Letter #35

Well, this week was pretty great.  We had sun for 3 hours one day, so that's enough for one week, right?  Well, daylight savings time is coming to an end, which means that the sun will be below the tree line at around 4:30 in the afternoon, and it will be starting to get really dark around 5:30.  So that's pretty exciting.  Luckily, it doesn't usually rain too much around here.  Most of the time it's just overcast, and if it does start to rain, it's pretty light.  It only rained twice this last week, and both times were in the morning, during studies, so we didn't even get wet.

Well, Tuesday was a silly sort of day, because we spent most of the day waiting for the office to come and inspect our apartment.  Which was originally supposed to happen around 11:15, and ended up actually happening around 3:15.  And then I didn't even have any mail from the office.  We had a lesson that evening, which went pretty swell.  The non-member wife was asking us for a Book of Mormon by the end of it, so that was nice.

We had our Fall Festival on Saturday, which was a combination of a chili cook-off, and a trunk-or-treat for the kids.  We invited about a dozen people to that, who all said that they would come, and then they didn't, so it was just like Sacrament meeting all over again, pretty much.  But we decided we would give allowance to the one who was in the middle of a police investigation for the $20k worth of stuff that was stolen from her house earlier that day, and the one who hadn't gotten her car back yet from her son who was at a wrestling tournament that night.  But not the rest of them.  Everyone else is in trouble now.

And besides that, nothing too exciting.  Our new building is almost done, and so there is all sorts of drama on who get which rooms/closets when it opens up.  But that is about 4 days after transfers, so worst case scenario, I won't even be here when it opens up.  But I probably will.  Transfer calls come at the end of next week, so I guess we'll find out for sure then.

Letter #34

Well, yesterday was my 8 month mark in the mission, so I am officially one third of the way through my mission.  It's kinda weird to think about, because it always feels like so long and so short at the same time.

This week has been pretty great.  Our new stake center is going to be done in about 3 more weeks, and since it's right in the middle of our area, we are pretty busy inviting as many people as possible from the community out to the open house.  Which is 4 days after transfers, so I might not even be around when it finishes, but I've been here less time than my companion, so I'm not super worried.  But everyone around here is super excited for that.  I think this is the farthest I've ever lived from my church building right now.  Which is only like a 20-25 minute drive (depending on who is driving), so it's really not too terrible.  But it's going to be super nice when it's just up the road from us.

Besides that, we've been doing some service.  There was this one project that we did where we sifted through an investigator's flower bed to pick out rock and weed roots.  And it was a silly sort of service project, because took a lot of effort, and we didn't get a very large area done...  But during that service was the last time that I saw the sun, which was about 4 days ago now.  We also helped someone figure out Microsoft Office, and we helped a member move back into their house that burned down a while back.  So plenty of service this week.

Other than that, nothing too exciting going on.  Just the usual stuff.  Making appointments with people.  People dropping those appointments.  Members feeding us dinner.  You know, the usual.  Anyway, I am literally out of interesting things to say, so I am going to end this letter right here

Letter #33

Well, this week had a lot of drama in the ward, but luckily that is not really important stuff.  There was also some good stuff that happened this week too, so we're excited to keep working in this ward.

We had a pretty awesome tender mercy at McDonald's this week.  My companion and I were pretty depressed the other day because all of our appointments were falling through, and none of our back ups were working out at all, so we eventually decided to take a short break and go to McDonald's, because we had a coupon.  Well, we drive up to the window, and we order a smoothie (the coupon was a BOGO on that) and a couple of dollar sandwiches.  Well, my companion tells the person that he has a coupon at the window, but doesn't specify that it is a buy one get one free, so when we pull up to the window, the total came out to $2.17, which made the smoothie free.  And he tried to tell them to charge him for the smoothie, but they insisted that the coupon made it free.  So we just went with that, and they gave us a smoothie at the next window, and handed us a large bag, that we found out after we had driven away had someone else's order.  So Elder Wilson was determined to park and go in and let them know that they mixed up the orders, but I didn't want to take the food back and show them, because if they took the food back, they would have to throw it out, and that wouldn't be right...  So we eventually compromised that we would leave the order we got in the car, and go tell them they were off an order.  Well, as soon as they saw us walk in, they said, "Sorry we gave you the wrong order.  Here you go!" and handed us our actual order.  Well, Elder Wilson grabbed the bag and headed right out, and we ended up with about $15 worth of food for about $2.  And that is pretty much the best story from this last week.

Oh yeah, we had interviews this week.  Those were pretty fun.  I don't know how interviews usually go between missionaries and mission presidents, but I'm always surprised about how different they are than I expect them to be.  Mostly, President Weaver asks how we are doing, and about the work in our area, and gives suggestions on things we can do differently in the area and in our missions to be more effective.  And then Sister Weaver talks to us about how we are getting along with our companions, and how we are doing that way, and then she tells a story for about 20 minutes, and you just sorta listen to her for a while.  Haha, they are both special sorts of people.

And... that's pretty much the exciting things from last week.  It's getting dark around here.  Really dark.  We're starting to have clouds full time, and the sun is coming up later and going down earlier every day, so it's getting harder and harder to have energy when you do stuff.  But we're still going at it.  Miss you all!

Letter #32

Well this week was pretty crazy with all sorts of things, so we didn't get as many lessons or visits as we normally do most weeks, but we had a sunny weekend while we were inside for all of conference anyway, which I guess was a good thing.  Also we had a day in the middle of the week that was only mostly cloudy, which my companion optimistically referred to as "pretty sunny."

We had transfer meeting on Tuesday, which was pretty great.  This was the first time where I at least knew names for pretty much every missionary going home, so it was weird seeing them all leave.  Also it feels like we didn't get that many new missionaries this time, but I guess we can't get 30 new missionaries *every* six weeks.  We don't have any greenies in the Gig Harbor zone.  I guess this isn't as much of a hot spot for missionary training as Tacoma was.  It seemed like 1/3 of our zone was always in their first or second transfer.  Anyway, not much has changed locally as far as transfers go, since only one person in our district moved, and only 4 people in the zone actually changed.

On Wednesday, we had a District Meeting, which was pretty fun.  I made enchiladas for our district, which I did with homemade tortillas (I made those monday night), and chicken cooked in a crock pot (which I cooked Tuesday).  Also, I made my own enchilada sauce.  And so I felt pretty domestic.  One of the sister missionaries even asked if I made the chicken in a crock pot, which I had never done before, or even looked up directions for.  So I felt pretty proud of that one.

On Thursday, I was pretty sick.  I thought it was my allergies acting up again, so I took an expired Sudafed PE that was sitting in our drug cupboard from missionaries past.  And it made me really drowsy without clearing my sinus/throat.  So I think it was a cold.  Anyway, I ended up taking a nice long, unplanned nap that ended up taking most of the rest of that day.  No fun for Gus.

Friday we had to go to Tacoma again to have our car looked at.  I can't remember if I've mentioned this before or not, but my companion took a little bit of paint off the bumper while parking about a month ago, and now we're going through the whole accident process.  It's pretty silly.  They're going to get an estimate on it now, and then we're probably going to have to get it fixed later.  So that's exciting.  The car shop we went to was on the border of my last area, so that was fun to be back there.

And then, of course, we had conference all weekend long.  Lots of good stuff there, but my notes aren't really organized right now.  So I'm excited to get the ensign so I can reread them at my leisure...

Well, my time is long spent, so I'm going to wrap up this letter here.  Thanks for all of your support and letters/emails!  I miss you all!