Dec 18: Return date for catching pigeons

Good afternoon ladies and gents, welcome to another email. Overall super fire week with tons to talk about. Saw tons of success.


Tuesday: We taught Pedro again on Tuesday afternoon, and believe it or not, he is past Enos! He is straight up pounding the scriptures. He offered our opening prayer and while he was saying it, he just started bawling, it was super tender. We taught him more about the atonement and applying it for help. Mama sent a speaker so you already know we've been jamming in this house. We ate more Little Caesars pizza for dinner (guesstimate we have it probably 3 times a week) which is getting pretty gross. We went tracting for a little in an area that we haven't before and found a nice lady who opened right up and spoke the fastest Spanish I've ever heard. I didn't understand hardly anything, haha, but I caught that she was from Ecuador so that's gonna be fun someday. She was super super talkative and went on for probably an hour and a half and by that point my legs were asleep. 

Wednesday: We didn't do too much today, we've been driving over to a local library and doing our studies there because it's a lot easier to focus. We came home and made some classic quesadillas, of course, and went to work. We went to that same neighborhood that we did yesterday and the first thing we noticed was a house that had tons of pigeons roosting on top, so I was like "It's game time." We get to the door, knock, some man opens up and I gave him a speech. "Hey, we were walking around and noticed that you have a serious pigeon problem. We look for service opportunities like this to help out the community. We can remove them for you." The man was all in, so we are returning next week. In the meantime, I got to build a trap out of stuff I find on the side of the road hahaha. 

Thursday: We spent our whole morning and afternoon helping a family move. We had a ton of missionaries helping out so it went by super quick. Super grateful to have people to serve, especially during the Christmas Season. We have been scavenging for materials for the trap now on the side of the road. For some reason, people that live here think it's okay, or think it's funny to just throw their furniture and garbage on the side of the road. I don't understand it, but hey one man's trash is another man's treasure. We had found a struggling mother earlier in the week named Cathy, so we stopped by and taught her a little about our beliefs. She is super sweet, but sadly we had to refer her to our English elders here because we are only allowed to teach people in Spanish. 

Friday: We have been having so many meetings lately. Today we had another one. The 3-week meeting with President about questions we have or things we don't understand. We were there for a while - at least 3 hours. Super boring. We met with Tyler again. We sat around the campfire for our lesson and laughed for quite some time and eventually taught him the Word of Wisdom. God gave us that commandment because he loves us, and knows what's best for us. Tyler doesn't drink or smoke so he shouldn't have a problem with those. We realized that we have been struggling to find people to teach, and that going door to door doesn't work out, so we looked in our area book for ideas or people that we could stop by and see. We decided to clean up our area book a little by removing a ton of people who weren't interested, and we made a plan to stop by those that had been taught a little but stopped learning for some reason previously. That night we saw our work paying off... we went 3/3 on return dates. The second house we stopped by immediately let us in his house when he answered. We chatted for a bit and taught a little about why we are here on the earth. He was super engaged, and down to earth. He really liked what we had to offer. 

Saturday: We drove to one of the contact attempts from yesterday and it turned out unsuccessful. We drove around looking for a place to tract and decided to go to a nearby park. There were tons of people there having parties or playing sports. We approached a large group who were handing out free presents to kids in need for Christmas. The man in charge there was actually a member, so we talked to him for a while. We got there towards the end of the party so they were pretty much packing up. They had a decent amount of leftover toys and they just started giving them to us. The man in charge told us to give them away to families that we are teaching that can't afford toys for Christmas, so we now have about 50 toys to hand out! Super cool tender mercy. What a blessing it is to have the Lord looking out for you at all times allowing his love to shine everywhere at all times. It is a blessing to be able to give away these presents to families that have nothing because they are so grateful to have something. 

Sunday: I spent my whole Sunday morning preparing a talk that I was to give in Sacrament meeting. My talk was on having faith and having the faith to ask God for help when we need it, relying on him for comfort, strength, and help for anything. When the time came, I got up and gave my talk in full Spanish. It was kinda weird speaking to an audience in Spanish but the Lord was with me for sure. I read a couple scriptures at the pulpit. The first was 1st Nephi 15:11, and the second was D&C 6:31-36. I encourage you all to take a couple minutes to read them. I read those perfectly with no errors. The gift of tongues in real. I’ve seen it so much in my time thus far! All in all, I think my talk was 7 minutes long. 

Monday: I’m gonna keep this short cause I've been writing plenty enough for this week. But pretty much we didn't have our p-day yesterday because we had our actual interviews with President. I had mine, and I'm pretty sure I'll be staying another transfer here with Elder Badstubner which I'm super pumped about. 

I hope all you have a very wonderful week. Much love! Elder Rich

Santa - all I want for Christmas is my visa

Christmas is coming

Handing out presents 

Tacos

One of me for you for Christmas

Dec 10: Chilies and nińos... oh and a baptism

Another quick week another quick email from E. Reech. I hope everybody had a good week. This is basically what my week consisted of. 

Tuesday: The first half of Tuesday summed up was driving to Tempe for a zone conference and about 5 hours of pure fun sitting, listening and trying not to fall asleep. Quite a boring time, not a fan if I'm being honest. We met with Pedro again on Tuesday night. One of the first things he mentioned was that he had a direct answer to his prayer. He had been praying for a decision that he needed to make. He didn't know whether he should drive to Mexico and see his brother who was dying or to stay here in Arizona to find a job and continue listening to the missionaries. He said the next morning he received 2 phone calls from people trying to hire him. Super cool. I offered the opening prayer, and when I finished he was just sobbing in tears. He was like, "I'm sorry, I'm just so happy with my life right now." No doubt it was the spirit testifying the truthfulness of all things. 

Wednesday: Today was an absolute blast, absolute insane day. I really have been focusing on my Spanish this past week. I get up every morning and listen to a conference talk and just start reading Spanish in the Book of Mormon, trying to memorize 30 words per day. All in all, I forget all those words by nighttime. Hahahaha. We taught Shantel again tonight. She has been investigating the church for about 3 years now. Her husband is pretty anti-Mormon and doesn't really like her taking the discussions but she is spiritually prepared. She has been taking lessons for 3 years now, so she knows a ton about our gospel. The only thing she really is missing is baptism, it's really her last step.  We asked if we could kneel down and pray and ask God to see what her next step in her spiritual progression would be, and when we concluded she felt that it needed to be Baptism. She knew it, Elder Badstubner and I both knew it... the last step. We didn't invite her though, but we told her that it is the end goal and we're going to get her prepared for the day. We also met with my boy Tyler - A little bit about him, he is a recent graduate from high school and was referred to us by a woman in our ward who's daughter is dating him. The man is just a straight up beast, love the kid. In our previous lesson, we invited him to read Second Nephi chapter 31 when Jesus was baptized and set that perfect example for us to all follow him. He was super engaged and immediately wanted to share what he loved and felt when he read it. He was super interested in the topic or baptism, and straight up said he wanted to follow Jesus and be baptized. We got him on date for the 29th of December. Talk about the Lord preparing people. 

Thursday: We had another lesson with Pedro, and we figured we'd send it and teach him about baptism, and we had a very spiritual lesson. Pedro currently has 2 sons serving missions. One of them is in Africa, and the other in India. Pedro went through a divorce some time ago, and his ex-wife got baptized and raised their sons in the church. Pedro told us that he wants to use the atonement of Jesus Christ before he gets baptized so he'll have a super spiritual experience. We have that end goal in mind. We stopped by Antonio's house again, and he was dressed in the Grinch Pajamas onesie. We were talking to him for a while and all the sudden his little 3-year-old walks over to me and punches me right in the groin, and my companion goes "Audios Elder Riches Ninos" It was super funny. 

Friday: Went to 5 Guys for lunch, spiced it up a little. We prepared all our lessons for the day early in the morning and every single one of them bailed. So we spent the whole day finding. Mexicans love their Chilies. You can tell if they are Mexican because almost every house has chili plants in the front. We started doing this thing where we would eat the full seeds and all chili right when we knock on the door and when they opened up we would try and play it off. In one particular door approach we did, and the lady answered right when the spice just kicked in. Man, I swear they have the hottest peppers ever. We just try to play it off, but it is for real, the hardest thing because you just feel like you are going to throw up on the inside and die because your mouth is on absolute fire and you have no water, and we can't be like, "Your chilies are super hot, can we have some water!" hahahhaha. We are all about the full sends and memories. If you ain't full sendin you ain't livin. 

Saturday: We did a service project for about 5 hours, refurbishing an old baseball park. Sanding, and staining old bleacher seats. Cutting and ripping out grass in the infield. For real was a workout. We taught Tyler again about the atonement, and after we invited him to pray and ask for forgiveness he goes. "I'm not promising anything, I just can't. I'm just going to because I have to. It's not a promise, I'm just going to." What a stud. 

Sunday: Another 3-hour meeting at church ALL in Spanish, wasn't too bad. I understood a lot of it. Pedro showed up though which was awesome. He was a little teary-eyed the whole time. 

Love you all, Don't forget to find opportunities to Light the World this week!

Elder Rich

My boy Ty

For the little sisters

full sends only

pigeons

Dec 3 - Out Here In Arizona

Buenos Dias otra vez. This week was flat out awesome. The field just keeps getting better and better. I'm loving it out here, my comp is an all-around beast. Anyway, this is what happened this week. 

Tuesday: We woke up at 6:30 every morning, and I'm still not used to it. I'm dead tired every single morning. I usually eat fruity pebbles or cream of wheat every morning - what else do you need? We do about 3 hours of studies every morning - 1 hour of personal, 1 hour of companionship, and 1 hour of language. This week our main focus was to find people to teach and to find referrals from members. We found an older woman named Virginia who had been taking lessons from the previous elders. We got to know her and her brother for a bit and read a couple scriptures in 2nd Nephi. They were just astonished, they said they could just feel the power in the message we shared and really wanted to learn more about our message. 

Wednesday: We did service at a food bank on Wednesday morning. We pretty much moved food around and organized it into piles. All of it was expired and pretty gross. There was a huge crowd of people waiting outside trying to get their hands on some of it. We would bring out small portions at a time and they would legit fight over the food. It was pretty funny. Right after Elder bad stew and I drove back over to Virginia's house for our lesson. She walked out and the first thing she said was "I'm gonna be honest with you guys, I'm not interested in anything you have to say or what you want to teach me. I would rather drink my beers then have you tell me what I can't do." She went on to say her daughter is super depressed so she has to take care of her 6 kids and she can't survive without drinking some alcohol. We began to teach her that our message can help her and her daughter and that through Jesus Christ anything is possible. Elder Badstubner and I were super bummed out because they had admitted to feeling the spirit so strongly the night before, and now nothing. 

Thursday: On Thursday all the newbies got to go to the Gilbert Temple, so we had to wake up decently early to drive to the mission home. It felt good to leave the mission boundaries haha. The Gilbert Temple is absolutely huge, and it's super nice. Mama sent me a package stuffed full of Christmas stuff, so we spent the next little bit decorating our room. It looks awesome now. We had a couple of lessons we had to attend but they both bailed, so we knocked doors for a while and had no luck. 

I often find myself just staring at pigeons here. There are so many, and they are twice the size as they are in Utah. They thrive here I swear, and there are so many different colors and flocks flying around. I have been trying to catch them for about a week now, but unsuccessful. I had so much fun trapping pigeons at home, so Elder Stew and I wish we could make a pigeon trap and set it somewhere

Friday: Funny story, We drink a LOT of water here, so you have to use the restroom a lot. I woke up around 2 in the morning and when I walked out of the bathroom, my companion gets out of bed turns the lights on and kneels down by his bedside and starts to pray. I was so confused, I thought that he couldn't sleep or something so he was praying for help. He finishes, and continues to look at me and then looks at the clock and back at me and was like “Oh my gosh what am I doing?"  That day, we drove downtown to do a service project for “Feed my starving children.” We boxed and made bags full of food for children all around the world. All in all, we packaged $45,000 worth of food for kids. 

Saturday: first off Happy late birthday to my sister Jill! Today was pretty festive. We sipped hot chocolate all day now that it's the season. Since it was a day of service, we went and laid shingles for one of the families we are teaching. We cleaned up his yard and laid tons of shingles for about 4 hours. We hope our service helps them realize we are here to help them and we care for them. They brought us Little Caesar's pizza like an hour before dinner. At dinner, we hardly ate anything. We felt bad because the lady who made us dinner kept telling us to go get more and we were like "We're too full."

Sunday: On Sunday we got to hear from President Ballard from the 12, and also President Gay from the 70. We got to also shake their hands. Our whole zone went to listen to them. Is was super cool to see them and to meet with them for a second. 

Anyway sorry, that was a lot if you made it to this point!

 I love you. Haha till next week 

Elder Rich

Pictures: (1-2) Temple pics (3) serving (4) pigeons (5) Arizona sunset (6) Views 

Nov 26: Primero Semana en el Campo

Good afternoon, Overall such a fun week here in Arizona. I love it here so much and love the people here too.

Tuesday: On Tuesday, our entire district woke up at 4 excited to leave the MTC. We didn't have to report until 8:15, so we took our time getting ready. When our time was about up, we all took a victory lap around the whole MTC campus. It was one of the best feelings of my life knowing I had endured it and then had to look at all the people who were stuck there. When the time came to depart, we grabbed our bags and took off. It was such a weird feeling to walk out of the back doors and into the real world. Right when I got on the bus, I called both my parents and talked to them the entire time we shuttled downtown (thanks for sending a tracphone). And I accomplished something I never thought I ever would. Somehow out of my persuasive lips, I convinced my mom to meet me at the airport. It was such a beautiful feeling to see her and to talk to her for a bit. Once through security, all the missionaries ate some super good Cafe Rio and waited about 2 hours for our flight to take off. I didn't last long on the plane ride and fell right asleep. The flight was super short, and before I knew it we had landed. We met our mission president, and drove over to his house for a delicious dinner and stayed the night at some Elders’ home.

Wednesday: We got up early like always and headed straight to the church building to eat breakfast, and to go over some safety rules for the mission. We are mainly a biking mission, but we still drive cars most of the time. We walked into the gym and got assigned our trainers. My trainer’s name is Elder Badstubner (only took me like 4 days to remember lol). He is from Atlanta and is about 6'4. He just finished his training, and now he is training me so it’s a straight up party. We grabbed my stuff and went to our house and dropped off my stuff and went right out. Arizona has the prettiest sunsets ever and perfect winter temperature. There are a lot of Mexican people here who speak Spanish so my Spanish should be good by the time I leave.

Thursday: Was an absolute breeze. Because it was Thanksgiving, we could not proselyte so we played sports and games all day long. We started off playing soccer with the Spanish ward here for about an hour. I am pretty bad at soccer and Mexicans are super good. We then drove over and played football with a whole bunch of firefighters here in Tempe. We ate some super good food for lunch at a member’s home. We just relaxed and then ate more food at night time at another member’s home. Mexicans sure know how to do Thanksgiving right. We ended the night by playing some basketball - Really just enjoyed a day off.

Friday: Elder "Bad stew" and I got assigned to serve in the South Mountain side of Phoenix. We are whitewashing the whole area, which means we are both brand new to the area and have no idea what we are doing and who the people are here. It was a little difficult for both of us because we are practically starting from scratch. We have no people to teach, nobody to check up on, and no idea where we are half the time. We decided to meet with the Bishop and the Ward mission leader here. They gave us a ton of info and gave us some names of people to go by and see how they are doing. He mainly wanted us to stop by members’ homes and get to know the families and ask for referrals. The bishop here is awesome, his main focus is missionary work so he makes sure the whole ward is helping out with it. We have a member feed us every night, and actually, they cook decent food. Most of the area here is super poor. Most people live in trailer homes, or just on the side of the road in little shacks. They are super grateful though for what they have. Elder strew and I did a lot of tracking on Friday and didn't have too much luck.

Saturday: Saturday was my favorite day so far in the Mission. Our main focus was to find people to teach. We had set up a couple of appointments to teach, but most of them bailed. We did teach one to a recent convert named Antonio. We taught him the importance of attending the temple and why we should strive to enter. We invited him to work towards entering the temple on the 8th of December. We also attended 2 baptisms on Saturday. One was an 8-year-old boy, and the other was a young lady who made the changes necessary in her life to be baptized. Elder Badstubner and I were in charge of the halftime show so we had to teach the whole Restoration. It went by pretty smoothly. I sure don't know a lot of Spanish, but the spirit was there for sure. 

Sunday: Sunday was honestly a super weird day. It was my first time attending a full 3 hour church, not in English. I was pretty confused the whole time. I honestly had no idea what anybody was speaking about. Anytime anyone would try and talk to me I would just sit there and smile, and look at my companion haha. Good times! I still have a lot to learn but I know by having faith in God, anything is possible. We spent the remainder of our day tracting. We found a man named Carlos, and we taught him a short lesson. We spent the remainder of our night trying to find people. We weren't having much luck so we decided to say a prayer and asked God where we needed to go because there were people here waiting to hear our message. I felt prompted to go to a trailer park area and we did. We talked to tons of people and set 4 appointments to come back to teach. One woman, in particular, had seen missionaries before but had never wanted to talk to them. She felt something different from us, something that she had never felt before and decided to hear us out. I have really come to love Tempe. My attitude had totally flipped. I was so biased towards United State missions, but they are all foreign and they all need missionaries to teach the word of God. I am happy to be here, and I know I am here for a reason. Much Love.

Elder Rich 

The boys

Reassignment Elders

Here we go

Mom!

My aunt Lig was picking up her daughter, Elise, for Thanksgiving
at the same time so I got to see them too which was cool

companion, Elder Badstubner

Mission president, President Christensen and his wife

Out on "Lake Powell"

Nov 17: MTC week 6 - Last few days

Man, what a wonderful sight. Only 2 more days until we actually get to teach legit people. This past week flew by. Nothing really happened this week. 

One of the best things about the MTC is the opportunity to attend the temple every P-Day. Not only do we enjoy our time in the temple, but after as well. THE MOST important thing though is that we don't eat breakfast before, and after we finish our session - we FEAST, I'm telling ya! Today, we got to the temple around 7:25 and did Initiatories and then right after we did a session. As soon as we finish, we race to the men's dressing room and change quick. The whole basement of the temple just smells like food. Y'all don't even understand. After eating MTC processed food for days and days going to the Temple and taking your first bite of legit food is a miracle. I'm telling you, the best thing ever. One of the best moments of my week every week.

Also this week, we taught about 10 lessons to our fellow classmates. I still think back to my first lesson that Elder Flake and I taught and I distinctly remember just sitting there not saying a single word. I would write down my testimony and my prayer on paper and while teaching, I would just read it off!  Contrast to this last lesson, and I realized how much I have learned here at the MTC and how much I have learned about teaching the doctrine of Christ instead of just reading what you think you know on a piece of paper. I can't wait to get immersed in Spanish and really start the journey of a mission. 2 more groundhog days left. Next email will be from Tempe. 

Shout out to my boy T-Pac for starting the best adventure of your lifetime on Tuesday.

Also thank you for all of you that supported me while I've been at the MTC, all the letters, packages, and emails. Much love!

Happy Thanksgiving this week

Elder Rich

At the temple

The district

Elder Mitch making us all laugh

Nov 10: MTC Week 5 Tempe Arizona

Well, no surprise I didn't get my visa so I got re-assigned to Tempe Arizona for 6 weeks. I take off the 20th at 8:15 and I seriously couldn't be more excited to be out of this place. Today is my one month mark. It’s weird to think that I've been gone this long. The Spanish is still coming, we put a lot of work into it. I can already tell when I leave the MTC I’m going to know absolutely nothing.

Nothing really happened this week, typical class, study, and exercise time. We always get some crazy volleyball games going. We finished our Soda Tower with 300 cans and it was taller than I was, I haven't even gained a pound either.

A scripture that I especially liked this week was in Alma 26 versus 11 & 12

11 "I do not boast in my own strength, nor in my own wisdom; but behold my joy is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy, and I will rejoice in my God.

12 Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever." 

This scripture really spoke to me. As a missionary, it's super easy to get frustrated with myself, or with those around me about so many things. I know that I am nothing, but in the strength of God, I can do all things. 

I hope you all have a wonderful week. 

Elder Rich

Map picture with Ecuador - I'll get there eventually

Picture with my brother, Austin's, trainer from Wisconsin, Elder Lewis, who is now a Hmong
teacher at the MTC.  He seemed like a super funny guy. He said Austin was a great missionary. I pulled off my tag and showed him my name and he like instantly gave me a hug. He told me
his first impression of Austin was him dunking a basketball and he thought it was so cool.  He also said
he went back to visit Wisconsin this last summer and he said Austin was cracking jokes in Hmong.

Elder Mabeus and the Soda Completed Soda Tower

MTC selfie

November 3: por los piebes - MTC week 4

Nothing really happened this week so this email is gonna be a little shorter than usual.

I forgot to mention in the previous emails that my companion and I started teaching TRC lessons to an actual person of interest. The lessons are for 25 minutes each and we have 3 each week. Our person of interest is named Andrea and she is from Spain. She is currently attending BYU to study English. Elder Flake and I have taught about 5 lessons now, and this past Thursday we taught the restoration of Joseph Smith to her. Every time we teach a lesson, the spirit is so strong, and I just wanna speak English and say “Do you feel the spirit that is present today"? It's honestly crazy how much Spanish I know. I can understand just about everything that is spoken in the lesson, and speak what words I need to say in Spanish. 4 weeks down, 2 more to go!

The elders in my district and I have been working on a soda tower ever since we've been here. I'd say we crank about 3 sodas each every day. Funny story… My mom sent me a loaf of pumpkin chocolate chip bread for Halloween this past week. The bread was just sitting there on our desk in my room so I gathered all the Elders in our zone for something I called "Partake and Pass" so I went first and took a bite out of the bread. As a couple more Elders took a bite I stopped them and said "Wait, wait. Whoever takes the biggest bite out of the loaf wins!" I swear, these Elders were passing this thing around taking the biggest honking bites ever. Every Elder kept trying to top the previous person with a bigger bite. We were all screaming our guts out - pretty funny. Also last night, P-day eve, our zone gathered together in the meeting hall. Elder Mabeus brought out his CD player and turned on the Frozen Soundtrack. We immediately started singing along. We had about 15 Elders all singing and during one particular song, we all started to mosh pit! It was so funny, mainly that we were getting rowdy to Disney songs. 

Overall a good week.

Love Elder Rich

soda tower

The boys with Sister Hatch

Welcome to Groundhog day Elder Jensen