Letter from Tacoma #16. February 16, 2016

 Hey!!!!!!!!!!?!?!?!?!!!#@@#&!*@*(!!!!!!!!

Yeah, President's Day! Sure, I'm all for patriotism and "Land of the free" jives, but do they really need to close the libraries whenever one of these national holidays come up? Quite personally, if I wasn't a missionary, I'd want the library to stay open during my days off. Maybe I'd even check out a book about patriotism and how president's day actually came to be. But no, these holidays always have to be on Monday, and I have to postpone emails until Tuesday. Thank you, mister presidents (not really, but hey some of you old farts did a splendid job in office)

Anyways, that's enough of a passive aggressive, sarcastic rant. How's everybody doing? How'd your date go, Ryan?

Sorry everybody's been feeling under the weather. But, 'weather' you liked it or not (ROFL), I hope you're feeling better by now.

Okay, so this week has been a bit crazy, but I think it's coming out for the better. This last Thursday, Elder Alvarez and I got a call from President Blatter, near the end of the night. Now, just to give you guys an insight, if you're not an assistant to the mission president, 'weather' (rofl) you're an obedient missionary or not, you know it's not a good sign when the mission president calls you out of the blue on a rainy night. A bit unnerved out of our wits, president then proceeds to tell us a zone leader in Olympia had to go home because of medical reasons and that Elder Alvarez would be emergency transferred to take his place.

So, Elder Alvarez left for Olympia this Saturday, and now Elder Bosshardt is taking his place as District Leader... though that put me in a bit of a predicament, because that meant I'd be the only missionary in the area that really knew about everything that's going on, and I've only been in this area for four weeks. Granted that's enough time to figure out an area, I think I need about another week or two to actually feel comfortable in this 'new' environment.

But we've been working hard anyways, and we haven't slipped up yet... YET.

But on the bright side, Elder Bosshardt is really into bodybuilding and athletics. Since missionaries have to work out every morning anyways, he says he's going to whip me into shape during the time he's with me. I've already had to help him move 400 pounds of weights and a bench press up to our third-story apartment in the mansion, so I can tell you with some satisfaction that my legs are extremely sore this morning. Though if this continues like this, I'm not sure if I'd rather stay here for two weeks, or a whole other transfer after this, because I'm sure this is going to be a physically painful companionship.

So, before I sign off though, I want to just quickly tell a crazy story regarding our investigators. You see, this Sunday was Stake Conference, and we were really pushing to get all of our investigators out to attend it. But none of them came, not even our best prospective converts, those two little boys I wrote about last week: Matthew and Mark. Even after texting and calling their mom, we couldn't get a hold of them, even after conference was over.

We were a bit bummed about that and figured we'd swing by their house on Monday to see what happened and why they didn't come to church (Because in order for Matthew and Mark to be baptized, they need to attend church at least twice. They haven't been to the ward once since we met them). But then, Monday morning comes and we get a text from their mom and it read something along the lines of: "Hey, sorry we didn't make it to church yesterday. I was in the ER. I'd gone out last night with my boyfriend and somebody drugged my drink at the bar. I woke up Sunday morning in the ER, so I couldn't bring the boys to church."

Yeesh, talk about having a good reason for missing church. I felt really bad about being bummed that they didn't come to conference, because honestly I should have trusted that she had a good reason to have missed it. But it's all good, because the mom is now back on her feet and she still wants her boys to be baptized. She still has her priorities straight... I hope.

But that's all from me! Thanks for the package, Mom and Dad! I'll have to read those books during decomp later!

Went on Exchanges to Steilacoom Area last Tuesday, and there was an amazing view of the Puget Sound. Elder Clark is on the right, he's from Ukraine and he's learning to speak English.

1One of our investigators got married this week to her boyfriend, so she could fulfill the requirements for baptism! It was awesome!

You can see buds beginning to bloom in front of the mansion. Spring is definitely on its way! (It's just passing through here first, HAHAHA!)

I love you all!

Thanks for reading!

Elder R. Austin Moe

And also, Happy Valentines Day!