Week 8 - 1st Transfer - Staying in Bothell - Trainer Now

Hey Everyone!

So this week I had the chance to go to the Seattle Temple!  It was a perfect day.  We went with two recent converts and did baptisms.  They both loved it and it was just a great experience for them.  Our ward missionary came with us also, he's been great about helping us try to get people in the ward involved with missionary work.  It's a lot more effective to work through the members than it is to knock on doors.

We've also been working with the son of the sister on the left.  He's 19 so we get along pretty well.  We've really just been hanging out with him and playing basketball, but he's agreed to take the lessons from us!  We are really excited for him, he's probably the coolest person I've met in Seattle so far.

Yesterday was tranfers!  I got a call the night before from the zone leaders saying that I was staying and Elder Follett was leaving.  I miss him!  The morning of transfers I got a call from one of the APs letting me know that I would be a trainer!  Apparently President thinks I learned enough to train a new missionary after just 6 weeks of being here.  Technically the training period is supposed to be 12 weeks, but I'm really excited for the opportunity to learn better how to teach.  As a trainee I was taught a good amount of lessons but Elder Follett really did the bulk of it.  This is going to be a huge change for me and I'm stocked to start taking the leads in teaching.

My trainee's name is Elder Skelton.  He's fresh out of high school and he was in marching band just like me!  He's from Utah and pretty nice.  He has a strong desire to learn and I know I have a lot to learn from him too!

 

I didn't get to mail home on Monday because they like to move preparation day to Tuesdays during transfers, I'm not so sure why, but it didn't even matter because transfers lasted until 7pm.  So we're just doing e-mail and shopping today and then we'll be back to work.  I think usually transfers are supposed to end a lot earlier but we had a group of 29 come in, and each of those missionaries has to meet with President and Sister Schofield.  While they were doing that, I was in a first-time trainer class, so it was a long day!

Love you all and thanks for the support!
Ben

Other Tidbits:
re:  Washington Fires - We had a decent amount of smoke here 3 days ago!  Its been gone ever since though.

re:  Driving the car since he is the senior companion now - YUP I got the sweet new car!!  I'm worried I'm going to get lost sometimes.  I didn't pay attention to directions as much as I probably should have.  I got us home from the mission office OK and that is what I was most worried about.

re:  Bella getting leftover pork strips from Grandma's purse - I'm trying not to laugh hard in the middle of the library at that!  LOL

re:  boxes on transfer week - A box!! No, not yet!  They hold packages on transfer week because they don't want to send them to the wrong place.  I'll probably get it Friday!!

re:  breakfast - I used to make smoothies for breakfast.  I would put banana, some vanilla yogurt, milk and some protein that I bought in there and it was pretty good.  I learned how to make a great egg sandwich from Elder Follett.  He puts cream cheese on it.