Monday, September 28, 2015

Week 13

It was a hard week!  A lot of our appointments fell through and we didn't find too many people to teach, but I'll try to make this good.  Our one bright spot was a guy named Chad.  Just really open minded and nice.  I asked him to be baptized and he said he would be willing if he gets an answer to his prayers that this is the truth!  We actually found him while on exchanges with the district leader's companion, and that was pretty cool.

We were only able to teach one of our other investigators the whole week.  Other than that we looked for new people.  Tracting during the Seahawks game is the most ineffective time.

We met with a less active member named Harrison.  He used to be in a gang so he had lots of stories for us.  He's cool and our ward mission leader said we should have him come out on visits with us.

I had some really good pizza from this place called Zeeks!  It was crazy expensive, like 20 bucks.  It wasn't worth it but I was starving.

Love you all!

Ben

Monday, September 21, 2015

Week 12 - West Seattle

We had a great first week in West Seattle!!  The area is beautiful and very diverse.  You meet lots of different people.  We also have a really nice view of the skyline.  It will be even more beautiful here when the leaves start to change color.
The first few days here were super hard because we didn't know ANYONE.  We have a really involved ward mission leader though; he's been awesome and the transition went a lot more smoothly with his help.

Our first night we had dinner with the Elder family!  They bought a bunch of pizza so I was in heaven.  The next night we had a meal with a member who gave us cheese and crackers.  I love the meals here.

This week we really tried to find a lot more people to teach.  We ran into one guy who was being taught a few months ago.  He had a church tour with the missionaries but he's never actually attended Sacrament meeting!  We also found a few more people to teach.  One lady we met is really awesome.  She has been meeting with JW's for a little while so she was really interested in what we had to say as well!  She's probably our most solid investigator right now.  We only inherited one from the previous missionaries.  He's on date to be baptized next month but he needs to kick the habit of smoking.

For my birthday, Elder Skelton baked my cake and decorated it.  It was awesome.  I got a lot of great gifts and letters in the mail.
Yesterday was our first day in the new ward, and I love it!  The building has been around forever, so it looks really old school.  The members are awesome!  The Bishop is really nice too; he set up an appointment to meet with us every week so that he can stay involved in missionary work and helping us out!  On Saturday we helped the SeaTac ward do a blitz, where we go with members and visit people on the less active list to see if they're still around and invite them back to church.  It's something that our bishop has expressed interest in doing for our ward.  It'll be really beneficial for him to have all the records updated so hopefully we can get that going soon.

After church, we met with a guy that our zone leaders found when they were tracting in our area.  He's from a reservation in Montana.  He seemed really interested and would ask lots of questions.

Last night we went to the member missionary fireside.  It's always awesome to hear the testimonies of new members because they are so strong and personal.  The theme of the fireside was enduring to the end.  It was great and afterwards we got to meet with all of our friends from North Creek.  Grace even made me a red velvet birthday cake and bought me flowers!  Great week!
Love you all!

Ben

Monday, September 14, 2015

Week 11 - Emergency Transfer

It's been a very eventful week!  We were able to baptize Moses on Saturday, and that was just a great experience.  I forgot to tell him to bend his knees so it was a little awkward but it worked out.  He was really happy that day; he said he feels like his luck has changed now.

We had a couple people we were teaching drop us, so our teaching pool really shrunk down.  We were planning on doing a lot more finding this week.  Yesterday we got a new ward mission leader!  He's awesome and was super excited to get the members more involved in doing missionary work.  We had a meeting with him last night and came up with an awesome plan.

Just an hour after that meeting ended, we got a call from the AP's saying that we were being emergency transferred to West Seattle.  We packed as fast as we could and cleaned our apartment and this morning we left at 9am.  I haven't even been to my new area yet, so I have no idea what to expect.  I'm so excited though.  I'm still training Elder Skelton.  Its funny how I was just starting to get comfortable in North Creek, I was actually starting to hope I would stay another transfer, but we didn't even finish this one!  Change is good though, and I'm happy to be even closer to the city.  It's going to be a lot of fun, I've heard it's a good area.  Now I'm back in the same zone as Elder Follett!  He'll be pretty surprised to see me so soon.

Sorry I didn't have time to e-mail everyone back last week.  I love and miss you all.  

Ben




Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Week 10

Sorry I didn't e-mail Monday, it was a mess because the library was closed and we also had zone sports day.  We played soccer and ultimate.  It was fun but then there was no e-mail time!  We had to go to the stake center in Redmond but got lost, so couldn't make it.

It was a good week though.  I wish I had more time.  I'm having my first baptism Saturday at 7, it's Moses.  He's super cool.  He turns 20 later this month and his mom (Grace, from the temple pics) is doing a combined birthday party for us on the 19th.  Moses asked me to perform the ordinance, so I'm stoked.  I'll have pics for you next week!  Yesterday our district leader came on an exchange to North Creek with me and he did the baptismal interview.  Moses said he's excited to "become a new man."  The coolest experience we had with him was asking him to pray at the end of a lesson, and he told us it's been since first grade since he had a sincere prayer.  It was really cool because you could tell he felt it.

Other than that we did a lot of service last week.  This older lady, Joni, has us going over again today.  We cut her trees, blew off her roof from the crazy storm, and cleaned the gutters.

I feel like I've grown so much in the aspect of Jesus Christ though.  I think I mentioned last week that I had started receiving answers and guidance and that has continued.  It's been great.  My faith in God is better than ever.  I think I have the faith to do anything he wants.

Other cool thing, a member pulled over and tried to give us money for dinner because they couldn't have us over and I tried so hard to deny it but they wouldn't let me!  So we had free sushi!  Then later that night, we went again (unexpectedly) with the Nakamuras!  And the even cooler thing was some random person paid for us just because we are missionaries.  So I had a lot of free sushi!

Don't have time to answer everyone's e-mails but I will get to them all on Monday, sorry for the dely.  Love and miss you!!

Ben