Week 34

 Hellooo everybody!

We had a busy week!  The sad thing is, our area is not really any better than it was last week, but we were busy with two exchanges and some meetings too.  This is a hard area to do missionary work in.  Potentially because it's so small, everyone here has already been contacted by us!

On Tuesday Elder Cole and I went on exchanges with the zone leaders.  They do exchanges different now, instead of us just swapping areas/companions for the day, both E. Cole and I went to SYSA 3rd with them, and we just split up during the day.  The idea is that both of us should be in their proselyting area so that we can learn better from them.  It's hard for a leader to teach a missionary when they're not familiar with the area.  Anyway, it was super fun.  Elder Ellis and I went to Red Square, which is on UW campus and just talked to students whenever we didn't have a set appointment.  It was super fun to talk to kids my own age, college kids are way more open and polite too!  Later in the evening we had a sweet lesson with a guy named Jason.  We went over to teach a recent convert and she was playing Bananagrams with a bunch of friends in the lobby.  They all scattered when we showed up but "J" lingered!  We invited him to join in our lesson and he said "sure, I've never done this before!"  Next thing you know, a Book of Mormon was in his hands and he is getting baptized next month!

Also on Tuesday, we had a DLA meeting.  All the district leaders in the zone have a meeting with the zone leader's every week for an hour, and so we formed our own group.  We eat chocolate cake and have trainings on finding joy in the work, and then we play pool.  Their meeting went so long that we got pretty bored and ended up going to Red Square to contact. haha

 I went on another really sweet exchange later in the week.  I went with Elder Pulini, who is probably the biggest legend still alive in the mission.  He goes home next month, so he's built up of knowledge and experience.  He's like an old nuclear reactor, just emitting all this energy.  And he serves in downtown Seattle!  What a crazy place.  I think the biggest thing I learned from him is that I just need to be real with people.  I probably learned more from him than I learned in the other 8 months.  I'm feeling great at this point in my mission.

 On Saturday, President wanted to meet with me at the stake center.  He rebuked me for not emailing him in like 5 weeks, and then we had a really good conversation.  After that he drove us back to downtown, where we promptly headed to the nearest McDonald's, and we got there in perfect time, two members were in front of us in line and bought our food for us!  So cool!

We had another fireside, this one in Kirkland.  Now I've made it to all 8 stake centers in the mission.  Kind of crazy how fast the time goes.  Sometimes when people ask me how long I'd been out at the beginning of my mission, I'd say "a little under a year", the scary thing now is that that's a pretty accurate statement.

Love you all!  Have a great week!

Elder Robb