Letter #84

We had a really busy week this week, and the weather was super crazy for us.  We had some really crazy rainstorms, and a whole lot of wind and a little bit of sun a few times.  But mostly wind and rain.  Over the weekend, a  bunch of people around here lost power in Port Orchard, and I'm told that about 2/3 of Seattle had power out too at one point.  And then there were fallen leaves and trees all over the place, including one fairly large tree that took up an entire entrance to our apartment complex.  But things are pretty much settled down with the weather now.

We had 3 apartment inspections this week, which was more than I ever thought we would have to have in a period that short, but I guess everyone just needed to be in our apartment this week, so we had to keep it clean the whole week.  Bummer.  Haha, but really, the mission inspectors were really impressed, so we got a gold star from them.  And a little toy thing that looked like a green army man, except it was tan-ish and a nephrite soldier.

I also made a paper chain to count down until Christmas.  My companion was sick for a while, so I had fun making that.  Also, Halloween is this week, which is pretty crazy.  We are having a zone meeting, and we get to watch a movie for that.  They haven't told us which one yet, but rumor is it might be Frozen. 

Ah, well I just ran out of time again, so this is another lame letter.  Happy Halloween everyone :)

Letter #83

This week was kinda long and not that eventful, since I was sick for a decent chunk of the week, and all our investigators were sick too, it seems like.  On Tuesday, we had our transfer meeting, which was really great.  We had a lot of missionaries go home, which was so weird to see.  We had more than normal going home, so this was one of the longest transfer meetings that I've ever been to.  Our ride had to go early, so I didn't get to say goodbye to everyone, which was sad, but the meeting was really great. 

On Sunday, we had a musical fireside, which was also a really great meeting.  The turnout wasn't the greatest, because we found out about it pretty last minute, but we had a lot of really great musical numbers there.  We also had some recent converts from the surrounding stake share their conversion stories, which were all pretty interesting.  I got to see Elder Stirling, so that was really nice. 

Ah, I have like one minute left, and I barely have an email to send.  But I guess this is better than nothing?

Letter #82

Transfer calls came this last week, and Elder Bradshaw and I will be staying together in Orchard Heights for another transfer.  Our whole entire district is staying the same, which is pretty unusual, but I like everyone we have right now, so I'm not that disappointed about it.  And since I'm staying in this area for another transfer with my same companion, there is a pretty good chance that this might be my last area, which is super wild.  I'm kinda planning on staying here for that whole time now.  This week has been up and down a lot.  Our investigators have been not wanting to keep commitments, which is always annoying, because we know how much happier they would be if they would just come to church every week, and not go to the bar all the time, and sometimes they just can't do that.  But we've had some pretty great stuff this week too.

Ward conference was this week, which was a really cool experience.  It feels like we've hardly had any normal meetings this transfer, because we had 2 fast Sundays, stake conference, general conference, and ward conference in 6 weeks, which only leaves 1 Sunday for normal meetings.  Ward conference was great though.  Our bishop talked about 4 truths about God that has gotten him through challenges.  The first was that God is always good.  The second is that this world is fallen. The third is that God never forgets us, and the forth is that all things work for good for those who love God.  And he brought those together really well.  And then our Stake President gave a really awesome talk afterwards that I don't remember super well, because I don't have my notes with me right now.  It was really awesome though.

We have been trying to work more with our members in finding new people to teach here.  Our current game plan involves teaching the restoration to members, and then extending the invitation given by Elder Ballard 2 conferences ago to invite 1 person to take the missionary discussions in the next 3 months.  So we will see how that goes.  We had one of our first lessons last night, and it seemed like it went pretty well.  Afterward, we left a reading assignment from Preach My Gospel, because I guess our leaders want members reading out of that more too.  So hopefully that goes over well.

Well, I am almost out of time now, and I still have to email our mission president, so I'm going to end this here.  Love you guys, bye!

Letter #81

This week was way packed with stuff, and pretty busy, so I'll try to go over as much of the stuff as possible.  So the coolest part about this week was that we got to the temple with one of the recent converts in this ward.  We have been spending a lot of time planning out this trip and helping the recent converts here with family history so they would be able to go and do family names, and then early last week, once we had everything planned, we called President Blatter to get permission to go, and he said that we couldn't because Donald was baptized before the specific rule change that let us go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead.  But then our awesome ward mission leader wanted us to come really badly, so he got our mission president's email address and wrote a long email about all the reasons that we should go, and President Blatter changed his mind on us and let us come along.  So we took the ferry from Bremerton to Seattle on Friday and drove from there to the temple.  That was way cool because we got to be on the water, and when we go to the temple with the mission, we actually never get to drive through Seattle, because the temple is actually out in Bellevue.  So I got to drive through Seattle for the first time too.  The temple was really great.  Donald is pretty old and not that stable, so he didn't actually get baptized for any of his family names, but he got to be a part of the confirmations, which was cool for him.  His wife was one of the family names that he had done, and so it was a really special trip for him.  Afterwards, we got to have dinner in the cafeteria in the temple, which I had never been to before either.  So it was a really fun trip.  We drove back through Tacoma on the way home, which wasn't super exciting, except that I got to see a few of my old areas again.

The other great part about this last week was conference.  This was the last conference of my mission, which is kinda crazy.  We told our investigator to pray about modern prophets and then watch conference, and she said that she loved it, and believes in prophets now, and had a really good experience with that, which is exciting for us.  And it was way fun to hear a bunch of talks in other languages.  Anyway, I 'm all out of time now, but I hope you all have a great week!  Oh, and transfers are this next week, so I'll tell you if I'm moving!