Brandon's Eighty Third Email! March 11th, 2017

I'm eating craisins! Right now! I don't think that I've ever eaten a little box of raisins, now look! haha and I actually like them. It's sad really, how much food I didn't like before that I like now. Lots of times I'll eat something and love it, and it's something that I would've hated to eat before! I don't know why it took me coming here to make that happen....

Anyway, this week we had Leadership council, and training for new district leaders on Tuesday and Wednesday. It went well, I think that my portion of the meeting on Tuesday went well, but I don't know. I just know that I'm less nervous now. Not because I love talking in front of people, but I think because I feel that these things are so important, and they are like tools to help people find Christ in their lives, so the desire that I have to share that outweighs me being uncomfortable.

Wednesday was good, like everything has gone really smoothly, people showing up on time, people making buses, and it's great! I'm so grateful! Been so lucky!

Thursday we had a pretty normal day. We had a meeting with President because in 2 months a GA (General Authority) is going to come to our mission!! We had to fill out a questionnaire with him and some of the questions were really funny, like how well do the missionaries do their exercises? Do you how well you (talking to President) do yours? hahah

Yesterday we had divisions with a companionship that president asked us to do. One of the missionaries arrived here a week ago and is from Arizona, so it was fun working with him! We had a good day, found new investigators, and had a sick lesson with this investigator who is 18. Brazil just passing the border in Artigas, and is super prepared!!! Im stoked!!! (No idea what Brandon is saying here, sorry.)

These coming weeks will be crazy!!! We have like the same conferences that we had last transfer, so we'll be going out on Tuesdays and Thursday to other zones, but this time President will drive and we'll drive separately so we can bring the ZL (Zone Leader) back to our area after the conferences while he does interviews so that we can have divisions! SO we have planned to do divisions with the zone leaders in all 12 zones, including the conferences! I'm stoked though because now our area won't die while we're gone like three days a week! Now we'll get home a little late, but we'll be able to leave in the afternoon like everyday except for when we go real far to 33 and Melo! We did the math and from the planned time that we have out of our area, it comes out to that we are in our area 66% of the time, and that's not including unplanned, so now we'll be able to have a lot more time! 

I feel so happy and stoked working in the streets and teaching new people and talking about Christ and his eternal love and sacrifice for us! The missionary who I had divisions with yesterday told me something. He said, "When you talk, you always are smiling, do you try to do that?" I told him no, because it's true, I'd never thought about that. I think that I'm just really, really happy to be here and I love telling people about the fact that they can have an eternal family! I love my family and I'm excited to have my own wonderful family. (Christie's pics of JJ kill me!) Families are so important. I know that they can and are meant to be an eternal unit!!! 

I love my Heavenly Father, and I am very grateful that somehow I was born into a family that had this wonderful gospel in their lives!!

Love you all! 

Elder Richmond

By the way, what is the berry from which craisins are made? 

AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO AUZTRAIN RICHMOND!!!! 

March 16th turning 19... weird!!! Hope you have a good one!