Another Baptism - Members Take Care of us.

Hellllo My HIttas on the other side of the border of CALI!!!,

     This week was a new milestone for me! I finally got sick on my mission!!!! It was the worst thing in the world!!! I developed some sort of food poisoning Tuesday night and was up throwing up from 1-5 AM. Twas not fun. I was sick until Friday before I could go out and do anything again. Being sick as a missionary absolutely sucks!!!!!! You can't do ANYTHING!!!!!!! It is 10 times worse than being sick at home! I've never wanted to go out and do something more in my life than when I was sick! And I don't know if any of you have ever seen The Testaments (highly recommended, he end makes me cry every time) but I can quote that movie from beginning to end now....

     Sam's baptism this last Saturday was freaking hectic....We told him to be at the church at 5:30 and by 5:55 he was nowhere to be found!!! We sent out 3 different search parties for him and Elder Pace and I rode with our BML (branch mission leader) and finally found him on the other side of town just chilling at his sisters!!! So we didn't even start till 6:45! After that it went great though. Amid all the confusion nobody got pictures sadly (sorry mom).

      This week is Thanksgiving and my companion and I are so blessed as to have 4 Thanksgiving meals!!! So much for the 30lbs that I've dropped. Oh well, at least the members love me enough to feed me!!!

      Last thing, so this Saturday is transfer calls. Which means, this is the Saturday that I will find out whether or not I am staying a Hmong missionary!!! Pray for me please cause I really want to stay a Hmong missionary more than anything else in the world!!! I love you all! Happy Thanksgiving!! 

Kuv hlub koj, 

Elder Richy!

 

P-DAY - Do you think my Missionary TAG is visible?

Zone Conference and Cool Swords/knives!!

Was Up My Hittas, 

    So this past week was awesome!   We also had a zone conference this week that was amazing!! These Elders gave a training about being Exactly Obedient and I've never been more excited to be obedient in my life!!! They talked about Alma and Amulek and their journeys and teachings throughout the land and how because they were always obedient, not only were they saved from a burning fire but they converted thousands of people!!! I left that conference so pumped and just ready to kill people with the gospel (in a spiritual sense). 

     Also, i went on an exchange this week and we went to this members house who had this INSANE sword collection!!! I was in HEAVEN! He has a sword from the Civil War that still had blood stains on it!! 

    It's been raining a bit up here but that's about it! But we have another baptism this Saturday that we are preparing for!

     Love you all!!, 

Elder Richy

Asian machete!

Don't get me agree.

Civil War Swords at an investigators house - he collects them.

I like to play with big knives!! :) 

Fog every morning.

At the other Hmong missionaries' apartment there's a big drawing of Navoo.  Pretty cool.

Just a cool selfie.

I know what you're thinking... was the car in motion?  We may never know.

Pang was baptized - I baptized her

11/9/15

Hello Beautiful people in support of the Elder Richardson Mission Foundation!, 

Guess what!?!?!? Your homie had his first baptism on Saturday and baptized this petite little Hmong lady!!! She's so aweome! The baptismal service went great and no I didn't mess up! We have 3 more invetigators getting baptized in the next 2 months as well! I'm so happy and love them so much!! I love the Lord and this opportunity he has given me to come serve in the California Fresno Mission and am so excited for the many wonderful things this mission has to offer!!! 

Also, yesterday we went and did a baptismal interview for this little boy that live in Los Banos and they had a pillar in front of their church, so obviously...i took pictures in it. I love you all! 

Kuv Hlub Koj,

Pang was baptized.  My companion and I. The interviewing missionary Elder Cunningham and his companion.

We all look better in White.

Halloween / Airplane Service

Nyob Zoo!, 

SO this past week was pretty awesome! Every other Tuesday my companion and I go to this plane museum and help kill wasps and pull weeds and stuff. But then we are aloud o go explore the museum. Well this past week I was exploring with one of my favorite Elders (Elder Smith) and we found out that we can get on top of the planes by pushing random buttons on the side of the planes hat cause ladders to sprout out! He and I are pretty close ( he was also a wrestler back in high school so we are pretty comfortable with each other...). We took pictures on the plane and then saw some workers coming so we hid on top of the plane until they drove away. It was a close call but we jumped off before they came back. It was lots of fun. 

Halloween was pretty fun, the recent converts brought up two other Hmong Elders from Fresno (basically our best friends) and we played at a park for about an hour and the had some intense volleyball/basketball games at the church for 6 hours!! SO ya that was a pretty eventful Halloween.

So after the prayers and fasting of everyone in the Merced stake....we finally got rain!!! On Monday it started raining at like 4 in the morning and didn't stop till about 9 that night! it was awesome!! 

This Saturday we have a BAPTISM!!!! And I couldn't be more excited!!! She is Hmong and I am most likely going to baptize her (I've said about 5 words in Hmong to her total and she absolutely adores me more than my companion for some reason but hey I'm not complaining). So ya I'll take lots of pictures for you all to see! Kuv Hlub Koj! 

Elder Richardson

Holloween - Learning HMONG

So this week my companion and I did some fun things! we decorated our apartment for Halloween!! (thank you mom for the package!) And we absolutely love it! I'm starting to really understand Hmong a lot better and can usually keep up in the conversation! As for my speaking....that's definitely still a work in progress, but i will get there! I want to become a Hmong Elder so badly!! And i will get there slowly but surely!! 

I found out like a week and a half ago me and Cogi have the same Hmong name. So he put me in their family! The mom even calls me her son in Hmong now! And Cogi is my older brother (Big Jer) and I am obviously his younger brother (little Jer). I love Cogi more and more everyday. And on Tuesday, he told me that he finally gets to see his kids that he hasn't seen in over 5 years!!!!!!!!  I guess you could say...I was a little excited. Also, we comitted two investigators to get baptized in November!! One's name is Christina whose like 48 and she is alright. Her date isn't completely solid cause it took us a half hour for her to give us a straight yes or no answer about baptism. But hey she said yes!!! And the other one's name is Sam, he's 24 and stays at home all day raising chickens. He knows the BOM is true and reads it without us telling him too! Christina is getting baptized November 21 and Sam is on November 14.

Last thing...I LOVE MY COMPANION!! He is a straight gift from God! We get along so well and we love each other and make fun of each other all the time!! (it's a guy thing) We pretty much do everything except snuggle...but hey that's ok! We still sing every Mormon gospel song known to man at the top of our lungs! Well, that's all for this week. 

Kuv Hlub Koj, 

Elder Richardson

Big Jer and Little Jer

Halloween Decorations 1

Halloween Decorations

Smoking and Smoothies

This week was interesting. Well we got our new car last Tuesday! It's the same thing but a year newer. 

So our investigator Cogi started smoking again so we have to push back his baptism date for November 7 which is annoying cause so many people want him to stop smoking so badly. But i know he'll pull through eventually!

So Elder pace and I have started dieting and every morning I make us delicious fruit smoothies (I like to thinkk I make the best smoothies ever). So all week we had amazing smoothies and then today came....all we had was apples and apple juice so i made a compromise. I made a smoothie with $ apples, apple juice, 2 eggs (for protein), 4 oreos (Elder Pace decided it was our cheat day), almond milk, and an ice tray full of ice. Needless to say, it was the single most disgusting thing I have ever had in my life, but it was our breakfast for the day so we drank every last drop!

That's about it for this week though! Love you all!

Kuv Hlub Koj!

Elder Richardson

P.S.- I've started saying my prayers in Hmong now!!

Air Bags don't feel so nice

Dear Family and Friends,

This past week has been awesome!!! Last week I had the opportunity to go to Yosemite and it was soooooooo much fun!!! Some members took us and it was lots of fun!!! i got to hike 12 miles which was amazing!! Not much else happened that was too exciting this week.  We had to 2 investigators drop us this week which was disappointing but we are bouncing back hard by parking our car a block a way from our appointments and talking to EVERYONE we see on the way!! We have about 7 new appointments this next week because of it!!

Ok so here's a story that happened on this wonderful preparation day today, i was driving down the road and my light was green and apparently this lady in the turn lane on the other side thought her light was green too no she turned right in front of me. I put both feet on the brake and slammed them down as hard as I could!  I hit her front of the car and honestly I felt like I was in an explosion. Just to let you all know, airbags don't feel as awesome as they look. And mine didn't excatly work all the way and I ended up hitting my head on the steering wheel causing a massive headache. Funny thing is the girl that pulled in front of us got out and immediately said it was my fault. i just kind of looked at her and with a smile on my face said, "Hi nice to meet you too. I'm not too hurt just a bad headache. I'm Elder Richardson. Are you ok Ma'am?" She was very surprised and finally realized that she was kind of mean in what she did and said sorry. Other than a massive headache and whiplash I am pretty much ok. My companion got out without a scratch though! I know the Lord definitely protected the both of us from getting too injured though and i am so thankful for that! But ya that about wraps it up for the week . i love you all sooo much! Till next week!!!

Kuv Hlub Kaj!

Elder Richardson

Our Car

Bad Headache After Accident