Letter #17

This week was pretty eventful.  We had the mission tour this week, which was where a general authority comes out to check out the mission.  One day, he came and met with all of the missionaries in the north half of the mission, and the next day, he did the same meeting with the south half of the mission.  And it was a really long meeting.  We got there at 8:00, and it was over at around 4:00.  That is an entire P-day in length.  President Weaver was pretty stressed out about it all week, because last year, the mission tour wasn't so great, because the missionaries weren't really ready for it, and I guess they mostly just got yelled at the whole time.  But this one was good.  We had Elder Pieper from the Seventy come up, and he was pretty nice.  He gave us training on different things, and shook all of our hands, and then we left.  And that was our whole Wednesday.  Haha, it was a relief to be done with that, because everyone who was here for the last one was so strung up about it.

Yesterday was also the Hastening the Work of Salvation worldwide broadcast.  That was pretty fun to watch.  We still do a bunch of tracting, and our mission president puts a lot of emphasis on that, so it was interesting to hear the general authorities talk about how we shouldn't be doing as much of that.  Also, it will be interesting to see what happens with the social media that will be introduced more into the missions.

Also last night was a musical fireside that our mission does.  We were out in Puyallup for that, so that was the first and last time I will be out there.  That is about to be a part of the Federal Way mission next week.  It was sorta a sad little reunion, because that will be the last time that we'll get to see those guys.

I had an exchange this last week, so that was pretty fun.  I went to the Wapato Park ward for a day with the Zone Leaders, and we went tracting, and studied together and fun stuff like that.  It was pretty fun because the ZL areas have 4 people in them, and it's way more fun than living with one other person.

And that's mostly all that we did this last week.  Not too exciting, but we do have a baptism this next week for Chandea.  So that's pretty exciting.  Teaching kids is always fun, because they're so innocent.  But anyway, I love you all!  I'll talk to you later.  Bye

Letter #16

Well, this week has been pretty fun. We had our park day this week on Thursday, and so, of course, it was the rainiest day of the week. We didn't bring our coats with us for the day, because the weather looked pretty nice, but it actually rained on us really hard. It was not the normal Washington rain either, because usually that's not too bad, but it lasts forever. This was hard rain. We both got soaked, and we were tracting the whole day, because no one would make appointments with us. But something cool is that we had a dinner appointment with a family that night, and we didn't know where they lived, because they had just moved, and we were just out tracting, and we were going to do this one street, and then Elder Burt said we should do the next street instead, and so we did, and we knocked right into this family that we had the dinner appointment with that night, so we knew right where they lived. That was pretty cool. And then Sister Dickjose ordered a pizza, and fed us that for lunch, so that was pretty fun too.

There was also a pretty cool blessing that happened this week. There is a sister in the ward that gives us milk and cereal every week, and we were at her place picking it up, and she asked us for a blessing. She had a lot of health problems that I don't really know about, but she's always talking about going to doctor appointments. Anyway, she asked for a blessing of healing, and so we gave her one, and right as I was about to end the blessing, I stopped and said something about her family relationships improving, and it kinda came out of no where, but afterwards, she was like, "How did you know I was having problems with my family?" And so that was a pretty cool experience.

We also hit up the family history center this last week. That was pretty fun. Our mission president wants us to start using that more with finding investigators, because it's a really cool resource that the church has that is interesting for all sorts of people. So we checked that out, and it's pretty fun to look at, especially when everything you are looking at has already been done for you, and you are just competing with your companion to see who has the oldest recorded ancestor. So it was more like family history play than family history work. But it's still really cool. It made me wish we could go out to the temple more often.

Well, that's about all that's going on here right now. We have 2 investigators that were supposed to get baptized on Saturday, but that didn't happen for various reasons, and so we have been trying to get contact with them again, but that's been really hard, and we've been working on teaching Sonja's kid so she can be baptized soon. So things are going pretty swell right now. I miss you all! Love you.

Letter #15

This last week was pretty uneventful. Lots of meetings. We had Zone Conference this last week, so we got to spend all day in the Stake Center with the missionaries from the surrounding zones. And the roof was being redone while we were there, so that made for a pretty eventful meeting. We had to be there at 8:00, and we stayed until almost 4:00, and then when we got out, we got 4 calls from people to give blessings in hospitals to different people, so we had a pretty packed day. In our meeting, we had a lot of training on planning effectively and with the spirit, and people have been going crazy with that. Some people have been planning baptisms for the weekend without actually having people in mind, and then the day before, someone who's already ready will show up and ask to be baptized at the time that they've already planned for. And this one companionship wrote in their planner that they were going to have a lesson with Katrina, when they didn't even know anyone named Katrina, and they ran into someone named Katrina, and taught her a lesson. Funny things like that. I think that there were a bunch of missionaries who didn't really take these stories seriously, and put stuff like that in just to mess around, and then they ended up getting that stuff to happen anyway. Pretty funny stuff.

Also, at church this Sunday, Sonja (who was baptized the same day as Brian about 2 months ago) has been trying to get custody of her kids for a long time, and she has finally been having some success in that area, and she brought her daughter to church yesterday, and said that she wants her to take the lessons and be baptized. She's almost 9, which is pretty much the perfect age, so that was a really cool experience.

And that is pretty much all of the exciting things that happened this week. I hope you are all doing well! I miss you all tons!

Letter #14

Our mission president tells us that we need to knock doors every day from 5:00-7:00 to find people, and that the best things always happen at 6:58, so we need to keep knocking during that entire time. Well the last 2 days in a row, we have been offered hamburgers at houses that we've run into at 6:58, so that's been working out for us lately. The funny thing is that it was the same group of people at two different houses each day. They asked us if we believed that black people were going to heaven, and I said yes, so that was good enough for them. I showed them 2 Nephi 26:33, because that came to mind when she asked. I got a hallelujah when I got to the "all are alike unto God" part. And then we had to explain the whole priesthood thing, because that's what they were thinking about when they asked the question. And then one of them said "Well, that wasn't just your church. That was the times. We don't blame you for that." And then we got food from them.

That soup kitchen thing didn't really work out. The preacher there was going to go all night, and let us go when he was done, and we didn't have all night, so we left after listening to him for like half an hour. That was a little weird. But it was mostly good stuff. We talked to some less actives there that had supposedly been baptized before and thought they might want to show up to church again sometime. One of them was even a fairly normal person that wasn't completely wrecked from past drug use. So he was pretty cool.

On Saturday, we had a baptism for a 10-year-old boy. Darius Corniciuc. For some reason, his last name has been written in our progress reports as Bell for about a year now, and that is not his last name at all. About a year ago, he told his less-active parents that he wanted to be baptized, and they told him that if he went to church for a year, and still wanted to be baptized after that, that he could do that, but they really just said that because they didn't think he would do it, but he did. It was a really nice baptism. His family all came out for it, and we had the ward mission leader and his wife, and the second councilor in the bishopric, so it was a pretty small turnout. But the mom started crying at the end, and the WML conveniently waited until after they had already taken pictures that they shouldn't do that. And Elder Burt gave the talk on baptism, and I taught the Restoration while Darius was getting dressed.

Elder Burt talked me into getting a gym pass at the YMCA we have just downtown. So now we're getting up at 5:45 every morning to go over and lift weights. And nothing makes you look like more of a fool than benching an empty bar. We put a 25 weight on each end this morning to make me feel better, but we always have to add about 100 pounds when Elder Burt goes to do a sets, and he says that's WAY less than normal for him. Also, I'm sore all over the place now. Haha, but this is probably good for me. Also, he has started doing insanity at night, so I might start doing that with him too, because I really prefer cardio to weight lifting. But it looks so hard, so I don't know yet.

Anyway, that's about all of the interesting things for this week, so I'm going to finish up this letter now. I love you all and miss you!