I LOVE TEXAS!

Hey y'all!

First things first... HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEVIN!!!  Ah, I can't believe that you're turning 16 this week!  Are you getting your driver's license?  Do you already have your first date lined up? ;) You MUST tell me all about it.  And before you go, imagine me teasing you about it, like a good older sibling would. :)  I love you so much, and I hope your day is fabulous!

Second - thank you everyone for the mail that has been sent, emails included.  It is always so great to hear from everyone!  I really appreciate it - getting mail always brightens my day. :)  It was especially fun to get some mail from the Finch Family reunion - It sounds like you guys had a blast!  I'm sad I had to miss it... but I've got work to do here in Texas, ya know? :)

Also, I'm going to have to take back what I said last week... It is so hot here!  Luckily I have a car... (Speaking of, I'm not sure where my cousin Elder Ririe got his information... I'm not on a bike, fortunately.)  And everyone we talk to say that this - upper 90 degree weather - is nothing.  Apparently this is a mild summer, and August will be much worse.  Not looking forward to that... but the work goes on, no matter how hot it is outside!

This week has been crazy busy.  Opening a new area is hard, because neither of us know anything about the area.  We've been spending most of our time getting to know the members and trying to get to know the less actives - there are so many in this ward!  Most of the homes we go to we find that no one is home.  But then we do find one door where there is someone home - and some of them don't want anything to do with us... so sad, I wish I could help them remember why they were baptized in the first place!  But then we find the one home where they say we can come back and teach them.  Which makes our day. :)  It's

amazing how just one "yes" can make all of the "no"s seem worth it. :) We're starting to set up return appointments, and some of the homes that we have been able to get into are part-member families, so it will be interesting to see where all of this goes.

The members here are great - They LOVE having sister missionaries. :) We had been trying to contact less actives all day, and had no success, so we decided to visit some of the active members in the area.  Most of them weren't home either, which was kind of disappointing.  But we did find one family, where a young mother opened the door and excitedly said "Sister Missionaries!" and immediately invited us in to meet her family.  There are a lot of young families in the ward, so Sister Wahlen and I are getting used to having kids running around screaming while we're talking to the parents - it's great. :)  But like I said, everyone is very welcoming, and we're excited to get to know everyone better.

Random thought: Texans love animals - nearly every house that we go to has dogs barking when we knock on the door.  And if they don't have a dog, they have a cat.  It's great.  We went to visit a less active family that the Elders had been visiting, and they recently got a

golden lab puppy... He loved having company over, and laid his head on my lap like Sasha does when she want's attention, and sat there, wagging his tail the whole time we were there.  And at another less active's hose, a smaller dog came and sat on my lap.  Needless to say, I often have pet hair all over my skirts... But I love it. :)

Oh, one cool experience I have to share:  Sister Wahlen and I were out trying to contact less actives yesterday before dinner, and we knocked on one door and an older guy opened the door... He was kinda scary looking at first, I'm not going to lie - and he just stared at us... I

asked if RJ (The sister we were looking for) was there, and he said no, and then asked how we got her name.  We said we were the new sister missionaries in the westlake ward, and he said "Oh, you're... Mormons."  with not the most excited tone of voice.  We said yes, and

he shocked us by smiling, and saying that she's never had Mormon missionaries come visit her before.  He shook our hands and introduced himself, and said we could come by next Saturday afternoon.  Just goes to show that you can't judge a book by it's cover - don't jump to conclusions!

We're supposed to do service every week, so the Elders invited us to join them for their weekly service on Friday - they go to a retirement home and talk to the people there.  We got to play bingo and do puzzles, and get to know some of the older folks - a lot of the people

we talked to don't usually get many visitors.  Sister Oliverson, you would love it there. :)  We had a great time, and are looking forward to going again this Friday.

I love you all, I love Texas, I love serving the Lord!  Yes, it's hard, but it is so worth it.  I do miss home sometimes, but I am so happy here!  As my best friend would say:  I LOVE MY LIFE!!! ;)

Have an amazing week!

Sister Ririe

Psalm 46:10

I'm in TEXAS!!!

Hey y'all!

So... I was going to start this email with "It's so hot here!" (just for you mom ;) ) but it's not actually that hot, surprisingly enough... very humid, but not too hot.  Yet.  All the locals say that we're in the middle of a weird cool-ish spell... and that August should be MUCH hotter.  I'm not looking forward to that... but right now is good. :)  Anyway... I made it to Texas, safe and sound!  We had an hour and a half delay on our flight from Dallas to Houston... not so much fun... so our layover ended up being about 4 and a half hours long.  But, eventually, we all made it to Houston. :)  There were 34 missionaries in my travel group - all going to the Houston mission. Crazy stuff!!  The wave of missionaries is turning into more of a

tsunami... and I'm so glad that I'm a part of it!  President Pingree and his family were waiting at the airport, and everything good that I had heard about him is true - he's an amazing mission president, and made each of us feel like we were at home as soon as he met us.  I'm so excited to work with him and get to know him better.

So, about my new companion... Sister Wahlen (pronounced Wall-en) is great.  She's been out for 4 months, and I'm her second trainee... just goes to show how many missionaries are coming out!  We're supposed to be with our trainer for 12 weeks, but there just aren't enough experienced missionaries to train the new ones.  But she's great - I'm learning so much from her!  She's from North Ogden Utah, and has been serving in the Montgomery area since she got out into the field.  ...until now, that is.  Yep, we're whitewashing.  (For those of you that don't know, whitewashing is where neither companion has served in the area before, so you're basically starting from scratch in building relationships and such.)  Not only are we whitewashing, we're opening a new area for sisters.  So we don't even have an area book to work with.  Yep.  And, we don't have a map of the area. Yeah... we're struggling a bit.  Thank goodness we have an awesome ward mission leader who printed off the ward directory from lds.org and a few partial maps of the area from google maps for us.  So basically for the past few days we've been trying to get to know the area and some of the members.  There are elders in our area, Elder Bartholomew and Elder Pauga.  Elder Bartholomew has been in the area for the past several months and really knows his way around. they have been helping us out with finding our way to dinner appointments and church and meetings and such.  We've kind of been playing tag-along with them for the past few days... not to all their appointments - we've been doing some of our own contacting.  But as soon as the families from their dinner appointments found out that there were going to be sisters in the area, they invited us to come with the elders to dinner.  So we haven't been starving, don't worry. :)

We also joined them on an... interesting... service project Friday evening.  One of the recent converts in the ward asked the elders to help her and her husband build a fence for her mom who lives in the area.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Wrong - we were using wood from an old fence that had been torn down... so most of it was well worn and some of it was broken or breaking.  And we only had one hammer to work with at the beginning and it ended up breaking (Someone went to the store and bought a few more).  And the posts had been put in all crooked, so the fence ended up being somewhat zig-zagged... and VERY uneven on the top... but all she wanted was a fence to keep her dogs in, and she said that it would work perfectly, so... I guess that works.  It was, like I said, interesting work.  But we had a good time and got to know the elders better as well as the family we were helping.

We are living in an apartment complex, in a brand new apartment - so new that they were finishing the tiling in the kitchen and bathroom when we were moving in.  All of the supplies from the mission home got kinda jumbled around in translation... somehow we ended up with 3 sets of pots and pans, 2 irons, and no plates or bowls, and no bed frames.

We're working with our district leader to get the extras that we have back to the mission home and what we still need up here to us.

Oh, I guess I should probably tell you what area I'm in - I'm in the Westlake ward in Katy, Houston.  It's just west of Houston, so half the addresses in our ward are in Houston and half are in Katy.  There are a lot of apartment complexes in the ward, some older neighborhoods, and some newer neighborhoods.  It's a pretty area, very green.  Also, there are palm trees.  Yes, palm trees in Texas - who would have thought!  But there are no mountains... I miss the mountains, everything is so flat!  I also miss the grid system of Utah - It would be so much easier to find our way around!  But I think I finally know the main streets at least.  Sister Wahlen said that her parents said it's ok for her to buy a GPS, so hopefully we'll be able to get that today.

As far as mail goes, you should send it to me at this address:

Sister Megan Ririe

Stone Creek Apartments #3104

20000 Saums Road

Katy, TX 77449

It will get to me quicker if you send it that way - there is no one that really goes between the mission home and my area that regularly... I will eventually get anything you send to the mission home, but this is my address, for the next 6 weeks at least. :)

Sunday was great - we finally got to put faces to some of the names that we had talked about in meetings with our ward mission leader and the elders.  We got to meet a lot of the ward members and even some of the elder's investigators who were at church this Sunday.  Since we're opening up a new area for sisters, the ward members were so excited when they learned that we're not just visiting - that we'll be staying in the ward.  I'm hoping that their enthusiasm for sister missionaries will mean that they're super willing to help out!  So far, everyone we've met has been very friendly and helpful.  Our ward has a lot of inactive/less-active members, (there are 635 people in our ward records, but only about 220 actually come to church...) so I feel like we'll be making a lot of

re-activation efforts in the coming weeks.

We met an awesome family - the Schoenbecks.  They had us (Sister Wahlen and I, we have a dinner calendar separate from the elders now :) ) over for dinner yesterday.  They recently moved from New York, where they re-activated themselves.  Since they have started coming back to church, they have been really involved with the missionaries -

they would feed the missionaries twice a week when they were in New York, and their two kids LOVED having them over.  They moved out to Houston a couple months ago, and we were the first missionaries they've had over since they moved, so their kids were so excited to see us.  They made us feel very welcome, and made sure that we knew that they could come over any time - they said that if we ever had investigators we could bring them over to their house for FHE.  I love them!  They are trying to get rid of some of the bad habits that they started while inactive in New York so that they can go to the temple and be sealed as a family - their goal is this December.  And Sister Wahlen and I are going to do everything we can to see them there. :)

So.. Houston is great, I'm doing well, and I love to hear from all of you!  I'm glad that everything is going well, from what I've heard, at home and in your respective missions.  Elder Michael Ruesch, welcome to the group - I would love to continue getting your letters!  I love you all so much!! Have a great week!

Sister Ririe

Alma 7:11-12

I'm alive!! :)

Hello!! 

 So, I've survived my first week at the MTC... It's been crazy busy, a little overwhelming, but awesome at the same time. I've learned so much in just one week, it is incredible! Part of me just wants to be sent out to Houston right now, because I feel so on fire with the gospel and I want to share it with anyone and everyone I meet, but the other part of me is glad that I have another week to learn and grow before I am sent out into the field. 

 I love my companion, Sister Laws, so much! I honestly don't think I could have asked for a better first companion. She loves the gospel so much, and I am learning so much from her. The other people in my district are awesome too - there are 10 of us, 6 Elders and 4 Sisters. We all get along and have become close friends really quickly. The Elders in my district are all going to Washington, and all of the Sisters are going to Houston. It is weird to think that we have less than a week left together, and that I probably won't see any of the Elders again... hopefully I will run into the Sisters every once in a while in Texas!

Sister Laws and I don't share a room with the other two sisters in our district, but the four sisters we share a room with are in our zone. I'm glad that I have an opportunity to get to know those sisters better - they have become such good friends as well. 

 The welcome devotional was awesome, of course. Standing and singing "We'll Bring the World His Truth" with that many Elders and Sisters was so powerful. We changed the words of the chorus to be "we are NOW the Lord's missionaries..." and that's when it really hit me that I am a missionary... guys, I'm a missionary!! :D 

 Most of my time has been spent in various classes and in devotionals. I'm kinda used to the schedule now, but the first few days were rough - sitting all day, learning so much that I felt like there wasn't any space left in my brain to learn any more, and then learning more on top of that. We didn't get our first exercise time until Friday afternoon - I don't think I've ever been so excited to go to the gym! Mom and Sister Oliverson, you should be proud - I spent most of my 50 minutes running, yes, mostly running, just to get rid of all the extra energy that I had. It felt so good. But since then we've had time to exercise every day.

 The schedule on Thursday was just weird because of the 4th of July. And that's probably why Wednesday was so overwhelming - we got everything that was supposed to happen in two evenings all in one. But it was worth it - at the 4th of July celebration devotional we got to watch 17 miracles - I love that movie! and then we got to go see the stadium of fire fireworks show. It was very entertaining - the fireworks show was great, but more entertaining was the clapping and cheering of the missionaries. It seems like we are a bit starved for a little entertainment - especially those who have been here for a while! 

 Guess what - remember Brother Hobson, the patriarch who gave me my patriarchal blessing? He's in the presidency of my branch here at the MTC! Small world, huh? It's cool to talk to him and get reconnected. I talked to his wife, and she said that he loves it when he gets to see people that got their blessings from him. It's pretty cool for me too!

 Sister Laws and I were called as the Sister Training Leaders (basically Sister Zone Leaders) for our Zone. Which meant that our Sunday was full of meetings. Not necessarily a bad thing, except when it's fast Sunday and you have meetings until 5:40... Yup, we were hungry. But we learned a lot in our various training meetings, and hopefully we'll be good leaders to the Sisters in our Zone. There are 21 new missionaries coming today that will be in our Zone, and we and the Zone leaders are in charge of getting them all oriented to MTC life this evening. Hopefully we'll be able to do a good job and not make anyone more lost or confused than they already are. ;) 

 We got to have our first teaching experiences over the past few weeks. Because I am senior companion, for this past week anyway, I think Sister Laws becomes senior companion today... anyway, I've been leading out in the lessons which is a great experience. I'm getting over my fear of talking to people I don't really know, which is a huge blessing. Audrey, our first investigator, is one of those golden contacts that missionaries talk about. She has been attending our church for two years, and wants the missionaries to come teach her so she can work towards baptism. I love teaching her, because she is really open to sharing her experiences with us. She is just having a hard time gaining her own testimony, so Sister Laws and I have been trying our best to create an environment where she can feel the spirit. 

Sister Laws and I had an... interesting experience during our first lesson with her. After we teach, we spend a few minutes to talk to each other, find out what went well, what didn't, what we felt, etc. When we were talking after our first lesson, we realized that we had both received a prompting from the spirit and neither of us had followed it... we both felt so guilty! And since then we have been working extra hard to recognize the spirit in our own lives and to follow the promptings that we receive right away. 

 I've learned so much while I've been here - and it's hard to convey that all through an email. One thing that I've really learned is the power of prayer. Here at the MTC we pray for everything - I lost count of how many prayers I had said in one day at about 25... and it wasn't even dinner time yet. But I love it. Praying brings the spirit, wherever you are. And it brings you closer to Heavenly Father. Sister Laws taught me something interesting, and I've applied it to my personal prayers, and it has really helped me to stay focused and not let my mind wander. She said that every time she says her evening prayers, she starts by asking God to let her feel of His love for her, and then she waits until she feels His love, and then she'll continue with her prayer. I've tried it for the past few nights, and it really works! If you ask to feel God's love, you will feel it, even if it takes a few seconds for you to open your heart to it. You should try it sometime! 

 Most of my district went to see a recorded MTC talk by Elder Bednar on Sunday after the regular Sunday evening devotional. The talk was titled "Character of Christ." And it was INCREDIBLE. Really. Life changing. During his talk, Elder Bednar talked about how our mission is not about us. It is about others. Christ always turned out towards others when others would turn in and be selfish. Elder Bednar can say it so much more powerfully than I can... but I, and all of my district, really enjoyed it. If you can, and I don't know if you'll be able to, because it was a talk given at the MTC, you should find it and read it, or listen to it. And Elder Ruesch, if you didn't go watch it last week, you should go this Sunday, if they're showing it again this week. Hopefully they are. It really is very powerful. 

 I've seen so many people that I know here at the MTC - both from high school and college. It is fun to see everyone as servants of the Lord. And don't worry Sister Oliverson, I saw Sister Williams and she passed on your message. :) 

 I love you all so much! I feel so blessed to have this opportunity to learn so much and then go out and share the Lord's message with the people of Houston. Love you!! 

 Sister Ririe 

 Psalms 34:4 

 Also, I wish I could send some pictures, but I'm having some troubles with the computers here. So stay tuned, hopefully I'll be able to send some soon.

and so it begins...

Hey y'all :)

So... my time has come.  After nearly four months of waiting since I received my call to serve, it is finally time for me to leave my life behind for 18 months and go forth and serve the people of Houston Texas.  I am so excited!  And a bit nervous... but mostly excited. :)  I love this gospel so much, and I am so grateful for this opportunity to teach others about it and bring them closer to Christ.  I love you all, and I really appreciate all the love and support that you've given me through the years.  Just in case you feel inclined to write to me (I would love to hear from you!) here is my address:

(Before July 17, 2013)
Sister Megan Noelle Ririe
JUL17 TX-HOU
2013 N 900 E Unit 345
Provo UT 84602

(After July 17, 2013)
Sister Megan Noelle Ririe
Texas Houston Mission
16623 Hafer Road
Houston, TX 77090-4401

I really would love to hear from you, and if you want to stay updated with what's going on with me, my mother will be posting my weekly emails here. :)  I love you all, and I wish you the best 18 months!  

-Sister Ririe

D&C 84:88