No email this week because the church system was down, but here are a few pictures to enjoy until the next email.
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| Hanging out for P Day Activities |
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| Baptism with Jim! Elder Rich did the baptizing! |
This blog is for Elder Allen James Rich who will be serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for two years in the Florida Fort Lauderdale Mission. We hope you will check in frequently to see how he is doing!
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Monday 8/13/18
Hey family and friends
So this week has been crazy for all the wrong reasons lol. So we really haven't found anyone to teach in my area for a few weeks now and the area we are in is an area where the people aren't so nice. This week we had another person draw a gun on us and a couple of people telling us to leave because their neighbors will shoot us. We also had another guy threaten to arrest us if he saw us near his property or on his street again. Jim is finally getting baptized this week! We have his interview lined up for this Friday and he's getting baptized on Thursday. Our ward might be getting kicked out of our building so that's awesome. Sorry about the non day to day format this week there's just not a lot of things that happened. So back to our building we are currently holding church in a middle school because our chapel is being built but something is always wrong so the finish date always gets pushed back. School starts here in Florida this week so if you could pray we get to keep meeting in our building that would be great. Now to the fun stuff.
Miracles.
So this week for my personal study I have been taking a challenge left by Elder Bednar which is to get a blank copy of the Book of Mormon (got plenty of those around here) and to mark it with one subject. I have been doing that with the Doctrine of Christ. It's going so slow because everything applies so I'm marking everything. It has really helped me to realize though how much the Book or Mormon as a whole is a testament of Jesus Christ not just a few chapters here or there. I was also reading in the Bible and I found a verse that really is so true in every situation. So a little backstory to this verse. The prophet Elisha was at a certain city with one of his servants and the city was surrounded one night by force's of an enemy nation and when they woke up they saw that the hill side was covered with this other nations forces and the servant of Elisha said master what shall we do and this was Elishas response:
2 Kings 6:16- Fear Not, for they that be with us is more than they that be with them. This is so true. This verse is backed up by D&C:84:88 which reads as I will go before you. I will be on your right hand and on your left. My spirit shall be in your heart and mine angels shall be round about you to bear you up. This verse is so true and powerful. And another verse that backs this up is DC:82:10 Which reads I the Lord am bound when ye do what I say but when ye do not what I say ye have no promise. What this means is that heavenly father will always help us out when we are keeping his commandments and that all the promises in the scriptures are applicable to us as long as we are keeping his commandments. The even greater thing we have though is the atonement because none of us are perfect and we all will mess up. The Atonement of Jesus Christ allows us to be forgiven of our sins. There is a line from a song that describes how heavenly father feels about us and why the atonement is an act of love. "Come unto Christ. He's calling your name. He's waiting for you with arms open wide. Come unto Christ. This is such a powerful line. It is so true though. The world makes it seem like there's never any hope in the world or that once you've messed up that's it but I bear my Solemn witness that this is never true and never will be the case. Our heavenly father is always going to be there and he will always love us no matter what we do. He might be disappointed in us but as long as we ask him for help and for forgiveness he will always help us out.
That's all I really got for this week peoples.
Hey family and friends
So this week has been crazy for all the wrong reasons lol. So we really haven't found anyone to teach in my area for a few weeks now and the area we are in is an area where the people aren't so nice. This week we had another person draw a gun on us and a couple of people telling us to leave because their neighbors will shoot us. We also had another guy threaten to arrest us if he saw us near his property or on his street again. Jim is finally getting baptized this week! We have his interview lined up for this Friday and he's getting baptized on Thursday. Our ward might be getting kicked out of our building so that's awesome. Sorry about the non day to day format this week there's just not a lot of things that happened. So back to our building we are currently holding church in a middle school because our chapel is being built but something is always wrong so the finish date always gets pushed back. School starts here in Florida this week so if you could pray we get to keep meeting in our building that would be great. Now to the fun stuff.
Miracles.
So this week for my personal study I have been taking a challenge left by Elder Bednar which is to get a blank copy of the Book of Mormon (got plenty of those around here) and to mark it with one subject. I have been doing that with the Doctrine of Christ. It's going so slow because everything applies so I'm marking everything. It has really helped me to realize though how much the Book or Mormon as a whole is a testament of Jesus Christ not just a few chapters here or there. I was also reading in the Bible and I found a verse that really is so true in every situation. So a little backstory to this verse. The prophet Elisha was at a certain city with one of his servants and the city was surrounded one night by force's of an enemy nation and when they woke up they saw that the hill side was covered with this other nations forces and the servant of Elisha said master what shall we do and this was Elishas response:
2 Kings 6:16- Fear Not, for they that be with us is more than they that be with them. This is so true. This verse is backed up by D&C:84:88 which reads as I will go before you. I will be on your right hand and on your left. My spirit shall be in your heart and mine angels shall be round about you to bear you up. This verse is so true and powerful. And another verse that backs this up is DC:82:10 Which reads I the Lord am bound when ye do what I say but when ye do not what I say ye have no promise. What this means is that heavenly father will always help us out when we are keeping his commandments and that all the promises in the scriptures are applicable to us as long as we are keeping his commandments. The even greater thing we have though is the atonement because none of us are perfect and we all will mess up. The Atonement of Jesus Christ allows us to be forgiven of our sins. There is a line from a song that describes how heavenly father feels about us and why the atonement is an act of love. "Come unto Christ. He's calling your name. He's waiting for you with arms open wide. Come unto Christ. This is such a powerful line. It is so true though. The world makes it seem like there's never any hope in the world or that once you've messed up that's it but I bear my Solemn witness that this is never true and never will be the case. Our heavenly father is always going to be there and he will always love us no matter what we do. He might be disappointed in us but as long as we ask him for help and for forgiveness he will always help us out.
That's all I really got for this week peoples.
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| Doesn't Elder Rich look great???? |
Hello family and friends... and people I don't know but that read this. Lol so this week has been SO FLIPPING BORING. We just had our Zone Conference. It was pretty good. That was on Wednesday. I'm going to try and member this week day by day but if it's wrong oh well.
Tuesday. So Tuesday was an alright day we found a woman named Lisa. She was the only person on this street to open the door to us. She's a funny woman. We taught her about the book of Mormon and we bore testimony about it's importance. We left her with a copy and are stopping by Saturday to see how her reading went.
We knocked for a really long time on Tuesday. It was pretty crazy. Florida summers are honestly not as bad as California as long as your drinking water you'll be fine.
Wednesday. So from 5 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon we were at Zone Conference over in Miami... that's a pretty crazy place. Anyways Zone Conference is where we find out what President Garns wants us to focus on this transfer. We are focusing on the Doctrine of Christ this transfer. For those of you who don't know the Doctrine of Christ can be found all over the Book of Mormon but my favorite is 3 Nephi 27. To summarize it is:
1. Faith in Jesus Christ
2. Repentance
3. Baptism
4. Receiving the gift of the holy ghost
5. Enduring to the end
It is the key principals we try to teach people. We had an awesome experience that night tho. We went to Chili's for dinner because it was right across the street from our lesson. And our server was a returning member (we aren't allowed to say less active the church has officially changed it to returning member) We are going to go visit her on Monday and see how she's doing.
Thursday. So Thursday morning we went and met with Sister Williams she is a returning member and her two kids aren't baptized. She has had a really hard life. She's currently getting evicted. She has been really angry at God for a long time and she said that she usually doesn't let missionaries over but for some reason she let us come over. That was one of the strongest spiritual experiences of my mission. We bore testimony to her of God's eternal love for all of us even if we don't want it. We read Alma 42 with her (a personal favorite of mine). We gave her a promise that if she would kneel down in prayer and ask God to show her how much he loves her and to read her scriptures she would see her problems melt away and she would feel that eternal love and guidance our Father in Heaven wants to give us. We went knocking that day on the same street as Lisa because we didn't finish it. We knocked into a man named Rueben. He' s from Cuba but he speaks awesome English. He is not very religious but his wife is a JW or Jehovas Witness. We left him with a book of Mormon and a commitment to read 3 Nephi 11. It was pretty cool. OH SHOOT I FORGOT TO MENTION THIS. So we are no longer allowed to ask people for bottles of water which really sucks because it's hot y'all. We can now go home if we really need to get water but we can't ask for it at doors anymore. Anyways after we met Rueben we ran into this older lady who asked who we were as she drove past. We told her we were missionaries and she said oh that's good cause I was going to shoot you. She pulls a gun out of her Center Console and my comp are like what the flip. We gave her a book of Mormon tho which was pretty funny. She was packin tho. She had a Glock in the center console. A shotgun in the back seat and a knife strapped to her seat.
So Friday Saturday and Sunday all can be summarized with one word BOREDOM!!!!!! So Elder Norman somehow got sick and they think it might be appendicitis so please pray for him and we have been stuck inside all day for these days. I have done exchanges with the zone leaders twice. We went to see Lisa and she wasn't there and I'm hopefully going to see our man Jim tonight but his baptism on the 4th is being pushed back because he just can't quit coffee in time. He is quitting it just slowly.
So the Zls exchanged with me and I was able to go our for the night and work. We went and saw Jim and yes we are pushing his baptism back but we also left him with a promise that if he replaces drinking coffee with reading the scriptures and prayer he will never feel the withdrawal or need for coffee again. We shared when christ declared he is the bread of life. That is a cool video I would encourage you all to check it out. To finish off the past couple days I will summarizw it with this statement. The apartment has never been so clean before.
Tuesday. So Tuesday was an alright day we found a woman named Lisa. She was the only person on this street to open the door to us. She's a funny woman. We taught her about the book of Mormon and we bore testimony about it's importance. We left her with a copy and are stopping by Saturday to see how her reading went.
We knocked for a really long time on Tuesday. It was pretty crazy. Florida summers are honestly not as bad as California as long as your drinking water you'll be fine.
Wednesday. So from 5 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon we were at Zone Conference over in Miami... that's a pretty crazy place. Anyways Zone Conference is where we find out what President Garns wants us to focus on this transfer. We are focusing on the Doctrine of Christ this transfer. For those of you who don't know the Doctrine of Christ can be found all over the Book of Mormon but my favorite is 3 Nephi 27. To summarize it is:
1. Faith in Jesus Christ
2. Repentance
3. Baptism
4. Receiving the gift of the holy ghost
5. Enduring to the end
It is the key principals we try to teach people. We had an awesome experience that night tho. We went to Chili's for dinner because it was right across the street from our lesson. And our server was a returning member (we aren't allowed to say less active the church has officially changed it to returning member) We are going to go visit her on Monday and see how she's doing.
Thursday. So Thursday morning we went and met with Sister Williams she is a returning member and her two kids aren't baptized. She has had a really hard life. She's currently getting evicted. She has been really angry at God for a long time and she said that she usually doesn't let missionaries over but for some reason she let us come over. That was one of the strongest spiritual experiences of my mission. We bore testimony to her of God's eternal love for all of us even if we don't want it. We read Alma 42 with her (a personal favorite of mine). We gave her a promise that if she would kneel down in prayer and ask God to show her how much he loves her and to read her scriptures she would see her problems melt away and she would feel that eternal love and guidance our Father in Heaven wants to give us. We went knocking that day on the same street as Lisa because we didn't finish it. We knocked into a man named Rueben. He' s from Cuba but he speaks awesome English. He is not very religious but his wife is a JW or Jehovas Witness. We left him with a book of Mormon and a commitment to read 3 Nephi 11. It was pretty cool. OH SHOOT I FORGOT TO MENTION THIS. So we are no longer allowed to ask people for bottles of water which really sucks because it's hot y'all. We can now go home if we really need to get water but we can't ask for it at doors anymore. Anyways after we met Rueben we ran into this older lady who asked who we were as she drove past. We told her we were missionaries and she said oh that's good cause I was going to shoot you. She pulls a gun out of her Center Console and my comp are like what the flip. We gave her a book of Mormon tho which was pretty funny. She was packin tho. She had a Glock in the center console. A shotgun in the back seat and a knife strapped to her seat.
So Friday Saturday and Sunday all can be summarized with one word BOREDOM!!!!!! So Elder Norman somehow got sick and they think it might be appendicitis so please pray for him and we have been stuck inside all day for these days. I have done exchanges with the zone leaders twice. We went to see Lisa and she wasn't there and I'm hopefully going to see our man Jim tonight but his baptism on the 4th is being pushed back because he just can't quit coffee in time. He is quitting it just slowly.
So the Zls exchanged with me and I was able to go our for the night and work. We went and saw Jim and yes we are pushing his baptism back but we also left him with a promise that if he replaces drinking coffee with reading the scriptures and prayer he will never feel the withdrawal or need for coffee again. We shared when christ declared he is the bread of life. That is a cool video I would encourage you all to check it out. To finish off the past couple days I will summarizw it with this statement. The apartment has never been so clean before.
Kim here...It's been a little bit since I've updated the blog. It's taken a little while trying to figure out the best way to communicate with everyone. The elders in the Naples area mostly use Google Hangout. I finally got Elder Rich on game plan of emailing weekly besides the Google Hangout and then the app that the missionaries use (churchwide) went down last week. But I am posting his emails and some pictures that he has sent. Thank you so much for all of your support and thank you for checking in. Posts and pictures to come!
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
May 29th, 2018
Hello family and friends,
Week 2
Well this week was a little bit interesting to say the least. I'm definitely happy to be leaving the MTC in a week as the food is getting old and I'm ready for a change of scenery. I absolutely love the spirit here as it is so cool to see it completely change people and their lives. Me and my companion got an investigator Jose, ironically from LA, to commit to baptism so that was really freaking cool.
I MISS all of you.
We unfortunately lost the "senior" district this week as they left on their missions which means I'm part of the senior district...yikes. I really do love and miss the elders that left because they all had such strong testimonies.
I have gained such a strong testimony of perfect obedience since I have been here. Obedience really does bring blessings and power into our lives. If there is someone that is struggling I can bear witness that having the pure love of Christ for that person works so much better at helping them than any home cooked meal. Everything that happens is for a reason I can promise that Heavenly Father knows each of us individually and that He loves us all. I really like the Father aspect because it perfectly describes Heavenly Father. He is like any Father and He loves us all because we truly are His children. I can bear witness that the atonement is real and that it is so powerful. Repentance is not a negative thing. Rather all it means is to change your life to be more in line with God's teachings and commandments. I have seen it strengthen my life so much and it has only increased my testimony.
I have to go to devo but enjoy these pictures.
Elder Rich
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| AHHH...Yesss! Buttermilk Syrup |
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| Hair cut at the MTC! |
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| Zone Elders |
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| These sisters will be serving in my home stake! |
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| Good Luck Sister Bird! (She is from my home ward) |
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
May 22, 2018
Well it's actually his second email, but his first P-day (preparation day). He is loving the MTC! (Missionary Training Center) I will do my best to keep the blog updated with his pictures and emails. (By the way, it's Kim here) Have a great week!
Well it's actually his second email, but his first P-day (preparation day). He is loving the MTC! (Missionary Training Center) I will do my best to keep the blog updated with his pictures and emails. (By the way, it's Kim here) Have a great week!
HELLO PEOPLE
It's the one and only Elder Rich here and after one week at
the MTC Let the story telling begin...
My companion is Elder Simpson from Pocatello Idaho .
He is super organized and good at planning lessons so we
work really well together.
The other two elders in my district are Elders Taito and
Jaques from Fontana and Brazil respectively. We all work so well together I
absolutely love the MTC and it is the most spiritual place I have ever been and
my testimony has grown leaps and bounds. Since I've been here I definitely love my
district the most though as we are all going to Florida and I can't wait for us
to get to the field because we have grown so much in the past 5 days. Oh and by
the way
Elder Simpson and I are zone leaders so that's awesome... not
really...actually it's amazing!( Kim here...Zone Leader just helps the group to be organized and leads the group in some tasks.)
Well I have to start writing soon so enjoy some
pictures .
See you next week Tuesday !
Elder Rich
And if I did not respond to your email this week I am so
sorry I am new at managing my Pdays so I promise to double write you next
week!!!!!
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| Loves the name tag! |
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| Just showing it off! |
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| Which one is Elder Rich? |
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| P-Day |
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| His District-Elder Simpson is his companion |
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| Look out Fort Lauderdale-He'll be there soon! |
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| Everyone else thinks peace...He says "See ya in two!" |
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| His district that he loves! |
May 16th, 2018
I'm here safe and sound. My P-day is on Tuesday oh and don't worry I've already lost my card that gets me into the cafeteria and my building
and the campus yay! 99 percent of my district are going to my mission as well as
my companion so that's awesome! His name is Elder Simpson gotta go to class love
you.
Elder Rich
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| Writing in his journal before we took him to the MTC. |
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| Getting ready to drop him off at the MTC....How can the heart be so happy and sad at the same time??? |
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| After lunch at Wendy's |
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| On our way to the MTC!! |
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| Dropping him off.... |
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| See you in two Elder Rich!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
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