Dang, I thought I would look older now.

Hola,

My first week has gone by pretty well. My trainer is Elder Scott. He has been out for a year and he is really cool. He acts just like Scott Richards. It's pretty freaky. He mumbles like Scott too. He thinks he is ripped just like Scott thinks he is ripped. ha ha. Great guy though. I have learned a lot. I'm so glad to be out of the MTC.

We went to the Vegas Temple today. It was awesome. It took us forever to get in through because Elder Scott's recommend wasn't working. Rubbish. I wasn't able to email on preparation day because Temple days are preparation days.

It's like 100 degrees right now. It's actually not that bad. I got a Camel Bak so I'm all set for the blazing summer. It never goes below 95 here. But it's dry heat so its not so bad.

My first Sunday here was kinda weird. It was Memorial Day weekend so there was barely any one there. So I wasn't that nervous bearing my testimony to them. After I was done, the Bishop then got up and announced that I was over the age of 12 and they had the documents to prove it. haha. Dang, I thought I would look older now. O yeah, and he announced that I am a magician. Great, now I'm gonna have all the Primary kids swarming over me. I still have the talent though. Elder Scott has seen my money tricks soo many times and it makes him mad that he cant figure them out. Don't worry though, I'm not showing off.

We like to incorporate my magic into the lessons. People love it. We haven't really taught any investigators because our teaching pool was all baptised right before I got here. It's hard because we have such a small ward (West Oquendo Ward) and we don't get any referrals. We tracted for over 4 hrs yesterday and no one answered their doors. bummer. So we have been visiting a lot of inactive people and part member families. But a lot of them fall through too. We did something cool with Cole's mom though. She has a smoking problem but she wants to quit. So as we were running yesterday we found a empty box of cigarettes. so we took it and then rolled up scriptures to look like cigarettes and put them in the box. We decorated the box and called them celestial cigarettes. She takes one out a day then reads the scripture. It was a brilliant idea.
Vegas has some amazing Mexican food, and I'm not just talking about Chipotle. We are going to Chipotle later today though. yum. The members feed us every night. I'm soo glad to be on a bike. Our Stake President Jenkins fed us Italian meatballs the size of my fist! No lie. I'll send a pic later. But Elder Scott and I burn it off on the ride home. Ugh, I hope that bike comes in soon. The seat on the one I'm borrowing is a pain in the butt. Literally. But my leg muscles are getting huge now. It's scary.

I'm glad you got the pics. ha ha I thought you all would like the light sabers. What you do is take a highlighter or scripture marker thing and put it in front of the camera where you want it. you hold it close to the cam and make sure your fingers aren't showing. Then when the flash goes off, it illuminates the marker(s) to look like a light saber.

Well that's all I can think of right now. Lisa please send me Mike's address, thanks.

Love you all. Elder Richards