Thursday, September 24, 2015

Answered prayers & miracles

Good morning friends and family! How excited I am to tell you about everything that happened this week! Looking back on it all I am so grateful and so happy it brings me to tears.

Miracles that happened this week:

1. Braxton is going to be baptized on Wednesday!!! :) 
Sister Fuentes (her grandma) called us on Monday night and told us that her dad (not a member) has given her permission to be baptized. This is something I have fasted and prayed for and I know that Braxton's family has fasted and prayed for for over a year. This is a huge step for Braxton and I hope her dad's heart will continue to soften towards the Gospel. Braxton is such an example to her family and will be a huge influence in helping them become active in the church.

2. On Tuesday night we taught Brent Davis the 15 steps to stop smoking and so far he's had success!!! Yesterday was day 5 of being smoke free. He wasn't feeling too well from it all so he didn't come to church which was a bummer. But he experienced a lot of temptations this week and he overcame them! I am so happy for him. It's so awesome to see the changes and progress he's made. 

3. We contacted that referral we received--the Furbush family and they're awesome! There's Chris, Jenny and their daughter Amelia. We taught them about the Book of Mormon and invited them to read it and pray about it. We left the Restoration pamphlet for them to study and were planning on teaching the message of the Restoration in our next lesson and when we came back they all had read and Jenny had two pages front and back of questions for us. We answered them all and then taught more about how testimony comes by praying with faith. Sister Thumstedter invited them to be baptized when they came to know that the church was true and they committed! Amelia went to the young men/young women activity Saturday night and they came to church yesterday. The ward mission also had a social activity last night and they came to that so they're getting some great fellowship into the ward. 
I'm just so excited to teach a family! I've been praying to teach a family for many months. I know that the Gospel blesses families so much and I'm grateful for the opportunity to teach the Furbushs how the Gospel will bless theirs. 

I can't believe it's the end of the transfer already. Sister Thumstedter and I are pretty confident we'll be staying together next transfer. We'll be getting a car back next week! That'll help us out a lot! There is so much work for us to do here! I am loving serving here in Taylor. Thank you all so much for your prayers and your support! 

Hope you all have a great week! 

With love, 
Sister Richards :)

Cheesin' with Sister Thumstedte


The Sisters conference we had with all the mountain sisters last Monday night! It was really good.




Our awesome district this transfer! The Elders are something else haha they make us laugh for sure.




Saturday, September 19, 2015

Hello from Taylor!

I'm happy to hear that BYU won this weekend! Sounds like their season
is off to a great start!

But more importantly here's what happened this week:

We've been teaching this 12 year old boy named Michael. He and his
family joined the church about a year and a half ago. We've been
teaching the lessons to him and sharing stories from the Book of
Mormon with him to help him strengthen his testimony. He is so
awesome! He spends a lot of time with his grandma and she's not a
member of the church and she really doesn't like the church or any
church at all and she tries to get this to rub off on Michael but it
doesn't affect him at all! In our lessons he's showed us his style for
marking his Book of Mormon and he talks about his goals to read it as
many times as he can before he goes on his mission. He also says how
he wishes he could serve his mission right now! We told him he doesn't
have to have a tag to be a missionary and that he can be a missionary
now--we're going to work on that :) In the closing prayer he offered
in one of our lessons he prayed that he could continue learning from
the Book of Mormon, stay faithful and prepare to be a missionary one
day. I was so touched by his prayer! It was so sweet. I am so
impressed by his desires to serve. How great the youth are these days!

We taught the Norwegian foreign exchange student again. She really is
so prepared. We gave her a Book of Mormon in Norwegian and watched the
Restoration movie with Norwegian subtitles. It was great! We invited
her to read the BoM and pray about Joseph Smith. She said she had
never really prayed before in her life but she has started to and she
feels really good when she does. Yesterday when we were talking to her
host father he said she's already talked about coming back next summer
and being baptized! It's so neat to have the opportunity to share the
Gospel with her while she is here. Her host father also said she feels
really good when we come over. I'm so grateful that we are able to
bring the Spirit. We cannot teach without the Spirit!

Yesterday we had a very spiritual lesson with Mel, Katy and their son
Cooper. We read in the Book of Mormon about Sherem and Korihor and how
they sought to experience a sign before they believed and then we read
the testimonies of Jacob and Alma and how their testimony came simply
by the Holy Ghost. We asked Mel a lot of inspired questions and came
to understand his concern. He hasn't been receiving revelation through
prayer because he has been scared to ask. He knows what answer he will
receive when he prays about baptism. He told us that the Spirit is
telling him he's out of excuses. He is so close! I keep praying with
faith that he'll pray and feel the Spirit and know that he needs to
follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized. Please keep him in
your prayers!!

There is so much potential in our area! That referral we received from
the booth last weekend is a family that just moved here from New York
and they first were living in Snowflake and they were attending a ward
there and now they've moved to our area! We tried calling and
contacting them this week but we don't think they've moved in yet.
We're super excited for the opportunity to share the Gospel with them!

I hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Sister Richards :)

Here's my selfie with a cow haha




Said goodbye to Auralin this week! She's off to serve in the Washington Everett mission! :)



And here's me getting my wart burned off this morning. The 5 shots to numb my finger were painful. My pinky is larger than any jammed finger I ever had in basketball





And here's me getting my wart burned off this morning. The 5 shots to numb my finger were painful. My pinky is larger than any jammed finger I ever had in basketball











We were trying to selfie with Mel but he dodged it and my hair was falling out... 

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Hello!

Hello everyone! :)

This week was so busy but it was really good! Labor Day weekend is Taylor's sweet corn festival! Taylor is known for it's sweet corn. We volunteered to organize and create our ward's float for the parade cause they were just going to bag it. Sister Thumstedter and I said no way! Mel and Katy helped us out so much! We had a really good time working on it with them and some of Katy's family. The theme for the float was growing in faith, family and friends. We built a temple out of these huge boxes from the furniture store and Sister Thumstedter and I were teaching Katy's sister, who has a month old baby- and then her niece and her friends and Cooper and his friend passed out candy. We did pretty good for throwing it together in less than a week. haha 

We had a booth at the festival. We have a new potential investigator as a result! We also found a family from Eagar that's interested in the Gospel! Some members gave us some referrals to their less active family members. The set up was a lot better than our last booth! 

I'm out of time so I'll include some pictures and call it good! 

Have a great week! 

-Sister Richards :)

Working on the float!


Silly Mel...


Couldn't have done it without the Chees and their family and friends!


Taylor sweet corn! Yum!


And the booth!


Rodeo!


My cute friend Gavin Hensley


My cute friend Gavin Hensley

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Life's been crazy

Well Monday is here and I don't know exactly how to sum up this week... crazy? stressful? overwhelming? trying? exhausting? I'll be honest and say D) all of the above

These were the highlights of the week:
On Monday we had family home evening with the Austins. They have a foreign exchange student from Norway living with them this year. She is so sweet and so receptive to the gospel! She's actually taking seminary and studying the Old Testament this year. She had some questions about temples and we explained what they are and why they are important. She asked some really good questions and we invited her to have some more lessons with us to learn more about what we believe and she was open to that. We told her we would get her a Norweigan Book of Mormon and she was excited! Later in the week Sister Thumstedter were talking about how we want to teach the Restoration next and we found out that the Restoration movie has Norweigan subtitles! That was pretty sweet! We had planned to watch it with them yesterday but they had to cancel, so hopefully we can reschedule for this week! 

On Wednesday we went to visit this sister in the ward. She and her husband are inactive and they're pretty newly wed and they have a one year old son. We had a great conversation with her and got to know her pretty well. She's super sweet. We sat there for a while just talking and I didn't know how to bring up the gospel our how we hadn't seen them at church. It took me some time to get the courage and I prayed to know what I should say because I knew it was a sensitive subject. I finally just asked "Have you and your husband been to the temple yet?" and she opened right up and explained their current situation. She is more ready than her husband, he isn't ready to go to church right now but she's struggling to come on her own. We told her we know that her example will have a huge impact on her husband and will help them on their way to the temple. We invited her to come to church and said that we would love to sit by her. She really appreciated it. She didn't come this week but I hope we can help her gain the courage to attend next week. I'm so grateful that I myself gained the courage to ask a simple question so we could help her progress. 

We saw Heather this week! We dropped off some cookies and asked if we could come visit her. She said she would be busy but that we could come next (this) week. I hope we can find the right opportunity to share the gospel with her.

We were able to get some flyers together for the service project! On Thursday we were on exchanges and guess what?! Sister Thomas is my STL again. I think that Thursday was our like 20th exchange together and that's only slightly exaggerating. We have got on exchanges so much together. She's up in New Mexico now! We had a great day. We went tracting with the service flyers. We actually stopped at the Lutheran church to see if any of the members there would be interested in cleaning up the community with us. We were able to talk to the pastor. He was very nice and said he would see what he can do. He told us that he stopped at our booth that we had on the 24th of July and requested a visit so we called and chastised the Elders haha and told them to visit him. On the Marque (sp?) outside their church it actually says "We believe in Moroni 8:18" so that's pretty cool! That scriptures says: For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity. 

Also on exchanges we saw Brother Holladay... He's not really progressing :( He knows what he needs to do just needs to act. In the lesson we had he said "I know I need to for my family and for my wife" I said Brother Holladay the most important reason is for your personal salvation. I think we need to drop him soon because he's not making or keeping commitments. It's so sad to see him... trapped in addiction... We can't stray from the path.. we need to correct ourselves as soon as possible or we can get so old and forgetful that it's very difficult change.

It was neat to do an exchange with Sister Thomas again. We started doing exchanges together when I was in my second transfer. Now almost a year later we were able to reflect on how much we've learned and grown. 

One of the greatest miracles of the week was that Brent came to all three hours of church yesterday! He hasn't done that in over 30 years.

We're still experiencing troubles with the bikes. I think in the last two weeks we've had 8 flat tires. As soon as one is fixed another is flat. There's a bunch of other trials we're experiencing but I won't go into all that. A mission is hard. It is is trying, stressful at times, and it's exhausting. I'm so exhausted- I didn't realize how much biking all day would wear me out. I'm trying to juggle a lot right now. But I'm so grateful for this experience. I have learned and grown so much. Looking back I am so grateful for the changes I've made this past year and the missionary I've become. The above successes made this week worth it. This work is so rewarding. I feel so blessed to serve here and I love my mission so much! 

Thank you all for the love, support and encouragement!

Lots of love,
Sister Richards


Sister Call and I decked out our place with ensign pictures and I took this picture cause sister Sweeney wanted to see how we decorated our apts and I thought I'd share. 



We have so much love for this guy. Brent's doing so well!



Nasty web and spider at Gary's house... Ew



Sister Thomas and I - exchanges!



I don't know their reasoning... But pretty cool


At the service project I went to get my sunglasses out of my backpack and they snapped in half :(


At the service project I went to get my sunglasses out of my backpack and they snapped in half :(


At zone conference I got to see these pretty sisters! Love them