Letter from Tacoma #17: February 22, 2016

February 22, 2016

... Wow, last week of the transfer. Just a question for all the missionaries and RM's in the family, do transfers usually fly by this fast, or is it just going to get worse and I'll be home before I know it?

Well, hey everybody! I'm glad to hear everyone's feeling better from being sick, but I'm even more glad to hear Eric's going home soon! Hey, Eric, hope you and Dad have a great time going up to Grandma and Papa's! Say hi for me!

But yeah, this week has been kind of slow, but still very fast. While time seems to pick up here a lot quicker, it doesn't disregard the fact that almost every. single. evening, our appointments fall through, and we've got nothing else to do every night except walk around on the street and talk to anyone we see. Granted, it's not so bad, but it's so annoying to have our investigators cancel on us just hours beforehand, and this has happened every. single. day. so far!

Our investigators are seeming to have it rough lately. One of them has a newborn child and a wife with a broken ankle who is starting a new work-at-home job, and he's trying to get his schedule together before we can teach him. Another is super solid, and she could really get baptized at any moment, ...eeeexcept for the fact she's in jail right now because she accidentally wrote down the wrong date for when she needed to see her Parole Officer. Oops!

Now she's not even going to be back for at least two weeks, or maybe until May at the latest.

Oh yeah, but those two boys I was talking about, Matthew and Mark? Well, we talked to bishop, and we agreed to move their baptism back to March 6th. Which was a good decision in hindsight, because now their Mom is having her boyfriend move in with her and the boys, and because of that, Matthew and Mark missed church!!! Gah, why is this so frustrating?! We had literally no one we were teaching show up to church!

So, I really have no idea what to plan for this week, because half of our teaching pool is unavailable until next transfer. This week was going to be long enough anyways with the impending Transfer Calls this Saturday, and everyone's nerves are tensing up to see if they're being transferred out or not.

But at least there was some relief from this crazy week. Finally Sunday rolled around and everything seemed to calm down just for the day. It was peaceful, and just great! But to top things off, we had a missionary fireside for the Lakewood, Tacoma, and Gig Harbor stakes. All the missionaries from those zones got together to sing as a choir, a lot of members from each of the stakes attended, and the main event in it was having some recent converts bear their testimony of how they joined the church. You could feel the spirit so strongly as these new members told of how grateful they were to be part of God's church, even going as far to say it saved their lives, because that is true as well. I actually had the pleasure of meeting one of these recent converts back during my first transfer:

His name is Bruce, he's about 82 or somewhere around that age. He's from the Crescent Valley Ward in the Gig Harbor stake, but the reason why I met him is because on the last P-Day of every transfer, he has all of the missionaries over at his house. He gives us food, lets us play his pool table, and he also has a bunch of other fun things like a zip-line and a batting cage. But his generosity is explained through his conversion story. To make a long story short though, it will suffice to say before the missionaries found him, he had severe anxiety and his doctors determined that he only had two more years to live. But notice how I said, "Had", because after he accepted Jesus Christ as his savior, that anxiety was gone. Now Bruce feels that he is forever indebted to the missionaries for helping save his life.

There were four other amazing stories told at the fireside, and I really think it was an awesome way to start off the new week. Hopefully I can find something to do instead of planning to visit investigators who drop off like flies.

Pictures:

Elder Bosshardt and I went golfing at the lake right next to our manor.

Needless to say, I was a pretty poor shot. Mine never went more than ten feet out into the lake.

I got to attend a baptism for another ward, and it was being done in the Puget Sound. I'm sure, even though the water was freezing, it'll be an experience he won't forget.

The puget sound is a beautiful place, so I figured I'd take a lot of pictures to send home!