Letter #13

Sorry for not writing on Monday... President Weaver told us to email on Tuesday morning, since the libraries would be closed on Monday for Memorial Day. It's still weird how holidays work on the mission. They really don't affect your life at all, so you sorta forget about them until they happen.

Okay, so transfer calls came on Saturday, and I found out that I will be staying in the Stadium ward again! This was a really big one, because the mission will be splitting during this next 6 weeks, so everyone in the Graham and Puyallup stakes during this next transfer will be in the new Federal Way mission. So because I am staying in Tacoma, I will definitely be a Tacoma missionary still. I am also keeping my same companion, so Elder Burt and I will stay together. But Elder Burt will be a District Leader this next transfer, which is pretty exciting. Later this afternoon, the whole mission is going to get together in the stake center, and we are going to welcome in the new missionaries, and send the old ones out to the plane back home. I don't think most missions do this, but it's a really fun time to see everyone together, especially as you meet more people around the mission, and people move around.

This week has been pretty solidly back to rainy Washington. Not much sun, and a lot of tracting in the rain. You don't really pay attention to whether or not it is raining, but how much it is raining after being here for so long. According to the locals, summer starts on July 5th, and goes through Halloween, and those months are supposed to be relatively sunny.

We are going to have a baptism this next week. It's for a UBC (un-baptized child of a less active member), and so those aren't really as exciting, since they really can't understand the gospel at the same level as a real investigator, since they really haven't had enough life experiences for that, but it's still pretty cool. He is almost 10, and they are moving to Arizona soon, and the mom asked if we could look up to see if there was a ward in the area she was moving to, so hopefully this has had a positive impact on her. Also, we had 3 people (investigators) show up to church on Sunday, and that's way better than normal. Most of the time, people drop their commitments last minute here, so I've actually never had someone come to church because I invited them until now, so that was a really cool experience. We put all 3 of them on-date (committed them to a specific baptismal date), and so we are hoping they will all go through with that. There is definitely a lot of work that can be done here all the time. I can't remember if I've written this in a letter before or not, but I've been told that there are 1 million people in Tacoma, and based on how the area boundaries are drawn, there are probably a couple hundred thousand people in our area, and based on the nature of our area, we get people coming and going all the time.

Oh yeah, so we got a call from the Lincoln ward missionaries that they ran into someone who preaches at a soup kitchen, and they invited them to preach there sometime, and it's right on the border between our wards, and so they invited us to come with them, so hopefully that happens. It would be this Saturday, and we would be teaching about 150 people. So that's pretty crazy. Just standing up and preaching to a bunch of people. Haha, I'll have to tell you guys how that goes.

Anyway, I love you all! I hope everything is going well! Talk to you next week.

Letter #12

So today marks my 3 month mark on the mission! It feels so much longer and so much shorter at the same time. Also, transfer calls come this Saturday! That means I might be moving this coming week, so don't send me any more letters to my address until I find out if I'm staying or leaving. It seems like chances are pretty good that I'll end up in a new area this time, and Elder Burt will stay in Stadium, but you never really know. If I am leaving, I will be moving a week from tomorrow, so it will be exciting to see where I will go. Stadium has been an awesome ward, and it would be fun to stay longer, but there are probably some other wards out there that are pretty good too, so I'm not too worried. But this transfer is going to be really intense, because 2 of our zones are leaving the mission. Anyone who is in Puyallup or Graham zones after this transfer happens will be in the new Federal Way mission in a couple of weeks now.

This week has been so long. We've been doing service projects most days with the nice weather, and I've been a little sick with something, and so we really didn't spend that much time in lessons this week. We spent a bunch of time digging up sod for a single sister in our ward who wants a flower bed next to her driveway, and then we helped someone in the final phases of moving out of their home, and then we helped that same person plant tomatoes in their new home. It's been a lot of work, but it's really fulfilling. More so than knocking doors for a couple of hours, and not finding anyone interested. But it's all good work.

This week was pretty standard. When we weren't doing service for ward members or investigators, we were talking to your everyday crazy people that are all over Tacoma. Apparently the missionaries from an adjacent ward to mine called Tacoma ghetto in testimony meeting a couple months ago, and that wasn't too popular. We were working with Eddie and Tiffany a little bit this week. They will be a slow process in teaching if they do get baptized. Eddie doesn't want to make commitments, but Tiffany is reading the Book of Mormon, and likes the church so far, but she gets busy. If she does decide to join the church though, she will definitely bring Eddie with her, so we're working harder on bringing her right now. They get pretty busy though, so we haven't had a set lesson with them in a little while, so we're working on that. They still let us come in and talk to them when we're passing through though, and Tiffany does read the Book of Mormon occasionally, so that's a good sign. Right now, they really just need to come to church.

Also, we were working with Chris and Darius this last week. They are the children of a less active who wants them to get baptized. Missionaries have been going over there for probably about a year now, and we finally have them set to get baptized on June 1, which might be right after I leave here, but that's super exciting that they will be getting baptized. The mother of the kids asked us if we could find out if there was a ward in the place she was moving to at the end of the summer, so I think teaching the kids has had a positive impact on her too.

Well, I miss you all! I hope you all have an awesome week!

Letter #11

So I called home yesterday, and now I have no idea what to write about. Well, I had clams for the first time ever last night. They were pretty good. Especially considering they were something that I was really creeped out about eating. And Brother Peterson said we'd be having other seafood in the next couple of weeks, since he heard that I've never had pretty much any seafood. Apparently, crab is next on the list. And if I stay here for this next transfer, it'll be his fresh caught stuff too, so that would be cool.

Well, the baptism this week was a really cool experience. She has been investigating the church since... the end of January, I think. And she had this really sketch vision that led her to the church, so it was pretty interesting hearing about her conversion story. Anyway, the man she just got married to is a return missionary, but he was inactive, and she kinda reactivated him through investigating the church, and now they both come again. So that's really cool.

Also, Heavenly Father gave Sister Dickjose permission to knit us hats, but we haven't been over to her house recently, so he hasn't given her the special message that goes with them yet, so we're going to have to take care of that this week. And that's going to have to be it for this letter. I give up on it. Hope everyone is doing well! I miss you all! Talk to you later

Elder Prue

Letter #10

So my favorite new "doctrine" that we got over the pulpit yesterday is: "The Holy Spirit is a person who gave us our bodies so we could come to Earth." Fast and Testimony meetings are the best. We got to sit next to Sister Dickjose for that meeting, and she was talking to us the whole time. Mostly Elder Burt, since he was the one next to her. She took down our names, hometowns, and favorite colors, and she is going to ask the Father if she has permission to knit us hats. But she is actually so blind that she can't knit without the help of the Father, so she needs permission first. But I'm thinking we're probably going to get hats.

So we had a very service oriented week. On Saturday, we got a call to help some people move at 10:30 a.m., and then we were between that move and another one all the way out until 9:30 p.m. except for a 1 hour break for pizza. That was a pretty rough day. And then we had another day where we moved a huge pile of dirt into flower boxes. And that took several hours. We haven't had any rain all week, so it has been really nice weather. I even got sunburned a little bit one day. That was actually pretty cool.

On Tuesday, we had the opportunity to go out to the temple. That was a pretty awesome experience. It's out in Seattle, which is outside of the mission, so we only get to go up there once a year. We took a bus up, and then we did a session, and listened to the temple president, and then the mission president, and we had lunch in a stake center up there, and it was a pretty great experience. The Seattle Temple was really pretty, but not as great as the Provo or Rexburg temples, tbh. Haha, except for the escalators (sp?). I've never seen those in a temple before.

So I bought a new stick of deoderant on Monday. That was a much bigger ordeal than I think it probably should've been, but I eventually decided on Hawkridge by Old Spice. For one, it had a really great commercial that I saw right before I came out. For two, it said, "For guys with Swift minds," and that reminded me of Taylor Swift, so I decided I could deal with that.

Well, there isn't really anything else interesting going on right now. We have a baptism this coming weekend for Leah, but we don't have too many other investigators progressing right now. There's a lot of good potential in some of the people we're working with, and we have a couple of less-actives that we're trying to reactivate, but it's a lot of slower work right now. Thanks for all of your love and support! I love and miss you all!