Letter From Tacoma: #1: November 2, 2015

Oooooooof, it's been too long since I've written home. the last time I did was two Friday's ago. But now that I've finally reached my first Monday here, my first P-day, it's time to remedy that.

Hey family! As you guys can probably guess, my P-Days are now Mondays. It's barely been a week since I arrived here in Washington, and boy let me tell you guys, it's been a doozy.

Now where do I start? Well, I guess a good thing to do would be telling you where exactly I am. I've been assigned to serve first in the Key Center area of the Tacoma Mission. My whole area is a big peninsula right above Tacoma. If you look on a map, it's a pretty big area, but everyone tells me there's only about 300 houses with people living in them. About every square inch of this place is covered in green! It's a wonder that's there's even a town here... though I think a community of hermits would be a better description. Seriously, every driveway I've walked down for tracting is close to half a mile long each.

But still, it's a beautiful area out here, right in the middle of fall, where every tree is green, yellow, and red, and there are a lot of trees here.

Now this letter is going to be a bit short, cause I only have half an hour to write today, since we haven't quite gotten me a library card to use yet, so I'm stuck on guest time for now. I promise I'll try to make the next letters longer!

Anyways, my training as a missionary has been pretty tough so far. Trying to teach the people here is a very different experience from what I had at the MTC. but thankfully, my trainer, a missionary called Elder Hansen, has been in this mission for about a year and a half and I can rely on his experience at the moment. But don't worry, I've had plenty of opportunities to add to the lessons here.

But I think, after only a week, I can see why so many missionaries are being called to Washington. There are a ton of different churches out here, like Jehova's witnesses, the church of christ, and a few others all crammed into this area. But then there are plenty of 'bashers' we've come across just this week alone. But so far, all the people I've met that aren't LDS can all be described under one phrase: Bitter. They're so bitter with their lives and their paths, and most of them hate religion and don't believe God as a result of that. It's honestly really sad, but I think the Lord is forwarding his work here to possibly change that.

Well, I'm out of time, so I'll leave this here.

Miss you all!

Thanks for reading!~

My address: 1920 162nd ave kps Lakebay Wa 98329

 

I live with a former bishop of the ward here, though now there's a new bishop so he isn't the acting one. He's a really cool guy, so I'll have to tell you guys about him later.

--

Elder R. Austin Moe