Janesvilleeeeee- Week 18

Hey y'all! This week has been quite the adventure. I hope that you all have had a great week and continue to have a great next one and have a fantastic 4th of July:)

I was able to visit a lot of families in Marshfield before I left and they are such a great ward and such great people! Bishop Taylor has pet ducks haha and when I heard that I needed to see before I left! So they took us on a tour to see their ducks:) it is honestly one of the coolest things haha!

Doing the transfer system here is pretty wild! So all the people in the zone go to church building in their zone and they get picked up but members that are willing to drive us to Neenah! That is called transfer point and when we get their we take all of our stuff and put it in piles depending on where your next transfer will be! So I am in the Madison B zone so I moved all my stuff to that pile and from there we go with another member to our new zone building and get our car keys, apartment keys, and things like that.

BUT, I guess that they forgot to add that my companion (Elder Freeman) and I needed to go to Madison! So there wasn't enough room in the guys car that was going their and the Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders were calling the AP's for about 50 minutes trying to figure out what we needed to do. During that whole thing we went and had like a mini devotional, which was pretty cool. We also ended up talking to a couple of the Elders that were just in Janesville and they said that they didn't leave any area notes for us(because we are doubling into the area) and 2 of the Elders were going home soooo they didn't clean the apartment either haha. So we ended up riding with one of the counselors to the president and that was super interesting! We get to Madison and ask the Zone Leaders for our keys and they only give us the car keys and say they don't have the apartment keys😂 so we are like greaaaat and called the AP's and they told us to stay in Madison with the Zone Leaders for the night, so we went and played soccer with some Hispanics:) Woke up the next morning(Thursday) and they called us saying they can't bring the key to us until Friday but that the apartment was unlocked anyway!! So they told us to go down to Janesville and that is my adventure with getting to Janesville!!

They were right about the apartment and how messy it was going to be, sooo I have been taking the time to go through everything and throw it all away haha! I think my companion wants to keep it all and store it though but there is stuff here from like 1990 probably haha!!! So it looks a lot better here, and hopefully we can continue to make it look better because it's still not the best haha!

Also it is pretty hard to double in to an area! Neither of us have any clue what to do here or who they are teaching so we have had a good time going and introducing ourselves to people! There is a cool member Herman's De La Rosa and she has a sun named David who recently got back from his mission and they want to start doing a soccer night with us and that would be super cool! So he is gonna invite tons of his friends and tell us when it is so I am excited for that! And the Bishop was able to give us a list of Hispanic people that we could go and visit to invite back to church and stuff like that so I have a pretty great feeling about the ward here, and about the work!! 

So far if I were to come back and live in Wisconsin, Janesville would be the place! It is a pretty decently big city and has actually a lot of places to shop and eat out at! But I don't think I'll ever move here haha:) Oh, also the humidity is wild! We were helping a member move and we would go inside and it would be cool, and then we would walk outside and we would just start sweating! Even if we weren't doing anything haha! So I love it here:)

There is a member here, his name is Brother Ricks haha. He is from Rexburg Idaho, my great grandpa and his grandpa are brothers! He knows/grew up with my mom and dad(kinda) and it was super fun to talk to him! On Sunday we didn't have a dinner planned or anything, so he came up to us after sacrament meeting and asked us if we could come over for dinner and it was awesome to talk to him about my dad and my uncles! I love my family haha:) 

(I meant to get a picture with him but I think I forgot haha) 

The scripture Ether 12:6 has stood out to me a lot this last week and we had a lesson on applying the scriptures to our lives this week so I want to invite you all to read this scripture, and apply it to your life! And when you do this, I'd love to here some of the ways you applied it in your life!

Thank you so much for all of your thoughts, prayers, and love! I am so glad that I have the chance to serve the Lord here in Wisconsin and am grateful for all of your fantastic examples to me at home! I love you all!❤️

DO GOOD, BE GOOD

Love, 

Elder T. Ricks