We have a new investigator, Adrienne! She's quiet and doesn't say much, but she is kind and seems to enjoy the lessons! She came to all three meetings of church with us, and even two investigators came to sacrament meeting! The blessing of being in a small ward is that everyone knows and supports each other, and embraces and befriends those who are new to or are visiting the ward.
Elder Jessee and I volunteered at the thrift store again, and while I was looking throught some stuff, I found two boxes of old records that were brought in! I looked through them, and oh boy I found some gems! First, I found a Jim Croce record (he's the man who really inspired me to learn guitar), then I found a Men At Work record ("Business As Usual"), a Oingo Boingo record (a lady in our ward is a HUGE OB fan, so I'm giving it to her as a gift), and last but not least, an Elvis Presley Hawaiian record! The artwork is so cool, and the store owners were so kind to let me keep them!
As missionaries we can't really "party" for New Year's; we had to be in our apartment by 6:00, so we just sipped on some Martinelli's in our goblets and dined like classy gentleman on the brownies I made. Our "countdown" was at 10:30, the time we're supposed to be in bed....but we stayed up till maybe 11:30 goofing around. And even at 1:30 or so there were still fireworks going off and people shooting guns (not shooting people, just shooting the guns in the air like rednecks, don't worry we were safe).
On Friday we went to a member's house to teach her less-active son, and while there Elder Jessee and I met her two daughters, the youngest -McKenzie- is my age and just graduated from high school in May. Currently she is going to BYU-Hawaii, and I asked her if she knew a girl by the name of Clarissa Weser (I was friends with her back in high school, and took her to Homecoming my senior year; she's on the school's soccer team right now). And amazingly she does know Clarissa! Actually, she knows several girls that are on the women's soccer team there that I went to school with at Timpview! McKenzie even took a Snapchat video of me and sent it to Clarissa, and Clarissa said to McKenzie (through Snapchat) that she was shocked to see me again, what a small world we live in! So that was a really cool experience.
On Sunday during fast and testimony meeting, a member of our ward painfully and slowly got up to walk to the stand. He's a retired rodeo bull-rider and was recently reactivated into the church after years of alcoholism and church inactivity. A few years ago he was very masculine and in shape! Sadly he was diagnosed with cancer, and after going through treatments, he lost more than 70 pounds in body weight. He recently had to go back to UCLA for more cancer treatment, and he appears to be in an even more worse condition now. I feel so bad for him and all the pain he's had to go through. And yet he still got up and sloooooowly walked to the podium. We could tell it was very hard and painful for him to get up and move around; everyone was thinking he was going to fall because he was so weak! But he made it to the stand and bore a brief but powerful testimony on the Book of Mormon. It was so awe-inspiring for me to see a man like him go through all that to bare his testimony. If he went through all that to share his testimony, I think we should all share our testimonies with everyone; what's stopping you?
On Saturday we taught a lesson to one of our investigators, Nelson. He's going through a divorce and is trying to save his marriage, and I felt inspired to ask him if he wanted a blessing of counsel and comfort. He said yes, so after the lesson we went into a quiet room and I gave the blessing. I gave my whole heart to the Lord in that moment, so that I could be guided by the Holy Ghost as to what I should say in the blessing. It was so powerful, and after the blessing he said that he definitely felt better.
Gotta go, love you all!
-Elder Ruiz
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