I hate wasting time in the apartment, we can take some extra rest when we are dead

Dear Family

This week was really busy, and we were hard at work finding. Elder Johnson is doing a lot better, and yes, we did get the packages that were sent. Thank you for the delicious pumpkin bread, and Elder Johnson says thank you too. Our meetings were really good this week. Elder Golden is amazing in his knowledge of the gospel, and also is really good at explaining his deep knowledge. He said that my neck hair is to long though, haha we've been too busy to get hair cuts, and I don't really want to buzz my hair again. I have a coupon for a free hair cut at sport clips anyway. Hopefully I can get it done today. There were some really good things said in our special zone conference. Here are some of the main messages that Elder Golden wanted to get across at the zone conference.

1) You win the battle every day before you leave your apartment by following the mission standards: Getting up on time, having meaningful prayer, doing your daily preparations, attending to personal and meaningful companionship study and then leaving your apartments for the ministry on time.

2) Our expectations are too low, especially regarding contacting. We are authorized missionaries of Jesus Christ and carry His authority to preach and baptize. "For there are many...who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it." (D&C 123:12) We must help them find it. Be bold. I believe we should set as our minimum standard 100 persons contacted every week.

3) Faith = Personal Righteousness. If we want to increase faith, increase personal righteousness.

4) To double baptisms, we do not need to double our effort. We are starting to rely too much on ourselves. (Alma 37:6-7) Plead your cause before the Lord.

5) Listening is a powerful tool. Don't ask questions and then be thinking of a response. Listen for understanding through the Spirit. Reflect what you heard. Then let the Spirit help you with the response.

District meeting went pretty well. I just trained on things that we learned at zone conference that we need to apply as a district. Mainly raising our expectations, and pleading our case before the Lord. We have certainly raised our expectations in this companionship, and we have set a goal to find and baptize one family per month. As the way things are going now, we are on track to making several families investigators, and we are making progress with the Friel family who have been investigating the church for 7 years. Yesterday was an especially long, but productive day. We are very drained and need to refill our spiritual mojo after testifying to and teaching a couple of difficult people, but we also finally contacted some less active families that we have been trying to get a hold of.

We have about 15 really good potentials and we expect to make 9 of them investigators this week. There are two or three promising families in those potentials, mainly Rose, Max, and their daughter, and Fred and his wife, with their sister also, and all of their kids. We also have Kayla and her mother, as well. We then also have some part members mainly the D's with two kids that may not be baptized because their records were lost and they have been inactive for a time, Jim, and his two kids, and then we have the U. Family with Colby who is not a member yet (14 year old boy, his sister was baptized 4 months ago). We have some other potentials, but those are the most promising ones I could remember, oh and also Sister K. who is an investigator of other missionaries in the Valley that just moved up here two weeks ago.

We have a to to get to this week! Just hope that we can manage our time right to get to all of them, and finally invite them to be regular investigators. We are making a goal of continuing to find though-- with at least 100 contacts per week.

That's awesome that Elder Thompson is a father of 3 :D So awesome! I may be a father in two weeks too. Lots of new missionaries are coming next transfer. It's too bad he had to deal with an anti-American Frenchi though. Wonder how that went, probably went fine, Elder Thompson is a stud. His emails always inspire me! Sometimes I wish people around here would take the mission a bit more seriously, but I'm learning to deal with that. I just hate idleness. Men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many good things of their on free will-- that is like my slogan for life now. I hate wasting time in the apartment, we can take some extra rest when we are dead. luckily not much of that has gone on for us this transfer. We have been too blessed to be able to do nothing:)

Oh, by the way, I can't wait to make some chili. It will be really good, oh and the ward is having a chili cook off soon too. HAHA the missionaries will be entering that event. Well I have about 5 min left. Everything here is pretty busy, and your prayers are much needed and they really do work. I love you all and I hate that the mission is going by this fast. It's to bad it has to end some time.

Well--with love

Elder Rickers

PS: For my birthday, I would just like money for some food and a few clothing items (socks, and some dry cleaning). Don't worry about anything fancy. Maybe some good uplifting music that I can study to though. Like some really good acoustic guitar and some things other than Motab and the Orchestra on Temple Square:) If you put them on CDs then I can transfer them to my Ipod.