Letter from Tacoma #80: May 8, 2017

Hey Family!

Oh my gosh! Kobe is here! That's crazy! I can't wait to see him after the mission!

And it looks like it was a great week back home. Sounds like a lot of fun! But this week is going to be fun, because Mother's Day this Sunday! I can't believe we're at my last call home! It's all gone by so fast, but now it's finally here!

Our Ward Mission Leader is going to let us use his home for the call during the evening after church. So we're thinking about 5:30 our time (6:30, Utah time). My guess is it'll be over Facetime, but there's a slim chance that it could be Skype. Just plan for Facetime, but if not, I'll shoot a phone call an hour beforehand if it's Skype, so you guys can get it set up.

First week of a new transfer and it's been pretty good. The weather was mostly good, so we spent a good deal of it knocking doors. Nice and Sunny. Wednesday was the best. It was way warm, almost in the 80's, with not a cloud in the sky. That day we had a Ward Garden Party. There's a garden on the church lot, right beside the parking lot, which had become overgrown over the winter. About half of the ward showed up to help garden, so there was a great turnout. They had a small picnic dinner prepared afterwards, hotdogs and chips. Near the end, some kids brought out some squirt pistols, so I joined in their little squirt gun fight. It was a lot of fun!

But then the next day, Thursday, was crazy. We did Weekly Planning in the morning, and it was looking like it was going to be as sunny and hot as it was the day before. We went out to work in the afternoon, and boy was it hot. It was warmer than Wednesday was. We went knocking doors, but all throughout the hours that we did, clouds started forming overhead, and pretty soon we started hearing thunder roll through the sky. The wind picked up and we started to see lightning strike every minute or so. Needless to say, we were heading back to the car when the lightning started to come down, and it wasn't until after we got to the apartment that it began raining. I haven't seen weather like this before in Washington. I saw more lightning and heard more thunder that day than I have my whole mission combined. This was a big thunderstorm.

Funny story: I tried taking a video, but the whole time I recorded, not a single bolt struck. So, I gave up, but then there was about six or seven strikes right in a row, way close. I was like, "Oh come on!"

But we made it through alright. Just kept out, working in the rain. The rain eventually stopped, but we enjoyed the lightning the whole rest of the night.

Oh yeah, and I feel pretty accomplished now. I've filled up my 2nd journal since I've been a missionary. Time to start on the third!

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On Friday night, Key Center Ward plays basketball with the young men, so we went and played with an investigator named Blake. He's not really interested in doctrine and stuff, and he mostly just goes to church for the social aspect, so we invited him to play b-ball with us. We had a fun time playing. There were a lot of men there, so we had a couple of 4v4 half-court games going. But my team, we only had three, and we did pretty good. Blake enjoyed himself, but he kept commenting on how small the basketball court was in the Key Center Building.

... I'm spacing out while trying to think of stuff that happened later on in the week... Oh well, hopefully I'll have more to talk about next week.

I'm looking forward to seeing you on Sunday!

Love you all!

Thanks for reading,

-Elder R. Austin Moe

Wa-Tac Missionary