Hey family!

It's been a good week here in Citrus Ridge! A lot of good stuff is going on, and we're hoping that it keeps getting better.

On Monday's we've started having lessons with the Jewell family. They're a really nice family, and recently had an 18 yr old guy named Josh move in. He isn't a member of the church, but one of the stipulations of him moving in was that he had to attend church with them. He's been for the last two weeks, and we'll be going over tonight to teach a lesson to the family. He's had a bit of a rough upbringing, but we're really hoping that we'll get to consistently teach him about the gospel. It's funny how we can tract for hours and hours, and then suddenly someone to teach just falls into your lap. Ha I'm definitely not complaining though.

So I think it was about two weeks ago now, but we decided to go through the area book and try to check up on some of the people in there that had been taught before. One of the individuals that we tried to visit was named Fillis. Well when we went to visit her a Hispanic man named Pat opened the door. Apparently the missionaries had written down the address incorrectly, but it definitely wasn't an accident that we got to talk to Pat. He invited us right in and allowed us to share some points of the restoration. He was really interested and invited us back. On Thursday we went back to his house and this time his wife Joselyn was home. It's pretty interesting to talk to people about religion. It's such a touchy subject with most people, especially those that have a strong belief in something, and so there's that slight tension when you begin talking. But before we began we had a prayer and invited the spirit to be present at the lesson. They had a lot of questions about what we believe and I think that deep down their goal is to convert us, ha but at the same time it was a really good discussion that we were able to have. They're really spiritual people, and they kept saying that we met them for a reason. Hopefully good things come from visiting with them.

We had an awesome mission conference this week with Elder Kikichi from the Seventy. At the beginning of the meeting we all lined up and got to introduce ourselves to him and tell him where we're from. When it was my turn he lit up when I said St. Anthony, Idaho. He immediately asked me if I knew the Law family. I told him that I did, and he just smiled and nodded his head. As the meeting progressed throughout the rest of the morning and into the afternoon he was able to share his conversion story with us. Apparently a Delmont Law from St. Anthony knocked on his door when he was a young man and was able to teach him. Pretty crazy to hear connections like that. His conference was awesome though. He really pushed the idea of exact obedience in the mornings. He made a promise to us that if we as a mission are exactly obedient in the mornings then the amount of baptisms per month will double by Christmas. Quite the promise, but I know that he's right. Also they've increased the standard of people contacted (like through tracting for example) to 125 people per week. We don't really have many people that we're consistently teaching right now, so that means a lot of finding is going on here. Ha we had about 143 this week (Tyler, I'm sure you guys accomplish that in about a day ha). But through more contacting there's a greater chance that we'll find more people to teach so it's worth it. On Tuesday we were trying to follow up with some people that had met with missionaries in the past, but had stopped for some reason or another. No one was answering their doors, so we finally decided to park the car in front of one of the houses and just go tracting. After about an hour or so we were headed back to the car and from a distance I could see a piece of paper stuck under the windshield wiper. I immediately assumed that it was a ticket and my stomach dropped...finally we got close enough and I could see some handwriting on it. When I pulled it off the car I read in big black letters "Elder welcome to park here anytime! God Bless". And then on the back it went on to inform us that missionaries always seems to show up when they're going through tough times in their lives...it was pretty cool to read that. No matter what we decide to do or where we go the Lord always seems to place us where people need us.

Happy Birthday to Grandpa and Jase this past week (there's probably been a lot of birthdays that I can't remember...ha just know that I love you)! Have an awesome week and know that I'm praying for you all, and I'm grateful for the prayers you've been sending my way as well.

Love,

Elder Kade Bartschi