Elder Brandon Richmond's Mission Blog: Brandon's Thirty-Ninth Email! May 2nd, 2016

Hey... so first of all, I apologize for spelling mistakes because it is frigid right now and my hands are ice bocks!

So this week was CRAZY!!!!! It's too long with too many different side stories and that is just confusing, but I'll try my best to get down the basics!!

Okay so to start, it was Burgess' birthday on Monday last week so we had cake and pizza at mama's house and it was super fun!!! Just had a good night and that was awesome!

So the river has grown even more!!!!!! Like it is crazy!!! They are still letting out water so now the river is like 3 times as wide as it was!!! So there are a good amount of families staying in the church because the water is right there and I guess if you have kids you have to leave, but they have been cooking guiso (stew) like every lunch and every dinner for the past week! But probably like 10 gallons or more of it every meal!! But there is usually like always extra so we have received SOOOO many liters of guiso this week! We had it straight up for lunch like 3 days because lunch appointments fell through. But it has been awesome!!! haha like squash and potatoes and noodles or rice and some meat! I LOVE SQUASH NOW haha super random, but it is great!

Another noticia, it is soooo cold! We went to bed Monday all chilly and woke up Tuesday FREEZING!! Seeing your breath inside and everything... so not my favorite...

Heleman 3:28

We had conference Wednesday for interviews with President. Mine was pretty non crazy! haha BUT I received mom's package!!! It had the scripture covers so no more cardboard box!!! And a bunch of other cool stuff!!! And I got so many good letters from Sheridan!!!

Friday we had intercambio. Elder Ford came to PASO and it was so fun! He is so cool. Reminds me of Casey like tons, we get along great, and work hard at the same time so it is awesome!! He did the baptismal interview for Tatiana and that went well!!! We bought biscochoes and they were hot and SOOOO good. We were just scarfing them outside the bisochoeria haha. We made snickerdoodles at night and it was so good! I'm bummed that chances are I won't be in the same zone next change as him...

Saturday we came home and spent all day doing prep for the baptism and it was awesome!!!! The father baptized the two girls and they were so happy and it was a great spiritual meeting! Burges and I gave the two messages of like 4 minutes each!! Such a great experience! So that went like perfectly, and we actually had four investigators that came to the baptism, so that was also just super cool! This kid we call rockstar, (20 years old) came and we call him rockstar because he is so smooth and normal and a great people-person and has great style! So a great night! Then we went to Mama's house because it was her daughter, Sofia's birthday and had cake and pizza!!! So fun!!

Then Sunday was SUPER crazy too!!! So we had 10 investigators in church this week! We had 6 who we have taught a bunch. Like rockstar, the reference lady and her son, two other investigators, and Milton (the kid that loves China). Then four more came also who were people who the church has helped out who we had talked to. So we had 10 in total! And then also we had a full inactive family there who hasn't come since I've been here, AND when we walked in, the WHOLE Falcon family was sitting there looking SO great and happy!!!!

The father gave his testimony and it was great, and an investigator gave his testimony tambien!!!! It was sooo rad!!!

So then after we had a few lessons and they went well and that was our day!!!

So overall a great week!! I have tons of photos, doubt I'll send them all, but I'll probably send more later, but we have to go to a zone activity right now!

Top Ten

10. GUISO

9. Get to Skype this Sunday!!!

8. The conference we had with president

7. Having a great comp!!

6. Getting the sweet package from mom!

5. Getting super cool letters from Sheridan. So cool to hear about other mission experiences from someone so close.

4. Having the best mother ever!!!

3. A fun intercambio!!

2. All the people in church

1. A great baptism with a family now just that much more unified!

Love you all, but not as much as God, or the Lord... sorry, but they for sure have got me beat!!

I had such a great experience in sacrament meeting. During the sacrament I was reading scrips about when Christ was in the Americas and everything he did, taught, and talked about was always centered on love. Sometimes, if we don't understand a commandment or challenge, we just need to open our minds a little bit more!!! God loves us!

Chao!!!