Letter #22

Okay, so I promised I would work on making these longer again, so here I go.

 

This last week, our zone made a goal to contact 2000 people during the week, so we kept track of every person that we invited/talked to/whatever, and we made our goal.  So that was pretty cool.  And we got 20 new investigators from it, which is like half of what our mission president wanted us to get this week.  But it is what it is.  President has been on a numbers kick lately, which the zone leaders say doesn't usually last for that long.  We've been doing more hours of finding, and finding less people the last week or two, so that's been not much fun.  And the other Elders in our ward area always across the street getting a ton of new people while we're getting cussed off of porches.  So yeah, it's whatever.

Saturday was pretty great, because we had a baptism in the morning.  Sallynda got baptized in the morning (along with Nathan, who the other Elders taught), and so that was pretty great.  We had an awesome turnout, and Derek did the baptizing, and they got confirmed in sacrament meeting the next day, so that was really cool.  After the baptism, we followed up with a referral named Francis, and he ended up being a really solid investigator.  He even has a stable job and a home, so that right there makes him the most stable investigator that's ever been referred to me.  He is Belgian, and has an adorable European accent and speaks like 5 languages, and found out about the church through coworkers who enthusiastically sent us over.  And then he came to church, and Elders Quorum expounded upon doctrines that we weren't ready to teach him yet.... So, we're not going back to him until Saturday, so that'll be pretty exciting to see his reaction to some of that stuff.

Also on Saturday was Eddie's birthday (he's the investigator that called Dad home on Father's day).  He turned 30, so we went over and wished him a happy one.  And then we went tracting, and had dinner with 4 sex offenders.  It was one of those things that you didn't really think about until after the fact, and then you just laugh about it.  It was 4 missionaries in shirts and ties, and then 4 sex offenders, grilling hamburgers and swapping life stories (we all deal with interesting people).

And that's all I can think of this week.  Hopefully that's a better letter than the last couple of weeks.  I love you all and miss you!  Talk to you later

Letter #21

So Stadium is pretty fun.  And Sallyinda (I guess that's how you spell her name) is finally going to get baptized.  And everyone hates us.  Haha.  So that's too bad.  But we are having that baptism this weekend, and the other Elders are going to baptize someone that showed up to church a week ago now.  I guess he's been looking for our church for a couple months now, and he finally found our building.  So he was pretty much already ready to go.  He quit smoking last week, and he's going to be baptized on Saturday with Sallyinda.

Washington has been just beautiful lately.  It's about 80 degrees in the day, and around 60 at night, and most mornings are overcast, but then it always clears up in the afternoon.  So tracting is hard, because no one is home because the days are so beautiful.

On Friday, we got back to our apartment, and we ran into someone from the Samoan ward, and he handed us a package of chips ahoy cookies.  That was a tender mercy.  And then later, we knocked into a member having a barbeque.  That was a miracle.  Fun stuff.

Letter #20

 

Well, transfer week is over, and now we have 2 sets of missionaries in our area.  My new companion is Elder Williams.  He came out into Washington at the same time as me, but this is the first time that I've actually met him.  I guess that kind of thing happens when there are 30 missionaries in your group.  The other missionaries in our ward are Elder Augustine, who is a District Leader (he came out the transfer before me) and Elder Haynie (who is a new missionary this transfer).  The ward is all excited that we have the extra set now, and so that's nice.  We have been mostly knocking the northern end of Tacoma this last week, which has been super slow.  People just don't talk to you up there.

This morning we gave a blessing to a baby in neonatal ICU.  That was a pretty crazy thing.  In all my months here in Stadium, I've never had to go to that part of the hospital.  We had to pass a bunch of security checks and fill out forms, and then we had to wash our arms up to our elbows for 3 minutes before we could go in and see this poor little baby and her mom.  We talked to her for a couple of minutes, and gave the blessing and left.  It's pretty cool being in the Stadium area, because you get to meet with people from all over Washington at the hospital.  The baby we gave a blessing to was from down in Elma.  Which is south of here, I think.

Well, there really wasn't anything super exciting this week.  We got called police officers like 3 times in the same day.  And someone asked us where this one isle was in Winco on Tuesday.  And that's about it.

Well, sorry this is a boring letter.  I'm going to try to work on making my journal better so I actually have more to say in these letters.  Also, I'm going to try to find investigators so my life isn't so boring either.  Haha, well I miss you all!  Talk to you next week.

Letter #19

 

 

 

 



So, first things first... Transfer calls came, and I will be staying in Stadium!  I'm pretty excited about that.  This will be my fourth transfer here, so that's just a little bit crazy.  I love it here though, so I'm not complaining or anything.  Elder Burt got made a Zone Leader in the Tacoma West Zone, so he won't be too far away, but I will be getting a new companion tomorrow.  His name is Elder Willeyums.  I haven't talked to anyone that knows anything about him yet, but he did text me Saturday night, so I know that he is coming from Yelm, and that's about it.

Last Monday, we went crabbing with Brother Peterson.  And we did everything from catching them to eating them, so that was a really cool experience.  We took his boat out to the middle of the sound, and dropped these crab pots into the water (they look like little cages), and they're attached to a rope and a buoy at the top.  We dropped them in there first thing in the morning, and let them sit all day.  The crab pots have these doors that open up one way, but not the other, and there's bait in the middle, so when they get in there, they can't get back out.  Well, we went back out there that night in his boat, and we pulled up the cages full of crab.  You're only allowed to keep the males, and they have to be at least a certain size, so he showed us how to pick them out, and how to grab them without losing any fingers.  We got 5 good ones that we could keep between the 2 pots.  We stuck them in a cooler full of water, and then brought them back to the dock.  When we got there, we cooked the crabs (just throw them in boiling water for about 5 minutes), and then he showed us how to open the crabs out and what to clean out and what to keep, and then he sent us home with the crab, and we ate it for dinner.  Elder Burt had to show me how to eat crab legs, because that was the first time I had had it, but that was really cool, because we did everything short of building the pots ourselves to get that meal.

The fourth of July was pretty fun.  We were told to tract for 2 hours that day, but it's mostly a family day for people, so we were told to mostly hang out with members that day, and that we had to be back home on time, like usual.  So we spent a bunch of time at the Peterson's new apartment up on Ruston Way, which I'm pretty positive has the best view in the entire city.  You can see Rainier and you have an awesome view of the Puget Sound, and their patio is 700 sq. ft., so we had a little party there with a bunch of their family and some ward members.  After that, all the missionaries in Tacoma got invited to the mission home for a barbeque, so we got to hang out with President Weaver and his wife, and a bunch of other missionaries from the two tacoma zones.

Sunday was a pretty cool day too.  We were invited up to primary for the third hour, and that was a blast.  I think we were in the CTR 6 class?  They were having a lesson about how they could be missionaries now, and they colored pictures of missionaries, and we let them wear our name tags around for the class time, and they asked us cute little questions, and at one point, one little girl asked me, "What do you do when you are taking a break from working in the fields?"  Haha, so that was pretty awesome.  And after that class, there was about 15 minutes left, and so we just stuck around for closing exercises, and so Elder Burt and I got visitor stickers, and Elder Burt has an August birthday, so they had him come up for birthdays, and gave him this cardboard cupcake picture thing to wear around his face (haha, I don't know how else to describe it...) during a birthday song, and then they had mail time, which was super exciting.  They had me come up and get the mail, which was pretty cool.  You just open up the mailbox, and it had pieces of paper with the assignments for next week's opening exercises, so I got to hand out the mail to them.  And then after church, the Young Men's President came up to us and was like, "Hey, did you guys teach the teachers last week?" and I was like, "yeah," because we did.  Well his stepson is a teacher, and he's just your typical too cool for school teenager.  Whatever.  Well, last week, we asked them all if they were planning on serving a mission, and we got 3 no's and a yes, and so we just kinda took questions and told them about what a missionary does.  And so this one kid (Bailey) comes home, and says, "We should have the missionaries over for dinner sometime."  And that just blew their minds, because that is totally not him.  So the young men's president said, "Whatever you guys did in there, it really made an impression on my boy at least, so thank you."  So that was a super cool experience.  And we're going over there for dinner next Monday.  Also on Sunday, we talked with Derek's friend Selinda about taking the missionary lessons.  She has been around for a while, and has "had bad experiences with organized religion."  Derek tells us that she came from a not very good home, and that's really where most of that comes from, but he finally got her to come out to church, and she has been reading through all of the church's manuals, and finally actually started reading the Book of Mormon, and she said that when she is ready to be baptized, she will come to us.  And then Sunday is full of disappointment too, because of the people who don't make it to church.  We were really hoping that Eddie and Tiffany would make it out, but they slept in.  And then Brother Torrella came and woke them up, and then they got ready and then almost came to the last 2 hours of church, but then they decided that they didn't want to crash late.  But they fed us Saturday night, and Sunday night, and we already had dinners those days, so basically, I'm just getting fat.  In other news, the mom of the one guy who came to the baptism last week sorta dropped us... so that was pretty disappointing.

Anyway, that's about all the news from this week.  I miss you all!  Love you.

Letter #18

This last week in Washington has been hot.  And by hot, I mean 85-90, which doesn't sound so bad, except that it is soooo humid here, and no one has AC.  Or fans for the most part.  So the only way to get away from the hot is in the car.  People say that it's only this way for about a couple weeks out of the year, so hopefully we don't have to deal with it for too much longer.  I don't really mind the heat that much, but I am definitely used to the dry heat.

We had 2 baptisms yesterday.  We were planning on baptizing Chandea this last weekend, but things kinda worked out that we got to baptize Matthias too.  Chandea is 8 and Matthias is 9, and it's funny that they got baptized on the same day, because Chandea's mom (Sonja), and Matthias' dad (Brian) got baptized in the same service about 3 months ago now.  President Weaver made a surprise visit to our baptism, and so that was exciting.  Elder Burt performed the baptisms, and I taught the Restoration while they were drying off and getting dressed, and then we had awesome talks from Sister Peterson and Brother Short (Derek), and it was a really good service.  Afterward President Weaver did a photo shoot with the ward.  He's such a celebrity around here.  The best part about the baptism is that we had someone show up who wants to investigate the church.  His name is Nick, and he is Chandea's older brother's friend.  So mabes I'll talk about him more later if anything happens there.

Transfers are coming up this next week.  We get transfer calls this next Saturday, and then transfer meeting is a week from Tuesday.  Pretty exciting. I'm probably going to get moved, since I've been here for 3 transfers now.  So that's pretty sad.  But we'll just have to see.

My companion's sister just got married, and her new husband is from Tacoma, so Elder Burt's whole family was just in the city a couple of days ago, and he didn't get to see any of them.  Which was a little sad, but his sisters new in-laws came by and gave us some wedding leftovers, so that was pretty great.  They both work right in our area, so we might be going to lunch with them sometime during this next week.  So that's fun.

Anyway, that's about it in Tacoma right now.  It's a pretty fun place to be.