Letter #96

Because next week is President's Day, this will be the last time I send out my weekly email.  I'm not planning on checking my email again after this, so please don't send anything else to this address.  I'm pretty excited to be coming home and back with family and friends, but I'm also way sad to be leaving so many people behind here.

This week was pretty good.  It was the wettest week we've had in a while, so that was a little rough.  I think I'm going to miss the rain, but I'm not going to miss being out in it all of the time.  We got to get back in contact with a lot of people that we haven't been able to see in a while, so that was really nice.  I also had my last district meeting, and my last ward council, so it's weird to think that those things have come to an end.

We had a really interesting church meeting this last week on ministering.  It was a combined priesthood meeting that was conducted by the bishopric, and we talked a lot about home teaching, and how we can best help out the people that we visit depending on their circumstances.  There was quite a bit of advice for ministering to less actives that I won't be using anymore after this next week, haha.  It was interesting to think about how different home teaching can be in Washington than it was in Utah, Idaho, or even California.

I'll give a little preview on this next week, since I won't be emailing about it next week.  So tomorrow, we will be going on exchanges one last time.  I don't really know where I will be going, or with whom, but it should be pretty fun anyway.  And good to go out with a missionary who isn't also going home in a week.  And then on Wednesday, we are going to have my last zone meeting, where we will be talking about focusing on Preach My Gospel, and/or improving our door approaches, and/or effective study.  After that, we will have our last bishop correlation before we leave.  Thursday is weekly planning day, so we will be leaving comprehensive notes for the next people who come into this area, since neither of us will actually be here to actually follow through with the plans that we would make for next week.  This next Friday is a temple trip for all of the missionaries who will be going home this transfer, so that is really exciting.  Since the temple is outside of our mission boundaries, we don't get to go there very often.  So hopefully we have a lot of really great things happen this next week.

Anyway, that about it for now.  I have been really excited about serving here as a missionary, and I'm also really excited about coming home.  I love you all, and hope you have a great week!

Letter #95

Wow, so I just realized today that this will probably be my second to last letter home.  My last Monday is a holiday, so I probably won't make it online that day (and it's only 2 days before I go home anyway), so we're almost done with these.  And someone told us that it's supposed to not stop raining at all for the next 2 weeks, so I guess that means I'll get to soak up the most of my Washington experience. 

Well, the Super Bowl was this weekend, which made our Sunday not that exciting.  We had to be on lockdown again, just like last year.  People get crazy about their Seahawks here.  So we had a zone "Scripture Bowl" game during the actual Super Bowl, and then we had to be home by 6:30 before the game was actually over, so we had a long time to spend alone with our companions.  So not that exciting, especially since they didn't even win this year.

I also went on another exchange this week.  I got to go to the Olympia 2nd ward with Elder Short, and it was just like something out of the District.  We had several appointments with solid members at each one.  The potential and former investigators we tried visiting actually answered their door at times they said would work for us to come by.  Most of the people we taught were middle class families with steady income.  Some of the people we taught said that they felt the spirit.  So that area was really cool, and I wish my area was like that every day.  So it was a really fun exchange.

Oh, and we had a Returned Missionary from Thailand come to my district meeting on Wednesday.  He just came and talked to all of us about how much higher his missions numbers were than ours.  So that was interesting.  He then went out knocking on doors with the missionaries in his ward and found out that missionary work is a little different here than in Thailand.  But it was really interesting to hear about how they went street contacting out there, and how they couldn't really knock on doors in their areas because everyone had these big gates, and so when they did try that, they just had to shout over them to get them to come out so they could talk to them.  So it was pretty different than what we do.  He said they would talk to about 1200 people per day from 6 hours of street contacting, and they said they got around 40 people to church every week from that.  So pretty interesting.

Anyway, this is my last normal week as a missionary, so we're going to be doing lots of hard work and stuff.  Anyway, I love you all!  And I'll talk to you again soon!

Letter #94

Well this week went by pretty quickly, and it seems like not too much happened.  For one thing, I had my last zone conference.  That was really long, but really good.  We talked a lot about goal setting,  teaching, and finding, which are all pretty basic missionary things.  But really important.  So we got to hear from a bunch of different people than normal which is always pretty fun.  Luckily, it was right in Olympia, so we didn't have to drive that far.  Haha, the last time I had a zone conference in Olympia, we had to drive for an hour to get there, so having it at the building that we normally meet at anyway was really nice.  It was super sad being there and realizing that I wouldn't see a lot of the people there again though.

I also went on an exchange this week, which was nice.  I got to go with Elder Johnson who is usually in the Olympia 4th ward.  He is from Logan, and was really fun to be with.  So it was nice to have someone new to talk with who didn't already know all of my stories by heart. 

Besides that, it was a pretty typical week.  We knocked on a lot of doors, taught some people, and sat in a bunch of meetings.  I'm about out of time on this computer, but I love you all and miss you!  Talk to you later

Letter #93

This week was really exciting because we got to have a visit from an apostle.  On Saturday and Sunday, Elder Christofferson came to our stake conference to pick a new stake presidency, which was a really cool experience.  Everyone in our zone had more investigators out to church than normal because of it, which was exciting all on it's own.  The topic of our stake conference was Councils bless Individuals and Families, so we talked a lot about how ward councils should run.  And then we talked about family councils, because not everyone there was in a ward council, so there were some really interesting things that were talked about in conference about that.  A few of the bishops got up and shared families in their ward that had experiences with counseling in their families that had been beneficial, such as families who had recently decided as a group that they wanted to join the church together.  One of the focuses was on how we make better decisions when we discuss them with the people that are involved in them first.  We mostly talked about that on Saturday.  I got to shake hands with him that night, so that was exciting.  On Sunday, the stake center was really packed.  The new stake president was from our ward, so it was pretty cool that it was someone that I already knew.  After the testimonies of the new and old stake presidencies were over, Elder Christofferson spoke again, this time about making covenants.  He was pretty funny overall.  He started out by saying that he was recently reading an article in a French newspaper that said that our church takes rolls of microfilm and dips them in water to do baptisms for the dead.  Then he talked about a recent conversation that he had with an influential religious leader from another church, and he said that that person said that we need more "muscular Christians," meaning Christians who were strong in their values.  Elder Christofferson said that he believes that the way that we become those muscular Christians is through making and keeping covenants.  So he then talked more about those covenants from baptism and in the temple and how important they are in changing us.  It was a really good meeting overall. 

Also on Saturday, I had my exit interview, which had a lot of interesting things in it.  It was really weird, because that is one of those iconic moments of your mission that you wait for the whole time, and now it's over.  I still have a few weeks left, but I'm starting to hit a lot of lasts.  Anyway, I don't have a whole lot of time left, so I'm going to have to end this email here.  I love you all!  Talk to you next week!

Letter #92

Transfer calls came, and I am staying in Tumwater 1st with Elder Smart.  This will be both of our last transfers, so it's a little weird that we are both staying in the area like this.  We are both pretty excited to stay though, so it should be a good transfer.

We had another weird week this week with New Years to finish up the holidays and stuff.  We spent New Years Eve mostly with members, and went home early for safety on the roads or whatever.  It was pretty cold that night, and everything froze over.  And since we got home earlier, I think I actually went to bed early that night, so I didn't stay up for the new year.  So it was actually a pretty uneventful day.

I got to go on another exchange with the zone leaders this last week.  This time, I got to leave my area to go to the Olympia 2nd ward.  We got to talk to some pretty different people over there, so it was fun.  I also got to be in a foursome over there, since there are two sets of missionaries in that ward.  Foursomes are always interesting, because you get to interact with a bunch of different missionaries during the course of a day. 

Well, my planner is completely drenched from the rain last night, so I can't really read anything from it that is worth talking about (luckily we start new planners today with the new transfer), so sorry this was a pretty boring email, but that's my week.  Hope you are all doing well!  Talk to you guys next week