Letter #91

Merry Christmas everyone :)

This week was super busy and crazy and funny, and it feels like we didn't really get that much done because of all the holiday things going on for everyone.  But we did have a really cool baptism, so it was definitely a good week.  On Tuesday, we had our mission Christmas party, which was absolutely crazy.  It was really cool to see the whole mission, because I kinda know a lot of people now.  We did a white elephant gift exchange, which was alright.  There were a few pretty funny gifts (i.e. an Assassin's Creed: Unity poster that was altered to read Nicene Creed: One Lord.  One Faith.  One Baptism), but a lot of them weren't that exciting.  Ha, I ended up with a broken bobble-head.  But we had a pretty good group of people, so it was fun.  We also had skits from each zone (and they all were about 3 times the length they were supposed to be, so we ended up going super late), almost all of which made fun of President Blatter's frequent use of the word "gosh."  We also had lunch together and sang some Christmas songs (very loudly), and followed it up with a devotional.  Everyone had to prepare a talk, but only a few people were going to get called on, so it was a little scary.  I didn't prepare super well, so it was a good thing I didn't get called on.   We also read the last chapter of the Book of Mormon together (we have been reading it as a mission for the last 3ish months), and then got out at around 6 (we got there at about 8:30, so it was a long day.  Including travel both ways, it was about 12 hours).  So that was a really good day, but it was long. 

On Wednesday, we had a zone meeting, which was pretty fun.  Since it was Christmas Eve, we decided to make zone lunch into a potluck.  My companion decided that the only thing we could bring to a potluck was a rabbit, so we roasted one of those and brought it for the zone to eat.  It tasted a lot like turkey.  We also had a lot of normal food, so I mostly ate that.  After zone meeting, we had to go out caroling for 2 hours, so we went to downtown Olympia with our zone.  That was pretty cool.  We got to meet a bunch of cool people, and it wasn't raining on us, and we were next to the water and the capitol building, so it was all just really exciting.  We had a lot of people of "alternative lifestyles" come up and talk to us, and a lot of them were a lot nicer to us than most of the Christians that passed by, so that was kinda interesting.  We had a really good time though.

Christmas was really fun too.  We spent a lot of time with other members who fed us all day, and we got to Skype home, and sleep in for an hour.  We had a lot of people take good care of us.

The day after Christmas, we spent most of the day in service.  There was a member who had a Christmas flood and so we helped them salvage out their house for them.  They were redoing one of their walls too, and they were trying to show me how to do that, but construction mud and sheetrock isn't my specialty, so I mostly stuck to cleaning.  Later that day was when we had our baptism, so that day was pretty packed.  The whole family came out to the baptism (all of the family except for the one who just got baptized are non-members or inactive) and then to church on Sunday, so it was really great to see all of them there.

And anyway, that was my week.  I hope all of you had a Merry Christmas and will have a Happy New Year this next week!  Bye

Letter #90

Well, we had a pretty good week this week.  It was pretty busy with zone meeting, interviews, and an exchange all back to back, but things are going pretty well in Tumwater in general.  Things are also pretty crazy for everyone over here, because the holidays are coming up so fast, but it's fun too.  We get to go caroling with the zone instead of tracting for an hour tonight, and our mission Christmas party is next week.  We also have a baptism scheduled for the day after Christmas, so that's going to be super exciting too.

We had zone meeting on Wednesday this week, which was pretty fun.  We have them about once a month, so it's pretty fun to get to see the whole zone together, because it doesn't happen super often.  Elder Farr and I had the opportunity to give a blessing to one of the sisters in our zone, because she had been really sick for the last few days.  She had already gone home for medical reasons and then came back out into the mission, so everyone was pretty concerned about her, and she ended up having to go home later last week because she was doing so poorly, but it was really cool to have the chance to give a blessing to her, and to bring an assurance that everything would be alright.

We had interviews on Friday, which were also pretty great.  I asked to train a new missionary next transfer, and was pretty much told no.  Turns out we are only getting 2 new English elders this transfer, and one of them is going to one of the APs who goes home after next transfer, so I guess I probably won't get that this time.  Oh well.  Besides that, everything went fine with interviews.  President Blatter mostly asked me about my post-mission plans, which seemed a little weird considering I'm not really all that close to going home.  But it was good.

Our exchange happened Thursday to Friday, and was pretty standard.  I stayed in my own area, so I didn't really get to meet anyone new or explore new territory, but it was fun to get to go out with a new companion.  I was with Elder Geier, who is only about 2 months out.  I haven't been out with someone that green in a while.  He did a really good job about talking with people though, so I thought he did great.  We had a really crazy wind storm that day to the point that President Blatter texted everyone to go inside if they felt not that safe where they were at.  We had a bunch of small branches on the ground, but nothing too worrisome, so luckily we didn't have to go in.

And then we had a bunch of Christmas stuff last weekend.  We volunteered to help with the tree lighting festival at city hall, which mostly involved us helping kids decorate sugar cookies and make ornaments.  And the night before that, we had our ward Christmas party, where we got to have a dinner with the ward.  We had a really good turnout of investigators and less active members, so it was a really great event.  Our ward didn't think we would have as many people as usual, since we recently had a split in our ward, but, we filled the whole gym.

I miss you guys!  Have a great week :)

Love,

Elder Prue

Letter # 89

Well, I just made it to Tumwater this last week, and it is pretty nice here.  It's weird being back in the south side of the mission.  It really isn't that far away from where I was in terms of actual areas and stuff, but it feels like a completely different atmosphere over here.  And the weather got colder this week too.  We even had a little layer of snow on the ground Friday morning, so everyone got excited about that over here.  I think the coldest it got this week was around 20 degrees and windy, which is about as cold as it ever gets around here.  My companion is from Arizona, so we had to stop and play in every frozen puddle that we passed during tracting and street contacting. 

This week has been pretty crazy with transfers and Thanksgiving right next to each other.  I am now living with 3 other missionaries in a duplex outside of Olympia, which is infamous for being the craziest place in the mission.  It's the capitol of Washington, so you get a lot more liberal people here than in most places in the mission, which makes things pretty interesting.  The big focus of our week has been a new video that the church has put out this week called, "He is the Gift."  It's all based around Jesus Christ being the center of Christmas.  The day after Thanksgiving, we started sharing it with all of our members, investigators, and other random people that we meet during finding, and it has been pretty great so far.  The awesome part about Christmas is how easy it makes it to come up and have conversations with people about the gospel. 

For Thanksgiving, we had a pretty good day.  First of all, we played in the Turkey Bowl, which was probably a bad idea.  It was cold and rainy the whole time, and everyone except the missionaries had cleats.  It got pretty muddy a little bit into it, so we got kinda dirty.  But I caught the ball once, so it was a pretty good game.  We had about 20 people there, including 8 missionaries, so it was a pretty decent sized game, despite the inclement weather.  We got to have Thanksgiving dinners with 2 members, and then afterward, we visited a few other members.  So it was super nice having places to go even though I had only been in the area for 2 days. 

Church felt a little empty this week.  I don't know if it was because we had a holiday this week, or if this is just a smaller ward, but there aren't nearly as many people that go to this ward as we have had at all of my other wards.  We had some pretty good talks, an interesting gospel principles lesson, and a 5th Sunday discussion on covenants.  We have some really nice members here though, so it should be a really nice place to serve.

And that was my week.  I hope you are all doing well!  Have a great week.

-- Elder Prue