No Time For Little Old Us

This is the exact email from Kinzi this week...thanks a lot there Sister Ricks! just kidding!

 

 

"i dont have anytime this week to write a weekly because we have a lunch appointment with some friends or usually i would have another hour so i will catch you all up next week :) "

Who What When Where

Sister Ricks sounds like she is really enjoying life in good old Ireland. She said the food is interesting, everything is tiny, they speak English...but not really, its very confusing to drive on the left side of the street and it has rained everyday since she has been there...except one! But, the people are wonderful and friendly and she's been able to teach a lot of people! In fact both her and her companion got asked out on a couple of dates last week alone! She said it was pretty funny to watch her companion explain why they couldn't go on a date, and especially why they couldn't go clubbing.

 

Sister Ricks explained that everyday they pray specifically for people to teach, they call it "who, what when, where" meaning they asked for who they want to teach and when and where. Last week they prayed to teach a tall blonde woman in her late thirties and that day they ran into a tall blonde woman in her late thirties who allowed them to teach her the lesson and place a Book of Mormon. She said that things like that happen everyday and it's amazing. They even found a former investigator by praying specifically in that way. Currently they're teaching someone who came to church yesterday which of course, was very exciting and they're hoping that he'll commit to  be baptized.

 

They also are working with a young man who is blind but able to read The Book of Mormon, she is amazed at the miracles and blessings she has been able to experience while serving her mission and she's only been gone since March 27th!

 

Sister Ricks is doing well overall and is learning and growing so much! Thank you for praying for her and supporting her and the family throughout her time as a missionary!

Finally in Ireland

This week, Sister Ricks' email was pretty long and detailed, so I pulled the naught copy and paste, because I didn't want to mess up the travel details...

 

 My apartment is like 150 years old lol. its heated by radiator panels, no vents but it seems to be somewhat warm enough. we have no dryer and a washer that can probably fit like two towels in it. everything here is so small lol. every members house i have been to they have like mini washer, fridge, stove, over, freezer, etc. most people don't have dish washers lol. simple living here. but its just because all the town is pretty old, I'm in Belfast, Northern Ireland. some weird people here but they are so cute haha

i have been in three different countries in a week and i am exhausted. the first day i arrived in Scotland (where the mission home is) was Wednesday after flying for 13 hours and literally having to run from plane to plane in every airport because our plane from salt lake was delayed which made every other plane we were to get on delayed as well. so we absolutely no lay overs which is good and bad considering we made each plane wait for us for 30 minutes and having all the passengers give us dirty looks as we got on lol.

 

anyways so we get into Scotland and our mission president and the zone leaders decide to take us to the Edinburgh castle we walked 2 miles uphill and took a billion stair to get to the castle, which was amazing to see and go into all the museums within the castle except for the fact i hadn't slept for 30 hours so me and my companion and a couple other sisters where going from place to place to find benches to sleep lol. so basically i have slept in a castle. sweet... so then we went back to the mission home, ate dinner went to bed. woke up and they took us on a hike, which obviously i was more excited about because i had actually gotten sleep. so the place where we went is called authors seat but we as missionaries call is Pratt's hill. Because when Orson Pratt came to be a missionary in the Scotland area he climbed that hill and made a goal with the lord to be able to convert and baptize 200 souls(which he eventually did) so we as missionaries follow that tradition and go up there at the start of our mission and make a goal with the lord. pretty cool :) also our mission motto is that "act well thy part" that was mentioned in general conference by sister Dalton. so look that up it's pretty cool.

 

my mission has a lot of history so its way cool. anyways after the hike we were able to go back to the mission home and get our calling of where we were to go and who our trainer would be. i got called to Belfast Northern Ireland, i never realized that our mission is the only mission that covers three countries lol. Northern Ireland, Ireland, and all of Scotland. Pretty cool. so anyways thats where i am right now and yes i will be able to email you every week. i also will send you a letter so you have my address! my companion is sister Morgan and she's really cool. she's super obedient and awesome. she's been in this area for months and i guess all the sisters that have served before us has served here for 9 months each haha so i might be here a while. so i fulfilled my goal and handed out my book of mormon in the airport. i was able to give it to the ladies that sat next to me for 8 hours to London. so that was cool. i also taught this lady named twinkle on the streets of Scotland, I taught her the restoration. gave her a BOM and a joseph smith pamphlet. we went chapping (which is knocking doors lol) and i did some cool stuff during that as well.

 

 Yesterday i saw this black lady at a bus stop and i was committed to inviting someone to be baptized by the end of Sunday and our investigator Adam bailed on us so i was desperate lol so anyways we ran across the street and started talking to her, surprisingly she is a former investigator from like a year ago. so that was a miracle because we were able to clear up some misconceptions that she had, she has been to church once or twice and i don't know why she stopped meeting with the sister missionaries but anyways the bus came so we decided to hop on with her and we continued to talk she was surprised to find out that we pay our own way here to preach the gospel. she got off the bus at the next stop so as she got off i yelled and asked if she found out these things were true if she would be baptized and she said maybe lol that's a good start. so we are going to look at the area book and look into her. we are working with a lot of less actives and recent converts but we also have like 5 investigators too.

 

 

MTC and Trip to Scotland/Ireland

Sister Ricks has been in the MTC for 2 weeks, and left Tuesday morning for her journey to Scotland/Ireland! It is very exciting and time seems to be flying by already!

Sister Ricks said that in the MTC she had two "investigators" that she and her companion were working with. They had teach them the lessons and challenge them to baptism. She said that has been an excellent way to learn. She is having a lot of fun learning more about the gospel and how to share it and is very excited to start missionary work in Scotland or Ireland (where she'll start, we're not sure yet!) She was able to call home during  a layover at the airport and it sounds like she is doing well. She's not sure what she is going to do without an IPod on the plane for that many hours but she's excited to begin serving the people in Scotland and Ireland! Thank you for all of your love and support!

As soon as we hear from her in the mission, we'll post! 

First Letter Home

The family has already gotten the first letter from Sister Ricks since entering the MTC. She said that they were encouraged to write home the first day they got there, so she is trying to be obedient to EVERYTHING and wrote home! She said that the first day in the MTC was great and busy, they already started teaching their first lessons, she said that it is a lot to keep straight, but already she had learned SO MUCH! She is in a room with 6 sisters, 4 of them are going to Scotland/Ireland and the others are going to Peru and are already learning Spanish. She loves her companion, she said she is quiet but that's probably a good thing...(heaven knows Kinzi will help keep the conversation going)

She also says that she loves everyone back home and she's really excited to begin her mission. She can't believe the time has already come! She'll only be in the MTC for 2 weeks, so she's hoping she'll be able to learn and take it all in in that short of time before she heads off to teach the people of Scotland/Ireland. Thank you for all of your love and support for our Sister missionary!