Letter from Tacoma #46: September 12, 2016

 Hey everybody!

September is definitely here, and Autumn is approaching, because it's actually starting to get cold in Ocean Shores! I'm not sure if I mentioned it in my last email, but the town is starting to really die down with the lack of weekenders and tourists coming. I'm legitimately surprised that we were able to make our street contacting goal this week, most of which happened on Saturday, because there just happened to be an event going on that afternoon in the convention center, which brought more people out.

But I'm sorry to say that the next few weeks may just look like this:

But yeah, that's how the beach is looking, so I don't think beach contacting is going to be a thing for very long at this rate. We're trying to figure out what other ways we can use to do missionary work before the beaches are completely deserted. So far, we only have a few ideas, and it really looks like we'll have to rely on the members here even more during the winter months.

Oh well, I still get a laugh at how quickly things have changed out here. Lately I've made it a goal to smile and laugh more, because I notice that my days always seem to go better when I do. When things aren't going as well as you hope, it helps a ton to be able to give a little laugh at your 'inevitable suffering' and then do something about it. I think that's a big thing that the mission has taught me so far.

This week was also a slower one in the way of seeing investigators. The whole week, Andrea and Gordon were busy, particularly Andrea, so we weren't able to teach them, but hopefully we'll be able to teach them the Word of Wisdom this week. I'm starting to feel more and more convinced that if they give that commandment a shot, it'll bless them and help them get to church in the mornings. Now we've just got to be patient and continue to try seeing them.

We have appointments later this week with the rest of our investigators, Sandy, and Diane. I'm looking forward to those. Also, this whole week is going to be filled with service. With the lack of people in Ocean Shores, a better use of our time would be serving the people who ARE here. So we've scheduled every day this week with service... and it astounds me how little open times we have left in the daily planner. It's fun to do manual labor anyways, so it works for me.

I've got nothing else to report on, just the usual. Labor Day wasn't all that different, considering it was P-Day.

All I've got left is this:

Farewell, beautiful sunshine! I'll miss you so.

Love you all!

Thanks for reading!

-Elder R. Austin Moe

Wa-Tac Missionary