Excuses

Hello Family!

Another week down here in the Oklahoma Tulsa Misson! I can't believe it! Time is seriously cruising!!!(:

 

Well, this week was definitely better than last.  It was long, but busy!

 

We went to a lady's house and talked about Family History. I am terrible at mine...): Turns out, we are probably related.  She is from Morgan/Henefer and She has Porters in her family.  It was way cool and we talked about her stories growing up and things.  She talked about raising sheep and helping her grandma in the fields with them.  Then she showed us old books.  She showed me the teeniest little bible in the world.  It had great advice on it....i guess....definitely not the correct bible, but hey.. it was cool!(:

 

Wednesday i went on an exchange with Sister Henderson! She is hilarious. She is very blunt and to the point.  I love her! She is a driver who is.......crazier?....than me. Lets just say, kinda scary! (; We went to a youth activity and it was super fun! The kids pretended to be missionaries and i was an investigator! (: Pretty easy since i can just pretend to be one i am teaching. They said, "We can't take you seriously as an investigator with a missionary nametag." So i took it off and man did it feel weird.  I felt like i suddenly was missing something. It was cool to see the desires of the youth to teach people. Such a fun activity!

 

Friday we had the greatest opportunity to see and watch Meet the Mormons.  It was such a great movie! We are using that in our missionary work because it is a non threatening way to share with others our beliefs.  It follows the lives of 6 families.  I love the candy bomber and the missionary mom, (though i can say i cried during the entire missionary mom part. That is still a tender subject.) It comes out on Friday, and i am sure its playing in tons of theaters in Utah. So y'all better go see it! It is so good, and the proceeds go to The Red Cross Foundation.  Elder Holland said no missionaries could be there so that is why we saw it early. (;  A cool thing that happened because of this movie... Here in Ozark, the closest place this movie is playing is Kansas City.  So we have been working so hard to get everyone to like it on facebook, share it, and request it for this area.  It needed 600 requests.  Needless to say after all that hard work, it is playing in Springfield! We got it here!!! It was so exciting! I am so excited for everyone to see it!!!

 

Friday night, we went to dinner at the Palmers. They are incredible! They are so nice and help us so much!!! We got to their house and we were SO excited. We waited all week to eat there.  Attached is a photo of their house. Seriously. Coolest thing ever. 

 

This week i have been really bothered by all the excuses we have been getting. I am so sick of hearing all these excuses of why people cant come to church, why we can't come visit, why they can't pay tithing, why they can't pray and read scriptures.  It is so hard. I know that these things will bless them and bring them closer to Christ. I know they will see the effects in their lives.  As me and Sister Pereira were talking about this, we realized. Wow. We make excuses. Everyone does. Sometimes, you just need to be humbled a bit. I am sick of excuses from everyone, and i am sure Heavenly Father is sick of mine. I am not making excuses anymore. We decided we are going to give 110% so that we don't have any excuses. We made it a goal this week to visit every single person on our roster.  Thats a lot. But we don't want any excuses from people of why they didn't feel the spirit in at least some way.

 

One more cool thing this week.  Last night, we went to teach at the Roberts. We taught of repentance.  We did a great lesson, a cool object lesson, great scripture and the spirit was so strong! When we got up to leave, Sister Roberts said, "I don't know how you knew we needed that, but thank you.  That lesson was perfect. It is exactly what we needed."  It is moments like those that make the terrible, frustrating, and hard moments of missionary work worth it.

 

With love,

Sister Ritter