Highlights and Advice

This week has been quite an adventure! I have so much I want to say
and such little time to say it! Here are the highlights:
-"Cat cake" is a new flavor of cake with a secret ingredient: cat hairs
-We got a pogo stick for helping clean out someone's basement!
-We have a few Chinese investigators who are wonderful! It is such a
different experience teaching people without any Christian background.
It is so great to be able to practice teaching the gospel incredibly
simply and to be able to testify so much about the Savior
-I adore my companion
-African food may come back to haunt you four or five times during the
next few days. Be careful!

I love working in Philadelphia and loving such a diversity of people.
I will forever be grateful for this incredible opportunity that I have
to serve! The gospel is TRUE!

Also, I wrote to one of my EFY boys about some things I wish I had
known/ done before my mission and I thought I would share:

1. Missions are HARD. Super, duper hard! For sure the hardest thing I
have ever done in my life. It's physically exhausting and emotionally
draining and sometimes spiritually difficult.
2. All of the pain is worth it! The person that you become BECAUSE of
the hard times is someone you will never want to give back. Change is
hard, but growth from the change makes life better than you can
imagine.
3. I wish I had been a better member missionary! All it takes is
simply loving people enough to invite them to do things: come to
dinner, come to church, come to mutual/institute, come to church, read
the Book of Mormon, pray to know if God is there, come to a ward
activity, etc.
4. Go out with the missionaries and ask them about what it is like to
be a missionary. What is a normal day/ week like for them? What is the
hardest thing about being a missionary? What is the best thing? Etc.
5. Also, when you think that you are the only one struggling and
having a hard time, YOU ARENT! Everyone else is too, they are just
trying to be strong. Be willing to talk about it with people. It makes
everyone feel more comfortable.
8. DO NOT DEVELOP THE MISSIONARY VOICE!!! Just talk to people like
they are people and you will have success!

Love you all!

Sister Amber Ricks

Happy Monday!

Dear e'erbody-
I love being a missionary! I love working in Philadelphia! I love
working with Sister Hyatt! We had a super fun week working with some
awesome people. Mostly everyone really is African! I feel like I need
to develop the gift of tongues being here. I had really wanted to go
somewhere on my mission where I had to speak a foreign language and
it's happened! I'm in Africa speaking Philly. It's a real thing. Or I
guess I'm just in Philly trying to understand different Liberian
dialects. Either way, I'm having a blast!

We are working closely with the family ward to help reactivate their
600 less active members. It's quite a job! But with the help of the
ward members, I know that we are going to see some great miracles.
It's all about the members and the missionaries working together!

In other news, we went to try to find a potential investigator and in
order to avoid us he army-crawled through the living room, but the
door was open so we could see him. Haha! If you're going to avoid the
missionaries, at least be creative about it :)

I love youuuuuuuuuu!!! The Church is true!

Love, Sister Ricks

Surprise Transfer!

****NEW ADDRESS FOR SISTER RICKS****

28 Llanfair Road #4B  (Llanfair like llama)
Ardmore, PA 19003

Well this week was quite interesting with transfers. A huge surprise happened when I found out that I was being transferred to Liberia, Africa! It doesn't happen very often for sisters, but I am one of the lucky ones!

Okay....well MOSTLY that's what happened. I was actually transferred to West Philadelphia (born and raised...... name that t.v. show!) and it consists largely of Africans! If you know me well, you probably know that it has been my life dream to go to Africa. Well, Heavenly Father is so good to me and gave me the next best option while I'm on my mission. I feel like I'm in heaven working with these people. I don't know if ever had more fun at church being surrounded by such diversity!

I am SO excited for this new area. It was super hard to leave the people in Cape May, but I know that this is what Heavenly Father has planned for me at this time. And I feel so blessed! My companion is absolutely wonderful too, Sister Annabelle Hyatt. She only has a few transfers left and is a boss missionary. I have so much I can learn from her.

This week has been so fun just getting to know the people in my area. We cover a family ward and a YSA ward, so we have plenty of work to do. What a blessing!

I love being a missionary. I love the Lord and His work that I am blessed to be a part of. I love the people that I get to love. And I hope that each of you are taking advantage of the Lord's call to be member missionaries. Because soooooooooo many blessings come from it!

I love you all!

Love, Sister Ricks

The quilt I made for Maddy's baby!

Saying goodbye to the Johnsons

First selfie with Sister Hyatt

Transfers!

 The call came Saturday morning- Sister White is staying in Cape
May and I am off to somewhere new! I expected that I would be leaving
because I've been here for almost 6 months, but it is super hard to
leave. I feel like this place has become my home and these people have
become my family. I had a neat experience yesterday in sacrament
meeting. I had gone up to bear my testimony and as I started speaking,
in my mind I had a flash of all of the people that I have met and
served while I've been here. It was incredible to feel such an
overwhelming love for Heavenly Father's children.
        We went camping this week! Well.... Kind of. We were invited
to lunch with some members from Pennsylvania that were down here for
vacation, and they were staying in a campground. So we sat around
their camp site to eat.
        We received a referral from church headquarters for a girl
living in our area. We drove down to check it out and we found a
building that looked like a hotel that was under construction. We
decided that it was a flaky referral and we were going to mark it as
contacted. We had the thought that we should double check the referral
though, and we found a phone number. We called it and the girl
answered! She told us that she had been investigating in Virginia and
needed the church back in her life. Another miracle! We taught her on
Wednesday and she is almost ready to get baptized!
        In sacrament meeting after I bore my testimony, Cindy got up
and bore her testimony! That was a miracle because she had said
multiple times before that she did not want to have to talk at the
podium. But she felt the spirit encouraging her to go and she did it!
        I love these people. I love this work. It is hard and
exhausting and oh so wonderful! I hope that each of you are praying
for opportunities and acting upon them when they come to share the
gospel and prepare people to take the missionary lessons. Elder
Ballard challenged us to invite people at least four times a year to
take the missionary lessons. That is an apostle who speaks for God
giving that challenge.... Which means that there are major blessings
attached to being obedient. This church is truly Christ's one true
church on the earth. I know it, I love it, it love it! And I love you!

Love, Sister Ricks

The District

A quilt I made for a member's new baby

Monster's Inc Doors!