Week 90. The week that almost didn't happen

 Hi! Sorry about it, but I hope you're ready for 2 emails in a row because I slacked on getting this out sooner. Some weeks are just awesome and writing takes a lot longer... and I procrastinate. Wups. But I told my Mom I'd write every week. I think it's up to interpretation if that means once a week or just writing about every week.  love ya Mom!

Exchanges - I took Elder Suchomel with me and within the first hour he twisted his ankle in basketball. Which meant we couldn't run the next morning. Big sad. But the next day was one of the best ever. We had a great study together and some great lessons that day. My favorite was reading 3 Nephi 27 with Riley... and Azalee, Kat, and Ethan, who had all stayed from our last lesson. We went through groups of verses and just talked about them and the principles from it. It was the best. Give it a study

Wednesday Dinner - was pretty normal as usual. It was pasta. The funny thing that happened was when I tried sitting next to these 2 new guys. As soon as I turned my back to get a water, they got up and moved. Kinda sad but it was okay, because afterwards Jonathan from Columbia, decided to sit in on our lesson. He's still learning English but everyone else in our class knew Spanish. A tender mercy. 

Ocean - this story has been slightly modified to make the telling of it easier:

We were talking to Azalee about her baptism, when out of nowhere Kayla spoke up and said, "wouldn't it be cool if you got baptized in the ocean?" Azalee thought that was a great idea. So for the next week and a half or so, we called Bishop and President, got permission, let everyone know we lied to them when we said it was at the Stake Center, scouted out potential beaches until we found a good one, and had to reorganize everything else. That was fun, mostly hectic, but it's honestly going to be awesome 

Cookies - the first time I do cookies on campus with Niven and the oddest stuff happens. We got out 2 hrs late because the first batch of cookies got messed up, Azalee and Ethan came with us which was cool, and some odd people came up to talk with us. We had a Pastor from another church, he tried telling us that there was 1 God. We had a guy with a banner that said 'Repent or go to Hell' on it. He tried bashing (arguing) with us, but we weren't giving him anything. He tried saying we were brainwashed as kids, my comp is a convert of 3 years and the dudes argument fell apart. Then he brought up some scriptures that he thought would shake our faith, and I simply said, "yes, I believe in that scripture and I still believe in what I believe." He tried talking to us more but eventually left. Nobody came up while he was there but a lot took pictures. 

Then this dude who believed in astrology came up right after, talked for a bit, then ran, stole the dude's banner, and took off. It was insane. We actually ended off great tho talking with a couple Christians who wanted a Book of Mormon to look into the Church and see what it was about because they thought we were good Christians. It was a cool miracle. 

Costco - the best place for members to buy missionaries lunch because it's so cheap. It was a blast talking with the guys: Mitch, Mckay, Ethan, and Zac. They are some of the coolest dudes I've ever met. And the lesson was funny because we talked about the Oaks devotional on marriage and told them they were all slacking  guess that was the last time they'd feed us, jk

4th Wheel - we had a lesson planned with Azalee on Saturday at the Seattle Center. Coincidentally a festival was going on at the same time and she was with a dude named Eric. It took me a bit to realize that she had been on a date and had planned our lesson to be right after in case it went bad. But this was only after we invited him to walk around the whole festival with us... wups. Afterwards we shared a scripture and later found out that he is an in-active member. 

Pizza Pact - Larry is so good at fellowshipping. He hosted a party for Caitlin and whomever she invited. Which ended up being like 7 people. Made pizzas for everyone and we got to talk to peeps. Found out one of them was a member, nobody knew. And it was just a good time. Then that night we get a text from her saying she feels a very strong need to be baptized! 

More on that next week

Spiritual Thought - I can say this with some authority because I am a procrastinator, but the more you put something off the harder it gets to do it. A lot of the time Satan doesn't try to make us to not do something, he tries to get us to do it later, and later. Which effectively has the same effect. 

I invite you all to do this with me, pick the one thing you know you should be doing, and do it. Write it down right now, plan to do it, or just do it right now. Waiting only helps the adversary, if it's something good why not do it sooner. I'll be working on it and I hope together we can get past that self-made barrier and follow Christ. 

Love y'all 

Pic

That's Eric

Week 89. The Busiest and Best week!!!

 I honestly had a hard time naming this week. Despite a past title, this week truly had way more meetings than any other week, but it also had a ton of miracles and the best highlights ever, one of them being Bam! She's back! So cool, we'll be meeting with her next week. Here are the rest:

Temple Tuesday - Early morning edition. We got to go do baptisms again and we just happened to be there the same time as this guy who brought 3k+ names to the temple. We did around 250. It was super awesome and a great temple. Temple is awesome. 

Azalee - She's a beast. We taught her the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation and she understood everything. She loved how we understood the Fall of Adam and how it was necessary for growth. And then found out that she was starting to read Doctrine and Covenants. She's awesome. 

Then as we were walking around the Seattle City Center with her, a member from the Samoan ward in Seattle told us she'd pay for our dinner, so we got food, thanked her and then while we waited I started to talk to this Hispanic family behind me. Mostly in English because someone never taught me as a child. I made sure to tell them that. They were super nice and invited me to visit them in Mexico, but still haven't texted me back to get into contact with missionaries in their area. Still a cool miracle 

Caitlin - she had a question on polygamy and instead of answering it with history or reason it away, we read Alma 7:11-14 and focused on the Atonement, feeling God's love and asking Him for truth. We explained that a lot of questions about early church history could easily be answered if she believed that God restored His Church and that the Book of Mormon was true. It was super cool because we all felt the Spirit and she said that she really liked that answer because she had this question for a while but never had an answer to satisfy her. We invited her to start reading the Book of Mormon to know if it's true or not. 

Karaoke - Wednesday night after Institute, FHE was Karaoke and so someone signed me up to sing Yellow Submarine with Kat. Elder Niven did one with Mos, and then I got Cadi, a shy girl in the ward, to do I Want It That Way. I think she almost puked before we started but afterwards she had a huge smile on her face and started talking with everyone. She also had the funny idea to Rick Roll someone, so instead of the right song popping up, the dj played Never Going To Give You Up and the 2 singers went right along with it. It was hilarious and a great night for everyone to feel included

Elder Cordon - he's part of the Area Seventy Presidency and did a mission tour to talk on the importance of Obedience and Preach My Gospel. According to some semi annual surveys our mission was not doing so well on those 2 areas. So he came and chastised us a bit and gave a really good instruction on teaching with Preach My Gospel and including Christ, especially in the invitation. I thought that was super cool, each time we ask someone to read the scriptures, pray, come to church, activities, or whatever else it is, it's to bring them closer to Christ. 

The next day was MLC and he led that too. The focus was on us helping lift the rest of the mission up and help them make the things we talked about a habit to be exact obedient. I know perfection isn't possible so I asked him what the difference was between Obedience and exact Obedience and he said to be exact is to be obedient because you love God. It doesn't mean that you're perfect but it means your reason to do it is perfect, because it's for God. Don't forget to involve Him. 

ASL Class - Caitlin wanted to go, so we went with her and it was pretty fun. The lesson was on classifiers, which is basically advanced charades to tell a story. It was pretty fun and Elder Burris (deaf missionary) gave me a sign name! It basically means Tall-man. It's awesome 

Kayla - had a dinner with her and a couple other students at SPU, she's just the only one who could stay for the lesson. We talked about sharing our testimony and had her practice with us. Then got onto the topic of temple endowment and we testified that it's honestly one of the most important things to do in life to have God's power, help, and guidance. She texted us later that night and said she'd stop making crop tops. She's great and she's getting there, can't wait until she can know for herself how amazing it is.

 

Also, no matter how sad it makes me, I must add this to the history of my mission: no matter how many times I've Parallel parked successfully before, for some reason I epically failed and scratched her car a bit. Big sad, and now they all think I can't drive well

Festival - on Saturday this random festival just showed up right outside campus along this one street for several blocks. I was on exchanges with Elder Freeman (he says he's an introvert but talks more than most extroverts)  despite that we weren't able to find anyone new but we did run into a lot of our old friends and got to say hi again and let them know we were still here for them. 

Kat - she got her patriarchal blessing on Sunday and invited us to be there. It was so cool! The Patriarch laid his hands on her head and started to speak and the whole room filled with the Spirit and I knew without a doubt those words were from God. It was awesome 

Spiritual thought - don't forget to turn to the Lord daily. That was a thought I had this week. So I turned on the timer on my watch to buzz every hour. Each time it did I prayed and invited Him into my life and thanked Him. The next couple of days it was crazy! Half of the times it buzzed was literally right before a miracle happened and the other half was after the miracles. It was super cool seeing how much a prayer every hour not only changed my attitude and focus, but also gave me so many blessings spiritually and physically. 

Love y'all, hope you enjoyed the long email 

Pics

Temple, run, Kat coming along to a lesson (we accidently color coordinated), list of karaoke songs, Caricature of Niven and I, and video of one of the songs 

Week 88. Friends are the Best!

 Sup. This week has been amazing! Lots of miracles and lots of great lessons. Here are the highlights:

Caitlin - she finally texted us back after a month and wanted to meet last Monday. We did, it was good, set up a lesson and she was at basketball that night. She had to cancel again, it's crazy how many times this has happened. But we were able to talk to her again Sunday night and got some more plans this week. We'll see how it goes

Azalee - so we got this call, from some Elders, on Tuesday morning at 10:45 asking if we were on our way for a combined lesson at 11.  so we hurried and left, and because it was downtown it took another 20 minutes to find parking. Luckily, she showed up the same time we did. 

She was definitely prepared by God, Christian all her life, wanted to be baptized but priests said it was for babies, a member friend gave her BoM, she read it in 3 days and loved it. Got in contact with missionaries and then we met her because she's a young adult. Her baptismal date is June 3rd and she's so hype. We invited her to our Wednesday dinner the next day, she came, loved it and stayed til 9. She loved it and became instant friends with Kat and Kayla. Then Sunday she gets a ride from our ward mission leader and goes to relief society with her and meets everyone and then rides the bus home with someone else. 

I know these look like small details, but they are amazing. It's like she was already part of the ward family and was just gone for a bit, but now she's back and it's awesome. I hope that made sense. She's awesome 

Mos - we met and talked outside the church on some benches. The day was amazing and has been the whole week. Best part besides the Gospel, he brought me a homemade shake. It was great. We talked about truth and following and listening to the one source of Truth. It was good, I just wish July 5 was here already so I could hear his answer and know what's going on inside his head, although that might take me a while

2nd Sacrament - Mothers day was great and we had some friends, and some new moved in members too. But Kat and Kayla weren't able to come and got permission to get the sacrament from us later. And so we held a tiny sacrament meeting and it was pretty awesome. We asked them both to give a talk on the spot and Kayla did a really good one on the commandments of God. How it's a privilege, because as we follow these relatively easy commandments we are blessed beyond measure. And that although there are some that are more difficult for each individual, as we take that step of Faith and do it despite the hardship, God will bless us with the strength to do it. 

Spiritual Thought - Just to finish what I started in the last point, God wants us to have joy, love, progress and safety, for eternity. For that to happen, He showed us the path. It is our privilege to walk it and our duty to share it. That doesn't make it easy, in fact, the path is sometimes steep, sometimes rocky, and sometimes with no shade. But it doesn't make it the wrong path. As we stay true to our Covenants and keep the commandments that Christ has shown us, we will know the True path from Satan's temptations of an easier route that leads to sadness, misery, and death. But the True Path leads back to God, the commandments and Covenants not only point the way, but give us the strength to take each step until we arrive at His feet in Gratitude. 

I love you all, and I wish you well on each one of your paths. Don't forget help is always there from God and from His loving children. That means you  

The one pic I took last week, making friendship bracelets and Mos pulled this one out for me

Week 87. The tired accountant

 Hi everyone. This week was nuts. It was a spiritual high, anxiety high, and joyous high. Just to start with a little miracle before we get into the deep stuff: we contacted a crap ton of people the last 3 days of the week and we actually talked with a good amount and got some things set up. Super neat. I thought it was worth mentioning. Here's the rest of the highlights:

Temple Tuesday - one of the best days ever. After being baptized for only 2 days, we get to go to the temple with Kat and do baptisms for the dead. It was super neat and I was able to help her by being baptized in proxy of her grandpa. Afterwards, despite me probably having one of the oldest phones, all 111 pics were taken of our group, and everyone said bye to Elder Lusk

Crazy Transfers - a lot of driving was done today to make everything work. It was Elder Lusk's last day so we played some missionary songs about going home and it was pretty fun. My new comp is Elder Niven. I've served around him before in Bellingham, and he's a great guy, love the crap out of him, but he's not the best at sports and we do a lot of sports. Speaking of, that night for FHE we did Dodgeball. He actually didn't do too bad, I was the one that got demolished with a ball straight to the face. It was an impressive shot and the perpetrator left before any retaliation could be done. They were smart about it. 

Mod Pizza - on Thursday we went to Mod Pizza after DC and I started talking to this dude in line. He was a freshman studying CS and we had a really good conversation. When I tried talking about religion he said he wasn't interested, but he might come to basketball. 

This isn't a story of a miracle of someone being baptized(yet), but it was something that stuck out to me this week and it made me happy 

Kayla - so we had a small intervention with Kayla, where it wasn't even an intervention. We just asked if she'd ever thought of going on a mission. She thought it was super cool how we thought she'd be a good missionary, then I said before you go on your mission you have to be endowed. 

Haha I thought it was hilarious. So we talked about her concerns with being endowed again and challenged her to wear garment friendly clothes to see how it wouldn't be bad. 

Mos - went over baptism again. Idk if he thinks we're broken records yet. Had him explain it to us, added on to what he already knew and talked about the requirements to be baptized. There's basically one: a desire. He said he had one, so we asked him to be baptized. He said when his desire turns into an overwhelming will. Had him explain that one to me. Basically one was a dream and the other had an action plan. So we set an action plan with him. July 5, he will make the decision on if/when he will be baptized. Crossed fingers for 2 months

Stk Conference - Was one of the best meetings ever. First one since the very beginning of my mission and all the sessions were fire. We had Elder Jaggi and Elder Slaughter from the Seventy. Their words were amazing. Also Kat was asked to speak and give her testimony and she must have done a really good job because Elder Jaggi quoted her 3 times. It was great. I got to shake his hand

Demetri - he was a kid in Beverly Park, an area I served in a year ago. Elder Niven had just come from there and had been asked to baptize him so I got to go up with him and be there. Super cool, got to say hi to some familiar faces. And in true fashion of something always going wrong with a baptism, the drain wasn't blocked properly, so I got to jump in and do that before everyone got there. But too late to fill it up more so it was probably a little over 2 feet of water. Definitely something to remember. It was great!

Traffic - on our way home Sunday night from visiting some missionaries, we ran into the worse thing ever: downtown traffic. Unbeknownst to us there was a Kraken Game. And what would've taken 17 min took 50.  It was horrendous. 

Spiritual thought - but to end off on a good note, here is a combination of some of my notes from stk conference: God has a place for us to go and a work for us to do. If we trust in Him completely, with full purpose, He will magnify our efforts and refine us until we look and feel as great as Jesus is. 

Love you all and hope you follow His footsteps this week!

Pics 

Lusks last morning run, Niven's first morning run and a lot of temple pics 

Week 86. Kat's Baptism

 Hey, everyone this week was a blast, here are the highlights:

Destiny - She's been a member for a year and a half now but isn't always available to come to activities or church. So we had a zoom lesson with her, found out she was on break from work and invited her to come. She came that night to institute and church on Sunday. It was super cool, that the moment she could, she came. 

Funniest moment of the week - in a meeting Lusk was telling this story about his sister having something signed by Lin Manuel or whatever, and the quiet kid goes: oh that's cool... that's the lamest claim to fame I've ever heard. He wasn't being mean or anything, just factual and it was so funny. I laughed so hard. 

Kayla - had a really great discussion on the temple. It's become a bit funny because I bring it up every time we see her. Not to push her, but to show her how important it really is. She still has her concern but we're talking about it. 

Cookies - Lusk's last time doing cookies, and our first time doing it in a long while. It's finally sunny again and we can do cookies. It was great as always and super cool. Heidi came up and talked to us about trying to grow her faith, we told her that's exactly what we help people with. So hopefully she'll reach out to us

Bro Kolo - a Tongan member in a different ward that took us out to dinner with the other missionaries because Lusk uses to serve in that area. Tool us to a Chinese place and ordered a ton of food. It was so good! And hilarious because he was surprised with how much I ate. 

Brother Kahoo - definitely spelled the name wrong but he's another member in the same ward as Kolo, except he's a New Zealander. He coached Rugby all his life and now holds games for the youth. So I played 2 hand touch Rugby for the first time and despite slipping all over the wet field, won. It was pretty awesome. 

Kat's Baptism! - the moment we've all been waiting for. This last week has definitely been up and down with opposition from her parents. We saw her everyday and talked. She had some low days and some high days. It was really awesome when we could see her testimony shine despite her fear. 

The night before was especially hard but I knew, and she told us that she was going through with it. I was just scared she wouldn't be able to feel the hope and happiness and joy that comes from the Spirit and Baptism. Afterwards she told me this: that as she was getting ready for the baptism and putting things in her bag, with each thing she did she just kept feeling happier and felt peace that this was the right path. So much so that she walked through the front doors and yelled Let's Go!

The room was packed, the water was steamy, first mission story ever where the water was a bit too hot and fogged the glass and mirror so you couldn't really see anything. It was awesome. She was so happy and you could see her light shining. 

Honestly one of the best baptisms ever. 

Then I had one of the greatest honors/blessings of confirming upon her the Holy Ghost. It was great. 

Spiritual thought - I don't think I can get more spiritual than a baptism but the next day I read this verse and it just made me think of this whole week

Mosiah 4:11

And again I say unto you as I have said before, that as ye have come to the knowledge of the glory of God, or if ye have known of his goodness and have tasted of his love, and have received a remission of your sins, which causeth such exceedingly great joy in your souls....

I was able to watch someone come to know God more closely as they followed Christ's example. I saw His love help her through trial and strife. And I watched as she got baptized, her sins washed away, and witnessed the incredible joy she felt because of it. 

That was a Testament to me that God knows what we are going through. He knows what we need, He will deliver. And that the bigger the opposition, the greater the joy. 

I love you all