Ryder's Mission

  Not a whole lot went on this week, so I'll just give you guys the quick rundown.  We had a general authority come for a devotional, it was pretty cool. We talked about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, it was good but I think my favorite part was talking with my district about it after. After every devotional, we get with our district and talk and share our testimonies, the spirit is always super strong, it's always one of my favorite parts of the week.  We also had president Hymus (the MTC president) visit for our house devotional, he shared some really good thoughts about obedience, and how it brings blessings.  We also taught our first Spanish lesson in person! Needless to say, it was a bit rough, but I think we were able to get our point across well enough. Still have a long ways to go though.  Speaking of Spanish, we're going full Spanish on tomorrow. So wish us luck with that, we'll see how it goes.  One more thing to mention; they have a store o...

  Hey everybody! It's been another crazy week, I'll start from where I left off in the last email. Tuesday night last week, we had an amazing devotional by Elder Bednar (same person I talked about in the last email) but this one was even better because he was speaking live to the Provo MTC, so we got to watch it live from there. He talked a lot about the Book of Mormon, about faith, and the power of the Holy Ghost as a witness to us. I don't remember exactly where I heard this, but a quote that went perfectly with this is that there's enough proof of the gospel to not immediately dismiss it, but there's not enough as to make faith unimportant. That just really stuck out to me, because it just goes to show that if you're looking for proof to know that the Book of Mormon and Bible are true, you're looking in the wrong place. True knowledge and belief comes from sincere prayer and seeking the influence of the Holy Ghost.  We had another really great devotional ...

  ¡Hola! It's been a crazy couple of weeks, so sorry if this is kinda long.  It all started with a trip to the airport at 2:30 in the morning, which was an adventure, felt pretty bad for my parents driving. After saying bye to everybody, I went through security but forgot to leave my phone with my family, so I had to chuck it allll the way back over all the lines where dallie promptly dropped it .  Anyways, after that I flew to Atlanta and met with some other missionaries going to Mexico City, and then we flew off to Mexico. There were what seemed like hundreds of missionaries in the airport there, it was awesome.  Mexico is super pretty, especially the CCM (Missionary Training Center). It sits between two mountains and the campus itself is gorgeous, they call it "The Garden of Eden" down here. As for the actual city, its not so pretty. There's an insane amount of people though, and the traffic is crazy. Imagine downtown Dallas with 2 stoplights, streets going every ...

  Hey everybody! Next week is going to get pretty crazy, so I figured I should send an email out today. I’ll be flying out tomorrow morning for Mexico City, super exciting and nerve wracking! Been doing home MTC for about a week and a half, it’s been good but we’ve also been on a zoom call for 8 hours a day… I’m definitely ready to be in person.  My district and companion are super cool though, they’re all from Idaho, Utah, and Arizona (surprise surprise). It’s a small world though, because my companion lives about 45 minutes away from some of my family in Idaho, and their families know each other, it’s pretty cool.  Other than that, nothing much else has gone on. Got to do some service (cleaned the church and then just worked some without pay lol) but I enjoyed it, I’m definitely going to miss working on the ranch.  As for spiritual things, if there’s one thing I could say I’ve learned from this past week and a half, it would be that a connection with the Holy Ghost...