California Ventura Mission: Bubble Ball! 06/13/2016

Okay...this email may not be as exciting as the last couple. I don't even remember what happened this week. It is all going by so fast!!! I can't even believe it. But sorry if this is just a super random email... good luck following!

We had a really cool experience on Saturday night though. We had planned to just go contact people on one of the main streets in town at 8:30 until it was time to go home. We didn't end up getting there until about 8:50 and so we only had 10 minutes! We decided to say a prayer before getting out that Heavenly Father would place someone that needed to hear the gospel in our path. Well, the first person we talked to was named Lois! He is 22 and from Mexico. He started telling us all of these questions he had like, "Is there really a God?" "Why does God let bad things happen to good people?" "Why does God let bad people exist?" and a bunch of others that I can't remember..but the coolest part was that Saturday morning during studies, we had read in Preach My Gospel the part about how the Book of Mormon answers "questions of the soul" that are both temporal and spiritual. Each one of these questions that he had are listed in that section! The spirit is real. It guides us! So we told Lois about the Book of Mormon and how each of these questions he has can be answered by reading it. Hopefully we will be able to teach him now too!

I was also able to give a talk on the atonement yesterday in sacrament meeting. No matter what problems we are trying to help solve he atonement of Jesus Christ can always solve the problem! Hna Zurita (one of the other Hna's serving in the branch) and I had been asked to speak last minute because the other people that had been asked had cancelled. We weren't assigned a topic, but when we got to sacrament meeting, all of our talks had a common theme - that Christ can heal us and help up become better than we have the strength to become ourselves. It was really incredible to see how the spirit touched each of us to share something that everyone needed to hear.

Also yesterday, we went to go to a "pass-off lesson" with the zone leaders, (that's when the person you met has to be taught by different missionaries because they would go to a different congregation..) and they totally backed into someone's car. They only left a little dent..but they had to leave a note because they couldn't figure out who the car belonged to. We told them to take a picture so that the lady couldn't claim more damage was done than actually was... good thing! Because this morning she called and said that they had knocked off the fender... awkward. Thanks for teaching me the ways dad! The elders are grateful.

We also got to go to a quincenera for the branch president's daughter! That was cool. It is like a wedding! holy cow!

Oh! And last monday we played bubble ball...I will send pictures.

I don't really know what else happened this week... we went to KFC with the Ramirez family, but I forgot to take a picture. (they're ones who got baptized last week) and they are just the cutest. Those kids are going to be such incredible missionaries!

Pray for me this last week that we will have prepared people put in our path and that we will be able to use our time wisely! I know this message is so important, and that it is true. I am so grateful for the time I have been able to spend representing my savior, Jesus Christ. He is the way, and the only way to have happiness in this life, and in the life to come.

Love you all!!

<3 Hermana Ricks...