Week 76. Seattle: everything's great, except the driving

 Hi everyone! There's a cool spiritual thought at the end so go check it out, if I didn't explain it well enough maybe you could send me an email and I'll try again  jk, unless... but here's the highlights:

Japanese English convo - so there's this place in Seattle, a conversation table, where we talk with Japanese students to help them learn English. Idk how it started but my first time going there was 1 Japanese dude and 2 other Americans. Both of them were friends that missionaries in the past had talked to but hadn't seen in a while so we got to talk with them too and invited them both to volleyball and church. Dylan came to both and we will probably see Chase next week 

FHE - dinner was amazing! It was soup with homemade bread and I had like 3 bowls and probably a whole loaf. It was great. Then institute afterwards was so fire. We talked about faith, hope and charity and related it to exaltation. I wish I had taken notes. 

Exchanges - went on exchanges with Elder Twitchell. He's an awesome Elder who has been in Seattle for all 7 months of his mission so far. He's cool. So we did cookies and got to talk with a lot of cool people, had a lesson with our friend Kat and two awesome members and it was fire, played some pool and won if you saw my Facebook post, and got to play volleyball that night. It was a great day 

MLC - first one as a zone leader, it wasn't too different and it was a spiritual high as always. There were a lot of cool thoughts but the 2 things I liked the most was Elder Harkness gave his testimony on the Atonement, Jesus as our Advocate, and striving to do better because of Him. And President Oakes said that the mission is supposed to help you learn to decompress, destress, and go to the scriptures, to God, to find peace. Because that's the only lasting source. I liked that 

Caitlin - she's been coming to church for a while but had never had an actual lesson with the missionaries. So we finally had one, answered her questions, taught the Restoration, and she shared her testimony how she loves the church and feels peace even though she doesn't know a lot about it. It was super cool and we talked about baptism and set it for April 22. She has some struggles to overcome but she's so optimistic and it's awesome 

Mos - he's a bit eccentric. He's been taught before he moved up here and believes in the church. He still needs to learn but he wants to and it's great. He's fun.

Spiritual thought: this is something I learned at institute that I thought was amazing. The Question: Was the Great Apostasy a blessing or a curse? To help explain, our teacher talked about winter wheat. Wheat planted before winter, that starts to sprout right as the freeze comes, killing the tops. But the roots continued to grow and spread, and by the time spring came around the wheat was ready to grow. It had a jump start and grew faster and more abundantly than any wheat planted that spring. 

It's the same with the world. Jesus Christ and the Apostles planted the seeds and helped them grow, until they were all gone and the church lost their leaders. The freeze happened, no prophets meant no guidance to keep things true, but the roots, the foundation of a Savior who sacrificed His life for us did. Yes, there were many churches, and many differing ideas, but people believed. Then when the time was right the seeds began to sprout and were ready to receive the sunlight, the true and everlasting Gospel of Christ. And now, we are all growing fast, and we are helping others grow, so we can all reach up to the Sun and live with God again. 

I love y'all 

Here's the pics, sorry I will take more