Jan 28: Possibly a baptism

Hola Familia 

These weeks are just flying by. The weather here is just a dream - typical weather any old folk would want. This week we have still been hanging out with Jon Jon a ton. We started working out in his old broken down gym in the mornings. All of the windows are shattered, so it's freezing cold. He taught us this week how to make his homemade tacos, repair and reframe a ceiling, look for the positive in everything and much more. We have been slowing repairing his hotel. We helped him set goals and to trust and rely on the Lord for help. This week he told us that he wanted to be baptized, but before he wants to take all the lessons again, so it is a great opportunity for us to finally start teaching someone. President Nelson is coming to Phoenix in February to share some thoughts and his testimony. We are taking Jon, and he is more than excited. He exclaimed that he wants to be baptized before so he'll have a more spiritual experience. Big things coming. 

We have also started to teach a man named Jared who is an absolute beast. He is very lonely and has been wanting to find some people to be friends with.  We got him out to a potluck dinner on Sunday where he really got involved in talking to members. He was very happy at the end and was full of gratitude for coming. It turned out that he knew a good amount of people from work that he had never talked to. 

This week, we went to our local farmers market. We were surprised as to how many people we already know. It makes sense cause Ajo is tiny. We were greeted by so many giving us thanks for our service in spreading the word. 3 different people gave us free gifts. It's good to see our happiness and light shine on others. This week we also saw a Mariachi band that played a concert in Ajo. I never appreciated going to concerts or plays prior to my mission, but for some reason, now they are the best thing In the world. Probably because it is a break from the other things we do. 

A scripture for you all this week is in Helaman 4:12

12 And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.

I enjoy this because if we sincerely build our rock and our testimony with Jesus Christ and put our faith in him we cannot fall. As much as Satan will try and pull you away, you can not fall. 

Elder Rich

The sword

Pretty cool motorcycle

Dressed dog

Jan 21: Maricopa, Ajo, and the farmer's market

Hola familia, 

I spent almost my whole week in Maricopa until Thursday night. We had P day, zone meetings, exchanges, and zone conference. Overall I learned so much and I can't wait to apply what I've learned. It was weird to be away for so long and to be teaching so many lessons. I guess I'm used to teaching absolutely no one in Ajo. I went on exchanges with one of our zone leaders Elder Holiday, overall a good man and a good teacher. Learned some solid things. 

Sadly this week in Ajo we taught no lessons. We dropped 2 of our recent finds who really weren't too interested in changing. Our other 2 investigators weren't too interested in us coming back, so we're back to square one with no one - gotta love a good old whitewash. We met a man named Jon this week. He's pretty cool. He bought an old 30,000 sq ft hotel here that he lives in and is fixing up. He's come to church the past 2 weeks in a row and really enjoying it. Apparently, he's been close to baptism in the past but backed out last second. He looks to Elder Cowart and me as an answered prayer so let's hope we go somewhere with him. Elder Cowart and I have been spending a lot of time hanging out with him. I mean, we played pool in the old bar at his hotel the other day. We have also been helping him out with construction work around his hotel. He actually just cut my hair too. We're planning on driving up to Phoenix to take him to listen to President Nelson. He is very excited to go.  

We attempted to promote family history at our farmers market on Saturday but ended up being a complete bust. We set up a booth and maybe talked to 3 people about non-family history related, so we aren't totally sure if we are going to try it next week. We aren't sure either what we are going to do to find people this week.

A scripture that I memorized this week in Spanish was in Second Nephi 26:24

"He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him. Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation.

This week try and invite Jesus into your home. Try and invite his love and his matchless power into your home. We have a wonderful opportunity now with the Come Follow Me program to allow the spirit into our homes. I love you all I hope you enjoy this week.

 Love Elder Rico 

Church of Mike with my companion, Elder Cowart 

Family history booth fail

Jon's bar & hotel

Jon

Jan 14: Visa Update

Well, as you can tell by the subject of my email I received 2 updates on my Visa this week. The first one came around Friday. It said that by Visa had been registered, and I will receive another short email as to when I will attend the Visa consulate in Phoenix. The second email came on Saturday, and it said that there was an error with my Visa and I needed to fix it and resubmit it. The other 2 Visa waiters going to Ecuador received the same email so we will be working on that today. I'm not sure how it will turn out but I'm pretty positive I'll get it by the end of this transfer. And actually having said that we just received a call from the mission office saying our visas are fine and nothing is wrong. Apparently, we weren't supposed to get that email.  It will take another week to get things finalized and another week to get our meeting set with the consulate. It will be pushing it very close to the end of the transfer, but more than likely I should get it. But I may be here another transfer. If so, we should take off February 12. 

Ajo Arizona. What a place to be! This place is super fun. Of course like there isn't anything to do, so every day feels like a p-day. Our Ward is really focused on doing family history work, so as missionaries we try and promote people to use it. This week was decent, we didn't really get anybody to come out because every single person knows who we are in Ajo and has probably been hit by other missionaries. we decided that tracting wasn't the way to go. We had gone a couple times in our week and it was a complete bust, so we have been trying to go to activities where there would be opportunities to find people. So, we have been taking a clay/art class every Tuesday and Thursday for 3 hours. Elder Cowart and I both tried making the basic clay objects like bowls or cups and we are both so bad at art, but we did find a couple of people through that and we found a couple families to do service for. Elder Cowart and I also found a Mexican family this week to teach. We got lost in a neighborhood so we decided to randomly hit this one house. An older man answered and immediately let us in and we started to teach him. We shared some basic beliefs, and shared a video that poured in the spirit. We have since stopped by and given him a Book of Mormon and he loves reading it. We have found 4 new people to teach since we have been here. The work is not easy. Because the community here is so small, everybody knows each other. Although Ajo is so tiny, there are a heard of churches here - I would guess maybe 15 in total including ours. Most of the people stick to their own beliefs. We do a lot of service here. We have an Ajo Facebook post where we post free service opportunities. Our main objective is to find people through doing that. To try and serve people and talk about our religion when we are doing so. Hasn't worked too well but we’re in the midst.

We spent a lot of time this week trying to figure out ideas we can to do to get the community involved to find people. Ideas that you wouldn't usually think of or use to find people. We have a huge list of things we are going to try, but the one we are going to start promoting is basic and free language class taught by the missionaries. We think this has potential because there are always people that want to learn Spanish, especially here being so close to the border. So that is something we will be promoting at our next farmers market. We hope to find people by teaching Spanish and sliding in a brief spiritual message somewhere in there. Ajo holds a decent size farmers market every Saturday where people come and sell stuff. We are going to set a table next week and talk about family history and also about some of our ideas that we came up this week. I’m excited to see how it turns out. We have a lot of fun ideas that we are planning on trying. 

Our bishop felt inspired to focus more on the Spanish work and the people here. We want to try and do a Spanish sacrament meeting once a month. It is something that he has been wanting to try for a while but is afraid it won't work. This Sunday a pretty cool miracle happened. We were randomly driving to the church to drop off our garbage, and our Bishop was also there talking to a Hispanic lady. He called us over and turns out she had just moved here from Mexico and had been persistently looking for a church to attend ever since she had moved. She has been trying to find out what time our congregation started for a couple of days. We have plans to teach her and her family this week. She has 5 kids. After she drove away our Bishop explained that he felt inspired to drive over to the church. So looks like we really are going to have to start a Spanish congregation now. The work is coming along here. It's not always easy to White Wash areas but we have been so blessed with the previous missionaries helping out, but also our fantastic ward. We have many service projects this upcoming week. The work keeps moving on. Love you all.

Love Elder Rich

Ceramics class

Our ward mission leader, Malin Lewis
and my companion Elder Cowart

Classic Ajo Artwork

December 31: Transfer Week

Hello again, this week was super bomb. I found out last night that Elder Badstubner and I are getting split up. I'm super bummed out. President tricked us and said he was gonna second-half train me, but guess not. Elder Badstubner is gonna stay here in South Phoenix and first half train another fresh kid right out of the MTC, and I'm headed down to Ajo to whitewash again. (Which is when both missionaries are new to the area so they both know absolutely nothing) Apparently, there are only 2 missionaries in all of Ajo because it's a secluded town - Ajo is about 3 hours away from Phoenix and close to the border. The closest set of missionaries are 45 minutes away so I'm legit stuck with a new kid for 6 weeks. I also heard there are roaming pigs all over town. They run in packs, but I'm gonna try and see if I can't catch one. Also, I heard we have a huge backyard, so we might be able to actually build a pigeon cage. More to come haha.

Not really a ton happened this week, we found about 10 new people to teach and have been slaying our lessons. Coming into this area we started out with nothing. Legit, not a single person to teach, but now looking back to all the finding we've done and all the hours we've put in, it has really paid off. 

This week I had to go to the Instacare. We were weekly planning in our church building and I fell back in my chair while I was trying to scoot it back. As I feel back in the chair, it collapsed and 3 of my fingers got caught in between and were stuck. We tried to pull them out, but my knuckles were too fat and wouldn't budge. So we then decided to try and open the chair and slip them out but with my fingers in the worst possible spot, we couldn't open it.  It almost seemed helpless and my fingers were gonna lose circulation. We started to pry them out with different kitchen tools and they began to break one after another, but after some time we pried each one out. They were stuck inside for about 2 minutes in total. They looked pretty bad when we freed them. My pointer finger looked really bad, and so we drove to the Instacare to get it checked out. Luckily, just some superglue and a splint. More to come next week. Happy New Years to all, set some good goals. 

Elder Rich

5 minutes after

Smile

Vintage Cop

Classic Phoenix for ya

December 25: Christmas Week

Hola mass, Feliz Navidad! I wish you all who read this (my mass) a Merry Christmas. 

This week flew by, Im’a switch this week up and talk about the main/important parts about my week instead of a day by day list. 

Having said that Elder Badstubner woke up super sick Wednesday morning. He was throwing up all morning so we decided it was better to take the day a little bit slower. I took advantage of my time studying Spanish, reading from the Book of Mormon, studying grammar, and memorizing words. We found out that the other set of Spanish Elders were all throwing up all day too. We tied it back to yesterday's dinner, Taco Bell. They all ate the same thing, a Quesorito #1 - worse decision.

The man who said we could go catch pigeons on his house decided last minute not to let us. 

I went on exchanges on Friday with our district leader Elder James. He is an English elder and decided to come to my area so technically I was in charge of all the Spanish for the whole area. Not gonna lie I was a little nervous but Elder James and I straight up killed it. We saw tons of success. We talked to a ton of people (mainly in English) but when I spoke to those who spoke Spanish I realized that I know ALOT more Spanish that I thought I knew. I understood most of what people were saying and spoke enough to put my point across and try and set a return date. It's absolutely insane to think how far I've come. Thinking back to when I entered the MTC and knew practically nothing, no Spanish until now when I can hold my ground, It's crazy to think how fast you learn here. We study a lot, and pray a lot but to think how the Lord blesses his missionaries truly inspires me to work harder. To have only been here for such a short time and to understand as much as I do and to speak as much as I know is a tender mercy that the Lord is actively helping me. All in all, we set something like 6 return dates, oh and we got Shantel on date for the 12 of January so that's pretty cool. 

Love you all! 

Typical Arizona Picture for ya

Tamales

Merry Christmas

Skyping the family

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