Today I found out that I will be leaving Madison and will be heading to Green Bay on Wednesday! Finally, the cycle is complete! I am going to be able to serve in every Hmong area in Wisconsin! What a blessing! My new companion is Elder Taylor, he has been out for only 5 months and actually met my brother Ian while they were in the MTC at the same time. He is an awesome kid and I am super stoked to serve around him. Although I never met him in person he is already my favorite missionary. I have told that to him the couple times I have talked to him on the phone haha! He responded by saying that everyone says I am the goat. So from the sounds of that, we are gonna have a grand time in Green Bay together! I am excited!
This week we had a lot of preparation for the transfers. I knew that things were going to be switched up in the Hmong area. We got a text before transfers that our apartment would be closing, so we spent a lot of time cleaning and fixing things. This apartment has been open for around 15 years so it had a lot of stuff to do. We patched probably over a 1000 holes in the wall haha! Good times.
This weekend we had stake conference. We had a visitor from the Seventy, Elder Kim B. Clark, come speak to us. I enjoyed listening to him. One thing that really stood out to me is that he still acknowledges his weaknesses, his mistakes, and his dependency to the Savior and his atoning sacrifice. Growing up, and even now, you think the general authorities of the church are so righteous and don't make mistakes, but it was cool to see that we are human beings and are all trying to improve and become more like Christ every day no matter what stage of life we are in. A couple of other things that I enjoyed in his talks were using the correct name of the church, importance of being missionaries in our everyday life, and asking God for 1 thing that we can remove out of our life and 1 thing that we can do better.
Although I am very excited to leave Madison and head up to Green Bay, I am also really sad to leave. I didn't think it would be this hard to leave. This morning Kelly invited us over for breakfast and to say goodbye. After we ate we took a picture together and then said our goodbyes. She started to cry and then everyone knows me I started to cry too! Man, I really am going to miss all the people that I have met here. So many wonderful people and it is going to be hard to say goodbye. Grateful that we don't have to say goodbye forever and I can see these amazing people again someday. It has been such as blessing to serve in Madison for 9 months of my mission and see the growth in these wonderful members. It's been amazing and will be something that I will always remember. Glad that I had this opportunity to come on a mission and serve the Hmong people. Even though I am not great at the language and it's been harder than anything I have done before, there is nothing I would want to change it for.
Love,
Elder Rich
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| Saying bye to Kelly |
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| patching walls |
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| Stake conference |
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| Shoveling snow for days |
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| We saw this lady shoveling and went to help. She wanted to take a selfie with us |
