Richie Tackles Reno: Week Four: Smuggling Coke into the MTC!!!

October 15, 2014
¡Hola!!

Que tal? the CCM here is still great. I am having a blast. I am getting quite anxious to get the heck out of here though. We do the same thing everyday, and class is starting to get old. I am also ready to teach real investigators. The population here at the CCM is getting smaller now because the summer season is over. There are about 500 of us here now, there use to be like over 1000 earlier this summer, like when Kyle Gardner and Mitch Kirkham were here. But this Saturday we have an apostle coming to give us a devotional, Elder Neil Anderson!! Last night we practiced shaking hands with him cuz he wants to shake all of our hands....very exciting!!!

I used to LOVE wearing my suit coat and slacks cuz it made me feel like a stud, but now i actually dread it because i get SO hot wearing it for all the meetings and devotionals. luckily we only have to wear it on select occasions, but i still dont like wearing it haha.

I am known as the selfie king here in our district, because i guess they think i take the best selfies of the group. so thats kinda funny.

So as Zone leaders we organized a zone kickball game this week, which was way fun. i think we are going to make it a regular occurrence. We got a new district in our zone this week which was fun because now we are the old guys and they look to us for advice and stuff. we like playing pranks on them, too. Its also fun because our district only has three guys, so we dont have many guys to hangout with. but now with the new district we have a fair amount of guys and we are all pretty tight. we like playing basketball together, and we challenged another zone to kickball later today, so that should be fun.

This week in church i gave a talk, which was way cool!! It was only five minutes, but I did it without scripting it all out like everyone else. I just used like 10 bullet points and went off of that. i felt like it helped me better portray my message.

This week was Elder Cook´s birthday, so we celebrated a little by eating some chips and salsa. We also smuggled in some Coke (as in Coca-Cola), which was actually hilarious. It was like a drug deal. We saw one of the landscapers drinking it so we went up to him and told him that we wanted like three cokes, one for each of us. he told us sure, and told us to meet him at the front at 7 am. the thing is though these guys arent supposed to bring us anything from outside the walls, such as coke. We went there, but he wasnt there so we went on with our day.

But then later in the day we found him pulling weeds and he told us to follow him. so we were like sprinting after him in our dress clothes to where he kept his bag. he pulled out his bag and told us to put his bag in our bag before we took the cokes out so nobody could see them. and then i pulled out a little bit of money to pay him and he like FREAKED out and told me to put the money back away. This whole time he was looking around all suspiciously. He told us to then meet him in the bathroom of this building, so we went separate ways but met him there, where we gave him our money. It was the closest thing to a drug deal i will ever be. it was hilarious. we couldnt stop laughing after he left.

So this week a few of the sisters in our zone have been struggling. They are quite homesick and are struggling with the language. This has been a great opportunity to use our priesthood power as zone leaders and give blessings. I love exercising my priesthood power. it means a lot to me. Lately i have started to read Jesus The Christ, and I LOVE it. at first i was like this is dumb its just a huge textbook about Jesus, its probably way boring. but it is fascinating. i find myself enthralled in it like a John Grisham book haha.

This morning during personal study i read 1 Nephi 8 (in Spanish), which is Lehi´s dream. Lehi finds himself lost in a dark and gloomy world, but then suddenly a man in white appears and tells him to follow him, and Lehi has "Ok" and doesnt really know who he is or what he wants, but he follows him. annnndd as we all know, he takes him to the tree of life and all the good stuff, but it donned on me that as a missionary I will be that stranger in white. and i will be approaching those random people who are lost in this dark and gloomy world, and i will tell them to "follow me" and they will, not because they know me or anything, but because they just feel that what i know and have is right. And i will be able to lead them to the tree of life and let them partake of the goodness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I pray that i will be able to do as that man in white did and lead people to the gospel.

I love you guys, and i miss you like crazy. I cant believe i have been here a whole month, and that in two weeks I’ll be in Reno. It seriously is like mind-boggling haha. Anyways, let me know if there’s anything else i can do for you guys. you guys are the best. I am so blessed to have such an awesome support system back at home.

Love,

Elder Todd