Letter from Tacoma #41: August 8, 2016

 Hey everybody!

A lot of crazy stuff is going on back home! I can't even believe it!! Ryan's getting married this weekend, Kamryn got baptized, everybody's getting new cars (or at least repairing old ones). Ryan and Kamryn's birthday parties looked really fun! Oh, and speaking of which, Happy 3rd Birthday coming up, Kaysen!

Good Luck this weekend, Ryan and Tia! I can't believe another one of my siblings is getting married while I'm serving out here. At this rate, both Kylie and Eric will be hitched before I'm even home! Yikes!

Meanwhile, this last week wasn't that exciting. Just a lot of talking to people, finding a lot of people who aren't interested, and just trying to contact our other investigators. However, we just found out this week that not just one of the people we're teaching, but two different investigators are already members; They've just been less-active since they were youth. Hahaha, gosh dang it, it seems the only people that seem interested in talking area already members!

Well, there's always reactivation work to be done, I guess. It's just frustrating when you think you've found somebody you could baptize, but you realize somebody already beat you to the punch by several years.

Probably the most exciting thing this week was a super awesome lesson with a couple of fantastic investigators. I wrote about them last week, the couple who we taught the restoration to. Their names are Andrea and Gordon, and last Friday, we taught them the Plan of Salvation. They were so stoked about everything! During the lesson, Andrea looked to Gordon and actually said, "I think we've found our church." They are the most solid investigators I've ever seen! It's amazing that we were even able to find them! We're excited to meet with them again this week, and hopefully take them on a tour of the Branch Building before Sunday!

Although, the lesson could've been better with them... I mean, I could've actually been there. But no, I was on exchanges with Raymond Missionaries last Friday. So I swapped companions and worked in their area. I'm a bit sad I missed their awesome lesson, but I'm still excited that they're excited. Isn't it exciting?!?!

This week, though, we're hoping to go on a little adventure. This area, Ocean Shores, is the 3rd largest in the mission, and neither I or Elder Hansen have seen the northern half of it. That's mostly due to the fact that anyone up there would have to make an hour+ drive to church every Sunday, so it's not really worth working with anyone up there unless they're really motivated to come to church. So, as you can probably guess, there's a lot of less-active members up there, too.

But, this Thursday, we're planning to reserve the whole day to exploring up there and visiting less-actives with our Ward Mission Leader. He'll be driving us up there so we don't kill our miles for the rest of the month. So it's going to be an adventure, like the Hobbit! ("I'm going on an adventure!" -Bilbo Baggins)

Don't have a lot of pictures this week, sorry!

But our pet seagull has been getting a bit adventurous. Now he's trying to hop into the apartment when we're not looking! It's super funny, but we can't have that, so we're trying to teach him not to... if that's even possible.

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Well, I've got to get going!

I love every one of you! I don't want to regret not saying that enough!

Thanks for reading!

-Elder R. Austin Moe

Wa-Tac Missionary