Can't believe I will be home a year from now!

Hey everyone! 

SO much happened this week! We have had so many referrals that we've needed to contact and this week we contacted them all! Which was such a miracle. Usually we have to attempt to contact them multiple times but this week everyone was home first try! Not everyone was interested but we were able to talk with everyone we saw in the complexes we were at and we found a few potentials!!! One referral we received only had the apt complex address and no apt # so Sister Pazmino and I put up Easter Pageant flyers on every door (~40) with sticky notes that we had written a message and our number on. It was a lot of work to try to contact this referral but we did! Within a few hours the person we were trying to contact called us! The Easter Pageant is a production that the Mesa Visitor's Center puts on every year. They have over 300 people involved in this play of the life of Jesus Christ. Every day we pass out these flyers like candy and we've had a lot of success doing so! 

We had some really great lessons this week. We always want to have members at every lesson possible and it's been hard to find members for our new ward because we haven't met that many yet! So we talked to a sister in the ward to see if she could refer us to some people who would be good fellowshippers to our investigators. She was spot on! Our lessons were so powerful because of the members that we had with us. One member is returning to activity and just got her temple recommend back after many years of not being to the temple. We didn't even know she was inactive for a long time or any of this until we met her at the lesson. And the lesson we were teaching was about temples! It was so good. I'm so grateful for the members in our wards and know that we need them to be successful in our work! 

This week we had a temple trip to the Mesa temple! It was so good!  :) I love going to the temple. 

The whole time I've been in Mesa I've been trying to find this guy that bikes around with a cart selling corn with chili powder, snocones and mangos also with chili powder and this week Sister Pazmino and I found one! I wasn't brave enough to put chili powder on my mango but he sprayed lemon juice and sprinkled salt on it and it was so good!!! Mexicans put lemon on everything... 

We also went to the Phoenix zoo today with one of our members! It was so much fun! We rode on a camel and fed a giraffe! Feeding the giraffe was definitely my favorite part! :) 

Also, one last thing. We had stake conference yesterday and it was so so good! The messages were so powerful and really touched me personally and were exactly what I needed. President Sweeney spoke and called Sister Pazmino and I out of the congregation to bear our testimonies and share why we decided to serve a mission. It definitely was a little nerve racking for us since we didn't have really any prior notice! 

I'm so grateful for my testimony and the opportunity I have to share it with others and to grow so much as I do so! I love this work <3

Have a great week! 

Sister Richards