JUNE 4, 2012

Mom and the Family, It's been a great week and a great p-day! This past week for the first time president Gaviria and his wife passed by the house when we were studying and they started to comment on how "good" the house looks hahahaha.It was that first time that that has happened in all my mission and was the first time I had seen Sister Gaviria outside of a church building. It was a mess! Not my mess though. Usually all my things are clean and in order, but it's hard to do that for others. Actually my companion is an organized elder. I don't like living with 6 other elders. Anyways we had a sister from the church come one morning and cleaned the house all day. It was so messy that they didn't want us to do it, but ask a member to do it. Don't know why? Maybe because they didn't want us taking the time away from proselyting. Today was the day where we have to send all the information to the mission and take pictures of the house to send to the mission office so I don't have all that much time today to write because I took a lot of that time doing the things for the mission. Anyways thinga are progressing here and I am finding new techniques to improve myself as a missionary and still working out the problems that come as a mission at times, but it's great! I can feel like my faith is growing everytime I put more effort and go a little bit more than I set myself to and I feel like it helps me to stay focused more and to complete my purpose more as a missionary. I have come to know that faith is the basis of all that we do in life and that we all have it because we're here on earth, but sometimes many people don't know how to strengthen their own and that's why we're here as missionaries. We help people recognize how why their here and how they can start preparing themselves for what's really coming. I love my Savior and his atonement and grace can give us power and ability to do anything and everything we want to do. In the mission I have come to understand how to worship the Savior better and I have learned how to love him more as well and I think that for any missionary to come out of the mission feeling that way has to be thankful for the mission program of the church. Its been a great learning experience. The last few weeks haven't been so great of weeks because we opened a new area and such, but we are now coming out of it and I am feeling like I have put in more time and effort this transfer than any other transfer before. I am just amazed at what God can do with people like me to establish his kingdom here on Earth. I do want to ask you all how your work is going along in the ward and if you have been helping the missionaries in efforts to share the gospel? I hope you know that they need the members to participate as well. My companion and I have been passing by this past week calling the members inviting them to have us in their homes and to have us share a message with them. I feel like I have been pushing that aside a lot from the last transfers I was in, but I have refocused myself in that as a priority because we usually don't have success if we don't have unity in the ward. I wrotethe president in the e-mail the other day that for the first time I finally realize what he wants out of us as missionarys and the mission and it's something that felt was missing this whole time I have been out here and that is looking for the chosen families. I feel a little bit struck dumb a little bit because it's what all our message is about, but I haven't focused on it like I have been in this new transfer. It's almost like a lightbulb just hit the switch, but it's not that I don't know I just wasn't looking for it. I know that in these next six months that I have more to do here in Colombia so I am going to find out what that is haha. Anyways I didn't hear from anyone today so I am wondering what happened, but I will be waiting for a response next week. Love you als and take care this week. Elder Ridley