Tour de Taylor!

Good afternoon friends and family! 

It was another good week! We taught that newly married couple that I wrote about last week. Calvin know's a lot about the church already. We taught the Restoration and invited him to read the Book of Mormon and be baptized. He said he's already been baptized and we explained the Priesthood again. We were able to see him a few times later in the week just briefly and he said that he started to read! The bummer is that he's still living in Phoenix until he can find a job up here. So he said he'd be back up here in a couple weeks.

We went out with our ward missionaries this week and had some awesome success! We found another part-member family! Renee was baptized a long time ago and his wife and kids aren't members. He still has a testimony and his kids go to scouts where they used to live. It sounds like they're interested. Renee said he'd talk to his wife about his kids taking the lessons and coming to church. They have potential! :)

We had a couple really good lessons with this one less-active brother we've been teaching. He's had some problems with the word of wisdom and the members that came with us were really able to touch him with their testimonies and encouragement. I know that we need to reach out to those that have strayed and that as we do so we're following the Savior's example and keeping our baptismal covenants. Most less-actives will respond to the invitation to come back! 

The 24th of July Pioneer Day celebration and festivities were really fun! We were able to run a booth at the arts and crafts festival and at the community builder's themed parade we had a missionary float with the YSA- lots of returned missionaries! We were able to really get out in the community and celebrate the pioneer heritage. We got some good referrals from our booth and were able to talk to many people! 

Yesterday in Relief Society our lesson was on Elder Pearson's talk from this past conference titled "Stay by the Tree". I recommend everyone go back and study this one! One of my favorite quotes from his talk was "We can fill our lives with accomplishment and well-doing, but in the end, if we do not enter into sacred covenants to follow Christ and faithfully keep them, we will have utterly and completely missed the mark." This perfectly sums up our purpose as missionaries- helping people make and keep covenants! You may be a good person but you can't enter the Celestial Kingdom without making and keeping sacred promises. I'm grateful for the opportunity I have to share the Gospel and be a "guide" to help others to receive the blessings of covenant making and keeping. Yesterday we had dinner with the Chees and we talked to Mel about baptism and testified to him that it wasn't us 23 and almost 20-year-old Sisters extending the invitation to enter the waters of baptism, it is the Savior-- we're just His mouthpiece. Mel is really scared to be baptized but I know that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ dispels our fears (Elder Bednar). I hope we can continue to help Mel overcome his fears and strengthen his faith! 

I love you all! Thank you for your support and encouragement :)

Love, 

Sister Richards

We biked out to the Taylor sign for exercise one morning! So fun!

We live right across the street from the rodeo grounds so we sat in our driveway to watch the fireworks after the rodeo! They made up for not having fireworks on the 4th of July :)

Weekly free lunch at Celebrations! So yummy!

The missionary float!

And the booth :)

It was a great week!

It was a great week! We had great lessons with both investigators and

less actives. Yesterday we had a really good lesson with Mel (inv) and

Katy and some of Katy's family who aren't members. We taught the plan

of salvation with an emphasis on temples and the importance of temple

covenants. Katy came over this morning to tell us what a great lesson

it was and how everyone was talking on the way home about how they

need to go to church and read their scriptures. Mel encouraged Orion,

the young boy we've been teaching this summer, to go home and continue

studying and going to church even though he'll have no family support.

His parents will hopefully give him permission to be baptized soon!

Sister Call and I are so grateful they were applying the lesson we

taught.

I don't have enough to time to tell about all the other awesome

experiences we had this week but tonight we are teaching this newly

married couple that just moved here and came to church yesterday!!!

Apparently the wife hasn't really been active and her husband isn't a

member but is interested in learning more! Hopefully after tonight

we'll have a new investigator!

Hope you all have a great week!

-Sister Richards

I'm staying in Taylor!

Well, happy Wednesday! It's a transfer week and my news is that I'm staying here with Sister Call for her last transfer before she goes home! We're so excited to stay together. We had such a great week and this transfer is going to be a great one! 

I don't even know how to share everything that happened in the last week and a half--there was just so much!!! Thing are going really well. 

We were finally able to contact some inactive RCs with some of our ward missionaries in the 8th ward. We brought up the temple and being sealed with one Brother and his eyes lit up. He had the experience of temple baptisms after he was baptized and he loved the temple. He currently works Mon-Sat and so Sunday is his only day off which makes it hard to come to church. We were able to set a teaching appt for another day but then they weren't home. We're just excited that they are receptive. The RS is visiting the Sister as well so I think they have some good fellowship.  The other family is going to be a little stubborn about coming back. They have a son who's 8 years old and when we were talking to his mom on the porch he came right out and said "Will you teach me about the Book of Mormon?" It was awesome! 

We also had success visiting this less active family. They're inactive because the husband's mom is living with them and she apparently can't come to church because of her health/old age yet she can go shopping at Walmart??? Crazies... for some people any excuse will do. We're going to start teaching them tonight and we want to invite them to take turns coming to church if it really is necessary that someone is home with the mom.

Jeff Miranda, the convert of just over a year received his endowments in the Snowflake templeon Friday. It was such a neat experience to be able to work with a convert who has been retained and is still active and who is worthy to enter the temple! His son is visiting him right now and he's not a member and we taught him yesterday. He's really curious and desires to know the truth. He committed to start studying the Book of Mormon.

The 4th of July festivities sure are awesome up here in Taylor. These people are some of the most patriotic I've ever met! They have some really neat traditions. The history of Taylor is that members of the church were called by the prophet to come settle this land. They start out the day by early early in the morning lighting the anvil- an anvil with gunpowder with another anvil sitting on top and when it blows it's so loud! So they go all around town in this parade lighting off the anvil. I know that wasn't a very good description of how it all works but that's the best I've got. haha There also was a band following the parade playing patriotic music of course and the drum that was in the band is the original drum that came all the way from Nauvoo. We had breakfast with members and then we went to the patriotic program at the stake center where they had the band playing more patriotic music and there was a keynote speaker- a brother from our ward actually and they gave some town awards and things. The plans for our mission on the 4th were to "Go where the people are" so we went to the rodeo grounds to watch two daughters of a family we're working with barrel race! Then we went home for some studies and we lucked out with the way we planned our day because while we were studying while it was pouring rain. It was such a crazy storm. It poured for hours. We thought they were going to have to cancel the night rodeo! But they spent hours trying to fix the dirt in the arena and as my investigator Mel told me "Cowboys are tough" so the rodeo went on! We were able to watch a little bit of the rodeo with Mel but it was so delayed because of the arena being a bunch of mud that we only were able to watch about 30 mins because our curfew was 8:30... We live right across from the rodeo grounds where they were going to light the fireworks so we would have had a perfect view but they cancelled them due to all of the rain or something which was a bummer. We only saw a few big ones that people lit off. 

We have a baptism this Saturday! McKinley had her interview and she's all ready for her baptism this weekend :) We're super excited!

Also in the 6th ward we just committed Brayan to be baptized in August! :) We invited him to read the Book of Mormon but then he went to soccer camp for a week and when we followed up he hadn't read so we showed him exactly how the Gospel Library app works so he could listen to it and follow along and we explained thoroughly the background of the Book of Mormon and read the first chapter with him. He loved it! He thought it was really cool. We then invited him to read/listen to another chapter and when we followed up yesterday HE DID READ! :) It really is the greatest feeling when your investigators keep their commitments. He's also praying on his own and we committed him to listen to a chapter every day this week until we have a lesson on Friday with a family in the ward. 

Susanne is another RC we've been working with. We've been trying to help her be worthy to receive a temple recommend and go do baptisms. She is starting to be more receptive and really has a desire. We committed her to be worthy to do baptisms next month and we also committed her and her husband to prepare to be sealed next April after she hits her year mark! :)

We've started teaching the doctrine of the Sabbath for our dinner messages and committing families to make their Sabbath Day worship more sacred and meaningful. We've also been extending invitations to rescue less active families by inviting each family to pick a family in the ward to befriend and fellowship to help us in our efforts to bring them back. We feel like this is a more successful approach to inviting members to participate in missionary work here because no one seems to know or interact with nonmembers. We're excited to see how this works and to follow up with the families we've committed. I know that it is our responsibility as missionaries and members to rescue those who have strayed. Luke 22:32 "and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren" 

I love the Gospel and I love being a missionary and I feel so blessed to be serving in Taylor at this time! 

Sorry to those I didn't get a personal email to this week! I will on Monday! :) Also sorry for all the pictures :P

I LOVE YOU ALL! 

Sister Richards

We play sports every p day! :)

These red shirts are our zone tshirts for the transfer! Sister Call
and I designed them :

The Patriotic Program!

iPads

Good Morning! 

This week we spent most of our time in the church which was no fun. We have been entering in all of our records into our new area book app on our iPads.I took forever but it will be nice when it's all done. So as for more progress... there wasn't much time for proselyting. But this week will be good! :) 

The First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve are putting a huge emphasis on the Sabbath Day and yesterday our ward councils started discussing the training and how our Sacrament meetings can be more sacred. Us missionaries were forewarned that this was coming and we have been taught about the doctrine in our zone conferences. In teaching our investigators and less actives we have put a huge emphasis on keeping the Sabbath Day holy and the importance of the sacrament. Last week we had planned to teach a less active about the Sabbath, we had been bugging him for weeks to come back to church and before we even started our lesson he said he would come! We were so excited when he kept his commitment and we saw him at church on Sunday. The past few months have been really neat for me as I've covered multiple wards all we do all day on Sunday is attend sacrament meetings. I'm grateful for the opportunity to partake of the sacrament and remember the Savior during our meetings. I love seeing and sitting by our investigators and less actives too :) 

I know that what we do on the Sabbath Day is a sign to our Heavenly Father of how much we love Him. It's a day to rest from our labors and pay our devotions to God (D&C 59:9-10). It's not a day for recreation. We've been given 7 days during the week and we have one day to give to Him. I know that as we partake of the Sacrament and keep this commandment we are spiritually renewed for the week. 

I hope everyone has a fun and safe 4th of July! 

Love, 

Sister Richards :)

We Got To Go To Girls Camp!