Vacation

Hello One and All,

Well life in the WKM is pretty good right now I suppose. I don't think there's any items of business to discuss, but thanks mom for the Texas package, I'll touch more on that later. Oh yes, and happy early birthday to mom and dad, the check should be coming in the mail...ok there's no check. But I am thinking happy thoughts your way!

So this last week was pretty good. The cultural event was a blast! It was a typical Spanish activity, the start time was 7 pm, so the opening prayer didn't get said until about 8:30ish! We got called and asked to set up so we were there at about 6 to make sure everything was ready on time. Needless to say I was a little stressed and impatient, but it was fun once it started. They had all sorts of cool native folk dances from Mexico complete with the authentic outfits and dresses. There were tables featuring Mexico, Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Our branch mission leader Hno. Mendoza was kind enough to share the El Salvador table with me, so it also featured Texas. Everyone who went over to look got a big laugh out of it. And I had some fun "arguments" with some of the natives. Apparently they still feel Texas was stolen from them. Well, their loss. But if things are as hot down there as I've heard, they can have it. We had a new family of 4 show up that we had just started teaching, and they had a great time, it was so great! We finally got out of there at about quarter to ten, yikes! But we didn't want to leave our investigators there by themselves. The branch did great in fellowshiping them,

This last Sunday we were all set to have that same family come to church, plus a couple of other investigators when we get a call from the Branch President. Turns out the church burned down. Well not burned down so much as there was a small fire which caused the sprinklers to go off and make everything all wet so all meetings were canceled. So we scrambled to make calls and get permission to go translate at one of the other building's English services. We eventually did but could only get one investigator there, plus one from the sisters. So I got to translate on the headphones. It had been a while but I did pretty good. They were actually having their ward conference so the stake presidency was there and all gave great talks. The 1st councilor talked suuuuper fast, but the 2nd councilor and president were fine and I was able to translate theirs quite nicely I think.

So tomorrow morning I head out for Kennewick to have the 3 day training, I'm really excited, I hope I get to go down to my old area in Pasco to work during the evenings. I'll try and pull some strings. So I get kind of a mini-vacation, so it should be fun, although I would definitely pick working to sitting in meetings all day. But I'm sure I'll get to learn a ton to share with the district.

This morning we played a round of golf. It was a lot of fun, and I've improved a lot since the last time I golfed 10 years ago. It was a 9 hole par 3 course, and I hit a 75. Not too shabby I'd say...

Well thank you everyone for all the love and support, I do appreciate it. Mom made a reference to a package from Whit, I'll keep a weather eye out for that. Too bad about Utah and UT games, at least it sounds like we did good at UT. Utah however, ooh that was a sad night. The zone was constantly texting each other to see if anyone had heard any developments. Next year will be better. Speaking of texting, I finally put two and two together...if dad received the texts from the family we helped out here, and if mom received a text from Eric the day he moved into his apartment (as she mentioned some weeks ago) then that means you have texting now. Why the sudden change of heart? I thought there was a vendetta against texting. Oh well, church is true with or without texts. Have a super awesome week!!

Love,
Elder Richards