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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