Week 21

It's been a good first week with Elder Woolf!  He's a great missionary, a whole lot better than I was when I started.

We had zone conference this week at the Bothell Stake Center!  It's good to hear from President and other mission leaders.  They installed Tiwi black boxes in our cars though.  I'm a good driver but this is making me extra careful.  If I get too many violations they'll stick me in a bike area!  Not what I want when it's this cold and wet outside!!  The traffic coming back from conference was insane, but we did have time to meet with one of our investigators.  It was the first time she actually let us in and we were able to have a solid lesson about the Book of Mormon.  She's committed to do everything we challenged her with!

We had an emergency preparedness event at church on Saturday, so we went and introduced Elder Woolf to a lot of members, after that we had a really rough day . . . Saturday's are usually a good day to catch the people we're working with, but no one was home.  We only had about 45 minutes left before dinner and we wanted to be as effective as possible so we prayerfully went through our list of people we could see and decided to visit G.  He's a really nice older guy who wasn't too sincere with learning from us, so we don't stop by often.  But we're really glad we did Saturday!  He answered the door and was a little unbalanced so we thought he was just drunk and helped him sit down, but it turns out he was actually having what he called one of his "episodes".  He had a life alert button but wouldn't let us press it!  He couldn't talk for a minute, he was nodding off and honestly there was a second where we thought he was dead!!  He came back though and siad he was really glad we were there for him.  When he came back, we just talked him down and he explained that he hates calling the ambulance because these episodes are over by the time they show up.  He figures if he dies he dies!  We're obviously glad he didn't die on our watch!!! We read a verse from the Book of Mormon with him and all jokes aside, the spirit was really strong.  Looking back, that was a lot crazier than it seemed in the moment.  God's timing . . .

One scripture that I read this week that really hit me was in the New Testament; Philippians 3:13-14:  "This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before . . . I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."  I've come to realize that we have to live by faith.  It's the only way.  Faith is for the future.  Faith is trust that God really does have great things in store, for all of us!

 I love all of you, and hope you have a great Thanksgiving!!

Ben

These next two pictures of of the Vashon Elders that he spends time with each week and gives rides from the ferry to meetings.