Letter from Tacoma #48: September 26, 2016
irst off,
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
And also, Happy Birthday Katrina! And Happy Birthday tomorrow, Brandon!
Soooo, I'm thinking this week I'll try something different. This time, I'll write my letter in Chronological Order! (Genius, right?)
Monday: P-Day went as usual, just emailing, then derping about in Ocean Shores for the rest of our free time. We got some work done after dinner, and then we ran to the Gerou's house for FHE, where we watched Meet the Mormons. Sis. Gerou and her kids are recent converts, while her husband still isn't a member (even though he loves the church), and everybody really liked the movie, including me, as it was my first time watching it. Crazy right?
Tuesday: That morning we were called upon to help a member, Bro. Wikan, do some service for another member in the Grays Harbor Ward, the next area over. She needed help moving stuff out of her old house in Ocean Shores, which she hadn't lived in for six months by then. I'm glad that we were wearing grubby service clothes, because that house was by far the grossest place I've ever been to in my entire life. Mold, spider webs, rat poop, EVERYWHERE! You know a place is too far gone when a couple of books that fell off of shelves, due to rats running about, are hanging in midair by nothing but cobwebs! However, we still helped her load up Bro. Wikan's trailer with all the stuff she wanted to hang on to, and they went on their happy way to Aberdeen. It still feels good to help people, despite a few odd circumstances.
Wednesday: Just the usual, talking to people out on the beach before we headed to Aberdeen for District Meeting. This week we received a great training on how we should take these meetings a bit more seriously. It's not just a time for missionaries to get together and shoot the breeze about what happened in the past week. We meet together to share advice and council about our individual investigators and what could help them progress. After focusing on that during this week's meeting, I felt it was a bit more productive than before, so that's a good sign.
Thursday: Lo and behold, this day... was park day. Oh, park days don't ever get easier the further into the mission I seem to get. It's just hard to get anything done without a mode of transportation. For the most part, we stuck close to home after Weekly Planning, and just talked to people on the street all day. Besides an hour or two of knocking, that's all that really happened. But at least it was successful and we didn't use the car once; it stayed in 'park' the whole day. I counted and I found that I only have 12 more park days left during the course of my mission, so that's reassuring.
Friday: Friday was awesome. That morning, right as we woke up, we found that it was raining hard. And when it rains hard in Ocean Shores, it doesn't just pour; It pours sideways. The wind's blowing so hard that it all looked like it was falling horizontally, and it just kept coming all the way through the morning. But thankfully it ceased by the time noon rolled around, and it was just bright and sunny afterwards.
Every Friday we do service at the Senior Center, where we help prepare and serve lunch. It's usually Spaghetti each week, so my specialty in the meal is the garlic bread, while my companion's is the salad. The bread tastes pretty good, so I'm sure I'm doing it right. The people there love having us around to serve and help in the kitchen. There's never a shortage of love going around.
After we finished with that, we popped by our most progressing investigator, Diane, to follow-up on our invitation for her to be baptized. But she replied with the same response she gave us when we first asked. She says she still doesn't know if the Book of Mormon is true or not, and she doesn't see why it's important that she does, despite the fact we've told her why about a dozen times. She just isn't good about applying what she learns, because she feels she already knows everything she needs to, even though she doesn't even know that. She's got a lot of pride in her knowledge, and that seems to be the biggest obstacle for her progression. So during our lesson, we asked her what she prayed for in specific. She responded with things of gratitude, like her health, her home, and her dog, but that was it, and she doesn't even pray that often.
We taught her in the lesson how Heavenly Father wants us to pray to Him everyday, and that He's wanting to bless us in what ways He will, but we still have to do our part and reach out to Him with the faith that He'll answer back. Diane mentioned that she was scared to ask Heavenly Father for too much, but the truth is that He wants to give us everything that He has, not all at once, but through the best route for us to take. He loves each one of us perfectly, and there's no way that He'd get annoyed by us pestering Him for things we'd like to have or have happen. To be honest, I'm thinking everyone in the world isn't talking to God enough, so He's overjoyed when we try to speak to Him.
The lesson ended well, and Diane actually came to church this week, too. She missed last week, so it was great to see her come again.
Saturday: Saturday? More like... Server-day? (I don't know, it just had a lot of service in it, okay?) We did some service for another member, Sis. Steele. She has a sewing studio in her garage and she needed some help pulling stuff out and reorganizing the shelves. So we moved everything out of the garage, which made a pretty large pile out on the driveway, moved the shelves to where she wanted them, and then reloaded everything back into the garage little by little. It seemed like a lot, but it only took two hours, and it was satisfying to see the finished result. Organizing big things like that is the kind of service I love doing.
She took us to Subway for lunch after that, and then we went to our next service project that day. One of the people we did service for a week ago (shoveling deer poop off their lawn), they're moving, so they've been trying to give away their upright, grand piano. Well, Sis. Ramirez had been looking for a piano, so today we helped her move it to her house. There were six of us guys there to move it out, but even then it weighed a metric ton! We had to get it down a couple of steps to get it out through the garage, but when we finally did, we broke off one of its wheels, which made it even more difficult to move. But once we got it onto the trailer, it was smooth sailing from there. Bro. Wikan backed his trailer ramp directly to the Ramirez' deck, bypassing the stairs there, so we just had to wheel it inside on palettes. I've found on the mission that heavy-lifting work is satisfying, and I'm learning a lot of home-keeping skills just on the mission itself.
Sunday: Since General Conference is next week, we had fast Sunday, and then a Branch potluck afterwards to break the fast. Not much else happened though, just the usual work of going out and talking to people. But since there isn't a lot of people to begin with, there aren't that many to talk to. But we're still going at it.
So yes, my year mark is steadily approaching, Oct. 15th. But no, I don't think I'll be counting down the days. That seems like it'd just make everything go slower, and really I want to focus on the work, not focusing on when the work is over ('cause let's be honest, even after the mission the work is never over).
But I'm Suuuuuuuuuuper stoked for General Conference this weekend! This has been the highlight that I've been anticipating this whole transfer.
And not to mention this week is transfer calls, so we'll be hearing if we're staying in Ocean Shores or leaving. The call will come on Saturday, probably in between sessions of Gencon. I'm thinking I might be going somewhere else, but there's an equal chance that I'll be staying for another. Supposedly this transfer we're getting 30 new missionaries coming in. That's alot! That's more than my group when we first came in, and that was about 22 of us, and that's still a lot!
Pictures!
It's mating season for the deer, so we're seeing a lot more males out and about. We even saw a few fighting for a mate a couple of times. It's pretty entertaining to watch how they'll go at it against each other, then both stop when they see people nearby, and then once the coast is clear they go right back at it again.
I keep seeing lots of caterpillars here, and they're all so adorable! I couldn't help but take a picture when I saw this one on a low branch. It was perfect!
Sunset in Ocean Shores, with a great view of one of the area's big attractions: The Driftwood Seahorse. This thing is massive, almost twenty feet tall!
I love you all!
Thanks for reading!
-Elder R. Austin Moe
Wa-Tac Missionary
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