Richie Tackles Reno: January 5, 2015 - HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Arachnids and an Accidental 4:00 am Wake-Up

January 5, 2015

Celebrating NYE with the Homies

Happy New Year guys!! I can't believe its 2015!! Like where did 2014 go??? Elder Rivera and Nieves and Steele and I had fun on the New Years Eve. We had to go home after our dinner appointment, so we actually all had dinner together. They came to our appointment because they didn’t have dinner, and so that was lots of fun. Then we came home and lit off some fireworks we found that were in the garage under our house. And then we had a bottle of Martinelli’s that we decided to explode all over our bathroom instead of enjoy like normal people. And then we messed around until 10:30 when we went to bed. We were supposed to do our weekly planning then, but that didn’t get done haha.

This past week has been FREEZING. The highs were like 29 and 24 some days, and the mornings were like single digits. It was freezing. Apparently this week is supposed to warm up, so I hope that is right.

Orange smiles with Elder Nieves
(aka 4:00 am wake-up guy!)

So Elder Nieves has this really loud alarm that goes off every morning and kinda wakes us up, and then the other alarms we put away from my bed so I have to get up to turn it off. So the other day his alarm went off, and he got up and, like he often likes to do, he started doing dishes and all sorts of random crap like vacuuming and stuff. So he got up and started doing dishes, (very loudly might I add!), and so I just happened to glance at my watch and it said 4:02 and so I was like "Yo dude, it’s freakin 4:00 in the morning, what are you doing???? and he looked at his clock and was like “Oh dang my bad, what the heck??” and so he turned off the water and the lights and everything, and climbed back into bed!! So thank goodness for my watch, or we probably would have showed up to the church building at 4 am and waited for everyone else to come until we realized it was freakin 4am. Missionary life....

The Lira's house BEFORE....

So I think that instead of being a missionary I should be a contractor...because this week we did a ton of service. We did a lot for the Lira family, who finally moved in this weekend! We basically installed a wood floor for them, and put the baseboard around the edges too. One of the Liras friends, Nester - who was kinda like their contractor, showed us how to do it, and then we basically went to work and did it ourselves, and then did the same thing with the baseboard around the edge.

The Lira's house AFTER!!! (With our new buddy, Nester)
More pics below.

And not gonna lie - it looks pretty dang good! Nester is like one of the funniest guys I know, and we became really good friends. He would always brag about how good he is, like he would lay a piece that he cut perfectly and then be like "Sometimes I pray to God and ask him, ‘Why do you make me so good??’” He was hilarious. He would also talk about how fast I learned how to do all the equipment and lay the floor and stuff, and he would be like, “Me and Todd are good at this stuff, why do you guys all suck??” He was really funny.

My new girlfriend, Andrea - who is the
cutest little girl ever and speaks
Spanish 100x better than I do

We also helped push this SUV up a huge hill that ran out of gas....Elder Rivera and I were exhausted afterwards!! One of my favorite parts of being a missionary is being able to pull over anytime there is someone with their flashers on and help them!! It is so fun to help people out, and many times they don’t need our help, but sometimes they do and they are super grateful for it. So that is a lot of fun.

We have realized this past week that we really need to focus on marriage with all of our investigators. Of the 5 main families we teach, 4 of them (the parents) are not even married!! So we are thinking that instead of baptisms, we are just going to set up weddings for everyone - haha! (Maybe instead of construction I should go into wedding planning!) But seriously, we have been thinking about how we can get all these couples married. It’s kind of an awkward thing for us to do...as like 20-year-olds, to tell these adults with families to get married. But we are praying that we can help them take that step of marriage, so then they can take the next step to baptism.

At one of the other missionary apartments,
the missionaries keep a pet BLACK WIDOW.
True story.

So apparently tomorrow our mission is going to start a mission-wide diet, which will entail no more candy, soda, unhealthy snacks, sugar cereals, basically everything that tastes good. And this will last 90 days. I am not sure the details, but we will find out tomorrow in our zone training. Sooooooo in other words, please don’t send me any more sweet stuff! Please postpone any thing until like April. I will give you more details next week, but luckily we got a heads up because we are good friends with the Zone Leaders. So I have been pounding the candy and cereal you guys sent me, trying to eat and enjoy as much as possible while I can. Apparently we are also going to weigh-in before and after to see the difference. We will see how it goes...

Yes - mom....that's a tarantula on my shoulder.

I often wonder if I have actually learned any Spanish, or if I haven’t, because sometimes I don’t feel like I know a lot. But then when I think back to the Missionary Training Center in Mexico and remember my first day when I had to give a prayer. I had to script it out and practice it before and everything, compared to now when I say ALL my prayers in Spanish and have even forgotten how to pray in English! Whenever I am asked to give a prayer in English I often end up throwing in some Spanish words, and it’s truly harder than I imagined!! So when I think about that - then I realize that YES, I have actually learned some Spanish haha!!

Well I hope that you guys all had a great week and a Happy New Year!! I love and miss you guys and appreciate all of your support.

Love,

Elder Todd