Letter from Tacoma #49: October 3, 2016

Alright, Mom, I'll try to do the chronological formatting on my emails a bit more often... never said I'd do it every time though. Just sayin'.

Hey everybody! I'm still alive! I'm emailing way later in the day than usual because this morning we went on an adventure through the woods!

​For Zone Activity this P-Day, we woke up early-Early this morning, to go on a 4-mile hike (Though I'm dead certain it was longer than that!), up in Olympic National Park. It was very difficult, because we literally hiked to the top of the mountain!

​I'll put a few links to a couple of videos I shot at the very top... The problem with this weather though is the fact that once you're that high, all you see is just fog. We didn't get to see a very good view, but we did get a bit of an odd experience in that fog-ridden environment.

Oh... and that also reminds me. Up at the top of the mountain, apparently we got cell phone service up there, just in time for us to see somebody had called and left a voicemail. It was one of our investigators, Rachel, and she called to let us know we shouldn't bother coming by to see her anymore. Wow, just when you feel you're on top of the world and closer to God, your investigator drops you. Well, she wasn't that solid anyways, so it wasn't that big of a surprise.

As for the rest of this last week, I overall felt like we got no work done whatsoever. Initiate the chronology!

Monday: Just another P-Day. That evening we stopped by a less active member's house, the Chism's, and got to know them a bit better. They're both full on nerds, including anime, custom-made lightsabers, and all manner of other stuff. They've invited us over today for FHE to play some games with them. Should be fun.

Tuesday: Throughout the course of the day, we were able to stop by two of our investigators, Diane and Rachel.

For Rachel, we talked to her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we talked about it pretty in depth, just because she asked so many great questions. Even though we're no longer teaching her at this point, I hope what she learned will benefit her later on.

For Diane, we stopped by and read more of the Book of Mormon with her, 1 Nephi chapter 17. She loves having us read with her, and she was really smiling by the time we said the closing prayer. We told her about General Conference and left her the days and times for each of the sessions. We invited her to come to the church to watch it with us, but she declined, opting to watch it from her own home... which I'm not sure if she did or not, because last time we were there, she was going on about how her internet is having problems. We told her to give us a call if she couldn't get it sorted out in time, but she hasn't, so I'm hoping that's a good sign.

Wednesday: We had District Meeting, which had a great lesson about following the promptings of the spirit. During it, we played a game of sorts; Two missionaries were sent out into the hall, one being a regular person, the other acting as the Holy Ghost. Everyone else stayed in the room (The Relief Society room) and moved around all the chairs to form a maze. The maze ran indirectly from the entrance to the other entrance on the other side of the room into the kitchen. Once that's set up, the other two missionaries, the spirit and person, came back in, but now the person is blindfolded.

The point of the activity is to have the person make his way through the maze, meanwhile the 'Holy Ghost' serves as a guide by only whispering directions. However, while they're doing that, all the other missionaries act as Satan and his followers, yelling, whispering, screaming anything they want, trying to get the person away from the end. Through this exercise, myself acting as one of Satan's followers, I realized the most effective ways of misleading the person being directed by the Holy Ghost is to either overpower the Holy Ghost's whispers with loud noise so the person can't hear him, or imitating the Holy Ghost, making the person believe your directions are the right ones.

This activity represented how we ourselves, and also how our investigators, are going through this life almost blind, and how it's important that we heed to the promptings of the spirit to stay on the right course. There'll be times where we'll be seriously confused, and other times where the devil wants us to think that he's really the one we should be listening to. But for our investigators to recognize which voice we need to be following, we need to help define it with them, because often times they don't have their own experience to rely on when listening to the Holy Ghost. They need to learn to recognize when it is the spirit they are feeling and that they must act in faith when they receive these things.

Thursday: Weekly Planning! We planned for the first week of the new transfer. Afterwards, we just went and talked to people outside in town. There aren't a lot of people for us to see out here, so we're gonna be doing a lot of finding still. But at the end of the evening, I just felt horrible coming home. I was dead tired, so I just went to bed as soon as we got home.

Friday: Surprise! I woke up horrible, too! I think I may have gotten some kind of flu or cold, but either way, I spent most of this day sleeping. Thankfully, probably because of divine intervention, ALL of our plans fell through that morning as we got a couple of calls proclaiming such, so I'm pretty sure God just let me take a sick day. Though by dinner I was feeling good enough to get back to work, albeit at a slower pace. But by the end of the night, I was feeling right as rain, even though my nose was still a bit stuffy.

Saturday and Sunday:

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I agree with Mom's email. I really liked Elder Nelson's talk about Joy despite our circumstances. I know I have some trouble applying that in my own life. Joy doesn't depend on whether we've had a good day or a bad day, because Christ is the source of all Joy, and He is ever-present in our lives. Really, I just need to be more thankful for what I've got, not just temporally but spiritually. Just like President Uchtdorf pointed out Saturday morning, we tend to take the spiritual truths and blessings we have for granted.

Oh yeah, and we also got transfer calls this Saturday. I'm staying in Ocean Shores with Elder MacQueen again! I'm excited for this! Halloween, beach style!

More pics: 

Went down to the Jetty on P-Day. It's a cool view, and a nice tiny hike

Elder MacQueen: "Huh, looks like the Presidential Debate is going on."

Me: "I like the guy in the third window down. The Walking Dead is a way better idea."

​Ugh!!! Being sick sucks!

I love you all!

Thanks for reading!

-Elder R. Austin Moe

Wa-Tac Missionary

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