May 31, 2010

Dear Family,
Well it’s just about a year ago that I went into the MTC. I don’t know anymore if it feels like a long time ago or not. It depends on the day. For the most part though it just feels like I have been a missionary for all my life and that I will continue to always be a missionary and it's not in a bad way at all. It is strange especially seeing both sides of the spectrum lately, "killing off" Elder Sellers and now training Elder Herring, who is from Michigan. He went to BYU for 3 semesters. He actually speaks really good French, especially for a "blue" who didn’t really speak French before. meaning he studied French about as much as I did. He, though, speaks much better than I did when I came into the mission. In about six weeks, he will already speak better French than me. NO joke unless I do as Dad did at his one year mark and buckle down and get this language down. I really love this language and have a strong desire to get it down. Its true though that I need to work harder at it. Its great working with elder Herring it brings back all sorts of memories of when I was a younger missionary. It is also quite a bit more stressful being the Sr. Comp, but it is like everything at first, it just takes getting use to. We have already seen success recently. We have also seen disappointments. I would say that the name that you can pray for is Dominique. He is one of our amis that was making the most progress. We thought he would have a baptismal date this week, but it turns out that he doesn’t feel like he can continue with the lessons. We have a rendez-vous with him Tuesday so we will see what the final result is. His problem is that he talked to a Catholic Priest to see if he could be baptized again into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day-Saints. His priest of course said that he should turn back to his childhood religion. Dominique said he reflected and doesn’t want to continue. We'll see what his final decision is Tuesday. It always hurts getting dropped by amis. If you don’t mind keeping him in your prayers. That would be great.

So it sounds like life is going well, that all is calming down a little bit. I remember loving this time of the year. There is a certain summer excitement always in the air. I just hope that not as many people leave for vacation here in Bayonne as they did back in Pau. Missionary work is not nearly as fun without amis as you can imagine. So it sounds like you had some fun at the "Guitars and Saxes" jazz concert recently, Mom and Dad. That is good. It’s funny to think that for now all of the "Kids" are out of the house. Well I just want to let you all know that once again I love you tons. It is so great to hear from you every week. I am so spoiled.

Have a great week

Elder Ritter