Use the words from Apostles & Prophets- Week 65

Hey everyone! Hope all is going well back at home. Pretty crazy it snowed in Idaho this last week!🤣 ALSO, thank you to everyone who has sent me packages and letters and emails over the course of my mission so far!!! I love and appreciate all of your thoughts and packages and prayers sent my way❤

The times have been changing and we have been working hard to figure out how to adapt to them! The Lord is working many miracles in our area and also in the zone! 

As a mission we did a cool mission choir and it sounded super good!! We are definitely figuring it all out. I love our zone & my mission! And we are still sharing our miracles that happen and its just so amazing! The Lord always gives us miracles. We just need to have EYES to SEE and EARS to HEAR. Think about how you can do this better in your lives just as President Nelson has invited us to do. 

It's been crazy how fast the past 4 months have gone by! It felt like I just barely hit my year mark and got the hump day package from my parents but it was actually kinda a while ago! Time is wild! Take a second and think about what you're doing with your time and figure out what is most important and then do those things!

I have been studying a lot from the past General Conference and I just wanted to share a couple invitations/promises that some of them extended. 

Elder Clayton - Invitation: Make time to study the scriptures every day. Promise: We will feel the affect of Christ more in our lives.

Elder Uchtdorf - Invitation: Learn of the message God has for you. Promise: [Because of our trials] we will learn the importance of life and become better

Elder Gimenez - Invitation: Have faith that allows us to rise above our earthly perspective and come unto Christ. Promise: You will find rest in your soul

Elder Bednar - Invitation: Have selfless service and work with the Savior from the inside out. Promise: Christ takes the slums out of people, Christ can and will change your nature and you will do and become good.

I know we have modern day prophets and apostles thag testify of our Savior and help us all to become better. They teach us principles in order to better our lives so lets use their words to help us grow as people! I love my Savior, Jesus Christ. 

DO GOOD, BE GOOD

Love,

Elder T. Ricks

Milagros- Week 64

Hey everyone! I hope you had such a great week. I heard Idaho is starting phase 2 of the reopening processes! Exciting stuff! We have been asked as missionaries to keep the stay at home rules for a little while longer so we are still not really able to do much! Its been a super fun time though. We sing and play the guitar and do lots of musical stuff! 

This week was filled with TONS of miracles! The Lord is still there and He answers our prayers! We started a cool think in my zone where we have people send in little miracles that happen in their areas and its been so cool to see!! We were getting like 3 or 4 miracles every single day the last couple days of the week! 

We had a cool discussion on Friday on this thing called Faithful Focused Finding and President asked us to keep track of how many people were found from Friday to Sunday in all the areas. We prayed and told the zone and WOW between all the prayers and effort of the members of the zone we were able to find 12 new people this week!!! That was more than like the 4 or 5 weeks before this week and it was just incredible! I think we had a total of 10 new people found since Friday!! The Lord is pretty amazing:)

Jeremiah 32:26-27 - Then came the word of the Lord unti Jeremiah, saying, Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?

Remember this scripture especially if you are going through a hard time! Look unto the Lord in every though; doubt not, fear not. The Lord will be there for you, He is able to do all things and so are we if we let Him work through and in us. Think about in your lives how you can hear Him better or just think about Him more throughout your days and I promise you will be blessed!! 

DO GOOD, BE GOOD

Love,

Elder T. Ricks 

My momm- Week 63

Hey everyone! I wanna recognize my mom! She's the best! I love her. Im so grateful for her and I'm so glad I get to celebrate my mom on mothers day! I love you mom!

This week was good. We have been singing sooo much like a ton. Its crazy! But its good, its been fun... except for when you forget the tune of a song on a live video! Good laughs tho. 

Nothing too crazy happens now a days though like every day is kinda wild but im getting used to it.

Oh so the other thing - there is 6 companionships in my zone and only 2 of them are Elders total. So mine and then 1 other one. The other set of Elders, one of them ended up having to go to the hospital at like 12:30 one night and we didnt know about it until about 3:40 and because of corona virus his comp (Elder Lacey one of my old comps) couldnt go in with him so they sent him outside to wait for outside. He was alone for like 4 hours cause he didnt have the SIM card and couldnt get into my apartment complex. So he finally got ahold of us at 3:40 or so and got to our apartment at about 4 and instead of going back to sleep we just made brownies and sang and played the guitar and played Phase 10. The Elder in the hospital ended up having to have surgery to get his appendix out! He was in and out of the hospital in like 18 hours! Sooo fast. We've been helping take care of him this week!

My brother is being reassigned today and will arive in ARIZONA!!! How awesome is that! He's a great example to me. 

Also, shoutout to my parents! They've been married for a long time! It was their anniversary yesterday! Im grateful for the knowledge of eternal families❤

DO GOOD, BE GOOD

Love,

Elder T. Ricks 

1985- Week 62

Hey everyone, I hope you are all doing super well and that you had a good week. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Analee yesterday!!! I'm so glad that we can now call 2 times a week so I got to call here and sing her a happy birthday:) I love you Analee! Can't believe that you're already a teenager😱

Honestly, not too much has happened this week! Just been keeping on practicing the guitar, trying to find people, lots of Zoom meetings and LEGO's! 

Oh, I actually fully cut my own hair this week too.. the sides the top.. everything! It was getting super long on the top as you can see from pictures but I kinda (really) miss it.

For our zone we have a local Facebook Page and about every other week we have to make a 'quality post' which basically just means that we find a creative way to make a cool video about the Gospel!! Just like the ones that I've made with  making the temple, and when Elder Cook and I sung with the guitar! We have another post TOMORROW!!! It's going to be great! And it's... MORE LEGO STUFF!! We are recreating a scene from the Book of Mormon! Thanks for all the LEGO's mom!! 

We will be recieving 23 reassigned missionaries on the 12th of May. Pretty cool that all these missionaries want to go back out and continue serving the Lord! Big shoutout to then and especially my brother Carson! What a great example he is of yielding your will to the Lord.

So the April 1985 General Conference has kinda a ton of super cool talks given. I was looking for some talks that I could share with my zone and have a discussion about and I came across this talk called Look for thr Beautiful by Keith W. Wilcox. It is such a good reminder that we NEED to be focusing on the good and building our foundations on Jesus Christ and as we do that we will have joy and happiness in this life. The joy we feel is all a matter of our ATTITUDE. If we are focusing on the ugly of life or the storms happening around us we will naturally have a negative attitude. I know life is a hard thing but I know that this principle is true, when we look at the successes of other people, enjoy more fully the sunlight instead of seeking out the storms, and searching for the beautiful in life, the good, the strong, the decent, and the virtuous in people than that is when we will find joy in our lives.

DO GOOD, BE GOOD

Love,

Elder T. Ricks