Letter from Tacoma #63: January 9, 2017

 Hey family!

So I think I've got a better idea of what Silverdale is like. Let me tell you more about my area.

The part of Silverdale we cover is on the outskirts of the actual city, and it's a decent sized city too. Our area is full of houses and apartments, more the residential part of town. The area itself looked a bit weird to me at first though because there were still so many trees around everything. It's kind of like they built the whole town in the middle of the forest, making sure they cut down as least trees as possible. So, there are a bunch of winding roads. And the area is very hilly, which makes for more windy roads, most of which seem to always go directly over the tops of the hills... which does not make me excited for park day this month.

As for the people, most of the people out here are either Navy, or they work for the Navy. There's a Navy base up here, but down south in Bremerton is the shipyard, which I swear has more people working there than the Navy itself. But because of the big military industry, that means there are lots of people who move often, which means new people are constantly coming through and we can talk to them.

The members here are very nice and very willing to do missionary work, either with us or on their own. They are all very missionary minded. Speaking of cool members, there's a family here called the Forbes. They just moved here from Japan three months ago (From the Fukuoka Mission!) because Bro Forbes is in the Navy. The funny thing is they are both from Highland, Utah, both graduated from Lone Peak. Sis Forbes, formerly Sis Brunstad (I think I spelled that right), played in the Orchestra with both Kelsey and Katrina. She even went to a dance once with Zac Carter, and she also knew Tami Heuer. So, that was a very cool 'coincidence'. The Mormon world is a small place.

This week has been fun. We've been working super hard. Our mission goal this week was to invite 15,000 people to be baptized. We wrecked it by getting 22,000+ Baptismal Invites. That also reminds me: 2016 ended, and we had a total of 555 baptisms this year. that's better than what we got in 2015. That's pretty good.

So, I'm back to working in a foursome again this transfer. I've got three companions I'm with all the time. I've served in a situation like this once before. It wasn't my favorite back then... and it's not quite my favorite way of working still. I'd rather be in a twosome like usual, but oh well.

Basically how it works is that whenever we're working, we usually split up into twos. I can go with any of my three companions, and we try to give everybody a chance to be with everyone throughout the day. For example, yesterday I went to the Brownsville Ward with Elder Pisciotta while the other guys went to the Silverdale 1st ward at a later time. Then we met up again during the afternoon, had dinner, then went out knocking doors. That's when I swapped companions and went knocking doors with Elder Simkins. Afterwards, at the end of the night, I went with Elder Gerber to go visit some members and investigators, while the other two visited the High Council member over missionary work. It's a bit complicated since we're trying to make to different schedules work together at once, but it works kind of like that.

Unfortunately, because of all the chaos, sometimes I don't know everything that's going on during the day. It's a little frustrating, but I just go with it because I know at least somebody knows what I don't.

Highlights of the week:

-District Meeting was way funny. We eat lunch as a district before we start, but during that time, Elder Gerber, our district leader, another sister missionary, and I all had a massive geek-out conversation. We were all going crazy as we talked about Pokemon, Legend of Zelda, Zombies, anime, movies, books, etc. It was so fun. I haven't geeked out like that in a long time. During District Meeting, we added a joke question to reporting stewardships, "Where would you go to survive a zombie apocalypse, and what pokemon would you have to help you survive?" It was a blast. I even had to give a training about Key Indicators and how they help us fulfill our missionary purpose. It went pretty well.

-There was one night we were knocking doors from 5-7. I was knocking with Elder Pisciotta, and during that whole session, we were able to find six new investigators. That was pretty crazy... though I'm not sure how solid some of them are. There was one of those that was pretty solid. His name is Zane and it turns out that he had been taught by missionaries before, back in Wisconsin. He knew just about everything from the missionary lessons, but the only reason why he didn't get baptized was because his dad didn't like mormons. I hope us meeting with him can spark something for him. We'll see where it goes, and trust in the Lord's timing.

-We went to the mall last P-Day. It was lots of fun. We got lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings, my first time eating there, and then I got to stroll around the different shops with my old companion Elder MacQueen! It's so great to have a best friend in the same zone with you.

-It's starting to get warmer, finally! I've been freezing my butt off a little bit this past week, but thankfully it got easier with each day that's gone by. Wearing a scarf all the time helped exponentially. #scarfsforthewin

And that's about all that I can remember right now. Just a couple of notes:

Tomorrow our mission is having a temple trip! I'm excited for that!~

I got the address to our house. It's:

6362 Pine Rd NE

Bremerton, WA 98311

(I'll put it at the bottom of my emails, too)

And Pictures!

​Silverdale with the Olympic Mountains in the background

​Home, Sweet Home

Love you all!

Thanks for reading!

-Elder R. Austin Moe

Wa-Tac Missionary