Letter from Tacoma #62: January 2, 2017

Hey Everybody!

I'm finally in the new area... well, technically it's two areas. We cover both the Silverdale 1st and Brownsville wards. It's made work a bit interesting as I'm trying to figure out which investigators and members are from which wards.

Oh yeah, and it's still freezing cold up here. Hopefully it goes away by the time February comes. 'Till then I'll just have to bundle up.

Monday: I packed up all of my stuff in Ocean Shores, made all the preparations for transfers, and sent off the package home with the stuff I don't need right now. By the way, has that package arrived yet? I hope it didn't get lost in the mail. That would stink if it did!

Tuesday: Transfer Day! We left at about 10 to drive to Olympia to meet up with other missionaries going to Tacoma for transfers. Elder Devenberg picked up his new companion there, and since we had time to kill before we had to go to Tacoma, we had lunch at 5 Guys. Afterwards, I said goodbye to Elder Devenberg as he and Elder Rogers were heading back to Ocean Shores, and then drove up to Tacoma with Elder Benge. I was with Benge in the MTC, so the drive up was pretty fun as we caught up on everything since then.

Once in Tacoma, I managed to find my new companions. There's Elder Simkins and Elder Pisciotta, who are the Zone Leaders in our area, and there's Elder Gerber, who's a normal missionary like me. When we all found each other, we loaded all our stuff into the car... which wasn't an easy task, because Elder Pisciotta, Elder Gerber, and I were all transfering into the area, so we had three missionaries worth of stuff to carry. But thankfully, the Ward Mission Leader from Brownsville, whom we all call Grandpa, was there with his car, too, so we made it back to our area with no problems.

I honestly can't remember what happened on which days from that point on because it was basically all a blur of figuring out a new area, being with new companions, and being very busy with work. The work up here is pretty good though, just a lot of things to do. We've been working non-stop this whole week.

During this week, we helped move the Silverdale 2nd Elders' apartment to a bigger one closeby. We helped move an older member couple, who are moving down to St. George, Utah. We chopped wood and fixed a broken fence post for Bro. Calkins, the Silverdale 1st Elders Quorum President. And we've been knocking doors every spare minute.

... I'm pretty tired just thinking about it. It's definitely a lot busier here than it ever was in Ocean Shores.

Here's a picture of the companionship:

From Left to Right: Elder Gerber, Elder Pisciotta, me, and Elder Simkins. Yup, I got a haircut, too. It's a bit shorter than I would have liked, but at least it'll grow back... Hm, now that I'm looking at this picture, I realize I look pretty tired. Just shows how hard we're working.

A few funny/cool parts of the week:

One night while knocking, Elder Pisciotta had a nasty bonk on the head. He was walking down some stairs from a door, but he didn't notice the roof of the house was pretty low at the bottom. So when he reached the bottom, he stood up a little taller and smacked his head against the corner of it. It took off a little skin and started bleeding, and he was pretty woozy that whole night and next morning. We think he might have had a minor concusion, but we haven't really seen any lasting effects. It was hilarious when he was calling Mission Medical, because he sounded like he was on something, just slurring his words and sounding pretty funny. He's okay now, but he couldn't work for the rest of that night.

This Sunday we attended both wards to get to know the members in both. But when we got to the Brownsville building, I realized the layout of it was an almost exact replica of the Highland 6th building. I was having a weird feeling of nostalga the whole time. The only difference I could see was the seating on the stand, which had pews instead of individual chairs. It made me miss home a little bit. But I enjoyed Sacrament meeting. There was a speaker there, Sister Forbes, who is actually from Highland. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to talk to her about it because we had to run to the Silverdale 1st meeting, but I will eventually. So that was a cool coincidence.

Pictures!

​Our Study Room! We live in a duplex, so we basically have our own house. It's pretty comfortable, but pretty chilly just because of how cold it is outside. Guess which desk is mine, if you're up to the challenge.

​Elder Pisciotta having fun during companion study this morning. His desk wobbled a lot when he climbed up there. I was surprised it didn't break.

Well, I'm all out of time today. I'll be sure to tell more about our area next week when I have a better idea of it all.

Until then, I miss you guys! I love you so much!

Happy Birthday Mom and Eric,

And thanks for reading,

-Elder R. Austin Moe

Wa-Tac Missionary

P.s. It's weird to think that I go home this year! IT"S 2017!!!!​

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