Week 11 March 15-21
Lift where
you stand…….Grow where you are planted
Joyce went to a womens conference and for lunch sat by 4 cute
ladies. They reminded me of my cute
daughters and daughter in laws. I would
have expected them to all have been born and raised in the gospel with few
problems. Boy, was I wrong. The cute mom sitting next to me had 3 boys
ages 8, 10, and 12. I commented on how
fun to have someone passing the sacrament and just baptized. She explained that her boys were not baptized
nor passing the sacrament. She had just
been through a messy divorce and was just coming back to church, because of her
dear bishop that was in tune with her needs.
The one diagonally across the table was going through deep, dark
depression and was trying to work through it.
The one across from me was a tiny little thing that was suffering from
diabetes and couldn’t seem to get it under control, and the one on the end had
just moved here, has a family of small children, and the first Sunday at church
was yelled at by some women that told her to control her children. She had cried, and she and her husband had
decided to just take a vacation from church while their children were so small,
so as to not disrupt the ward.
Thankfully, some sweet people in the ward were able to change their
minds. We never know what people are
going through that we meet randomly.
Each has their own problems and challenges and I know that is why we are
here. So thus: Lift where you stand, and
grow where you are planted. Memorize Ether 12:27. It’s a favorite!
Sunday: We woke up to pouring rain and cold. Mary didn’t feel well so she didn’t come to
church, but we had pulled some pictures out of a Gospel Principles manual that
she wanted so we dropped those off.
Joyce is going to start teaching primary to 3
new investigator that want to stay together so they are going to have a class
just for them. A new sister in the ward
needed a ride home so we took care of that. Skyway A Elders had their dinner appointment
cancel at the last minute so we had them over for supper and then picked up Brother
Nguyen and went to the mission devotional in Renton. It has rained hard all day. We heard it had only rained twice all week,
once for three days and once for four days.
Monday: Joyce needed a haircut so we went to the
mission office with the sisters to take care of that. Sister Nowlin told Joyce
she would do it for her. Art likes to go
there because they always have a bowl filled with chocolate in the office. The sisters wanted to stop at Costco on the
way home so we went there for lunch and bought Mary some chicken, so on the way
home we dropped that off at her place.
We needed to go to Wal-Mart and while we were there the sisters called
to tell us that Sister Chamberlain was cutting the Elders hair and Joyce wanted
to learn how, so we ran back to their place.
Since we were in our p-day cloths we walked to the Balukas and took them
some granola bars. Sister Fely Baluka is
flying to SLC on Wednesday and Joyce thought it would be nice if she had
something to eat on while in the airport.
On the way home we stopped and weeded
Sonia’s (the burglay lady) flower bed.
She sat on the step and talked to us while we did it. She is pretty entertaining, but she does come
to church now. Some of the ward members
are picking her up and taking her home.
Because of the weeding it was too late to go to FHE so we missed it.
Tuesday: We had
District training in the morning that lasted a couple of hours. The nice thing now is we are the odd couple,
(in lots of ways) so we split up and the missionaries do the role playing with
us as the investigators. Our tax info
came in the mail – thanks Jacob and Lara!
We worked on those and Joyce made a card that we can leave on doors when
nobody answers. It rained so we didn’t
go knock on doors as planned, and we needed to be at the Salvation Army to
serve food at 5. That was an interesting
experience with lots of interesting people we met. We had to hurry home so we could meet at the
Acostas with the Elders (Skyway B) for another lesson. They are trying to teach the new members,
plus teach two of the family that haven’t been baptized yet. They taught them how to have a FHE and taught
the restoration as a lesson, so we covered both bases. As per our teaching, we find out what they
want us to do before we go in the house.
It works a lot better than just winging it. We really enjoy going there. We have learned how to say good evening and
good morning in Tagalog. Next we want them to teach us how to pray in
Tagalog.
Wednesday: In the
morning we finally got the taxes done and sent off, now we just wait for the
bad news to see how much we will owe.
After emailing the taxes, we hit the streets and had a pretty good
day. We found more at home than not and
only one was rude. We also found a few
more churches that we can stop at to see if we can do any service there (when
we are feeling brave). The Skyway A Elders wanted us to help teach so we
hurried there and waited for them. They
never showed up so we checked the phone and found that they had sent a text
about 5 minutes before the appointment telling us that it was changed to Friday.
Art puts the phone on vibrate when we are in a meeting and he forgets to take
it off so we miss calls and texts until he checks it. The county library was close so we stopped
there and checked out a couple of books on teaching English. We have ordered Daily Dose from the church
but we need something for Friday. Thanks
to all who told us about Daily Dose. It
will really help. In the evening we walked over to the care center to read the
Book of Mormon with Sister Waters and the Skyway B Elders. She always has an excuse why she hasn’t read
more, so we just keep trying. Also, had
our meeting with the Bishop and got a few more assignments from him.
Thursday: We made it to W.W. in the morning which was
good since we haven’t been for two weeks.
Getting there was good, not the results.
We needed to go to Bellevue to Dessert Book and pick up a picture that
we had ordered weeks ago and we needed some manuals for the 12 step program we
are going to start in the Skyway building.
The Interstate 405 access is close to W.W. so we headed north. We picked up what we needed and wanted to go
to lunch at this famous Chinese place but it wasn’t opened yet so we ran to the
Temple and walked around for a while.
The trees and flowers, especially the tulips, are all blooming now and
it looks great. While we were eating we
got a text from Skyway B asking if we had a Cantonese Book of Mormon. We ordered one for Skyway A in simplified
Chinese and they needed one now. We
checked at Desert Book but they didn’t have one so we left. As we were pulling out the clerk ran out and
said she had found two in the back so we got those. We’re not even sure if they will work for
what the Elders need. We have the Schwieders
checking for us to see what is available. On the way home we stopped at the
Johnsons to check on them. No baby yet. We needed to take some material on family
history to the museum and check on a member up north that the Bishop assigned
us, so we rode the train there as far as we could, then hit the streets. We meet a lot more people when we walk and
get to know the streets better so we don’t get lost as much. Art was going to take a Chinese Book of
Mormon in case we ran into the Elders but decided it was too much to carry and
it was a slim chance of running into them.
Guess who we ran into when we got off the train. That’s the way it goes
sometimes. The member we needed to see wasn’t at home,
but we did find another that we were looking for. We finally tracked down the one we were
looking
for and reported to the Bishop.
Sounds like we will be back there on Saturday to help him out. It was raining off and on most of the time so
we walked back to the train station and called it a day, plus we were
tired. Going to be an Advil night, but
we did get 3 letters in the mail so that helps.
Friday: We walked
to the Filipino Cultural Center for a service project first thing in the
morning. They act as a U.S consulate,
for three days every three months so people won’t have to travel to San Francisco
to get documents. Art took photos and
Joyce worked in the copy room. We had to
leave at 1 for another appointment just as it was getting very busy so they
asked if we would come back later, so we did.
Our appointment at 1 was with the
Buddhist Monk, Soveth Moun. We thought
we were going to teach English, but we ended up helping him with a computer
class that he is taking. Joyce did most
of the helping, Art ran the calculator when needed. We did help him with correct English for a
few letters he is writing so his father can come visit him from Cambodia. After our visit there we ran back to the Cultural
Center, then onto an appointment to teach with the Skyway A Elders. They are teaching a set of 9 year old twins,
Ruth and Rubi. There brother, Joshua,
was baptized a month ago. Tonight their
mom sat in for part of the lesson.
Thanks to Elder Schwieder for explaining how the Chinese Book of Mormon
works. We think we have that worked out
now. We will find out for sure on Sunday
if we have the right one. In the evening
we worked on trying to get our area book straightened out.
Saturday: The Cultural Center wanted us to come back
this morning to help. We left at 8 with
blue skies, but not 200 yards from our apartment it started to rain, sideways
and cold. We had to walk about 2 miles
so by the time we got there we were soaked, even with rain ponchos on. (Thank
goodness Joyce carries the ones from Lara in her bag!) We should have taken the umbrellas, but not
too sure if they would have helped anyway.
Joyce had to start “Singing in the Rain” which didn’t help Arts attitude
much. Of course it stopped raining when
we got there. After 2 hours we had to
leave and sure enough, it started to rain again. After a quick change of clothes we drove to
the church to meet the bishop and get a food order from him, (not for us, for a
member), then headed to Kent to fill the order before the store house
closed. By now the sun was shining and
it turned out to be a pretty nice day.
At 1 we picked up our D.L. (Elder Jones) so he could split with us. We had to drop his companion off at the Z.L.s
(Skyway A Elders). This gave us an extra
hand to help deliver the food order we had. Elder
Jones went with us to meet a less active member (Q. Baker) and we taught him a
lesson on the restoration. He said he
would come to church so we will pick him up tomorrow. Elder Jones is a very
good teacher and very spiritual, so we were glad he was with us. Next we took Elder Jones to the museum and
gave him a practice tour. We have to do
a real one next week so we wanted to brush up a little.
We also took him to an overlook of I-90 so he
could see the top edge of the mission and a nice view of downtown Seattle. Not many Elders get this far north. We made a quick stop to check on a member and
then picked up his companion and took them back to their area. The evening was
spent in the lounge in our complex using the computer so we are ready for our
next lesson with Soveth Moun, our new friend, who is a nice monk...
Here is our preaching: CPR for the spirit………church, prayer, and
reading the scriptures
Hope you all had a good
week, we did. Keep those cards and
letter coming.
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