DIRTY DASH, BBQ, & ZONE CONFERENCE...

Hey!

That is pretty crazy that Elder Bouwhuis has been home for a couple of months already! His brother should have a fun mission down in South America. I have thought a lot about being called in the states and foreign and I honestly don't know if I could have survived if I was called to south America somewhere. Haha. The more and more I think about serving here in Montana I know that this is the perfect mission for me and it is just a testimony to me that my Heavenly Father knows me!

I am sad to hear that things with your health have not really progressed! I will continue to keep you in my prayers! I hope the doctors can figure something out and get you feeling better!

Our week was pretty good! We taught a few good lessons but the best one was our 2nd new member lesson with Trisha. It went really well and she actually opened up a lot and starting asking a lot of questions which was awesome! Our lesson with Amanda fell through which was sad but her and her whole family showed up at church!! It was great to see them there and they stayed for all 3 hours!! Church was pretty good!

 Some other highlights of the week were our ward BBQ, Zone Conference, and The Dirty Dash. Our ward BBQ was Wednesday night and was a blast. It was nice to have an evening to relax and play games with our ward. It also helped us make some relationships with members we don't know to well which was great! Zone Conference was awesome! It was very inspiring and gave me a lot of new ideas to incorporate into our area and missionary work in general. There was a lot of good instruction given to us. The Dirty Dash is a 5k mud race. We were volunteers for the first 45 hours and then we got to run in it. It was so much fun! Our service was standing in a huge mud hole and throwing mud and water on/at people! It was crazy! Then we ran it as a zone in white shirts and ties. Don't worry Mom, I used an old shirt and a tie I found! It was seriously so much fun though! Plus we got a couple free shirts! haha.

I hope you have a good week and start to feel better!

-Elder Ricardson

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Hey Dad,

It is great to hear that Tanner is doing well. It has been awhile since I have heard from him or Ty. It sucks to think that I will have a year after I get home to see Tanner. I am happy that he is finding joy in serving the Lord and working hard. It sounds like you had a pretty great sacrament meeting! It is crazy to think our ward has 10 missionaries out! That is a ton! Our ward here has 3 I think. Although it is a lot smaller than home. I thought we were actually going to have to open the overflow up this week though. We had a ton of random visitors. Amanda and her family also finally made it to church! It was great. They stayed for the full 3 hours and seemed to enjoy it. We have an appointment set up for Wednesday. I can't wait. We had some other sweet stuf happen this week like Zone Conference and service at the dirty dash. Which was a blast but you can read about that in Mom's email!

I am bummed I can't be there to help put the bat boxes out. With the leftover tags coming out and everything I can't lie, I have thought a lot about hunting/scouting with you this week. Nothing to really make me get homesick (I don't get homesick at his point) or not work but whenever we had down time I would think about glassing somewhere down south with you! I have also thought some more about a new pair of binos and I think the best thing would be to get you a decent pair of 10x50s or 12x50s and then a decent spotting scope rather than just a nice pair of 15x56s. Anyway. I also thought we could sell that little trailer we have since we never use it and put that towards some binos. Anyway I can't wait to find out if we got the 36b tag and start scouting!

Love ya tons!

-Jake

THE SITES OF THE COUNTRY LANDSCAPE AROUND LAUREL, MONTANA

Lots of Service Opportunitues...

Hey!

This week went pretty well. These are some of the highlights. We started teaching Sister Langford (Trisha) the new member lessons. We are having their Home Teachers come with us so it will be an easy transition once we are finished with the lessons and gone. Their Home Teachers are Brother Payne and his son. They are awesome and will do a good and consistent job at their Home Teaching which is perfect. We also had another lesson with A. We taught about the Word of Wisdom and the Law of  Tithing. It went pretty well and she still has a desire to get baptized but wants to move her date back :(. Elder Natay and I both feel like her husband is slowing the process down and putting doubts in her head which is sad! 

We had some pretty sweet service opportunities. One was helping out with the "Big Sky Games" which is basically the Olympics just for Montana. We helped with a bike race. We just handed out water and told people to turn around. It was kind of boring to be honest but Elder Natay loves biking and had a blast so that made me happy! We also got to go to Bridger, MT for their Jim Bridger days. Some of the fun things we did there were; We participated in a horse shoe tournament - we lost. Some of the Native Americans there were amazing. It was insane. We got snow cones for free! And we got to go to a demolition derby. It was way sweet. The announcer for the Demo Derby knew the Elders in Bridger so he was giving us kind of a hard time over the P.A. system but it was great because it gave us a ton of publicity. Over all it was a pretty good week. Hopefully this one will be even better.

To answer some of your questions. The weather has been alright but pretty hot. Pretty consistent 90s with some rain storms which will take it to the low 80s. Pretty funny how I think that 95 degrees is HOT! I am going to die when I come home! We haven't had any flooding and only a couple of decent rainstorms. Nothing compared to Tucson. For preparation day we are going in to Billings. We are playing some games with our Zone. It should be fun but who knows. My visit with the Struthers was great. It was pretty late at night so it didn't last long. It was weird to see someone from my home ward. It really made me think of home and you guys! It was nice to see them.

Love you a ton! Have a great week! Hope you feel better Mom!

-Elder Richardson

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Hey Dad!

This week was a good one. We taught some good lessons and got to meet some new people. Despite the lessons we taught and people we invited to Church no one showed up! Not even Sister Langford who just got baptized. :( I hate it when no one shows up to church and everyone's excuses are super frustrating, but I don't know what their situation is so I am trying to learn how to give them the benefit of the doubt. It is a slow going process. Haha - Hopefully this coming Sunday we will have a few more people at church! We have had a couple of new people move into the ward here recently which is nice. I actually really enjoy this ward. It feels like home!

I can't wait to get the package you guys sent and read your letter. I am pumped to taste the new jerky. Although I did just get a ton of junk food from the Struther's. haha. By the way they gave me some of these candies called Hi-Chews. If you can find them and send me some that would be awesome haha! They are so good!

Larry's trail cam pictures look good. That one bull is pretty nice what do you think he will score? I would saw 340-345. I would shoot him. I am pretty excited to see some of the pictures you get down in the desert. I miss the Desert actually. I miss seeing javelin, bats, coues, ect... You better get in better shape. I have a feeling we are going to hike a lot more than we have in the past. I really do not want to see other hunters in our spots this year so we are going to have to work a little harder and get further back!

Hopefully we can email back and forth for a little today!

 Love ya!

-Jake

RELAY FOR LIFE SERVICE...

Hey!

So I really don't have to much to say this week. It was a good week. We got Trisha some Home and Visiting Teachers. We put A. on date for the 2nd of August. She is still progressing really well. We did a ton of service. We helped out with the 'Relay for Life' which was so much fun!! We got to drive a gator around all day and drop people off places. It was probably the funnest service of my mission thus far. 

For preparation day we went shed hunting and golfing. It was a long but fun day. Unfortunately we didn't find any sheds but we did get to see some cool stuff. A couple of big bucks around 40 elk with a couple of small bulls. I actually cow called to them and we got 6 of the elk to come to like 100 yards and they were calling back, and some coyotes. It was a really fun hike. Golfing was alright but I didn't play all to well. 

I also got to plan district meeting which is fun but can be stressful. Hopefully it turns out alright. We also saw the most redneck thing ever. We were driving home when we saw on the side of the road a dog strapped to a bike carriage thing with a harness. We expected to see some little kid trying to get his dog to pull him around. It actually was a 6o year old 100 pound shirtless man smoking a cigarette!! By far on of the funniest things I have seen. I will attach a picture!

It sounds like your week was good. I am jealous of the rain you are getting! I miss monsoon season so much!!!

I am also bummed about the family reunion wish we could have gone! Looked fun. We will have to do something similar after my mission!

 Well I hope you have a fantastic week!

-Elder Richardson

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Hey Dad!

Not much to say about this week. We put our investigator A. on date for the 2nd of August which was exciting! We also got Trish Home and Visiting Teachers set up. We are going to start teaching her the new member lessons this week. We had an awesome lesson with them last week and they seem pretty committed which is great!

 We have Zone conference coming up on the 24th which should be good. Shed hunting was a bust. We didn't find any but we saw a lot of elk. About 40 head. I will send some pictures later on. I even called in 3 calves, 2 cows, and a spike to like 100 yards cow calling with my small coyote call. It was pretty fun. The were talking like crazy which was neat to experience! We also saw a couple yotes and 2 nice bucks! Makes me want to be archery hunting muleys in the velvet come late August!! It would be so sweet if we could get up to Colorado and help out on a couple of hunts! I am so excited for this hunting season!! By the way I changed my mind about the money I made off the sheds. I am going to split it half and half. I figure I should use some of it for my mission and some for fun stuff. So if you add like 70-90 bucks for hunting stuff what should we spend it on? Put it towards a new pair of binos? Buy another trail cam? Let me know what you think!

I hope you have a great week! Love ya!

-Jake

A BAPTISM WHICH MADE FOR A GREAT SUNDAY EVENING...

Hey!

I don't have a whole lot to say this week. The big highlight of the week was last night. Last night after church was Trisha's baptism!!!! It was great. We had a lot of support and a very good program. It was awesome to see how excited she was! Hopefully we can continue to get her and her husband coming to church! The Pollock Brothers in our ward did the Baptism and Confirmation.

The 4th was awesome! The fireworks here are insane but we will get to that later. That morning we went to the big parade. It was decent. I am just not a big fan of parades. Then we walked around all of the canopies and booths that were set up and handed out pass along cards. After that we went to a BBQ at the Bett's house. We only stayed there for about an hour and then went to a big BBQ at the Pollock's! It was a blast. We played football, soccer, did some fireworks and ate a ton of food. After that we headed to the park by the High school to watch the firework show. It was pretty awesome I will try and send a couple of videos to you that I took during it.

So today was transfers!!!! Well we are both staying which is exactly what we wanted! We are pretty excited and so is our ward which was comforting. One of the other Elders in the other Laurel ward, Elder Graham, is getting transferred to Havre and we are getting Elder Allen!!!

I am sad to see Elder Graham leave but so pumped to be getting Elder Allen! He and I are really good friends so it should be a blast to serve around him again!!

Today we just went shed hunting since we left it up to Elder Graham to choose because he's getting transferred. I found another small elk shed. Nothing to big but it is something. Also saw a couple nice muley bucks! The one buck is huge!

Love you tons

-Elder Richardson

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Hey Dad,

You can read all about our week in my email to Mom. It was an awesome week filled with lots of BBQs, fireworks, teaching, and to top it off a baptism!!! It was great. Plus we are both staying here for another 6 weeks!! I am super excited!

So today we went shed hunting. I actually didn't choose that, Elder Graham did. It was pretty fun but we have picked the place over pretty well. I was able to find one small 6 point raghorn. Other than that it was kind of a bust. I did get within 100 yards of a group of muley bucks! There were two bucks in the group that were looking pretty good. The one buck is REALLY WIDE!!! I send you a video of them. The video is pretty shaky because it is me holding the binoculars and Ipad which is difficult. (we haven't figured out how to upload his videos yet - sorry)

I have been able to keep up pretty well with the world cup so far. We have a couple of members that like soccer that have been giving me the inside scoop. I hope Netherlands or Argentina wins it. Van Persie and Robben on the Netherlands are awesome but Messi on Argentina is well... MESSI!!!! Haha!

Love you tons hope to hear that we got drawn for the Dec. 36B hunt here shortly! Have a great week! (UPDATE ON DRAW: Scott nor Jake got drawn...so I guess it's extra tags for them this year...but at least he'll get out hunting with his dad when he gets back)

Oh ya I forgot to tell you! I got re-certified to drive!!!!!!!!! I had to watch a powerpoint and take a test!

Love you -Jake

 At Trisha's Baptism

 Pretty warm here!

 In the clerks office re-taking my driving exam

 I passed - yeah I get to drive again!

 Coming up on the shed I found.

Through the binos