Hola Padres

well first off i absolutely loved conference. it was so good. i really liked the priesthood session, i cant remember a lot but that is why i took notes, i am so grateful for the chance i have to watch all the sessions. i guess i really took advantage of that before the mission and i guess i just didnt know how important is was to actually sit there and listen to our leaders of the church. it is just the best couple days ever to receive spiritual guidance from the prophet and the 12. they really are inspired men and they always know exactly what we need to hear as a church and it is amazing. so we didnt get anyone to church which was a little disappointing for us not seeing our gators at conference to listen to the prophet, i really dont like satan all that much.. ok maybe at all. he really is working hard on our gators and he really doesnt want them to progress and it is annoying, well this week was a weird one. almost every lesson we had planned fell through, and it was even more weird cuz all of them were at home and they just didnt want us to be there at that time, its been kind of a frustrating week for us cuz we have been really working hard to be able to find those persons that elect and want to hear our great message of the restored gospel. it really is the best message they can hear at this time in their lives and a lot of people are using their agency in the wrong way whether it be peer pressure or what but satan, i'll admit is pretty good at getting people to listen to him, and that is very annoying, well this week we are going to be practically starting over here in our area with a few exceptions, but we are going to be working better, smarter, and listen more to the spirit to find those souls that are prepared by our father in heaven to receive this great message, well i hope you got a lot out of conference cuz i sure did, now i hope i can remember it all until the next conference and be refreshed then, but i hope you have a great week and work hard, i love you all a ton. adios

8-15-11

hey fam. well this week was once again a good one. we had a meeting with our mission president and it was good. i learned a lot about the help of members, well this week other than that wasnt all to excited, oh and btw if this email is short its cuz the other missionaries are rushing me but any whos, so yesterday was cool. we had dinner with a family and they had invited over the fluckigers. he is an area 70 so that was cool to be in his company, well yesterday in church we talked a lot about member missionary work, and just how important it is in the conversion of people, i mean us as missionaries can do a lot but if they have no friends in the church there isnt going to be a lot of retention, and they will probably go less active and then inactive which just isnt something we want now-a-days. well we are progressing in the work. we are doing a lot of tracting still, still finding great people to teach which is always fun, cuz missionary work, being fun as it is (tracting) teaching is so much more fun cuz you really get to see those changes that people want to make so they can live with all of us when this life is over and we are in the presence of our father, but it is sad to see when they dont realize what they will be missing out on when they reject the message that "we know will change their lives". you know fam, i really do not like satan. he really is not a fun guy, a few days ago we had this lady come out of her door and come talk to us and just started talking about how joseph smith wrote the book of mormon and that she doesnt agree with "mormonism" and she just handed us these 2 little books and i just bore testimony about the book of mormon and joseph smith and i know they are true but she still rejected it, so it is sad but they have their agency and they are going to realize after this life when i look them in the eyes and say "i tried to tell you, but you didnt listen" its going to be tough to see a lot of brothers and sisters not make it but it is all on them and the choices they make, well family i know this work is true and that joseph smith really did see god the father and his son jesus christ and that they really did restore that same church that was once upon the earth back when jesus was here and that joseph smith did translate the plates by the power of god and that it is the most correct of any book on the earth and that we can come closer to god by following its precepts. i know these things are true without a doubt in my mind and i love you all very much and wish the best to you this week.

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Con Amor
Elder Ricobueno

Burning Up in Texas!

8-8-11 To Mom

first answer is yes - it is freaking hot down here. the last few days we have looked at the thermometer that says over 110 every time in the shade haha so yeah, we are burning, but it is all for a good cause :) well i am glad that the girls survived the "hot" trek, i knew they could. they are tough girls, well this last week was good. we had a few new people to start teaching as of lately so things are looking up, well that is to bad that shanlyn broke her nose. that must have hurt pretty bad but i do have a pretty good brother :) to help her out haha. well i am glad that you are doing good, yeah dont worry about the money thing i can wait till things get better for y'all. i think the lord will provide as long as we are faithful to him, well this week we have a meeting with the president and about 150 missionaries so it will be pretty good to be there, well i love you mom. i hope things go well for you. take care

To Dad

haha it is pretty cool how the lord answers prayers huh, that is one thing i have learned about a lot on the mission is that whenever i have needed help i first go to the lord and he has my back most of the time, sometimes he will want us to figure thing out but he is pretty loving, well i am glad all is working out for you at work. i bet it is pretty frustrating when things dont go the way they are supposed to, it happens a lot in the mission field. investigators arent doing the things they know are going to help them out in life even though they know the blessings they will recieve from just simply doing it, and i know there are still those elect people who are waiting still for us to find them and we are working hard to find our brothers and sisters that are lost, i heard a talk from troy dunn "life is a football game" and at the end of it he tells the youth that he doesnt want to just see a few of us in heaven but he wants us to go there and to bring everyone with us and it is our job to find them and bring them unto the true knowledge of the restored gospel, well i love you a ton dad. you are the greatest. thanks for everything

Hangin' In There...

8-1-11

well hello my wonderful family. i hope you all had a good week, well this week was a slow one again but we are hangin in there, well this week we got a great referal from the sisters and she is really great. she said she is really interested in learning more, so it is good to know that we have someone that wants to actually progress, so yesterday at church we had to translate for sacrament meeting and it was quite the experience. we had fun doing it, well this week we are hoping to be finding a lot of great peeps, so we are going to be doing a lot of tracting, haha. i kinda like knocking on random doors to share the gospel with them, well i hope you all have a great week. thanks for the pics of naomi. shes pretty cute :) well i love you all and take care
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Con Amor
Elder Ricobueno

7-25-11

well hello my family, how are you all doing this wonderful week. well i hope you all are doing great. well this week we found out that elders walsh's mtc companion is now our new zone leader so it is all pretty cool. so this last week, we still havent been able to find a lot of great people but we have found a few good ones. we are both just really trying hard to find those elect souls that are prepared by the lord, so we have been doing a lot of tracting. i love it. i just wish a lot more people would open their doors, haha. but it is all good. honestly, this week was pretty boring so there wasnt a lot happening, just a lot of tracting. so that is pretty much the news update. let me know when miles has his call. ssorry this letter stinks, so just deal with it :) and be happy. this week is going to be a better week than last so i will have something to write about. but i hope that you all have a great week and enjoy the cool weather. it is pretty hot down here. well fam, i love you all ton have a good one
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Con Amor
Elder Ricobueno

What's Been Happening This Last Month!

7-18-11

well hello my family how have all y'all been doing, well here it is still going a little slow but we are getting more people to teach so that is all going good. well this last week we had interviews with our new mission president and it all went well. he is pretty cool, then we all went to subway for lunch with the president, well i am glad to know that delbert and mary are married and i hope that they are happy with that, well that is cool about what leon baker said and i know that if we all just keep making that effort of just going and doing all we have been told to do, like keeping the mandamientos, i just finished 2nd nefi in el libro de mormon and i love the promise it contains that if we keep the mandamientos we will prosper in the land, and the same with now a days if we go to the temple reguarly we will see the blessings of getting a new one and i think that would be totally awesome to have one in moses lake, so i hear that miles is going to get his call this week or something like that. i cant wait to know where he is going, my companions little brother just got his call to lima peru, so i am really excited for you, so i guess an update is needed now i dont know if i told you but do you remember the investigator i told you about that got drunk that one time, well she got baptized about a month ago and now she has her patriarchal blessing and she goes teaching with the sisters, it is so awesome to see her progress, well that is pretty much the update. i am staying in this area for another transfer so i am happy about that haha, well my fellow family members, i love you and hope all is well, hasta luego

7-11-11
hey familia how have you all been doing, well this week we have been doing a lot of moving this last week with the family we are living with. they are getting their house ready to show so they can move but it wont be for a while, well it is still a bit hard to find some people to teach, and the family we are teaching is a little slow right now but we are still trying with them, well this week we have interviews with president durrant for the first time so i am excited about that, well i am going to try and get you all some pictures that i have taken, but this email will probably be a little short cuz we didnt find any new gators this week and we taught 1 lesson but we arent going to get discouraged and just keep moving forward and hope that something good will come of it, well family i love you all very much, oh and remember when i told you that elder merkley, (my last companion) found his backpack that was stolen a while ago, he let me know about that, i thought that was pretty cool, well i love you once again and hope you all have a great week

7-4-11
well hello my family, how are you all doing, well i am doing good, well this week we did a lot of finding and we found a couple of new families that look like they are going to go somewhere we hope, well this week we also had the chance to visit with our new mission president, president durrant and his family, they are pretty cool and yeah he is tall, well right now i am going to try and just remember what president smith said to us and just remember that president durrant is our president now and that he was meant to be here with each and every one of us so i am going to do the best i can to love president durrant as much as i loved president smith, so this morning our ward had this breakfast and it was pretty fun and now we are just doing emails, well we had a couple of run ins with a few people that were just annoying, but i got to remember that the lord loves all his children, just some of them arent prepared to hear the gospel right now, well sorry this is a bad letter and short but thats just life, full of ups and downs right, well family i hope you are all doing well, and i hope you all have a good week love you all

6-27-11

hey family. well this week was a good one. this weekend we had the chance to go to an 11 stake project that took about two years to finish, so this weekend was the final production of that and us as missionaries we got to participate in it and we sang a song and waved some flags around and i got the us flag for the first go around, haha, then japan and korea. we did 3 shows it was really fun, well these last couple weeks have been hard cuz we dont find a lot of hispanics to teach cuz of the area we are in so we arent really finding a lot of new gators but we arent going to let that stop us from keepin on searching for those chosen people, well we had our final goodbye with president and sister smith, they are leaving this week and we are going to be meeting with president durant this week and i guess he is just going to get to meet all of us so i am excited to meet him and sad to see that president smith is done with his 3 year mission but i figure that he will be a seventy soon cuz he and uchdorf are like pilot flying buddies haha, well the family we have been teaching, the dad got a new job and that is stopping them from going to church, but we are having the whole district pray for them and if you all wouldnt mind praying for the family coheto, they are a really great family and i dont want this job that he just got to get in the way of their salvation so a prayer is always good, well i really cant think of anything more to write other than i love you all a ton and if i think of anything else i'll write it down and put it in the letter next week. i love you all a ton and i hope you all have a great week

6-20-11

so this week was also a good week. we went up to north dallas to my old area and we had the last training from president and sister smith and she wanted a tie from all the elders so she could have something to remember us by and i took my favorite tie right off my neck and i gave it to her, haha. it was pretty cool and i felt that she deserved, they have done such a wonderful job here in texas i am going to miss them so darn much, well i found out that my last 2 investigators that were in my last area, the ones who i have mentioned the one lady and another part member family the dad got baptized this last weekend so it was good to here that i have once again helped someone reach the waters of baptism. i was so happy for them, well this week we are going to be going to do a thing with 11 stakes from this area of texas and all the missionaries that are in the area are going to be participating in it and we heard that an apostle is coming so it is going to be quite the expirience. i cant wait. we are singing a song, haha. that is it, so the family that we have been teaching came to church this sunday and brought their daughter so it was good to see an entire family at church, they are so getting dunked haha. well we have also been doing a lot of tracting so i really like finding new people to teach. yesterday we found some dude that i knew we were supposed to find, we got talking with this guy and he started talking about how god has helped him in his life so much and that he has seen many blessings from doing service and i shared mosiah 2 :17 with him and that whenever we do service we are serving god and that it is a mandamiento to serve one another and that when ever we are keeping the mandamientos we will recieve blessings and he can tell that when you serve, you get those blessings, it was a good expirience for me just knowing that people are out there and they are looking for us and, then we started talking about the BOM and then he said, "speaking of" he went and got his own copy that some missionaries had given him and we left him with some chapters to read, so this week we didnt get into a lot of doors so we are really going to focus ourselves on doing just that. this week is going to be a good one, i got a feelin, woo woo, that this week's gonna be a good one haha. well familia i love you all a ton and hope you all are doing great, IM AN UNCLE AHHHHH haha. that is so awesome. congrats shayanna, love you all take care
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Con Amor
Elder Ricobueno

Transferred to Mesquite

6-13-11

hey y'all. well this we went to the transfer meeting and i found out that i am going to be serving with elder walsh, my mtc zone leader, haha, so i was happy to get with someone that i actually knew before i got with him haha. so this week we had a family at church and they seem to be doing well. well my area is in mesquite right next door to my greeny area so i got to see a lot of members that were in my first ward which was good. so my first day i ran over a roofing nail and got a bloody nose, so it was all good. then some random dude gave me 20 bucks to fix my tire haha, so i took it, so other than that first day everything seemed to be going good. church was awesome yesterday. we had gators to church so it was good to see that they are taking those first few steps to progress towards baptism. well other than that i really dont know what is going on in this area yet because i really havent been able to meet all the members yet but i knew a few when i was in my first area so it was good to see some familiar faces and that some of them knew me. well familia, les quiero mucho. i hope you all have a great week and that you are all enjoying life haha. well i got to get going now. i love you all tons
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Con Amor
Elder Ricobueno