Hey! So I finally got a chance to
write again, so I will do my best to cover everything worth talking about, but
there's just so much. I have 2 letters and a couple of little emails from you
to respond to, plus our mission president's wife gave us a paper of things that
moms really want to hear about that you should put in your first letter home, so
I will try to cover as many of those things as possible. Also, before I forget,
if you haven't found it yet, there's supposed to be a blog from the mission
president's wife at thebeautifulwa-tac.blogspot.com
I haven't really gotten a chance to look at it at all, but she said that she
puts pictures up there and stuff like that, and she supposedly keeps it pretty
up to date.
Okay, so first of all, I am in the heart of Tacoma, Washington right now.
The area I'm in right now is called the Stadium ward. I love this city so
much. You'll be lucky to get me home after 2 years. We flew into Seattle on
Tuesday in the morning, and it is beautiful. Everything here is green and moss
grows everywhere. I'll try to get my SD card sent home soon, but I don't have
any Washington pictures yet. We have been pretty busy. We have a car in my
area, so I haven't had to figure anything out with my bike situation yet, but I
will get back to you when something happens with that. We have more cars in
this mission than any other mission in the world.
Apparently, being a WA-TAC missionary is a big deal. We used to be the
highest baptizing mission in the US, and right now, we're about 3rd, I think.
But I guess Gordon B. Hinkley said that this was the best mission in the world
at one point, and that every mission should be like ours. And everyone just
talks this place up a lot. It is a really cool place though.
We don't have a very big teaching pool right now, so we're doing a lot of
door-to-door tracting. And that goes a lot better than I would have thought. A
lot of people politely say that they aren't interested after listening to you
for a couple minutes, rather than slamming the door in your face as soon as they
see you, so that's nice. We placed 6 copies of the Book of Mormon this last
week. And that doesn't really mean a lot to me, because I don't have anything
to compare it to, but it seems pretty good to me. My trainer said that last
transfer didn't get nearly the numbers we are getting right now, probably
because we were in the poorer side of town this time, and last transfer they
focused more on the richer side.
My trainer's name is Elder Kearney. He's a pretty cool guy. He's from
Utah (a small town I haven't really heard of before), and he's been out about 6
months now. I'm his second boy, as they call it. He really likes rock
climbing. And that's about all I have to say about him. I really like him
though.
We've had 2 beautiful sunny days, and the rest has been rainy. It would be
nice if the rain was a little warmer, but besides that, the weather is amazing.
The rain isn't really a downpour like the kind of rain you get when it comes in
Rexburg. Someone here described it like walking in a cloud, where it's always
kinda misting down, but not really coming down in hard drops... It's kinda hard
to describe.
We had dinner with a member family yesterday, and that was really good.
They fed me way too much though. We've been trying to establish a better
relationship with the members this week since we've been here, so that it's
easier to get the active members involved in member missionary work. Of about
700 members in our boundaries, 140 are active. So we should be having 3
sacraments in our building instead of 1. And ward council only happens once a
month, so it's hard to get things done between auxilliaries in the church. So
it's hard to try to get people converted and coming to church after baptism if
the members don't have an active interest in doing their part in fellowshipping
those people. I think the main problem is in home teaching. We just hear about
so many families here who have been baptized, and want to come to church, but
just don't have the drive to do it on their own. So we're doing our best to get
them to work harder on those kinds of things, and to help out how we can. By
the way, the bishop is a great person. I've met with him twice now, and he is
awesome. He told me to not offend the gay community, and to not convert any
muslims unless they came to us specifically, because their family could be
killed if they converted. He is a military guy, and was on tour in the middle
east, so that was important to him. Not a fun talk to be having. But he's very
Christ-like, and does a lot for his ward.
Your letters make me so happy! In the MTC, we were encouraged to only
write letters on P-days, but my trainer said that we could use the time before
personal study in the mornings to do that too, so I'll try to write letters home
so you can get stickers sometime. I have gotten the Pokemon stationary one, and
the hand drawn stationary one. We're going to go to the mission office after
the library today, so I might have more mail soon. If you want to send me mail
to my apartment address, I will get it sooner, but if you send me anything after
I move away (next transfer is around April 16 or 17, and I may or may not move),
it might never make it to me. So here's that address:
The weirdest thing about this place is living with only one other person.
It's a HUGE apartment for 2 people. Like about half the size of a CP
apartment. Makes me not very excited to get married. Hahaha
All of the Elders from my district at the MTC came out to Tacoma with me,
and all of the Sisters went out to a different mission (Minneapolis?). So
that's cool.
Also, you asked
about Amy. We committed her to baptism before we left the MTC, but that was
right before we left, so we didn't actually get anything past that. She was...
a difficult investigator. But we love her so much.
Well, I'm about out of time here, so I'm going to have to tie off this
letter. I hope I told you everything you wanted to know. If you want any more
details about stuff here, just send me more questions, and I'm more than glad to
direct my letters that way more :) I love you all and miss you tons!
No comments:
Post a Comment