Elder & Sister Knowles

                                                                             WEEK 4                                       Jan 25-31

Missionary work is like hitting in baseball, if you knock on 10 doors and only find 3 at home it has been a great day.

       We went to church today with Mary so it was interesting again.  It was ward conference so all the stake officers were there. They showed us a new church program that is on service, but it is only available in a few cities in the west, Seattle being one of them.  After church a baptism was held for a young girl so Mary wanted to stay for that.  The Bishop had to tell her to be quiet during the prayer.  She just loves to show her excitement.    She loved the cookies they served after the service.  We made an appointment to take her to the DI tomorrow, and teach her another lesson. 

Mary

   We taught Mary the second lesson on the Plan of Salvation and another short lesson on prayer and the Godhead, then to the D.I. and out for lunch.  There was a Wendy’s close by so we wheeled her over there and fed her. After we dropped her off we headed up to the top of our area just below I-90.  Naturally we got lost again and ended up in Seattle and out of our mission again.  There are about 90 new members the ward just received because of a boundary change and none of them are active.  After we found the address we were looking for we knocked on the door and got no answer.  We tried one more with the same results.  By then it was getting dark so we went home.  You don’t want to be out in our area in the dark.  We will try on Saturday to see if we can find them home.  We have decided that if two strangers knocked on our door we wouldn’t answer it so why should we expect other people to do it.  Next time we are taking cookies with us to see if that will help. 

The Benson's

      Tuesday is our p-day and we were able to go to the temple.  We got lost again, this time it was from some bad direction someone gave us.   We took a car load of missionaries with us.  They get to go once each year.  After the temple they all went to Desert Book.  That is a hot spot for missionaries. The Benson's met us there and we ran into Karla Woodhouse there.  She works in the temple.
      When we got home we decided to move our bed into the back room, where it will be a little safer and have less noise from the street and sidewalk.  We had to clean and do laundry so it was an easy move.
       In the evening we had a meeting with the bishop, so we made a quick stop on our way to try and find another member, there was a light on in the house, but no answer again. 

Washington Seattle Temple

   Zone meeting was on Wednesday for 2 hours with more role playing.  I thought that was over when we left the MTC, but we did get a good quote from a G.A. who visited the mission last month. 
THERE IS NO COMFORT IN YOUR GROWTH ZONE AND NO GROWTH IN YOUR
                                                         COMFORT ZONE

     Thursday we went to W.W. then to Columbia City and walked around.  It is a small town that Seattle has taken over.  There are several addresses there that we are checking on so we knocked on doors all afternoon with the same results, nobody answers.  We did talk to one lady who was out working in her flower beds and we founds a set of stairs we had to climb. Only 81 so not too bad. At night we went to our training at the N.A.A.M.  We are going to take a tour next week so we can watch how they give tours.

    

Here we are working the streets.  Joyce has I-90 behind her.  That is the top of our mission.  This is the area that was just put into our ward so we know nothing about who lives here except that they don't come to church.  It is a long way from the church house and most people don't have cars and the public transportation doesn't come close to the church.  I'm checking out the baseball scores. Go Braves! Oh I forgot, season hasn't started yet.. Not really, we use the phone for directions to the next address.
         Friday morning we went to an institute class for old people, with the Benson’s, then out to lunch with them.  Knocking on doors hasn’t been too productive so we are now calling those who we have phone # for.  We have tried this before and found that most are wrong # or we can’t pronounce the names. We did stop by to check on Mary (she was to have her teeth pulled this week) but she was gone and she didn’t go to the dentist this week.  Sometimes she gets confused.  The move to the back of the apartment has solved the problem of the street noise, but now we can hear what is going on with our neighbors.  We are not used to apartment life. 

       Sorry for how long this letter gets, but we use it as our journal.  By the way, silver stars to all those who have written to us or called.  Jake gets a gold star because he wrote us a story about keeping the commandments.  Here is your assignment for this week.  In D. & C. 4 what are we laying up in store and when we knock what is it the will be opened to us? We could use your thoughts on this.  We have been working on memorizing this section since we quote it before each meeting.

       Saturday we went to a R.S. craft day at the church. They were making Valentines and eating.  After a quick stop at home we hit the streets.  We did much better today.  Of the 6 addresses we stopped at, we made contact with 5 of them and we walked all over the area to find that one of the addresses we were looking for didn't exist.  We did stop at a store to buy some popcorn and talked to the clerk about the church.  Not interested.

     That has been our week.

                                                                              Love Elder and Sister Knowles

 

Our Place

Mt. Rainier

THE TOP OF OUR BUILDING