February 27, 2012

Goodness. I was probably a third of the way into my email when
everything collapsed on me and the email was lost. So now I have to
start all over again. But I will survive!

So the transfers are in! Are you ready to hear some craziness? I was
really surprised! Elder Neeley is getting transfered and is being
sent to the Lake Nokomis Ward. It is over in South Minneapolis. And
I am staying here in the Twin Cities YSA ward again! Craziness! I
was definitely not expecting it but I am really excited to stay here
longer. My new companion is going to be Elder Truman. He is from St.
George and has been on his mission for 4ish months longer than me. He
is going to be my first companion that has been on a mission for
longer than me other than Elder Farnsworth. Coolness! I am really
excited. So we are going to party it up here and try to have a few
more baptisms. Elder Truman is an awesome missionary and so hopefully
we can see some good success. We'll see what happens! I am really
sad to see Elder Neeley leave though. I have had a blast serving with
him! We have gotten along really well and had a lot of success
together too. It's been fun. But this area is really different than
any other area in the mission and so it is good for him to get the
boot and have some more experience in a different area. He's going to
have a lot of good success on his mission!

Other great news! TX and TS were baptized on Saturday! Hooray!
Elder Neeley baptized TS and I baptized TX. It was really fun. After
I baptized TX, we were walking up the steps into the bathroom and he
was like, "That was awesome!" Ha ha. I thought it was funny. It
really is awesome though! Both TX and TS are students at the U of M.
TS is a girl and TX is a boy. They didn't know each other until the
day of the baptism actually but it was good for them to have another
person being baptized at the same time. There is a really strong
spirit at baptisms. It's amazing. We had two investigators at the
baptism and there is no way you can't feel that special spirit as
these people are participating in this ordinance. The Church is so
true! The next day in church, I confirmed TS and then a member of the
ward confirmed TX. It was really great! It was a good way to finish
off the transfer.

Did I mention a _______ last week? Probably. She is the one that
called the institute when we were in the middle of ward council. She
wanted to change her life back around. Yes I did mention her because
we have a baptismal date with her set for Ashley's wedding day! :)
Anyway, we are facing many adventures with her. She has a lot of
difficult struggles in her life and so we are helping her work through
them. It's interesting learning to deal with all of the challenges
you are faced with. She knows the church is true and wants to be
baptized really bad but has other obstacles that she needs to work
out. Other people have a really hard time coming to know if the
church is true or not. And other people have family struggles.
Something I have learned a lot about in the last few months is that
everyone is going to have problems as they head to baptism. So the
key is to not sit back and pray that no challenges come, but to
instead plan on challenges and then learn to deal with them when they
arise. And this is a similar principle of life! And I really believe
that that is one of the reasons we need the full gospel of Jesus
Christ. It is the only rock in our life that will help us to deal
with all of the problems and challenges that hit us in life. The
gospel is the only thing that can solve everything. It's great!

Yes, it is true. My shoes were either misplaced or stolen. Ha ha!
It was so funny. But it is a bummer though. My other pair of shoes
are in really good shape though and so they will easily be able to
last me for the rest of my mission. No problem. SO don't worry about
getting me another pair. And who knows! Maybe my shoes will
magically show up again! Ha ha!

Last letter I mentioned that we had just taught a guy and he accepted
the invitation to be baptized. He has done a ton of research about
the church and knows a lot. He is actually from India and was raised
Hindu but doesn't follow it at all. So we taught him for the second
time this week and he is SOLID. He is a definite baptism soon to
happen. It may be in either march or april but it will happen soon.
He also came to watch the baptism on saturday and we will be teaching
him again tonight. So excited!

Unfortunately, not everything in missionary work is always happy.
_______ who we had set to be baptized on March 17th is having
difficulties. After the last time we taught her and set her date for
baptism, we didn't hear from her for a week or so because she had a
lot of things going on. Well after that she told us that she doesn't
want to be baptized anymore and she wants to explore other churches
too. Noooooo! We were sad. Because she has totally felt the spirit
in our lessons and as she's read and everything. But something has
happened that we don't know quite what and she backed out. She does
have a lot of pressure from family and from friends and so we are
worried about that. It just makes me really sad. You can't deny the
feeling of the spirit! It's a bummer but we are hoping she will let
us at least meet with her again to talk about it all. We'll see.

I watched the wedding invitation! I just didn't play the music. Is
the music important at all? But it is SO GREAT! Ashley, you are
totally getting married!!! Weird. It's so exciting!
Also, I'm an UNNNNCCCLEEE!!!!! Yes!!! I was so excited when I got
the letter with pictures of little Emilia. Awe man! Make sure she
knows that i am her favorite uncle! Congrats to Brian and Jen!
MJ, good luck in New York! It is the best thing ever! I am so pumped
for you. And congrats to michael for getting to the finals of
sterling scholar. Good luck with your interview!
So many exciting things are happening in the family! Life is just too
good. I am very happy.

I better go. We're going to go bowling! Cool huh? We have several
missionaries here and several peeps from the ward too. It's great!

Love you guys!

-Elder Ruesch

p.s. we're supposed to get a ton of snow tomorrow! WOrd!

February 18. 2011

Hello!

Did I mention to you on monday that I was going to be emailing you today? I thought I did. But if not, surprise!

Today has been an awesome day! We started it off by being at the temple at 7 in the morning for a baptistry session. A bunch of people in the ward were there as well as AA, A*, and TH who all were recently baptized (sorry the initials are so confusing). Moral of the story, three of the people who got baptized recently went to the temple! Talk about awesome! AG and HT didn't make it but that's okay, they will come next month. After the baptisms I had to actually go interview another set of missionaries' investigator who is getting baptized next week. And then after that we came back to the institute and taught a first lesson to a guy we just met. And the lesson went really well. He actually referred himself on mormon.org and he is SOLID. We invited him to be baptized and he accepted! So it has been a morning full of baptism things! I love it!

This week has been crazy. There is something magical happening in this ward and people are just falling into our laps! It is kind of ridiculous how people just keep on showing up out of nowhere. While we were in a meeting before church last week, a girl called and said that she wanted to change her life and wanted to come to church. This girl will be called JF. She pretty much thinks that she is a member. When she was 15ish she went to church with her friend for two years but her parents wouldn't let her get baptized. And then after a while she got caught up in some stuff and stopped coming to church. Well now she is going to the University of Minnesota and wants to get away from all that stuff she was into and chnage her life up. So she called the institute. We ended up meeting with her twice this week and set a goal for her baptism to be on March 17th! Awesome!

But this is not all! Have I ever mentioned SW? She showed up at church several weeks ago. Her Dad is a member and she wanted to figure stuff out about the church for herself. So we've been teaching her for a while and we had a great lesson with her this week and also set a date with her to be baptized on March 17th. So there you go Ashley! That will be my wedding present for you. There isn't much that I can do as a gift. But I will celebrate by having two baptisms! :) Yay for marriage!

The spirit is so amzing. I am so glad that this church is true! Because we get to have the spirit with us when we teach. And there is no way we could work without it. On Monday we had a lesson with our investigator from Uganda. She is really cool but just doesn't have any motivation to read the Book of Mormon. In fact, she stopped meeting with us for about a month but we got back in contact with her again and she came to church last week. She also came to see __________'s baptism which was really good. Anyway, after all of our failed attempts to get her to read more of the Book of Mormon, we were teaching her the Plan of Salvation on Monday and we only got about half way through because she was asking so many questions and we were able to answer all of them. it was amazing and the spirit was super strong. And then she opened up to us about a lot of stuggles that she's had in her life and we told her all about how the Plan of Salvation will help and how everything that is unfair is made up through Christ. We talked about it for a long time and it was really really good for her. Later in the week she texted us and told us that she is reading everyday now, not because she has to but because she wants to. It's amazing how much the spirit helps! :) Ha ha. That was a really cool experience.

I mentioned last week about a girl from China who emailed us out of the blue and then came to church. Yeah so we taught her this week and she is awesome. A* came to the appointment and helped translate words and phrases that she didn't understand. it was really good! I am way excited for her!

So things for next saturday are still going well. TX and TS are both still on their way to be baptized! It's looking like we're going to start our own little Chinese branch here :) ha ha. They are both doing really well and I am excited for their baptism. This ward is SO awesome because everyone is so friendly and they all hang out together and so it is really easy to feel loved in this ward. And they have activities ALL THE TIME ha ha. In fact, yesterday they had spa night and it sounds like it was hilarious. We didn't go of course but apparently they had all this stuff set up at the institute like it was a spa. Kinda random but I hear it was fun. There is cool stuff going on all the time!

Do you remember how several months or so they combined all of the singles wards in the twin cities? i think that that is the reason for all of the success that we have been having. There is just a lot of excitement right now in the ward and a lot of people are just showing up that are really prepared and ready for baptism. I feel so lucky to be apart of this work here in this ward. It is amazing! There are so many things going on. It is really cool to be apart of it. Everyone just has a lot of faith! And now more people are being baptized and more people are becoming active again. It's great! Pretty soon this ward is going to be too big for the institute building.

So I just realized that you all probably think that my email isn't going to come until next saturday. Woops. Sorry I should have explained that one more. But oh well, you can be surprised with an email today! :) My next email wont be until a week from Monday. In fact, by the time I email next I should know if I am being transfered or not. I can't believe how fast time goes! Transfers will be in a week and a half. That's crazy.

I hope that everything goes well for Brian and Jen and the coming of little peanut! I'M SO EXCITED!! Let me know how everything goes. It is super exciting!

Well, I'm excited to see how church goes tomorrow. Getting people to church is always an adventure. I'm sure things will work out good though. Have an awesome day and weekend and week everyone! I'm excited to let you know in week how everything is going. I wish I had time to explain everything that happens each week because so much stuff happens. I just have to give the highlights. It's good though. Oh yeah, we also had Zone Conference this week and that was good.

Welp, till next time!

With Love,

Elder Ruesch

February 13, 2001

Wow! It has been a crazy week. Every time I write these emails I
look back and it blows my mind how fast the last week was but also how
many things happened. This week had an extra dose of crazy compared
to most weeks.

First off, benefits of serving in Minnesota! General Mills head
quarters is here and so many people work there in the church. Over
the course of my mission I've gotten tons of free cereal. But this
week a girl in the ward gave us three boxes of toaster strudel! Talk
about delicious. I was really excited about that and so I thought I
would let you all know.

On to things that are more connected with missionary work. Both of
our investigators are doing pretty well. ________ was set to be
baptized this Saturday but we talked to her and pushed it back a
week. She is progressing really well and living all of the
commandments. We just want to be sure she is really solid in her faith.

Our other investigator that is scheduled for baptism next week is
doing really well too. I've been teaching him for a LONG time and
over the last 3 or so weeks he has progressed so much. It's really
amazing! He made it to church again which is great. These people are
just crazy because they all take like 20 credits or more for school
and they never sleep! It's craziness. But somehow they do it and get
all A's.

Now here is the crazy news. On Saturday, President Clements called us
and told us that a sister in another area was sick and has to go home
and so he is going to move the sisters in this ward out to be with the
companion of the sister who had to go home. So we now have to take
all of the sisters people that they are teaching on top of our own
people. It's insane! President said that it is a temporary thing and
that hopefully when the transfer comes in two weeks he will be able to
move sisters back in to this ward. But for now, we're going to die.
We've been trying really hard to work out our schedules well. It had
been an adventure but it should work out fine I think.

This Saturday is going to be amazing. The ward is doing a temple
baptisms trip and all 5 of the recent converts are going to be going.
So we got permission to go! Yay! It is going to be really neat. So
because we are going to the temple that day, we had to make saturday
our p-day. So expect next weeks email on saturday.

Another cool thing that happened in church. _______ blessed the
sacrament for the first time yesterday! Woot woot! That was really
cool. As expected, he made a mistake the first time and had to say it
twice. I think everyone does that. But it was great! He's just on
fire right now. He is doing so well!

Xazmin tells me all the time about how her conversations that she has
with mom and michael. It's pretty hilarious. She thinks mikey-boy is
the coolest kid. And she is excited that he is excited about the
sciences. She is a freakin genius and is going to save the world
someday. So michael, make sure you stay in close touch with her and
learn lots from her! She knows what she's doing for sure.

The thing I love about this area is we have so much diversity among
the people we teach. We're teaching peeps from India, Uganda, and
China. And we've taught someone from Korea and hopefully will be
teaching a guy from Russia. The University tends to pull in people
from all over the place. It is quite excellent.

One more quick miracle. The Dinkytown missionaries have their own
email that they can use to get in touch with the students. And so we
got a random email from a girl who got our email from a friend and she
just wanted to learn about God. So we emailed her back a lot of
activities we have and stuff and yesterday she showed up at church!
It was cool and we have an appointment this week to meet with her.
Exciting!

And finally, I went on an exchange with the New Brighton missionaries
this week. And they took me over to visit the Cummings!! It was
awesome. They are the coolest family ever. I don't think I've ever
met cuter kids. They were hilarious! Ashley is going to have a dang
awesome new family. I am excited for her. I got a picture with them
and so I can email it to you. Fun fun!

Well, I love you guys so much! Life in Minnesota is super excellent.
It couldn't be better. And now we've got a date with the grocery store.

Love,

Elder Ruesch

February 6, 2011

Another week already! I can't believe how fast the time is going.

We had a great week again! Things are going really well. TH got
baptized! Yay! She asked me to baptize her which was an awesome
experience. It was a wonderful baptism too. She shared her testimony
and said that she's never been happier. And her family all came and
that was a great thing for them to hear. Her Dad is athiest and the
rest of her family isn't religious. There is no way they could not
have felt the spirit in that meeting. It was awesome and an exciting
day! Then on Sunday Elder Neeley got to confirm her. It was his
first confirmation and he did a great job. It was awesome.

Yesterday was also just a really really good day. AA was conferred
the Aaronic Priestood and so he and HT both are Priests. HT got a
calling today. And all five of our last recent converts except HT had
their interviews for their temple recommends. HT will have his
tonight. And so the plan is that everyone is going to do a temple
baptism trip on the 18th. Hopefully, we can go with them because that
would be so cool! But there were a lot of wonderful major steps for
everyone yesterday.

The work that we do with the Chinese students here just keeps
growing! Two members brought their friend to church yesterday and she
is chinese. Hopefully, we can start teaching her. Additionally,
________ is doing pretty good. She is still set to be baptized on the
18th of this month. She doesn't have as strong of a testimony as the
other recent converts did because she has no christian background at
all. She is doing extrememly well by living the committments we give
her though. She is living the Word of Wisdom which is great! We just
need to give the spirit a little bit more time to work in her. We'll
see what happens and hopfully she can be baptized very soon!

Also, there is a student that is from China as well. His name is
___________. He actually was meeting with missionaries last year and
then he went home for the summer and when school started again we
started to teach him. We haven't had the most consistent lessons but
he has made significant progress since I first got here. He also
doesn't have the greatest understanding since he has no christian
background. He went back to china over the christmas break and he had
a few great experiences so that when he came back he said he wanted to
be baptized! Awesome! And so he finally came to church for the first
time on Sunday and we're hoping to have him ready for baptism on Feb
25th. That would be awesome! Chinese people are the coolest people
ever.

It's pretty amazing all of the things that are going on in this ward.
Since all the wards were combined everything has just been growing and
growing. New people show up at church every day. It's bringing in a
lot of less active people and non members too. This kid got up in
testimony meeting yesterday and said, "even though I'm not a member
yet, I can feel the spirit really strong here and I know this is the
place for me." Ha ha! What? Awesome! it turns out he is from Idaho
and was meeting with Elders for a long time. He doesn't even want to
meet with us which is funny. He said he just has to work some things
out and he will be baptized. This ward just pulls people in! It's so
great. I really really really love working with the YSA age group.
It is fun. I don't know what I am going to do when I have to go and
talk to families again. I don't even want to think about it.

On Saturday night, after the baptism we took A* over to see the
temple. We walked around the grounds and then went into the church
close by and had a lesson in there. It was really great. I am so
amazed to see the impact that the Gift of the Holy Ghost has on
people. It is a gradual change but each of the recent converts
literally has a brighter glow. Each one is happier then they were
before and you can just feel the prescence of God around them. It is
amazing. All i have to say is this church is true. And then it is so
interesting to see the strong contrast between these recent converts
and someone who has lost their way along the path. We're visiting
with a less active guy who used to be on meth and do all this other
stuff. He was able to get off all of that but he still smokes and so
we're working on that with him. Smoking is a BEAST! I hate it with
all my guts. But the point is, he can't have the spirit with him as
much. And you can see it. Never ever ever lose the prescence of the
Holy Ghost!!!!

This email was kinda all over the place again. Sorry about that. It's
a good thing i don't have to worry about writting well for at least
another year. Thank goodness!

Well Fam Fam, I love you guys! Things are going great over here. And
this weather is INSANE! It's supposed to be in the 30's all week I
think. It blows my mind. Minnesota is not like this. Everyone
keeps talking about how amazing it is. i guess last winter was just
so bad that Heavenly Father wanted to give minnesota a break. ha ha.
But now that I say that, it's probably going to blizzard tomorrow.
We'll see.

Love you!!

Elder Ruesch

January 30, 2011

Goodness. I can't believe it. It has officially been a year since I
entered the MTC as a brand new missionary. It is so cool but also
strange to look back on the last year and look at what has all
happened. I have definitely been blessed to see some amazing
miracles. Missions are a funny thing.

_______got baptized! Yay! It was an awesome day. She was so happy.
We all were. It is amazing to see the progress that she has made in
the last couple months. The spirit has just taught her so much and
she has made leaps and bounds in her progression in the gospel. After
her baptism she bore a quick testimony and it was really really
awesome! Yesterday she even joined us for a lesson with another
student and shared a quick insight and testimony of the Book of Mormon
and it was really powerful. It is just amazing! She asked Elder
Neeley to baptize her and I confirmed her. Elder Payne, who is the
area seventy of this region came to our sacrament meeting. It was
really random. He didn't have any kind of business to conduct. He
just sat at the front and bore his testimony at the end of the
meeting. Pretty cool! But the cool thing was that he stood in on the
circle for _________'s confirmation. That was not only cool for
____________ but it was cool for me too!

This week was pretty busy. We didn't get much of a P-Day last week
but we still got everything done that we needed to. And last week
went really well! __________ is next up in line for her baptism. She
is doing so great! She will be baptized this Saturday. We are really
excited. This week we had a couple lessons with her. President
Clements wanted to actually come teach with us and so he came to a
lesson with___________. It was cool to have him there. He is very
close to the spirit. Cool experience. _____ also had to move to a
different house this week and we helped her with that a little bit.
That was super good too because we got to meet her mom. Her mom and
sister plan on coming to the baptism this week. I think that
___________ is going to be a great influence on them and hopefully, it
wont be too long before they are baptized too. Her dad is going to be
a little more difficult. But he'll warm up eventually. I mean c'mon,
this is the true church.

Ashley probably already told you but I forgot to mention last week
that I got to meet her future sister-in-law. She was at the church
when were setting up for _________'s baptism. It was really great to
meet her and she is really nice! I was super excited. I haven't met
brandon's brother yet but I hope to soon. That will be cool! It
looks like Ashley will be joining a very awesome family! That wedding
announcement that you are making sounds really cool! If you make a
DVD and mail it to me I should be able to watch it. I can make sure
to get permission but I am certain they'll let me watch it. Exciting!

_________ who got baptized in December gave a talk yesterday in
church. She was asked to share her conversion story and testimony.
It was SO GREAT! I love the testimonies of new converts. It is so
pure and 100% filled with faith. It is a really hard thing to change
religions and so they all have faith that this church is a better road
for them. Man, this church is so true.

We are hoping to see some more baptisms pop up for February. There is
a girl who's Dad is a member and she just showed up at church a couple
weeks ago. We met with her this week and she is really solid. She
will get baptized sooner or later, it is just a matter of time. I'm
really excited for that! We are also starting to get ahold of more
less active people and are working with them more to get them back
into the church. And so that is also keeping us busy. Since this
ward covers such a huge area, we have so many people that we are
trying to work with and keep in mind and everything. It's a little
bit overwhelming, but worth it. This is the best time in peoples
lives to either find the church or come back and so we have a lot of
work to do here!

Oh yeah! The lecture thing that we went to with the bishop last week
was really interesting. He was asked to speak to these senior
citizens about mormonism. The group is a lifelong learning group and
these people can take all sorts of classes about a wide range of
topics. The class they are doing now is called "Mormonism: The quest
for presidency." Ha ha. Some lady thinks that she is a mormon
historian and ran the class. It's funny. She isn't a member and she
taught the class a lot of weird stuff. And so when we came, the group
had a lot of weird questions. But I feel like we were able to all
answer their questions pretty well. Interestingly enough, the class
was at the Jewish Community Center in St Paul. It was definitely a
rare opportunity and I learned some good things. The world has such a
skewed messed up idea of what this church is. They are missing some
really big things. That's why it's so important to be a good
example. I can definitely say that anyone I have ever talked to, if
they know a mormon, they have a much better opinion of the church than
someone who doesn't know a mormon. It is really interesting.

Well, we are SUPER excited for the baptism this week. It's going to
be so great.

Love you guys so much!

-Elder Ruesch

January 23, 2012

What a delicious week it has been! School finally started and we
suddenly are getting extra busy. When all the student's went home we
had to totally build up our investigator pool again and so now that
the students are back, we have like twice the number of people we are
working with.

The week ended amazing with the baptism of _____________! He is such
an awesome kid and the baptism went really well. It was awesome! He
had no troubles for the week leading up to the baptism and he was just
as happy as can be on Saturday. He prepared himself well and has a
strong testimony. The great thing was that his parents even showed
up! I was surprised when he called us the morning of the baptism and
told us they were planning on coming. They were both pretty tense at
the beginning and you could tell that they felt uncomfortable. But by
the end of the program I think that they relaxed a little bit. The
spirit was very strong the whole time and it would be hard not to feel
it. And fortunately, President Clements came to the baptism too and
so after it was done and everyone was mingling he went over and talked
to __________'s parents and had a really great conversation with
them. I was the lucky one that got to baptize him and it was just an
awesome day! He also bore his testimony at the end of the program and
it was really powerful. That was awesome!

______________ is doing really well too! She came to ____________'s
baptism and also had a great conversation with President. She had a
few concerns and talked about them with President and she felt a lot
better about her own baptism after that. It's gonna be great! She is
so funny and we have had some great lessons with her. She passed her
baptismal interview and is ready to go for her baptism this Saturday.
Yesterday after church we helped her edit her essays for her
application to BYU. Ha ha. It was great. She really wants to be
accepted. And I am almost certain that she will be. She is pretty
dang smart and the essays were really good. Also, she asked Elder
Neeley to baptize her so that will be exciting!

Things are pretty much the same and are going great. ______________
is still set to be baptized on Feb 4th. She is really looking forward
to that day. She is doing really good and has developed a powerful
testimony really quickly. She is going to be getting baptized just as
quick as the ____________'s were. Pretty cool!

I'm trying to move as quick as I can because we have to cut our P-Day
a little short today. The Bishop has been asked to give a
presentation to some religious group that had been studying about all
sorts of religions. Recently, they are studying Mormons. So Bishop
asked us to come along and help with the presentation. I'm looking
forward to seeing how it goes. It should be cool.

Funny story that I must tell. Friday night we had to run over to the
church building to get the baptismal suits and randomly there was some
sort of birthday party going. They had music playing through the
sound system in the gym and it was really loud so we could hear the
music. While we were there several songs played and I didn't
recognize one of them! Elder Neeley knew them and I didn't know any.
Goodness! It's amazing how much you miss in just a year. I thought
it was pretty funny though. I don't think I have missed too much
though because all the songs were pretty dumb. Ha ha. The missionary
life is just the best!

Oh yeah! _____________ is still set for her baptism on Feb 18th too.
She has a lot that we still need to teach her but we are hoping to
have her ready by that day! We can do it!

We've got a crazy schedule this week. There is SOO much going on. It
will probably be the craziest week of my mission so far. I am really
excited! Hopefully we will have time to breathe. I am so excited for
all of the things that are going on. The Lord has been blessing us
like crazy. I think it is Elder Neeley's faith. :) He is an awesome
missionary. I'm excited to let you know next week about how awesome
our week was!

Love you!

Elder Ruesch

January 16, 2012

Well hey there!
This past week has been really awesome!! Many awesome miracles
happened. But first off, the transfer results are in.... Elder Neeley
and I are both staying! YAAAAAY! Thank goodness. I had a slight
worry that I had a chance of being transferred but all is well in Zion
and I will still be here. The Twin Cities YSA ward is the bomb. I
love this area and glad I get to stay. Plus we have several awesome
things coming up that I wouldn't want to miss.

So the news about __________ is actually still not sure. We didn't
get to talk to him on the phone all week because he has no service in
his house. But we are almost certain that he still is going to be
baptized. The ward kinda would rather have us do the baptism on the
28th, push it off a week so that we aren't throwing together a really
quick baptism. But I have a feeling that he is going to want to do it
this saturday, so we'll see. We called the branch president in the
branch where ___________ lives and he said that _______ came to church
and bore is testimony on fast sunday. He is doing great. I'll
probably send out an email later today to let you know what the plan
is! He is going to meet us at the institute in just a little while.

More miracles! We met with A*, our friend that is applying to BYU.
We met with her on Monday and had a really great lesson and then that
night she called us and said that she wanted to be baptized on the
21st! Woo! That was one dang exciting call. We had two other
lessons with her last week and decided to push the baptism back one
week to the 28th so that we can have a little more time to teach her
everything. She is doing super great and is excited! She even had
her interview with the Bishop yesterday for her ecclesiastical
endorsement for her BYU application. I'm sure that she will be
accepted and then Michael can be friends with her at BYU! Yay! That
would be really cool.

But I'm not done! Do you remember ____________? She is the one who
was a referral from the return missionary. Well, she is just solid to
the max. We met with her again and finally taught her the
restoration. We invited her to be baptized on February 4th and she
not only said yes, but she said "absolutely". Ha ha. She is pumped
and really loving the church. It's so great. In fact, she already is
signed up to take an institute class on the Book of Mormon this
semester. ____________ is taking an institute class too. But yeah,
it's going to be a great month!

OHHHH! So I just took like an hour break because ________ showed up at
the institute. Things are great and he is set for his baptism this
week! It is going to be great! And he asked me to baptize him. IT"S
SO EXCITING!

And then, our other investigator ____________ is doing pretty well
too. We have a lot to help her understand still. A lot. But we are
working on it and she is preparing to be baptized on Feb 18th.

This week will hopefully be super extra busy because the semester is
finally starting. They start tomorrow. So all of our investigators
that went home for the break will be back and we can teach a lot of
lessons. That will be great.

Last week ended in quite a bang too because one of the sisters
investigators got baptized. She is like the coolest person ever. The
best part is that she asked Elder Neeley to baptize her and then I got
to confirm her on sunday. That was so awesome. Elder Neeley
definitely had one of the most eventful first transfers of any
missionary in minnesota. We saw 2 people get baptized and then he got
to baptize someone himself that he didn't even teach. We are so
blessed. I can't even believe how well the work is going right now.
We have a lot to be grateful for!

On top of all these things, we are still doing a class every thursday
night for the students who don't know anything about God. Last week
was successful when the sisters got 3 chinese people to come and we
had a guy from india come. The guy from India even came to church.
Indian people are possibly some of my most favorite people in the
world. They are so nice! And for church yesterday, another one of
our investigators came to church that we never thought we would be
able to get to come. That was exciting!

But to be honest, of all those amazing things that happened this week,
probably my favorite part was when _______ (who was baptized last
month) was asked to give a talk in church yesterday about his
conversion story and his testimony. He gave a talk yesterday and
_______ was asked to give a similar talk next week. But his talk was
so powerful and so sincere. He just talked about the things that were
happening in his life before we started teaching him and how he really
got his answer that it was true and how it has been a blessing to him
thus far. I loved it so much! A lot of the things that he shared he
never actually told us while we were teaching him. It is just a
testimony that the Holy Ghost is the one in charge here and we as
missionaries just need to trust that God is going to take care of
these people we are trying to teach. He does give answers and he
always listens. This church is so true!

It looks like I got my wish :) the temperature dramatically dropped
during the week. It was 50 degrees earlier in the week and then it
fell to 10. That was a dramatically cold change. But it has been
fun. I finally have all the winter stuff whipped out. I'm sure it is
only going to keep dropping and dropping. Today was nice though.
It's gonna be a good week!

As I look back and read what I wrote, I realize how horrible of a
writer I am. i just ramble and splurge all my thoughts into the
keyboard, but hey, I guess that's me. So hopefully my letter makes
cognitive sense and you can be as happy reading this as I am writting
it. We have some wonderful weeks ahead! I'm looking forward to the
next transfer.

Love you!

Elder Ruesch

Pics!

January 9, 2012

My goodness, I think that we skipped summer and went straight to
spring! This last week wasn't cold at all. It's absurd! The last
couple days were in the 40's and then tomorrow might even hit 50. I
was getting myself mentally and physically prepared for this winter
and I was excited. And now all I have to deal with is this warm
weather! But I really do consider it a blessing. People are a lot
more willing to talk to us when they aren't freezing. In fact, we had
interviews with the president on saturday and when I got to the church
I hung up my coat. Well, when we left it was so warm that I forgot I
had even brought a coat and I left it at the church! Ha ha. I should
be getting it back today but it was craziness! I wont be surprised
though when it randomly drops to 20 below zero. That's minnesota for
you.

It was a pretty good week. We had some cool adventures. President
Clements has started having the AP's do exchanges with all of the new
missionaries at some point in their first transfer. And so on Friday,
Elder Neeley and I both went to the Assistant's area and split off
with one of the AP's and worked in their area all day. It was pretty
fun. The Elder that I was with for the day I actually have a funny
connection to. His name is Elder Crepeau and he actually dated
Jessica Frazier for a while in college! Ha ha. It's a small world
aint it? I thought that that was hilarious. But he is a way cool
Elder and a really good missionary and I had a fun time with him and
learned many good things. I think that Elder Neeley had a good
experience with the other AP too. It was a fun day!

We are still in contact with ____________. He is doing pretty well
and he is still solid on being baptized on January 21st! That is
exciting. It's actually the first saturday after the next transfer.
So there is always the slight chance that one of us will get
transferred but pretty unlikely since the training program for new
missionaries is 2 transfers long. But we'll see! I hope neither of
us are transfered.

________________ is doing pretty good too. This week we met with her
3 times which was awesome. We taught her about the ten commandments,
the word of wisdom, and more about modern day prophets. It was good.
She wasn't too excited to live the word of wisdom but she understood
why we have it and she has been living it ever since! It was funny
when we were talking about the ten commandments because we mentioned
keeping sabbath day holy and talked about how we need to keep it a
special day for the Lord by not working or stuff like that. She liked
it and thought it was a good thing. I don't know if she'll be ready
to be baptized on the 21st. We've talked about it with her and she
said don't push her too much, which I think is really good. Whether
or not she does it on the 21st, I do think that in the near future she
will be baptized. She's really close.

Our other investigator is also doing really well! We taught her the
restoration this week and it was INTENSE. It's amazing how difficult
it is to teach someone that doesn't have a christian background. But
she figured it out pretty good after we taught it to her twice this
week :) and she came to church and it's great! She even came to the
CES Fireside that we had last night. She thought it was SUPER boring
but endured the whole talk. She is funny. And then afterwards, she
asked us to teach her how to tie a tie. I didn't realize how
complicated it can be! Ha ha. But she figured it out.

Also! The girl that was a referral from that return missionary guy.
Remember her? Well she is doing really well! We had a fantastic Plan
of Salvation lesson with her last week and she came to church
yesterday. We were supposed to also meet with her on Saturday but she
got sick. She's feeling better now. So then we're going to visit
again this week and hopefully we will commit her to be baptized in
february. She really liked church. She is really exciting!

So things are going great! I'm still alive, awake, alert, and
enthusiastic. The institute building here has a ping pong table and
so last week the Zone Leaders came over and we had some INTENSE ping
pong happening. It was so fun. I don't think I've sweat that bad in
a long time. That's how intense that ping pong was. And it was so
fun that they are coming back again today. I'm excited. They are
going down!

I can't believe Jen's baby shower is this week! That's craziness.
Good luck with everything! That is super exciting!
Have a wonderful week and next time I email I should know what is
going on for transfers. Can you believe that another transfer has
already flown by? Gross!

Love you!

Elder Ruesch

January 2, 2012

Hola! Happy Happy New Year!
It sounds like you all had a great weekend! That Lobster meal sounds
like it was delicious. And the dancing sounded like a blast too.
Hopefully, MJ had fun at their party because it sounds like they
missed out on the real fun! New Years Eve here was pretty fun. We
thought that it would be quite the adventure to go into downtown
minneapolis and talk to people in the evening because we knew there
would be a lot of people around. It actually ended up being quite
successful and we had several people tell us that they would be
willing to meet. But the weirdest part was that is started raining!
Seriously? Rain in Minnesota on Dec 31st? It was absurd. The
weather has still been really warm. It has stayed at around 30 to 40
degrees for the last several weeks. But once 9 o'clock hit it got a
little colder and the rain turned into snow. That was pretty cool.
And of course, that night we went to bed at 10:30. But I decided to
set a little alarm at 11:58 so I could still celebrate the new
year :) It was fun. I woke up but Elder Neeley didn't even budge.
So I sat there for two minutes in my bed, waited till midnight, waived
my hands in the air and said a little "yay!" and then went back to
sleep. It was a good New Year. I actually got to start 2012 NOT
sleep deprived.

We had a great lesson with ______________ this week too. We watched
the Finding Faith in Christ DVD with her and again invited her to be
baptized. She gave the closest answer to a yes that we've ever gotten
from her :) So generally, the plan is for her to be baptized on
January 21st. Ha ha. We'll see what happens.

We had some interesting events with _______________. She is afraid to
read the BOM because she doesn't want to read it and convince herself
that it is true but at the same time she doesn't want to join without
reading the Book. So she is stressing herself out over this little
predicament.

So do you remember our other friends that came to the class we
organized? Well one of them dropped us because she isn't interested
but the other one is doing really good! We watched Finding Faith in
CHrist with her and she LOVED it. So it was good. We talked to her
about baptism and commited her to be baptized in february. Exciting!
Hopefully, if we work hard enough we can see a baptism every month.
That would be super duper awesome!

We also had two great miracles of new investigators! _________ is
doing great as a recent convert. She was talking to her friend about
the church and gave him our number and he texted us! So cool! And
then we met with him this week and have another appointment next
week. We're excited for him!

And then the other finding miracle is we got a random call from the
mission office telling us that a guy had called them and said that he
needed the elders to call him asap. So we called him and it turns out
he has been home from his mission for a week and a half and he had
been talking to a friend and got her to take the missionary lessons.
It was rad! So we went over on saturday and had a lesson with him,
his friend, and his other friend who is a less active member.
Awesome! The lesson went really good too and we have another
appointment next week. Our return missionary friend wont be there
though because he is headed off to the good ol BYU. Ha ha. He was
the epitome of a newly returned missionary too. It was awesome. He
had the fire! So we have two new exciting people to work with!
It has been a good week. Yesterday it started to get colder and that
was fun. But apparently, it's supposed to warm up later this week.
Crazy mother nature.

Students are slowly starting to return and things are going to keep on
picking up. I think that the next couple weeks are going to be really
exciting! Well, have fun as you all get ready to go back to normal
life. Fortunately, i don't have to worry about normal life for
another year.
Happy New Year! Make 2012 the best year yet!

Love,

Elder Ruesch