Elder Austin Rich : 2019-04-14

Nyob zoo,

I finally made it down to Milwaukee. I have been really enjoying it down here besides the fact that it has snowed 3 times this week. I was so certain that spring was finally here that I sent all my winter clothes home on Tuesday before I came down to Milwaukee. Pretty funny!

Coming down to Milwaukee I was thrown into the fire really fast. Thursday we woke up at 5 to take a missionary to the airport and once we got back I was told that we had to prepare for our 50 min training that we would be doing in Zone Conference the next day! So we prepared that training and the next day was Zone Conference which I was asked to conduct the meeting which was fun/scary at the same time. Our training ended up going really well which was good for the limited time we had to prepare for it! After Zone Conference, we went to an old favorite, Kopps, which has some of the best ice cream I have ever had.

Saturday we planned out the rest of the things we need to do for this upcoming transfer and let me say it is going to be really busy. This past week has been the fastest, but also seems like the longest week of my mission. We have had so many things to prepare for, phone calls, logistics, and other things we have had to do. It has felt like we haven't really been doing missionary work this past week just because of how different it has been, but it should be better this upcoming week when we have more time. We only had about 10 hours that we were able to go out and do stuff this week so next week should be good since most of the planning is out of the way.

Even though we were limited in time, we were still blessed with success in our finding and teaching. I think that it is really cool that no matter what our circumstances are or what we are going through, God will still bless us for our hard work, diligence, and desire to do his work and follow him. We were able to set a person we are teaching on baptism date named Treivy, but passed him off to the YSA Sisters and as well were able to find some really cool potentials that hopefully we will be able to get with this upcoming week.

A really interesting thing that happened this week that I've never experienced before was that we met a guy who was speaking something called striped Hmong. Basically what it was is the 2 dialects white and green Hmong mixed. I had never heard that before. It was really odd to listen to. To kinda explain what I mean, one sentence he would use the White Hmong word 'poj niam' meaning wife and the next sentence he would use the Green Hmong word 'quas puj' meaning wife, white Hmong 'thiaj li' or 'txhaj le', 'tuab neeg' or 'tib neeg' etc. It was funny because it sounded like he couldn't make up his mind on what dialect he was trying to speak so he was mixing back and forth the whole conversation. I guess an example you guys could probably understand is if someone was going back and forth between an American accent and a British accent. Obviously, that's not exactly the same, but a good example.

Spiritual thought this week which I am actually going to steal from my companion because it thought it was really cool. He was reading in the Bible about Jesus Christ's last week because of the Easter Season. One of the things that Jesus did that last week was cleansed the temple. And the part that is thought was cool that he compared that with 1 Corinthians 3:16 which says:

16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

Just like Jesus Christ cleansed the temple and got rid of the things that didn't fit the holiness and the sacredness of the temple. It is interesting to compare that to our body or our "temple." If Jesus came to us what would he take out of our body to cleanse our temple? Whether it is things temporal or spiritual it is a good way to reflect on our bodies and how we treat them and the importance to strive to make our body holy just like the temple.

Love,

Elder Rich