May 19, 2014 - Blessings

Well, I am very happy that you guys had such a busy, fun, happy week. I love my family! Well, dang, I honestly don't feel like writing very much! I'm pretty much in shock that Courtney has to go home. I feel so bad for her. I know it is going to be very hard on her. Holy Crap...

Well, thank you so much for sending me all of the pictures this week! I loved every single one of them and I showed them to everyone here in the computer lab! Ha ha I love you Mom. This last week here was great! Elder Peredo and I are working hard and we are seeing the blessings. You and dad have taught me so much about faith and about how to be a good servant of the Lord. So thank you for that.

I am so glad that everything is going well back home. There are people here in Spain praying for you guys did you know that? I was very touched the other day as we visited with a family in our ward. As we finished, the mom said the closing prayer and she prayed very long and sincerely specifically asking Heavenly Father to bless you and dad and my sisters. She said please bless them and all of Elder Ridd's family for what he is doing out here in the mission. I was so touched and I often think that I really don't deserve all of the blessings that I have. Heavenly Father has been so kind to me. I have so many worldly blessings of friends and family and loved ones and this mission does not even begin to pay back for that stuff.. and yet Heavenly Father gives me and you guys additional blessings for this service. It is special to think about. I love Heavenly Father and I love you guys. Have a great week!

May 12, 2014 - the One After Mother's Day!

I love you Mom! I'm glad you had such a good Mother's Day! Don't worry, I am happy and healthy and eating right and saying my prayers and brushing my teeth and making good choices and making my bed and doing all of those things that you want me to do! So don't even ever worry about me! I loved being able to talk to you guys! I love my family so much! I thought of a million things I wanted to say after we were done - the time just went by so fast! I forgot to tell Nicole Happy Birthday!! tell her I say happy birthday and that I will send her a letter this week! Also, tell Morgan that she didn't email me like she said she would...

So, we had a baptism this last week like I told you when we skyped. I am sending a picture. It was such a great experience. It is so great to be able to see people change their lives and get closer to God. Elder Peredo and I are staying together for another transfer so we are looking forward to some more baptisms together during this transfer!

I don't have a lot of time. Choose the right! I love you! Have a great week! Thank you for always sending me such great emails - I am very very grateful for that! Tell dad I say hi! and Mu Shu! And everybody else I know too. Tell Dad that I was serious about him telling the ward that I say hi and that I love them!

May 5, 2014 - More on Godspower

You can write Devon at:

Elder Devon Ridd

c/Cuesta de Davalo n.2a, 6i

Guadalajara 19001

Spain

And you can always email him at:

devon.ridd@myldsmail.net

Mom!

You are so funny with your Spanish! :) I can't wait to talk to you guys next week! It is going to be great!

So, Godspower (his real given name) is awesome! He came to church on Sunday and sat next to me, and I was translating in to English for him and he leaned over to me and said, "hey! I want to get baptized in this church" !!!!!!! So, I played it cool and just said, "alright, that's great. We'll teach you some lessons and you can get baptized in a few weeks. Ha ha, I am very grateful for him and to Heavenly Father for letting us find him.

Ricardo is also doing great. Technically he is supposed to get baptized this Saturday, but I don't think he is going to be able to. He is still as prepared as ever but we found out that he lives with a girl, so we are going to have to figure out that situation. We have faith thought that everything will go well. We know he will get baptized, we just don't know exactly when. But yes, it is such a blessing to be able to see the Lord's hand in this work and to see miracles.

Tell Uncle Jale that he will be in my thoughts and prayers. He and Auntie Shelley are so great! It sounds like Nicole had a good time at her birthday party! I didn't recognize hardly anybody in the picture from the party (there were boys?) but I'm sure they all had fun. Tell her I say happy birthday.

I am glad to hear that Courtney is getting treatment and doing a little better. I will pray with all of you guys now for a quick recovery.

So, I got your package this week! I love the flag! It is beautiful! Seriously, it is so professional and clean looking and great. So thank you for that and for the socks and the candies. I loved it all. Now you don't have to send me another package until Christmas. Seriously.

I got a letter from Grandma Ridd! She is so nice and great. Tell her that I say thank you very very much and that I loved it. Also I got a letter from Sister Erekson - will you tell her thank you as well please?

We have had a great week here in Guadalajara! We had a zone meeting and the zone leaders asked me the night before if I could start the meeting with a talk. So, I was a little bit nervous for lack of preparation but it went really well and the zone meeting was very inspired. i was able to talk to president Jackson a few times this week. He is so great. He also came to Guadalajara to visit our branch and that Sunday we just happened to have six investigators with us so that was awesome. Things are going pretty well here. We find out transfers this Saturday! I am excited to figure out what happens. I don't know anything yet but I have a hunch that Elder Peredo is leaving and that I am going to stay here in Guadalajara... but we will see! We are going to have a crazy week this week. Talking to you guys on Sunday, Saturday we have 2 baptisms and two members of the Seventy are going to visit our zone as well! Tuesday I am going to do exchanges with the Zone Leaders and we have lots of stuff planned so it's going to be fun.

I am so excited to talk to you guys! It is going to be awesome! Thank you for everything that you do for me! I love you so much! I pray for you guys and I am very grateful for all of the prayers that you guys offer on my behalf. The church is true! Talk to you soon! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Ridd

April 28, 2014 Dancing!

Devon is doing great! He never mentions in his letters that he is the District Leader. And his district is all Native speakers! He is the only American or English speaker in his district!

You can email him at:

devon.ridd@ldsliving.net

Or write him:

Elder Devon Ridd

c/cuesta de Davalos n.2a, 6i

Guadalajara 19001

Spain

So, a few things from your letter! My companion is from Bolivia! there were a lot of South Americans that came to Spain when the economy went bad down there! So Elder Peredo want to tell you thank you for saying that if he studies and learns English he could get a good job - maybe even for the church. It has given him some good motivation and he has that as his goal now!

I can't wait to talk to you on the 11th! I don't know what time but if you want to coordinate with Courtney or whatever I will do what you want! I'm very much looking forward to it!

I can't believe Nicole will be 13!

Also, we are teaching a black man named Godspower. Just thought you should know...

I got a sweet package this week from Aunty Shelley! It was a cute little package but it had one of the best letters inside that I have ever read in my life! I felt so loved and I was laughing so hard! Aunty Shelley is so funny! I absolutely loved what she shared with me and for the little goodies! So tell her thank you so much from me for that!

Well, this week we had a little miracle here! We were inside of the Sunday School class at church on Sunday and my companion felt the need to go outside and there was a man standing at the door! His name is Ricardo and he had found the address of the church online! He is from Honduras but has lived here in Guadalajara for 18 years. His brother and cousin live in the sates and are members of the church. They have been telling him for a while about the church and explaining lots of things to him. He told us that on Sunday, God told him that it was time for him to go to church, so he came. We showed him around on Sunday and wrote down his number and plan to meet with on Tuesday. My companion was in Azuqueca and I was with a pretty new Elder here doing exchanges. So, in the lesson, Ricardo explained to us that he was ready to change his life and to follow Jesus Christ. I asked him, "if you knew that this church was the true church of Christ, would you be baptized?" and he said, "well, it's just that I already know that its the true church!" so I said, "alright, you are getting baptized the 10th of May!" Two weeks from now! He is so awesome and so prepared. We are so so grateful that Heavenly Father has prepared him so much and that we are going to be able to help him join the church! I am so grateful that God gives us these miracles in the mission to help us keep going! It's awesome!

We had a ward party where we celebrated all of the different countries in our branch! It was so great! We had tons of investigators and lots of people did dances from their countries and there was lots and lots of food. I  made a little table for the United States and bought some Burger King and some Lays chips and put them on the table haha. I also sang God Bless America in front of the whole branch! It was pretty funny - I will see if I can send a video! (we didn't get a video - but if we do - I will post it here!)

Thanks for everything! I love you! Have a great week!

Love, 

Elder Ridd

Feliz Pascua! April 21, 2014

Easter was really weird here! We didn't eat with any members and they didn't do anything special in church. The whole week though is called Semana Santa and the Catholic church runs the whole city the whole week. It is freaky what they do here. It felt like war all week.I'm serious, they bang these big drums all day and dress up like the KKK and carry around statues of the Virgin Mary and a bloody Jesus and that is how they celebrate Easter!

It is so sad honestly and I just wanted everybody to be happy and to realize that Jesus is happy and that he lives! I am so grateful that I was able to study about Jesus and that I have my testimony! 

I didn't receive your package yet (yikes) but I did receive a package from the Mills! They are awesome! They sent me a little Easter package and I loved it! Sister Mills is very nice. Tell her thank you for me please mom!

I was able to make some cookies this week for some members with the recipe that you sent me and they turned out alright! I didn't have anything to measure with or to do the conversions so it was literally all with a spoon and guessing and some how they turned out alright! ha ha - I guess that was a miracle for this week!

It is raining really hard today so we are not going to do some of the things we planned - we will probably just go back to the piso and write letters. Thank you for everything that you do for me. I love you so much. Thank you for all of your words of encouragement and advice. They help me a lot! I have a family here on earth, they are so good to me. I want to share my life with them through all eternity! Families can be together forever - through Heavenly Father's plan. I always want to be with my own family and the Lord has shown me how I can!

Have a great week!

Love, 

Elder Ridd

April 7, 2014 - with Pictures!

Hello mother!! Do not worry about the long email! I skimmed! :) Yes, conference was great! I only got to see 3 of the 5 sessions because of the time difference and all of them were in Spanish but I still loved it! I got that message too that we really need to stay strong and firm in our beliefs in this crazy world! I though a lot about how blessed we are as members and as a family to have the gospel in our lives.

Everything is going well here. The English class lady is named Inés and her kids are Adriann and Melania! We are working with them lots and we also have some other great investigators. We are seeing lots of miracles here in Guadalajara that come from hard work and obedience.

Can you believe I get to talk to you guys in 3 weeks? I don't know when Mother's day is in the states but it is the first Sunday in May here! Is it the same there? I am pretty excited for that!

Well, I put lots of spaces in the email this week so it looks like I wrote more (usually it is just one long paragraph) I hope you guys have a great week this week! The church is true! I felt the Spirit really strong this week. My testimony was really strengthened. I realized that every time I share the Plan of Salvation wit someone, my testimony grows. I am so grateful that we know why we are on this earth and that we know God's plan. I teared up a few times during lessons this week (thank you for the genes Mom!) when I shared my testimony about the Plan of Salvation. It is a perfect plan. The Book of Mormon is true and there are so many consejos in the book that can help us make it through the world today. I love you all!! Have a good week this week!

Love,
Elder Ridd

 Just so you can see that we eat Kebab in Spain too!

 oh, what's up Spain?! #nofilter

Guadalajara missionaries - including our new sister from Argentina - Sister Ferrari

March 31, 2014

Please feel free to write him here:

Elder Devon Ridd

c/ Cuesta de Dávalos n.2a, 6i

Guadalajara 19001

España

or email him:

devon.ridd@myldsmail.net

It is so great to get everyone's emails! Will you please thank the Johnsies and Grandma and Grandpa Ridd for sending me letters! They were great and tell them I love them so much! Mom, you know you don't have to write me such long emails. I love them but I feel bad! It must take you like half an hour to write them! Thank you for sending me an American flag - I love America!! I also got a letter from Mairi too so tell her thank you for that too please!

Well, mom, I am sorry about the Suburban! But, I was glad to hear about your spiritual experience at the Women's Meeting. What a cool experience to be able to watch that broadcast with Nicole and Aunty Alice. You are a great example to me and to a lot of people. If you were on your mission right now, you would be a sister training leader for sure. Ha ha ha and Mom, I think I inherited my crying all the time from you so thank you for that.

We are still teaching that woman and her kids from English class! The kids are great. She is kind of lonely and has her ideas a little bit mixed up about the church but her kids really have a desire to learn more and it is awesome. We still have the problem that she lives in a little pueblo but we are just excited that we can visit her.

There are lots of miracles happening here. they are little and people might think that they are coincidence but we know better. For example, last night we visited a lady and her family who we found in the street and she is less active too we found out, she wants to come back to church which is awesome, and then after the lesson we got back to Guadalajara and we had about 20 minutes left to proselyte so we went to a park next to our piso and there was a man sitting on a bench almost like he was waiting for us to show up and talk to him. So we had a lesson with him and we are going to meet with him again on Wednesday. The Lord has put people in our paths we just need to be obedient and follow the spirit. The church is true! Just figured I would throw that in there!

Thank you for everything and for all of the love and support! Have a great week this week Mom! I love you!

Love, Elder Ridd