Elder & Sister Knowles

Week 15 Transfers April 12-18

Remember: The road that leads to Babylon or Zion is the same. What makes more of a difference than where you are on that road is the direction you are facing.

We will do our preaching at the first, that way if you get tired of reading this letter, at least you will have gotten the important part. The topic for the speakers on Sunday was repentance. One of them is a surgeon and he made the comparison of sin and cancer. If they are both taken care of early, they are much easier to treat. If left untreated both can be deadly, one temporally and one spiritually. It’s not only sin but also apathy about the Gospel that can grow until it is very hard to overcome. The cure for apathy: Read the Book of Mormon every day!

Safeco Field and Space needle

Sunday: Mary went to church today. She wasn’t ready when we stopped to pick her up so we had to wait. That made us late so we had to sit on the back row, which turned out to be a good thing. After the last speaker she raised her hand and started yelling that she had a question. Joyce had to let her know that you don’t ask questions in sacrament meeting. We always worry when she talks because she tells the same story over each time. Joyce taught primary (she teaches Ruth and Rubi when they stay for Primary). That meant Art had to take Mary to Sunday school. She said the opening and closing prayer and only interrupted the class once, (if you don’t count her telling her story again), to ask for a pen. Art was glad to go to Priesthood so one of the senior sisters could take care of her. We were going to pick up Brother Baker for church also, but he cancelled at the last minute. After taking Mary and Diane home after church, we hurried back to the senior sisters for dinner. It is always fun to be with them, since we both do the same things and we can compare notes. These two are just amazing and an inspiration to be around. On the way home we got a call from the Skyway B elders to see if we could meet them at the Acosta’s for a lesson. This worked well for us since we were planning on stopping there anyway. We talk, then Elder Palo translates for Sister Acosta. The daughters all can speak English, sort of. One time he forgot and just started to repeat what we had said in English until Sister Acosta stopped him. We all got a good chuckle. Elder Palo is still trying to learn English so he always speaks it when he can. After the lesson all of them bore their testimonies. Even though we couldn’t understand them, it was pretty special.

Monday use the umbrella day:

We walked to the Filipino Cultural Center in the morning to see if they taught classes in English or Tagalog. We want to volunteer to teach English and maybe pick up a little Tagalog. They don’t have classes right now so we will look someplace else. There are several other places that have classes. We started to knock on doors, but the farther we got from the apartment the harder it rained. Plus no one answered the doors, so we went shopping for stuff to make a Snickers Salad for tonight. We had dinner with Diane Nardi and the Skyway A elders. Several of the missionaries in our zone are being transferred tomorrow. Two that we see a lot, Elder Bennett and Elder Russell, Elder Bennett is one of the Skyway A elders (our zone leader) and Elder Russell is a Spanish speaking elder that lives in our complex. We will miss them! After dinner we went to teach Ruth and Rubi with the Skyway A elders. It was the last time we will teach with Elder Bennett. The girls were sad to hear he was leaving, but he will get to come back when they are baptized. We had a bunch of leftovers that Sister Nardi sent with us for the Skyway B Elders so we called them when we got home and had them come over and take them. Sisters Peterson and Henderson (another set of senior sisters) went home today so we will miss them. Two other sisters are coming this week to work in the employment office, but we don’t know if we will see them at our meetings. There is another new couple in the office, but they don’t come to our meetings either.

Tuesday P-day: First things first…cleaning and laundry. Second must...shopping. We had to make a trip to the mission office to pick up some things that the sisters had left for us when they closed their apartment. We were close to a mall so we had to stop there for a while then on to Wal-Mart. By now it is pouring rain and cold. Skyway B elders stopped over so Art could go online and order a part for a camera that somebody gave Elder Palo.

Mount Baker Station

Our Addiction Recovery Program is on Tuesday night so we ran to the church for that. This was the first night that we had a regular meeting with several people attending and it went very well. We were pretty excited to get it started in the Skyway building. We had one member show up just because they had read the notice in the bulletin and just wants to be better and figured it would help.

Wednesday: Our district meeting was this morning because of transfers. We met Elder Olsen’s new companion, Elder Ludlow. We did lots of role playing which we love. After the meeting we spent the next few hours at on urgent care. Art hasn’t been doing well the last couple of days. He said it is the first time he has filled out a medical history form that has a question after marital status asking if it’s a male or female companion. We ate a late lunch and then hit the streets walking. Joyce’s new favorite song is “Primary Children sang as they walked and walked…” Arts favorite is " I love to see Safeco Field. I'm going there someday."

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It was a fairly productive day. We found someone home at every house we stopped at and they were all nice. This is a first. One man did tell us that his house wasn’t the address we were looking for and he wasn’t who we were looking for. Pretty sure he just wanted to get rid of us because we were pretty sure it was the right address. On one of the streets we passed a man working on his lawnmower. He had a big boat in the driveway so Joyce had to stop and ask if he pulled water skiers behind it. He only uses it for fishing on the ocean, but he said he would take us out fishing if we wanted. That gave us a chance to talk about missionaries and the church. If we come back after our mission he will take us fishing. The area we worked in was up on a hill so we had a great view of Mt. Rainier on the walk home.

Thursday: Our day started with a trip to W.W. This gets us up and going early in the morning. On the way home we stopped at a library to check on the English class. The lady we needed to talk with wasn’t there so we left a message and hope she will call us. The weather here has been great so we hit the streets again walking. Not much results today. We did find one member that has moved and one house that looks deserted. Walking back to the apartment, a man asked Art if he was good with colors. We stopped and talked to these two men who were trying to decide what color to paint a house. Art told them to use whatever color was on sale, so they took Joyce’s advice instead. We are finding that most people on the street are nicer than the less active that we contact. We helped teach (Joyce does) Ruth and Rubi in the afternoon with the Skyway A Elders then stopped to check on a member on the way home.

Seattle

He has a family living by him that he takes food to so we had brought some for him to give to them. He told us to go do it ourselves, so we did. He was rather cold to us. He is a less active member that the ward has been working with that was showing some progress, but has started to fall back into his old habits. In the evening we met with all the missionaries for our coordination meeting.

Friday, a four Advil day: Spring time in Seattle is great. The weather has been great since the rain stopped on Tuesday, and the weekend is supposed to be even better. We started off with a trip to Auburn for our class and then out to breakfast with the Bensons. It’s nice to visit with them every week. We had an appointment to teach with Skyway B Elders up in the top of our area so we rode the train up and then walked and knocked on doors in that area. We finished one section then went to our appointment. The elders taught Bro. Baker a lesson on the Plan of Salvation. He is one of those members that was baptized then stopped going to church and he has just drifted away. Now he is trying to get back that feeling he had when he joined the church. We had a good discussion about the Good Sheppard leaving the 99 and going after the 1. It brings that message home when you see the 1 trying to be found. After our appointment we took the elders out to dinner then worked on another section. It was later in the day so we found more at home this outing. The section we were in is along Lake Washington so they are really nice homes with nice yards. One lady told us she has not considered herself a member for over 30 years, but didn’t have her name removed. She has been one of the first not active members that was nice and visited with us. Most just slam the door. We think that the Skyway Ward is where the church send records when they don’t know the correct address. We seem to find a lot that are wrong. After we finished, we wanted to get back to the lightrail station before it got dark, but we had to stop often to take picture of all the flowers and trees that are in blossom. We did make the train before dark and a lady on the train saw our name badges and ask what we had been doing so we were able talk and give her a pass along card.

Cambodian New Year Celebration

Saturday an eight Advil day: One of the housing missionaries told us we were not here to be entertained so we blew it today because were sure had fun. We walked to the Buddhist Temple and just missed the dancers by a few minutes and lunch was ending. They met us in the driveway as we walked in and insisted we come in to eat. You would thing we are royalty and very important by the way they treat us. Most get their food and sit on the floor on rugs when they eat, but they have us sit at a table and bring the food to us, bowls and bowls of it. We weren’t sure what we were eating (except the rice) but it was good. Different people kept bring us plates of dessert and by the time we finished we had six different plates. One man that speaks English saw our name tags so he came and talked with us. He wanted us to know that he was a Christian and he was there because of the culture. We had a pretty good talk with him and found out he played basketball in the Skyway building when he was younger. He said he may come to church just for the memories, but he would like to get with us and talk about Jesus. He took a bunch of pictures and said he would give a copy to the Monks so they could give them to us. We gave him a pass along card so he could watch the “Because He Lives” video and he gave us his business card so we can call him and order from his business. We will follow up next week. It was a beautiful day so we were walking and the area we wanted to work in was father than we though. We ended up on the west boundary of the mission next to I-5 where we had a great view of Seattle, the Space Needle and Safco Field. We are so close to Safco Field, but it might as well be a 1000 miles away since it is just on the wrong side of I-5.

We worked two different areas with fair success. We did have to cross under I-5 just to say we did, since we were so close. The walk home was pretty long. If we would have had some cash we would have taken the bus. It stops in front of our building, but the flowers are out and it was very sunny so it was a nice walk, we just have too many aches and pains. In the evening was the adult meeting for Stake Conference in Renton. We got back just in time to have a quick bowl of cereal and then head to Renton by 7 p.m. We did have an 8:00 o’clock appointment but it cancelled so we were able to stay at conference. It was a very good meeting. We would say more about the meeting, but we have already gone on too long for today. Love Art and Joyce