October 24, 2011

I can't believe that it is already p-day again. The time just flew by
like crazy! It blows me away.
So here's the big news on transfers...I'm staying! Word. To be
honest, I thought I was going to be gone and Elder Checketts would
stay but not so. Elder Checketts is being sent far away to a city
called Winona, which if you remember is the same place that Elder
Farnsworth was sent after he was with me in Plymouth. Winona is way
south and it's right on the Mississippi river. He is going to love it
down there. It's beautiful. I have had a really fun time with Elder
Checketts and I am sad to see him go. But change is good. We have
had a great transfer together. My next companions name is Elder
Mumford. He has been out on his mission for about 5 months (the same
amount of time as Elder Checketts). From what I hear he is super
awesome and hilarious. I also hear that he likes to sing and likes
musicals. That will be a first for my companions. Ha ha. I'm
excited. I will meet him on Monday.

I also got some other crazy news this morning. There is another
singles ward that is in Minneapolis and they are the Uptown ward.
Normally, there is a set of missionaries there but they are
temporarily being taken out and so we have to take all of their
investigators for a little while. We basically have to now cover all
of the YSA's in all of Minneapolis and St Paul. It's crazy! So we
are going to be busy. Fortunately, we will share these investigators
with the sisters here and so we can tag team. That will make things
better. I'm excited though.

This week was Homecoming week at the U of M and it was CRAZY! Holy
smokes. They had activities all throughout the week but the biggest
thing was they had a parade on Friday night. There were a ton of
people. It was nuts. And there were just as many old people there as
there were students and the sad thing to me was it was the old people
that were the really drunk ones. Some students were bad but ALL the
adults were crazy. It was embarrassing and sad but also really
hilarious. They also had the homecoming game on Saturday.
Unfortunately, the Minnesota team is absolutely terrible. They played
Nebraska and got crushed by at least 30 points. But that isn't
unusual for the Gophers (Gopher is the mascott by the way. It rocks!)

We had a Mormon Movie Night on Sunday night at 7 and so all throughout
the week we passed out and put up flyers trying to get anyone to
come. We showed the movie Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration.
The movie night turned out to be okay. A random guy showed up who saw
the flyers. He's an older guy and he said he's always been drawn to
Mormonism. He actually investigated the church about 40 years ago and
almost joined but didn't do it because he says he doens't have enough
faith. He LOVED the movie and he was crying by the end. But for some
reason he just doesn't want to meet with missionaries or anything. He
just needs more time. Other than that, a member brought her friend to
the movie and that didn't really go anywhere yet and then a bunch of
members came. So the turn out for nonmembers wasn't what we were
hoping for, but it was all worth it because that one older guy came.
He needs the gospel so bad!

Handing out flyers for the movie night was a crazy crazy hilarious
adventure. Since there were so many people out the night of the
parade and the day of the game, we went out on the street and handed
flyers to everyone. We always skipped over the adults and just handed
them to the students because we can't teach them :) It was crazy
though. There is a street that leads to the stadium called Frat Row
because that his where all the fraternity and sorority houses are and
so there were a ton of parties going on there before the game. On the
way to and from the staduim, Elder Checketts and I handed out flyers
to all the people along there while they were partying and it was an
experience I will never forget. Slightly frightening but also really
funny. I don't know why people like to party so much. It's just
embarrassing for them. When you become someone else's entertainment
because you act so stupid, you know something is wrong. There were
even parents with their litte tiny kids walking around at the
parties. I guess they were just enjoying the "good ol days" or
something. Wonder what their kids are going to turn out like. This
world is a sick place! No wonder we need the gospel so bad.

Speaking of the Gospel, ________is doing super well! He came to
family home evening last monday and had some questions about the whole
becoming god's spheal. So we talked about it and he was totally cool
with it. I guess he had some friends try to anti him. But he
withstood! Ha ha. We also met with him on Friday and taught the word
of wisdom. He said to us, "i already know this stuff." He has
apparently been doing a lot of research online and is really getting
into the church. He is even all the way to Jacob in the Book of
Mormon. It's funny to watch these investigators and think about the
process that I went through to gain my own testimony. I can see the
hunger for knowlege that _______ has inside of him and it is totally a
sign of his answer that this is true but he is telling us he hasn't
gotten an answer yet. It is just something that he hasn't quite
recognized but the answer is totally there. Man, I LOVE how the
spirit works. Heavenly Father is a genius.

We met with ________ this week and he came to church too. It was
good. He is just way lost in a bad group of friends and stuck in too
much junk. But I think that that is secrectly the reason why he is
meeting with us. This church can really help him and if he works hard
to find the answer, he will get out of a lot of messes. He's such a
cool kid.

This week was hard because we have a lot of new invesitgators and
stuff but a ton of our appointments fell through and all of our new
investigators fell off the planet and we can't get ahold of them.
It's so dumb! I hate when that happens. But I guess all we can do is
invite and then the people have to take the action.

Well, I'm super duper jealous that you guys got to go to lake powell!
I loved the pictures that you sent. I guess when I get home we're
just going to have to go on a million trips to all the places that I
missed out on while I've been gone :) And I'll be honest, that is
really funny that Jonny kicked the window out it the trailer. Must
have had a bad dream I guess. Ha ha.

The fall time weather here is fantastic and it's starting to get
chilly. Winter's coming! I will be spending halloween and
thanksgiving here is Dinkytown. That will be fun. I'm excited. I
think that is all for the week. Have a delicious day and I'm excited
to update you next week after all of the changes.

Love,
Elder Ruesch

October 17, 2011

Yes it is true, things did not go totally according to plan this
week. The baptism is postponed till November. _________ is really
anxious because he wants to be baptized as soon as possible. But it's
okay. This is the right thing to do and I think it will really help
his parent's progression in accepting the gospel themselves. So it is
worth a couple week's wait. The only thing that stinks is that
transfers are next week and so there is a good chance one of us could
be gone by the time he gets baptized. But I don't mind I guess, as
long as he gets baptized. I don't have to be there. So that was the
adventure of the week. A little disappointing but it will work out
better in the long run. _________ is SO solid though. This might
have been an event that has strengthened his faith big time because he
has had to learn to stand up for the Church and he knows without a
doubt that this church is true. He's awesome. I bet he'll be getting
ready for a misson in about a year. That would be exciting!

________ is doing awesome. We met with him and had a great lesson on
some of the commandments and then he came to a young single adult
activity and church on sunday! It was great! We changed his
baptisimal date to november 12th because we have stake conference on
the 5th and I think there is a good chance it could happen. He's
doing really well!

We also picked up several cool new investigators. We're excited!
Elder Checketts talked to a girl on campus last week and we met with
her again and she brought her friend too. And then they both came to
church! It was nuts! Then we also taught a couple of guys. Both of
them are super solid. It's amazing how people just come out of
nowhere! It's exciting. The Lord is really blessing us.

Yesterday some people in the ward had us over for dinner and guess
what we had? Gyoza! We even wrapped it ourselves and everything.
The girl who put it together was japanese. It was really fun. It
reminded me of New Years Eve. Good times. And then they also fried
some cheesecake and gave us that for dessert. It was amazing.

Elder Cook came on Friday and it was AWESOME! He first wanted to
greet all of us so we all lined up and shook his hand. The funny
thing was that when he got up to speak he said that he loves shaking
our hands and when he looks into our eyes it's like a spiritual
interview. Ah! The apostle looked into my soul! I hope he found
good things. Anyway, he talked about how there is nothing better we
could be doing with our life right now than serving a mission. Even
if it doesn't seem like it, it is true. He gave us his Apostolic
promise of that. Also, he sure looks a lot older in real life instead
of on TV :) Ha ha but i know they wear makeup for conference. The
thing that made it a really sweet meeting was the connection that
Elder and Sister cook had with President and Sister Clements. Sister
Clements grew up in their ward and idolized sister Cook. And then
when the Clements' got married, President Clements worked with Elder
Cook in the same law firm. Elder Cook was their stake president and
served over them a lot. Elder and Sister Cook were basically role
models for the Clements pretty much all their life. I feel like that
is just foreshadowing the future of President and Sister Clements. I
could easily see President Clements as a member of the 12 and at least
a General Authority. But anyway, the meeting was fantastic and I just
exploded with too much spiritualness. It was great! And Sister Cook
is super super awesome too. She had us all sing and it was really
cool. The church is true.

Elder Checketts found a spider in his bed this week and screamed
higher that a nine year old girl. It was the funniest moment of my
entire life. And then the next day he got into bed and thought he
felt something on his leg and screamed even LOUDER but there was
nothing even there. I died. It was so funny! I'm surprised my vocal
cords are still in tact.

One other cool adventure we had this week was we got to dedicate an
apartment! That was a first. A girl in the ward was living there
alone and felt unsafe from evil influences and so she called us to
come dedicate the home. That was cool.

Did I tell you how the sister from Nauvoo was coming here? I think I
did. Well she's here and so we have 5 missionaries in the ward. It's
kinda intense.

Things are going well! I'm sorry my letters are always so jumbled. I
feel like I'm always rushed! Goodness.
I got a letter with some chocolate in it from Tres Hatch this week.
That was super nice. Tell her Thanks you so much for me!
I hear that it is supposed to snow here on wednesday. I'm excited!
It's gonna be awesome.
Can't wait to get the halloween package!
Love you so much!
-Elder Ruesch

October 10, 2011

Yet another week flies by at a crazy speed. There are so many things
that happened this week I don't even know where to start!
First off, quite the roller coaster this week. After General
Conference one of our investigators was just floating on air. He
really felt the spirit and was doing great. And then on Monday night
he ran into an Anti Mormon website... It just threw him through a
crazy loop. We met with him on Tuesday and when he came he was just
unbelievably upset. He felt like he had been betrayed and that this
whole process was just pretend. Over the course of the lesson we
talked through it with him. Fortunately, we had a really great joint-
teacher (the person who comes with us for the lesson and is a member
of the ward) who our investigator really respects, so she helped a
lot. He just asked question after question but by the end of the
lesson his mood was better and the spirit was really strong. Elder
Checketts was amazing and everything he said was 100% guided by the
spirit. It was fantastic! And that spirit that was there helped a
lot. We saw him again on Friday and he was doing a lot better. He
still had a million questions but we talked with him about his past
experiences when he's read the BoM and helped him realize that he
totally knows this church is true. By the end of the lesson we
committed him to be baptized! Usually, we challenge them to be
baptized on a certain day but this time we said we want him to pick
it. So closed by praying about it and then we didn't see him till
church. After Church we talked to him and decided to have his baptism
this Saturday, the 15th! Word! His girlfriend and her family are
going to come. It's super duper exciting! This kid is so awesome and
he is so ready. I think he may very well go on a mission in a year.
That would be super cool! If that happened he would go on a mission
before I even got home from mine. Exciting!

So that was super great! But that isn't all! We met with another
investigator this week and had a great lesson with him. We invited
him to be baptized on October 29th and he agreed! We have a lot of
work to do with him though. The thing that really stinks is that he
didn't come to church this week. He's an awesome kid though. He is
the one that President Clements first talked to and so President was
super excited when we told him he agreed to be baptized.

One more! We have another awesome investigator. We had a great
lesson with him this week too and committed him to be baptized on
November 5th! Come to find out that that is the week of stake
conference here so we will have to push it back a week. But it is
still exciting! All our investigators are progressing really well and
I hope that everything works out! Unfortunately, nothing ever works
out according to plans but hopefully it all turns out for the better.

We also have a another investigator who is super cool. He still needs
to understand a lot so we have much work to do. But he said that he
is going to make us some real deal chinese food. I'm pumped!

Guess who is coming to our mission to speak this Friday? Elder
Quentin L. Cook! They didn't tell us he was coming until last week
but once we got the news I was super excited. I'll let you know how
it goes. Maybe I'll get to shake his hand.

Are there any Famous Dave's in Utah? A guy in the ward took us there
this week and it was delicious. You should go sometime.
So it sounds like the U of M has a really good engineering program. I
might just have to transfer here when I get home... Ha ha. Maybe not,
it's really expensive. I could see myself coming here for graduate
school though. That would be a party. I think it would be really fun
to be a normal member of the Dinkytown ward. There actually is a kid
here who served in this mission a few years back. Pretty cool. He's
going to dental school here. I think that would be super cool to live
in Minnesota. It's a glorious place.
The weather was fantastic this week. Surprisingly warm. Which is
really good. The longer we can keep the weather warm, the less time
it is going to be freezing. Winter is going to be a great adventure.

I loved the picture of MJ all creeped out for Shakespeare. It was
glorious! I saw the picture and had NO idea what it was for. You too
looked LEGIT! It sounds like the competition was really fun. Way to
be so awesome! I'm sorry to hear that the school didn't do too well
on the actual prizes. But that doesn't matter. Judges are stupid
anyway.

So basically, life is really good. Oh yeah, other kinda cool news.
We work a lot with the sisters in this ward and there is another
sister missionary that is going to come to our mission for a few
transfers. She is coming from the Nauvoo mission. It's interesting.
I guess they do this to give the sisters a chance to do some actual
proselyting instead of just working on the site their whole mission.
She is going to be serving with the sisters in this ward. So that
will be pretty cool. She'll get to experience the best mission in the
world!
Anyway, thanks for all of the pictures and emails from you guys! I
love hearing from you! Tell MJ they are stupid because they never
write me. And I hope Brandon wins the drumming contest. That would
be cool.

Love you so much!
Elder Ruesch

October 3, 2011

Hey hey hey! It's been another great week in the good ol' Dinkytown. Conference was the bomb.com. I loved it so much! It was broadcast right in the institute building so we got to watch it there. ___________came to the Sunday morning session and it was super duper great! He got blasted by the spirit. All I gotta say is you can definitely put your money on the Prophet. Also, Elder Callister's talk about the Book of Mormon was so bold and so perfect for him to hear. Gosh, I love this church. He still wants more time to be absolutely positive on his answer though. We are doing all we can to help him realize it. He is really close. I'm glad he's taking this so seriously though and not just getting dunked at the first good feeling he had. This is an important choice and you need to make sure it's right.

We also had two other investigators come to conference! We have an investigator that President Clements actually talked to and referred to us. He is an awesome kid and has hardly no concept of religion and who Jesus Christ is an so forth. We've been teaching him since we got here and he is progressing really well. He's awesome. The other investigator was incredibly impressed by conference and I know that the spirit totally hit him.

We have another really great investigator that unfortunately didn't make it to conference but he is reading in the Book of Mormon. We taught him the Plan of Salvation last week and it went pretty well. I think he really liked it. We invited him to be baptized and he said he never has been baptized and was wondering what it consisted of and so forth. The part that stunk was we were way low on time and he had to run to class. We'll talk about it next time when the spirit is strong again. Hopefully we can get him to commit to a date.

We've also found a few new investigators and we talked to a super solid kid on the street yesterday. He has awesome potential. I think that October is going to be a very prosperous month. The Lord has blessed us a ton. It's so nice to be busy with the work. Things are going really well.

The weather has warmed up a little bit. It is 80 degrees today. I like the 60 degree weather better. But i'm not complaining because the days have been beautiful. I guess I should count my blessings before it is -20 degrees. I'm still loving everything. The work is still the same. I don't have much new stuff to report. Just that conference was amazing. I really enjoyed it a lot. It is so nice to hear the words of the prophet every 6 months. It has become my favorite weekend of the year. So good!

I also went on another exchange this week. I went to the family ward that covers downtown Minneapolis again. That was fun. It is amazing how different every area is. We went to the ghetto in North Minne and talked to all the people up there. It's always an adventure. Everyone there always says yes you can come back because they are the type of people that don't know how to say no. And then they just avoid us when we do come back. It's annoying. Good times in the ghetto. It's pretty fun. I just hope I don't serve there. Ha ha. But now that I say that I probably will serve there. Who knows. I guess then that way I would get all ends of the spectrum. Serve in the land of the wealthy in Plymouth and then in the ghetto of Minneapolis. The funny thing though is that Minneapolis is such a clean, nice city that the ghetto really isn't that ghetto. It's just kinda ghetto. Anyway, moving on.

Well I hope that you guys all had a fantastic conference weekend! Best of luck to MJ this week at the Shakespeare competition! That is super exciting! And Michael, don't get TOO worked up about your scene. Work hard and it will all come together. When it comes to drama, everything doesn't finally click until the last day. Ha ha. You're going to dominate. I'm excited to hear how it goes!

Have a wonderful week!

Love,
Elder Ruesch

September 26, 2011

The family! It's been another great week. I can't believe that this
is already the third p-day i've had since i've been here. I can't
believe how quickly time flies by! Today we had a really fun p-day.
This morning a girl in the ward took the sisters and us to the zoo!
It was super fun. There is this tiny little zoo in St Paul that we
went to and the best part about it is its free! Woo! They've got all
the typical zoo animals like monkeys, lions, giraffes, etc. but that
is about it. It's really small but it was way fun. I'm glad we got
to do something new!

Sorry this email is coming so late. All four of us missionaries have
to share one computer to email our families and so it is kinda hard
working it out who gets to email and when. But we do what we can. We
had a lot of stuff to do today and so I have run out of time! But I
don't have a ton of stuff to write anyway.

We didn't find any new investigators this week but are still working
with the same ones. (Morgan goes into more detail about the
investigators, but out of respect for their privacy, we are not
including that information on the blog.)

Elder Checketts got hugged by a homeless man for like 5 minutes
straight. It was hilarious! I was laughing so hard. The homeless
guy wouldn't let go.

We have a lot of fun working this area because we are trying to find
areas where we can talk to singles that isn't just on campus. We went
to the St. Paul campus of the U of M this week and that was pretty
fun. We also put up A TON of flyers for general conference! I am
super excited. We're doing everything we can to get people there.
The flyer says in big bold letters A LIVING PROHPET and it's an invite
for anyone to come watch any of the sessions. I'm excited!

President Clements came to our sacrament meeting yesterday. He just
showed up with his family and then left after sacrament meeting. We
didn't even have anything special going on but whatever. It was good
to see him again. He is an awesome man.

Elder Checketts and I are having a lot of fun in dinkytown. Sometimes
I get too intense and work Elder Checketts too hard but we are finding
ways to work hard and not over do it so that Elder Checketts dies.
I'm learning a lot from him. He is a great missionary and I'm really
glad that I get to serve with him. It's been most excellent!

Love you guys and have a wonderful week!

Elder Ruesch

September 19, 2011

Hello! It's been another most excellent week here in Dinkytown. The
weather is really starting to cool down now. Elder Checketts and I
both had to whip out our sweaters for the first time of the season.
The chilly air feels super nice though. It's so much better than 95
degrees!

We have had some great success this week in teaching. We ended the
week with 19 lessons when last week we only had 9. It was fantastic.
There are several people that we found as new investigators that have
good potential too. It's really been a miracle. One guy I talked to
on campus last week and he actually came to the appointment we set up
and we taught him the Restoration! We have another lesson with him
this week. There is another guy that was investigating last semester
but went home for the summer and is back now so we got in contact with
him and are teaching him too. Another sweet miracle is there is a
girl who came into the institute last week asking if she could by a
parking pass from us. She didn't even know that the Institute was a
Mormon building but the people told her she has to take an institute
class in order to be able to park here. So she got talking to them
about the church a little and was kinda interested. She came back a
few days later with a friend and they asked if they could take a Book
of Mormon class! Crazy. Luckily, Elder Checketts and I happened to
be in the institute when they came so we gave them a quick intro to
the BoM and sent them into the class. We have another appointment to
teach them this next week more about it. It was crazy and they were
super cool! It would be a hilarious conversion story if they ended up
getting baptized. Or maybe their just pretending to be interested so
that they can have a place to park. We'll see! Ha ha.

Most importantly, we met with ______ twice this last week. He is
doing great. When we first met with him on Tuesday we challenged him
to be baptized on October 8th. He made a funny comment saying, "That
scares me, because it feels right." Ha ha. He is a super awesome kid
and I think that deep down he knows the church is true but just hasn't
recognized it yet. I've seen several very apparent answers in his
life that this is the truth. He just needs time to figure it out. He
is taking everything at his own pace but eventually he's going to
realize what he needs to do. He came to church, he reads, and he
prays so the answer is a guarantee to be there. We also brought him
to the President's fireside yesterday. I've told you what that is
right? Anyway, it was really good for him to hear the testimony of
recent converts and the spirit was strong. It's just been a great
week and we are becoming great friends with him. It helps that he is
only a year younger than us. Ha ha.

Speaking of the president's fireside, guess who spoke at it?
Charles! It was super great! He shared his testimony of this church
and his story to find it and it was just fantastic. I know it's only
been like 2 weeks since I've seen him but it felt like it was forever
and it was so great to see him again! I can't believe how time
flies. It's crazy!

For some reason, President Clements is very concerned about us here in
Dinkytown. Apparently, missionaries in the past have gotten casual
easily and don't keep the highest standard of obedience here. I can
see how they do that too. With everyone your age it's easy to lose
your purpose. But I am determined to not be any problem! It's really
fun here but it's also super hard work.

I loved hearing about the wonderful miracles you guys have been
receiving financially. I can't believe the Yard Sale was that
successful for you! Woo! That is so exciting. It's too bad
everything in this world costs money. I'm excited when Christ comes
and rules over the Earth and everything is fair and we wont need any
money or anything like that. That will be the day.

Also, congrats to Michael for getting past the challenge round! That
is flipping sweet!!!!! Who is your partner in that scene? And I'm
sorry you didn't get it jonny boy but it's okay. You got to be the
star for the whole semester last year. All the girls were drooling
over Mr. Darcy. You might be grateful later because having your own
Shakespeare scene is stressful! Good luck mike!

There are some really cool opportunities here on campus. We are going
to email all the religion professors and see if they would let us do a
presentation in their class. Also with conference coming up we have
flyers for it and we are just going to advertise like crazy! We are
also planning a mormon movie night for next month where we will watch
the Joseph Smith movie. Young students are just curious and so it is
pretty easy to do activities like this and get people to come. I'm
excited to see how things turn out.

We had an exchange this week with the Elders in the Cedar Lake ward.
We have exchanges all the time but I wanted to mention this one
because I was with an Elder who is just a beast. And by beast I mean
he is muscular up the ying yang. He excersices like crazy and so we
got up at 6:00 and went running and then did some arm work outs and ab
work outs. He was basically my personal trainer for the morning and I
thought it was fun but Holy smokes he worked me so hard. And the next
couple days I was so sore! It was horrible. Ha ha.

Well, I am looking forward to this upcoming week. We're getting
prep'd for general conference and hoping to see some good progress in
our investigators while still finding new ones. We're seeing good
stuff happen and I'm way excited but the work doesn't stop here!
We're still just truckin along.

Thanks for all of the support and prayers. I got a letter from
Grandma and Grandpa this week and i loved it. It was so awesome.
Thanks for being the best family ever! And I am so glad to hear that
grandma's cancer is gone and she's doing well. Way to be a fighter!

Have a wonderful week.

Love,

Elder Ruesch

September 12, 2011

Hey family! I've been super pumped to write home this week because so
many things have changed! I am safely in the land of Dinkytown. It
is super great. We got here on Wednesday and have been going at full
speed ever since. Elder Checketts is way awesome. He is way excited
about the work. He's been on his mission for 3 months now and this is
also his second area. It's pretty sweet. This is a good area for him
because he's super personable and friendly to the students and so they
are willing to listen to him. I don't know if I told you this last
week but we also got sent into this area with a pair of sisters who we
work closely with. It's kinda fun because the area isn't split in
half or anything we just sorta play "finders keepers" when it comes to
investigators. Any investigator you find, you get to teach. And it
is sweet to have two sets of missionaries that work on the U of M
campus. There are 70,000 students that go to the U of M and so there
are a lot of people to talk to!

When we came to the area, we met up with the sisters and went through
the people that were in the previous Elder's teaching pool and just
split them up. So we are going to teach half of the less actives and
recent converts as well as investigators. The Elders had three
investigators before and we got two of them :) One of them is so solid.

This ward is killer diller awesome. And the U of M campus is so
sweet. It sits right on the Mississippi River. Half of campus is on
one side and half is on the other. So pretty. I love it. Plus, the
members of the ward are really willing to help out in the missionary
work. They give us rides anytime we need it and will come teach with
us anytime too.

There are most excellent advantages to serving in a in singles ward.
For example, we totally get to go to Family Home Evening tonight with
the ward! And yesterday there was a CES Fireside and we went to it
with a few of the less active people we are visiting. It's super
fun! Plus all the students have nonmember roomates and so there is
potential for some sweet biscuit referrals. Awesome! Also, mom you
made the comment that we wont get fed very much in the singles ward
but you'd actually be surprised! We have a dinner every night this
week. The students either cook for us or just take us out to eat. It
is super fun. Gosh I love this area. It's so rad! Sister
missionaries get pampered and we get to benefit from it. It's
awesome. All sister missionaries get a car to use, no matter what
area they are in. So typically, Dinkytown is just biking and walking
but the sisters brought the car with them and so we get to share it
with them. However, we mostly bike anyway. It feels so good to
finally be on my bike a lot!

Since we are working with young people. They are typically WAY more
open to learning about the church and what not because they aren't set
in their ways yet. I love it. So we have a lot of really good
conversations with people while walking around with them. Man, it's
crazy though because it's a whole new kind of ballgame. In Plymouth
the afternoons were dead because everyone was at work and so tracting
was horrible in the afternoon. Well, now campus is crazy busy in the
afternoon and so that is the optimum time to talk to people on campus
and then the evenings can be sketchy, especially weekends. All the
frat party's going on and people drunk on friday night. It's funny
but you gotta be careful. Crazy college kids.

Another cool advantage to serving here is we get to use the computer
that is in the institute building to email. In fact, the dinkytown
missionaries have their own gmail account that they can use to email
students and set up times to meet with them that way and stuff. It's
so sweet. No other area has the advantage of email.

So as you can see, life in Dinkytown in flipping sweet. Since we
whitewashed in it's been crazy trying to meet people and having no
idea what is going on but we figured stuff out pretty quick and are
doing the best that we can. It's a super fun place and I can just
feel a few baptisms around the corner. I'm also looking forward to
Conference coming up here pretty quick. That is going to be most
excellent! I was sad to leave Plymouth but change is good and I am
really loving the work here in Dinkytown. There is so much we need to
do!

I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO pumped to here about my little peanut
NIECE!!!!! WORD!!! I can't wait to be her favorite uncle. It's
going to be a party!

Well, I love you guys and hope you have a wonderful week!

Love,

Elder Ruesch

P.S. Sorry about how random and totally ADD this email is. I keep
getting distracted by people coming to talk to us. Enjoy!

September 5, 2011

Sup Family?

And so the craziness begins. We had our transfer calls this morning.
Sadly, I'm no longer going to be serving in the promised land of
Plymouth. I have recieved a new assignment to serve in the Dinkytown
ward. AHHHH! I'm pretty nervous but super excited. I don't know if
you remember but the first day I got to Minnesota, they took all the
new missionaries to Dinkytown and let us loose to go talk to people
even though we had no idea of what to say. It was a mortifying
experience. Ha ha. And now I'm going back there permanently!
Dinkytown is an area of the University of Minnesota campus. There is
a lot of hussle and bussle of young students going to class. The ward
that I will be serving in is a singles ward, which will be a definite
adventure. All of the people that I will be working with are going to
be right around my age. It's wiggy wack. Basically, I'm going to an
area completely opposite of Plymouth. We are going to do a lot of
talking to people on the street, instead of tracting.

Anyhoo, my next companions name is Elder Checketts. We will be
whitewashing the area (if you remember the terms it means we're both
going in there brand new) and so that adds a new twist. School is
starting on Tuesday here and so the area is pretty busy when school
gets rolling. There will also be a team of sisters that will be
working in Dinkytown with us. And my guess is that it is going to be
a bike area! Woo woo! I love the bike. So there you have it! After
5 transfers in the land of Plymouth, I'm finally being scooted away.
I'm really bummed that we didn't see a baptism this transfer when I
thought for sure we were supposed to. I just really hope we didn't
miss something or do something wrong. But I am very excited for
Plymouth because Elder Gottfredson is staying here and the missionary
that will replace me is a super solid missionary. His name is Elder
Caldwell and they are going to dominate. I know that they are going
to see some great stuff happen.

Fall has officially begun. The weather has been constantly AMAZING.
It's generally around 70-75 degrees with a nice breeze. Except last
wednesday was the weirdest day. It randomly shot to 90 degrees and
really humid. But then the next day was awesome again. Mother nature
in Minnesota has a little bit of a bipolar problem. I think fall has
to be the best season of Minnesota though. It's glorious. I need to
enjoy it now because pretty soon it will be a little colder than just
kinda chilly!

As for this week, we had some good and we had some bad. Last Sunday
we picked up two new investigators (I think I told you) and they are
super great. We met with them again on Thursday and had an
interesting but good lesson.

Something that has been really awesome about this last transfer is
that I have gotten to develop a really great friendship with ______
who got baptized last June. She is just on fire. I love it. What a
blessing to watch these people grow in the gospel!

With Labor day we had a hard time getting appointments with less
active people and ended up spending almost the whole weekend
tracting. But it was okay. I have a lot of fun when we tract. We
make it a party.

Well, it is time to embark on a new adventure. I am really nervous!
But PUMPED too. We'll see how it goes. Thanks for all of the support
and love!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRIAN!!! I hope that it's a happy one. You scored big
on those awesome presents. Nice! Thanks for being born.
Have a wonderful Labor day and I look forward to emailing next week
after I have spent a couple days in the new area. Word!

Love you so much!

Elder Ruesch

P.S. It's only natural that the best teller at the story telling
festival was from Minnesota. Minnesota is just a superior place! :)

August 29 2011

It's been another week already! This is ridiculous.

We had a pretty good week. It surely was an adventure. President
Clements actually came to our distric meeting. That was fun. We have
a small district - only us and one other team. So we only have 4
missionaries in our district meetings each week. It was really cool
to have president Clements come to ours. I don't know why he chose to
do it because he is so busy. But it was really fun! He is such an
awesome person. He has a lot of weight on his shoulders right now but
he is so inspired and is really moving this mission to do great
things. The other fun part about that day was after the meeting,
President wanted to come to an appointment with each of our
companionships. So he went with the other Elders first and was then
going to come to an appointment with us to a less active family. But
it turned out that he got stuck in rush hour traffic and was too far
away to come back. Ha ha. It was kinda funny. But it worked out well
because our appointment ended up falling through and he would have had
to just tract with us anyway.

As for investigators, we really don't have much. We are working on
it! Yesterday was awesome though. We were knocking doors in an
apartment complex and this young, awesome couple let us in. The
husband is very interested in Theology and he has read tons of stuff
about our church. Normally, that would be a pretty bad thing but he
was cool because he try's to find literature that is not bias for or
against the church. He just wants the facts. And so he isn't really
into all the Anti Mormon literature, although I'm sure he's read
some. But they were so nice to us and we talked about the restoration
and how we can know through the Holy Ghost. It was great and we're
going back this week. We have high hopes for them!

One major part of missionary work for us is working with the less
active members. Recently we've started visiting with an older guy who
is a member and we're trying to help him come back to church. We also
found another fella who was baptized at 8 and pretty much never went
back to church. And now we're starting to work with him. So we get
to see some cool things happen. And when you see someone come back to
church after years and years, it's just amazing. It may not show up
on any baptisimal count or anything but it sure counts as something
very special to me.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this in the past but a long time
ago when I was finishing up with Elder Farnsworth, we picked a name of
a person on the ward list that we didn't know and decided to stop by
her house. Well it turns out this girl had moved here pretty recently
and had not been active for quite some time. She had been diagnosed
with Lymes disease the year previous and that provided a huge stuggle
for her. Anyway, we started visiting her weekly and she started
coming back to church and just a couple weeks ago she went to the
temple and did her first endowment session in quite some time. It was
so neat. It's just another cool success I have gotten to see since
I've been here. The church is true!

This week we moved homes for the LAST time. All of our past homes
were very temporary but this one is finally the permanent residence
for the missionaries in the Plymouth ward. At least for a couple
years. Thank goodness. In fact, when I first got here we lived in a
home for 2 weeks until the ward could find a better place for us to
go. And now we are back in that same house. I love it. It is funny
to live there because transfers are in a week and a half. If I am
transfered I will have spent me first two weeks in Plymouth at this
house and my last two weeks in Plymouth at this house. I love it.
The best part is living here is giving me flashbacks to the first few
days of my mission. Wow. I love it. Can you believe that I left 7
months ago? Freaky.

Things are moving forward and the weather is so flipping awesome. It
has been very mild for the past month, except for a few rain storms.
But it's fantastic. Can't think of a better place to spend my summer!

Well, when I email you next week I'll know if I'm being transfered and
where I am going. What happened to this transfer? It went so fast!
I thought for sure we were going to see a baptism this transfer but I
guess the Lord had something else in store. I just pray that I did
what I was supposed to do here. But we still got another week to go!
Another week of miracles! Word.

I love you guys and love hearing from you! Have a wonderful week!

Love,

Elder Ruesch

August 22, 2011

Hello family! I guess I wont have too much to update since it was
only wednesday when I emailed last. But things have been good. Last
week had quite the struggle with appointments. Once again, it was one
of those weeks where everything just kept on not working out and
appointments fell through over and over again. Oh well. Life goes
on. I would say that that is probably the most frustrating part of
missioary work in minnesota, appointments falling through. That and
when people turn away from the gospel even when it's staring them
right in the face and they can see it. Those are the two hardest
things. But hey, they are the ones missing out, right?

To be honest, I don't know the specific reason why President kept me
in Plymouth. We still don't have a baptism coming up soon and we
haven't seen any crazy miracles. I do believe _____________ will be
baptized but her date isn't for another month. I'm hoping we didn't
do something wrong. But we are working hard and I'm just going to
trust the Lord that he knows why I'm still here. However, I have seen
___________ progress a lot in the last few weeks. It's been a slow
process but things are moving along. I first met her in March and it
has been all this time that I've been working with her. So maybe the
reason I am still here is to help her. I don't know. She's getting
really close to being ready for baptism.

We've been helping ___________ move this week too and it has been
quite the adventure. She is going from a 4 bedroom home to a 1
bedroom apartment. It was funny because she tried to pay us 100
dollars for helping her. She insisted on giving it too us so we took
it just to not offend her but there was no way I was accepting 100
bucks. So we snuck it back into her purse when she wasn't looking.
It was awesome.

That's pretty much it for the week. We're going to keep on seeing
some good stuff happen! I wish I didn't have to learn patience though
because it takes SO LONG for people to progress. Ug. Why doesn't
everyone just get baptized? Goodness.
Anyway, I love you guys! Hope that the start of school goes well and
everything else too. The weather here is freaking awesome. It
couldn't be better. Is it good over there? I still miss the mountains.

Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Ruesch