La semana pasada en el entrenamiento- Week 17

Hooray, finally almost out of training. My comp goes home this week haha! I will be leaving the city of Marshfield and will be transferred to Janesville!!!!! Super excited to go there and see how the work is different. I will be going from almost the very north of the mission to the very south of the mission:) I have heard that it is very similar to the area I am at, just a little bit bigger and way more Spanish people, and Spanish members so I will be excited to continue teaching the people here of Wisconsin and continue learning Spanish!

Thank you for all of your prayers and thoughts for me:) the blessings I have received really reflect to me how much faith you all have. Mark 9:23 "Jesus said unto him, if thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth (has faith)".

This week we were able to plan and have a talent show for the ward here! It was super cool!! The youth and us as missionaries did a super cool break dance and I'm probably going to be a professional dancer when I get home now. People brought all kinds of talents. People baked brownies(me), danced(me), made a painting(me), and helped with the music for other people's acts(me). So as you can tell there was a lot of talent!! One of the older men in the ward also played the accordion, there were lots of youth who came and sang, gave poems, brought art work to show off in the back, singing without music(I forgot the word for that, actually I just don't know how to spell it) but it was super awesome! The Lord gave us many talents, so we should use them and always strive to gain more:)

We haven't been teaching Kriss but we have been stopping by a lot and seeing how she is doing and always giving her things to read like The Family: A Proclamation to the World, The Living Christ, book marks that have different quotes and stuff on it for her Book of Mormon so that she is always thinking of Jesus Christ. I hope that we can commit her sometime soon to being baptized and start a new chapter of her life! 

There is a guy in the ward here and his name is Brother Hunter. We were having dinner with him and he told us that he has a cool relative who traveled across the plains as a pioneer! His relative is actually one of the 3 boys/young men to go back and help the pioneers cross the really big river and that is so awesome! Such a huge sacrifice and it makes me want to share the gospel even more because there were so many people suffering and doing everything they could so that we could have freedom and be where we are as a church today!

I went on an exchange with the Elders in Steven's Point and they happen to be the Zone Leaders and I love them to death! Elders Allred, Isaacson, and McConkie are the Zone Leaders and it is incredible to have them help me through the mission and give me advice! I was able to go with Elders Allred and Isaacson and it was so fun. I love missionary work with them! They have a ton of fun, but still work super hard! We were able to give service to this wonderful lady of the ward and she had a dog that was like no joke 225 pounds and slobbered everywhere... When we got to the house we got out of the car and heard this Loud bark and I was like what the... And she lives in like the forest basically and it echoed and woow, no me gusta. When it was coming toward me I thought my life was going to end😂 But it was actually a really sweet dog! We put in probably 8 or so logs in the ground so that she could build a fence for all her horses! It was super good, giving service is such a blessing:) 

I am so grateful for the opportunity to be serving here in Wisconsin and am so grateful for all of your support, love, and prayers! I love you all!

DO GOOD, BE GOOD

Love, 

Elder T. Ricks

(I figured I should put a T in my signature thing because now there are 2 Elder's Ricks serving😊) 

Busy busy- Week 16

Hey family and friends!!! I hope you are all having a great week! Thank you for all of your prayers and thoughts and support! It radiates and I can feel so many blessings from you all!

I wanna give a huge shout out to all the dads out there!! Especially to my dad. Sorry I didn't get you a card for Father's day but I promise I have an awesome birthday card for you haha! My dad has always been there for me through the good and the bad and he is definitely one of my biggest role models and I strive everyday to try to make him proud and to be more like him! Thank you for all that you do for me dad:) I love you.

As for missionary work!! We are having a hard time getting everything done! It seems like we never have enough time for anything and are always so busy. We were blessed to have found 5 new people last week and due to that we have been running around everywhere for that and also been working with the youth and family of the ward and also planning for an awesome ward/community talent show. Elder Thacker is a super good dancer and so he has been teaching me and the youth of the ward how to break dance and we will be performing for the talent show! I will keep you all updated on that.

We went on a couple exchanges this week and I love exchanges! I get to meet new Elders and see how they do missionary work and it is so fun because I get to see other missionary work other than my trainers work haha. So I learn a lot from the other missionaries which is super cool! On one of the exchanges, I went with the Hmong Elders that are here in my zone and it was super fun. In the Hmong culture, Americans get like new names because our names don't make sense in their language, so I went to this guys house that gives names and he gave me the name of... Muaj Hmoo. Which means that I have lots of blessings haha. So that was definitely a highlight!!!

We are starting to get way more bold with Kriss because she knows the right things, she has been taught for almost a year, we just need to get her out of her shell and coming to church so she can see how much this gospel really can change her life through the love Jesus Christ has for us. I am hoping to be able to put her on baptismal date before the end of this transfer or hopefully the end of next transfer!

Missionary life is so weird but so awesome. Joseph Smith said "After all that has been said, the greatest and most important duty is to preach the Gospel" and honestly there is no work greater than sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Missionaries get to teach and serve others and help bring the fullness of the gospel and the ability for them to use the Atonement of Jesus Christ! How awesome is that? :)

Yesterday was pretty fun haha. I went on splits with some older guy in my ward. His name is Brother Biel. We have a couple different groups in our ward that meet every 3rd Sunday of the month and this guy was getting pretty frustrated that the missionaries don't go visit the people down there in Neillsville. And my awesome companion didn't really want to so I suggested that we go on splits so that he can take care of the ward up here and I can make Brother Biel happy. It was so awesome! I even got to give a talk. We met at a school for this group haha and only like 12 people showed up but they loved having a missionary there haha! This ward is awesome! So I am glad to have had that opportunity haha!

Oh also last week during P-Day I was able to go tour a baby calf(cow) farm and the guy giving us a tour only spoke Spanish haha! It was awesome and he even invited us to dinner to eat some cow with him so hopefully we could start teaching him sometime!!

As missionaries of the Wisconsin Milwaukee mission, we get to memorize this sweet scripture in D&C and recite it every day for companionship study. The scripture is... D&C 4. I challenge you all to read it and apply it to your lives:)

Also I just want to tell my little brother Carson, Elder Ricks, how proud of him I am. He will be leaving for the Mexico City MTC tomorrow and I am so proud to be able to call him my brother! He might be younger than me but I look up to him so much and am so happy for the decisions he is making in his life and lining his will up with our Saviors will. Never forget that through our faith in Jesus Christ, we can see miracles in our own lives, and also in others. 

No hay otra lugar que el Señor le necesita en este momento y El te ha llama en este momento a la ciudad de México por un razón. Testifico que este obra is la obra del Señor y yo se que el Evangelio de Jesucristo is verdadero. Gracias por su ejemplo para yo Elder Carson Ricks. Te amo.

Thanks again for all of the prayers an love from you all!! Have a great week this next week:) 

Love, 

Elder Ricks

Hey everyone- Week 15

Hey y'all!!! Thanks for all of your support, love, and prayers this last week!!! I love you all so much and I feel the blessings that come from your prayers for sure!!

I wanna give my little brother a quick shout out for his awesome farewell talk and just tell you all how proud of him I am! He will be leaving for the Mexico City MTC on June 18th and boy am I so excited!! He is going to be such a great missionary and is a great example to me and to all of us!

This week has been another great one!!! Many many miracles! As we look for God's hand in our lives, we can see it in literally everything. It's pretty awesome to be apart of this great and marvelous work that is taking place!

I was able to finish the Book of Mormon in Spanish yesterday!! It is true. The Book of Mormon is absolutely 100% true! I knelt down to offer a prayer to know if it was true and a thought came into my head and it said 'Dude... You already know that it is true, why are you asking!?' and then I was like yeah... Well I am asking because I just wanna make sure and I got my answer that it was😊 Joseph Smith is a prophet and translated this book by the power of God. I am thankful for the clarity, joy, and all of the testimonies of Jesus Christ that are in this book. I would like to invite you all to read from the Book of Mormon for at least 10 minutes in a day! If you think you don't have that much time, make that much time and I promise the Lord will bless you for your effort!!

I also had the opportunity to get another book called, The Infinite Atonement. And WOW. This is hands down the 2nd best book ever, after the scriptures. It breaks down the Atonement so well and I personally think that every family should own this book and read it! I got it and I told myself I was just going to read 1 or 2 chapters but I started reading it and 5 chapters went by! Before my mission I didn't even like reading but this book is incredible and has made me gain an even more testimony of the great gift of the Atonement that we have and has helped me to realize how I should use it and how I need to use it. You should all get a copy of this book!

We have had a ton of success here in Marshfield! Transfers are coming up soon and I am very excited to see what happens here! Thanks again so much for all of your thoughts and prayers! May you all have an incredible week filled with plenty of missionary opportunities! I love you all so much! I love Jesus Christ so much! Have a great week everyone!

DO GOOD, BE GOOD

Love, 

Elder Ricks

Fun at the Bar- Week 14

Hey everyone!

Thank you for all you do for me!! For all of your love and support and also for all of your prayers and thoughts! I know that because of your faith at home I am receiving blessings and I feel so blessed to have such great family and friends back at home! I hope that you all know how much I love you!

This week was crazy! I don't even know where to start. We didn't have a car because my companion scratched the truck we have and it was a huge scratch so we had to take it in to get it painted and stuff like that. We took it in on Tuesday morning and didn't get it until Saturday morning sooooo we rode bikes:) it was awesome. And we went on exchanges and I stayed in the area and had to ride bikes without a car even though I didn't even ruin the car!!! Haha it was super cool though and I definitely saw many blessings from riding bikes and being out in the public where people can see us and we were actually able to stop and talk to people that were out gardening and things like that! So great:) so even though Marshfield is so spread out and it takes a while to get across town there were definitely blessings from still working hard! The Lord works in mysterious ways:)

People are starting to graduate (HUGE SHOUT OUT TO CARSON MY YOUNGER BROTHER FOR GRADUATING AND LOOKING GOOD WHILE DOING IT!!!) and here in Wisconsin they have HUGE parties for the people that graduate! It is sweet. Especially as a missionary because what better place to meet and talk to people than at a fun graduation party where all of the members introduce us to literally all of their friends! So cool. We were able to meet more people there than I think that I have met this whole mission and we were able to tell everyone who we are and what we do and talk a little about Jesus Christ! The bishops son here graduated and invited us to his party and thankfully it was at a real bar where we were able to go and have fun doing missionary work:) while people are partying we were busy at work doing the most important thing, which is sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ! I love this work and that I have the opportunity to invite others to come unto Christ! It doesn't get better than this.

I went on exchanges with our new zone leader Elder McConkie, who is Bruce R McConkie's 4th great grandson or something like that so as you can all probably tell, he is a great man and an amazing missionary! We didn't have a car but we were able to work hard and find some very nice people that we get to come back and teach! We were also able to teach Kriss about faith and how we can strengthen that through our actions to show the Lord how much we love Him! It was so awesome to see the Spirit work on her during that lesson. We extended an invitation to her that I want to extend to all of you! We invited her to read 10 minutes out of the Book or Mormon and to pray to Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ! I invite you all to find at least 10 minutes of your day, every day, to read out of the Book of Mormon and look for the blessings that come from that! The Book of Mormon is the word of God and I am so grateful for the peace, knowledge and happiness that it has brought into my life. We as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints should take advantage of the knowledge we can gain from this book! As we study faithfully for even 10 minutes a day and pray to our Heavenly Father with real intent we will see a change in our lives!

I am so grateful that I get to be here in Wisconsin to teach others about the truthfulness of the gospel and to represent my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and be able to invite others to follow Him! This is the greatest work and I am so blessed to have this opportunity. Thank you again so much for all of your prayers, thoughts and love! I love you all.

DO GOOD BE GOOD

Love, 

Elder Ricks