Letter #44

So this week was pretty great.  There wasn't a whole lot of missionary work to do, because of the holiday season, but we were able to get some productive stuff done anyway.

Christmas and Christmas Eve, we were asked not to knock doors (we reluctantly obliged), and all of the people that we were working with already had plans for Christmas, so we spent both of those days with members.  We spent most of the time those days with the Taylors (a senior missionary couple who lives in this area), but we went several other places as well and had a pretty fun time.

Other than that, we met with Jake this week, and he is still set to be baptized on the 11th, so that's pretty exciting.  We also run into some pretty interesting people around here, which is always fun.  We get a lot of potential investigators around here, but most of them just don't really commit to anything.  But we have definitely been finding more work here now that the holiday season is over, so hopefully we get more busy weeks after this one.  We aren't allowed to go tracting on Tuesday or Wednesday this week either, so it should be a pretty wild week again.

Other than that, not too much to report.  We had a great conversation in Gospel Principles about when in the whole Plan of Salvation timeline God would be "giving out temple worthy spouses," but that was pretty much the most exciting thing.  So yeah, Happy New Year everyone.

Letter #43

I don't have that much time this week, so it's going to be short.  Merry Christmas :)

Aberdeen is awesome.  It's sorta annoying that it's in the middle of the Elma zone, but there are a lot of people here who are ready-ish for the gospel.  Haha, Aberdeen is actually a pretty rundown place, famous only because Kurt Cobain is from here.

The ward here is pretty great, and we're going to have some baptisms this transfer.  Right now, my tactic is basically to tell people that my birthday is on a Saturday, and that they should get baptized on my birthday.  Last week, we got one on date with that method.  So yeah, that's a good reason to get baptized.

Letter #42

Every transfer that goes by, I feel like a much older person.  And I kinda assumed that I would be staying in Gig Harbor through Christmas, but it looks like I'm going to be transferred before then.  I will be going to the Aberdeen ward in the Elma stake, which is way out in the middle of nowhere.  Which is pretty sad, because this last week, we set up 3 more baptisms for this month, so that will be cool for the new guy coming in.  I'm super sad to be leaving Gig Harbor, especially this close to Christmas.

Well, we had a bunch of Christmas-y activities this last week, which was pretty fun.  The first one was the mission Christmas party, which we had on Tuesday.  We all met together as a mission in Tacoma and we got to do a bunch of Christmas activities.  We started out with a white elephant gift exchange, and that was pretty great.  There was a picture of an old pope going around, as well as other silly things.  Most of them are on the blog.  I got some bible card games that I'm not planning on taking with me to my next area.  So that was pretty wild.  After that, we had lunch together in the cultural hall, and that was good.  We had to sit by zone though, which was a little annoying, since it was the only time that we would actually get to see our friends in other parts of the mission, and we weren't even allowed to be by them.  But lunch itself was good.  We had to do a lot of singing though, and then skits.  We had a really good skit planned out, but then when we went to have it approved, it was too long, and so we ended up doing something that wasn't funny... But that's alright.  After that, we went into the chapel and had a more Christ-centered Christmas activity.  And by that, I mostly just mean a testimony meeting.  So that was good too.  After that, we got our packages from home, and headed back to our areas to go tracting for the night.

Also this week was our ward Christmas party, which was pretty great.  We came to the church a couple hours before it started to go to the bathroom, and the people who were supposed to be setting up weren't there, and someone else in the ward noticed that and came over to set the tables, and so we got solicited to help with that, since there was so much work to be done with that.  And it was pretty great overall.  They showed a segment of Joy to the World, which portrays the birth of Christ, and then we had dinner, and then Santa came.  We had a really good turnout, and we went to sit with this part-member family during dinner, who quickly told us that they wanted to have their kids baptized.  So that was pretty cool.  They have been meeting with the missionaries off and on for a long time now, and it sounds like they really want to be more serious about the church now, so that's awesome.

And that's the most interesting things that have happened to us this week.  Transfers are tomorrow, so I'll be in Aberdeen for a little while pretty soon.  So yeah, that's all.

Letter #41

Believe it or not, we are already a week away from transfers.  This transfer is only 5 weeks long for us, so it came faster than normal, but it still felt super short anyway.  President Weaver is trying to keep as many companionships in the same area as possible for the Christmas season, so I'm planning on staying in Gig Harbor, but I might end up moving somewhere else next week.  We'll find out on Saturday.

This week was really cool, because we had our baptism!  It was super exciting for our ward, because it is the first one we've had since October of last year.  And he's a super cool guy.  He had the patriarch from Lakewood come up and baptize him, because he had been to China on a mission (the guy getting baptized was from Hong Kong).  The baptism was like an hour and a half long, which was pretty long, but it was still way good.  Curtis (the guy getting baptized) got a chance to get up and share his story, which was super good.  He's going back to Hong Kong for his dad's funeral this week, so we confirmed him and got him the priesthood on Sunday.  Our ward is super excited about him though, so hopefully they take good care of him when he gets back.

We also had a super awesome nativity festival this last week.  It was a really cool event.  The people putting it on did a super good job with it.  There were a ton of different nativities from around the world, as well as pictures of Jesus and angels and other different displays.  And then there was a kids room with a bunch of hands-on stuff that they could actually touch and play with.  And then there was a video of the Christmas story going on in one of the side rooms, and it was our job as missionaries to direct people to that.  We all took shifts standing in front of this door, and telling people that there was a movie inside.  I think we scared more people off than we invited in, but whatever.  It was fun.  They had live music the entire time, and we even got to perform as missionaries at one point.  That was nice.  The Weavers came out to hear us sing, so that was cool. 

Church on Sunday was only an hour long for us on account of the Nativity Festival still going on.  And we got to go watch the Christmas Devotional when that was broadcasting, so that was awesome.  I actually only got to see half of it, because we got out of something else late, and it took us a while to drive over.  My favorite part was when they showed the creepy video of all the kids singing around Elder Nelson.  So great.  Anyway, after that, our stake choir had a super cool Christmas program that we stayed and listened to, since our appointment that evening cancelled on us.  It was one of the best stake choirs I've ever heard, so that was super good.

Well, the Christmas season is definitely coming up, because it's getting harder to stay busy, since everyone else is so busy, and it is getting way colder.  But our mission Christmas party is tomorrow, so I'm pretty excited about that.  Hope everyone is doing well!

Letter #40

We had a pretty good week this week.  Thursday was Thanksgiving, of course, and so we had a pretty good day with that.  A lot of people were out of town, so we pretty much stopped at a bunch of members who invited us over.  President Weaver told us that we aren't allowed to go to more than 5 dinners.  Apparently the old record was 9, so I guess he felt like he needed to make a rule about that.  Haha, luckily, we only really had one dinner.  And then another person dropped off a ton of leftovers.  Oh yeah, and we met the parents of some ward members here who were from Fairview, so they said they would say hello to grandma and grandpa for me.  Oh yeah, and I played in our ward's Turkey bowl on Thanksgiving.  That's football.  And I played in it.

The most exciting thing for this week is that we're going to have a baptism this coming Saturday.  This will be the first baptism that this ward has had in over a year now.  So that's pretty crazy.  It wasn't even someone that we found on our own.  It was someone from another zone in the mission that ended up moving here after he was already scheduled to get baptized.  But he's super awesome.  He moved here from Hong Kong about 4 years ago, and he met missionaries a little before he moved here, so he has been seeing them for a little while now.  He's living with his ex-girlfriends family right now, and they are JWs, so I think that whole situation is super funny.  Our building is being reserved all week for this nativity festival thing, so we are going to have to do it in one of the older buildings.  Or in the Harbor.  That's my real goal here.  He had a baptismal interview yesterday, so he's ready to go for this weekend.

And yeah, that's about all that happened this week.  It was pretty uneventful.  Mostly we spent our time tracting into Jehovah's Witnesses.  So that doesn't usually go anywhere.  But you never know.