Tuesday, September 27, 2016

How Far can you go on $5?

September 19, 2016 

hiya mijos y mijas,

On Tuesday, Elder Hopkins and I went on exchanges in my area! We had loads of fun! We went and visited the Taccuba's (they came to church yesterday!!!!!!! Well, all of them except for the dad and the 2-3 yr old). We shared the Mormon message "Good things to Come" about Elder Holland and his early family life. Shared how times are going to be hard, no matter what. But if we push through and keep following the Savior's example, we WILL be blessed. As Elder Holland puts it, "Some blessing come soon, some come late, and some don't come till heaven. But they will come."  And that is so true for all of us. God WILL bless us as we turn to him in our times of need and as we endure to the end. Afterwards we went and saw a referral couple that we got from some Elders in Madera with Brother Vezzani (Ward Mission Leader). They're names are Angel and Ina and they are awesome!! They have such an amazing story. They moved down form Washington because a friend promised them jobs, came down and have never heard from their friend again. Wanted to go to church a couple Sundays ago so they typed in church in their google search bar and our church is the first one that popped up!! They went for all 3 hours! This was in Madera. Then the next week they had moved up to Atwater but still wanted to go to church. They only had $5 for gas but they still tried. They drove all the way to Madera and back for church round trip on the $5!!! Madera is like an hour away from Atwater so that is crazy!!! At this point, the missionaries down in Madera were like, "...uhh. there's a church in Atwater..." And gave them some Elders number in Merced and they relayed it back to us!! Anyways, they are SOOO prepared! They accepted baptism and have a date for October 8th (unfortunately they couldn't make it to church yesterday because of some housing issues). 

On Thursday Elder Witt and I were going around seeing potentials and knocked on a guy named Drew's house. He opened the door and told us that he used to meet with missionaries. We ended up starting to share a scripture about the Atonement of Jesus Christ when his cousin Ivan pulled up. Boy Ivan has a lot of view points. For the next 25 or so minutes he was just bagging on church and religion in general. Every comment Elder Witt and I made he had some sort of retort for it. It got to the point where I caught him slip and contradict his own beliefs and really wanted to point it out but didn't. The Spirit was barely there and I knew if I spoke out like that it would leave the lesson completely. But, Elder Witt came in clutch and bore a powerful testimony on something, can't really remember what but it was powerful enough to bring the Spirit back and shut Ivan up for basically the rest of the lesson. And then at the end, I backed up my companion and invited them to be baptized when they came to know that the Book of Mormon was true. And that if they did come to know it's true and did nothing about it, they will be held accountable for it at the last day, IT was awesome!! Drew flaked on our appointment that we had made for Saturday but we will try by him again!! 

On Sunday we had this cool Temple Activity that our ward put on. It was awesome cause they had a little girl talk about how she got sealed to her little brother Noah in the temple, it made me think of when I had the honor and privilege to get sealed to my little brother Adam. And then one of the members from the Temple Presidency and his wife spoke to us. My companion also sang at it. He did great!! 
Angel and Ina had told us they were gonna come, but 6 rolled around and they didn't show. But...I looked at the phone at 6:29 and basically gave up on them coming, but lo and behold all of a sudden I felt a tap on my shoulder and it was ANGEL AND INA!!!!!! And they brought they're 3 yr old daughter!!!  It was so good to have them there and can not wait to go over there tonight and talk about how they felt! 

That's all though!!! Love you all!! 

Elder Richardson

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