Ryder's Mission

  Hey everybody!!  Man I can't believe it's Monday again already, time is absolutely flying by down here. Not a whole lot went on this week, it should be pretty short. To start off, we finally pretty much know our way around the area around here, so it's been good! We've had a lot of good lessons and contacts this week, found a lot of new people! Coolest thing this week though was an impromptu service project. We were in an area a bit far from our house on our way to meet some recent converts when we came across this guy and his daughter moving a hugeee pile of dirt, so of course we jumped in to help! A couple hours and a very dirty white shirt later we finished. It might sound strange, but I actually really enjoyed the physical labor, reminded me of the good ole days back home building fence on the ranch.  Other than that, we had a super cool miracle this week!! We've been teaching a super nice couple and we've had some really great lessons with them, the only ...

  Hey everybody!! Como están?? Man, it has been quite the week. I'm not even sure where to start- Moncagua is amazing! The first night we got here, we had dinner with the bishop and his family, and man, they are incredible. Just a bit about them- from what I've heard, they've faced a lot of challenges financially, so much that they work through the night to be able to support their family. In addition to this he's the bishop (a calling that is extremely time consuming and difficult) and also finds time to join the missionaries in lessons. Between all these things and his family, he gets 2-5 hours of sleep a day- and we hadn't even been in his house for 5 minutes before he started sharing his testimony of missionary work and how important it is. As a missionary, I hear stuff like this a lot, but this was a whole new level; the Lord is definitely hastening His work here, it was definitely an "oh crap, I gotta work harder" kind of moment.  The lesson I learne...

  Hola everyone! Man what a week! Just a quick recap, got to travel over to San Salvador for some visa work, got to catch up with Elder Anhder and Williams, so that was a blast! Kinda threw off the week though, it was super weird coming back and speaking Spanish after talking in English with them for 2 days. But yeah got right back to work, had intercambios Friday, and thankfully they went a whole lot better than last time! Saw a lot of cool miracles that day; we were teaching a family a while back that moved without telling us, but we just happened to pass by when they were sitting outside their new house! We were totally led to find them, so hopefully that goes somewhere. Also, just after one of our lessons fell through we were deciding what to do when a car stopped by us, and turns out it was members from Dallas (crazy right, what are the odds?) who were visiting family in El Salvador and wanted to know what time church was, it was pretty cool, they gave us some pan dulce (prett...

  Hey everyone! Don't have a whole lot of time today, this will be pretty short. This week was good! I feel like I'm making a bit of progress with spanish, understanding more than I was at least. The area has been good though, we've been finding a lot of people! Lots of miracles too this week; my comp was sick and so I was at home doing calls (not my favorite, super hard to do in spanish) and I just finished when I decided to call one more person- ended up having 2 lessons, and he came to conference!!! Super cool!! Conference was absolutely amazing!! I learned a lot about being confident despite challenges, focusing more on Christ, and living every day like Christ is coming tomorrow. Someone once told me that Conference was like Christmas time for missionaries, and they were totally right, it was awesome. If you didn't get the chance to listen, or don't know what it's about, I invite you to find out more! Living what our prophets and apostles teach is life-chang...