of
Mormon so he pulled it out of the desk and started reading the parts
and cross referencing it. He became really interested in the
pre-existence. When he got back to California he was riding the train
home from work he saw the elders and he recognized he could either
pass them by or recognize it was divine intervention to talk to them
so he did. And turns out he's the son of a less active. We stopped by
Sunday and talked about the premortal life and the Book of Mormon.
We're excited to continue teaching him and also hopefully his family!
We then had dinner at the ward mission leaders. They're leaving for
Vietnam today so we had their leftovers and it was good!  But I broke
their chair...I was scooting it up to the table and it cracked in the
middle. Looks like I need to go running! Just kidding, it was an old
chair, but still, running isn't a bad idea. Which I need to learn to
love it, cause I really don't like running. We'll see what happens. We
then saw a few other less actives.

I love you all and I'm thankful for this gospel!

Love, Sister Riches