Letter from Tacoma #92: July 31, 2017

Ah man! Being on bike is exhausting!!!

But I'm glad to be in Olympia!

​Here's the Legislative Building. Yup, the capitol is in my area. We cover Downtown Olympia, and it is the sketchiest place I have ever been... well, that's a lie; downtown Lakewood is the sketchiest, but this comes in as a close second. The funny part is that members here tell us that it's not as bad now as it was a few years ago, so I can only imagine what it was like before.

But Olympia is exactly what I imagined when going off of what other people have told me. Tons of hippies everywhere, lots of homeless people, and the most prevalent color in the city is either green or rainbow. I mean, the effect of tree huggers in the city is so apparent, you can't even get plastic bags from grocery stores. We went to Walmart to shop this morning, and all they had were paper bags!

It's a fun area though. It's fun being back with Elder Kido again. We served together in Silverdale 1st and Brownsville Wards back in February, so we pretty much know how each other works. We have an investigator name Willy, who is 60+, but he loves the church and he's read the whole Book of Mormon. His only holdup is the Word of Wisdom, primarily Coffee. He's already gotten over smoking, which should've honestly been the hardest to kick, but he can't seem to kick coffee.

Yesterday after church, we spoke with him about priesthood authority and what the power of the priesthood can do. We told him about blessings, and then gave him a blessing to help him quit drinking coffee according to his desire to do so. He's on date for baptism for this Saturday, the 5th, so we're hoping he can hold out until that day. Unfortunately, Kido doesn't have too much faith cause Willy's been trying to quit the past four weeks. We could use some prayers for him to quit.

Anyways, as I said, I'm way exhausted right now. I've never ridden a bike to do work every day for a week straight. But on top of that, I've been having trouble staying asleep every night this week! Every night I keep getting woken up by something different, (Not used to the new bed, loud neighbors, window left open and got too cold, had to go to bathroom, etc.) I'm hanging in there, and I'm feeling better today, but yesterday especially I felt like a train wreck!

But I'm getting better! This week was just long, cause most of our appointments fell through, and we were left to knock doors most of the time. I really hope that's not the case with this week, cause we heard here, too, that we'll be getting 106 degree weather here... That's gonna suck.

Don't worry about me, though! I'm enjoying this area, and honestly from what last week was, it can only get better.  If not, I'll be able to make it to next P-day. That'll be the goal.

Love you all!

Thanks for reading!

-Elder R. Austin Moe

Wa-Tac Missionary