Week 21

                        

           Week 21 May 24-30

  When you come to a fork in the road, take it!

Sunday:  Renee, Debra and Joyce J. all wanted rides to church so we had a car full.  Deanne N. didn’t go so we had room for everyone.  The Skyway A elders talked in church.  The Acostas didn’t stay for primary.  It was a pretty small crowd all around, we guess because of the long weekend.  After church we had Renee over for dinner and she and Joyce read the first part of the Book of Mormon.  The Skyway B elders then came over and taught a short lesson.  Renee has lots of questions so it is hard to stay on a lesson plan, but the Elders handle it well.  Josh and Jared both called so we were able to face time with them.  Thank heaven for smart phones. Transfer calls are to night so we waited to here from the Elders how that went.  Skyway B called to tell us that they are both staying so that is good.

Monday: 

We found out this morning that Elder Olsen is being transferred.  He goes home next transfer so we will just deal with his leaving a little earlier than planned.  Most of the morning and day we worked on cleaning the pick-up to see if we can make it smell better.  We washed everything that was in it and sprayed the seats with air freshener so maybe it will be better.  In the evening we went to FHE for a little while, then to a lesson with Skyway B and the Acosta’s.  They are such a fun family to teach.  Sister Cabiao was there to help invite them to stay to all the meetings.  She is teaching S.S. in Talalog.  The Elders are going to start teaching Ray Mart and Princes Joy the lessons (with Joyce’s help) now that all the new member lessons are finished.

Tuesday:  Today was p-day because of transfers.  We had to go to the elder sister’s place first thing so Elder Lappalainen could get a haircut.  Since the weather looked good we decided to go to the Rodadenrum Gardens in Federal Way.  There were still a few blossoms out, but we were about two weeks late to catch it at the best time.  The Bonsai Garden was pretty cool any time of the year.  We still had a good time even with most of the blossoms were gone.  It is a pretty cool place.  Federal Way has a Wal-Mart Super store so we had to stop there on the way home.  The elder sisters wanted to stop at Sam’s Club also on the way home.
Skyway A wanted us to teach Rubi with them at 7:00, but we had our ARP meeting then.  The meeting went well.  We don’t have a large group, so it is a very personal meeting.  Even if only one person shows up we think it is worth doing.  We usually have 5 or 6 there, counting the elder sisters.  They have a person they try to bring each week plus there is a regular lady that tries to always come.

Wednesday:  Our district meeting was today because of transfers yesterday.  Elder Jones is our new ZL and Elder Goodell is our new DL. We really like Elder Jones.  He will be one of the Skyway A Elders so we will see him a lot. We are not with the elder sisters now so we have to do role playing again.  After lunch we went out knocking on doors.

  Every door that we knocked on where somebody answered said that the person we were looking for didn’t live there.  We get that answer once in a while, but not every door.  We thought it was a little fishy.  One lady told us that the person we were looking for lived there, until she found out we were from the church.  Suddenly he no longer lived there and she didn’t want to talk to us anymore.  We did have one less active member let us in for a visit.  We had a good visit with her. It made the long hot day and all the walking worth it.  One of the goals we set for this transfer (the next 6 weeks) is to have all of our sections done.  We were able to complete three today.  That leaves about 12 left, which is really pretty good since we started with about 50.

Thursday:  Today we went to W.W the first thing with not so good an outcome.  Art shouldn’t have eaten the chocolate chip cookies last night.  Afterwards we walked over and looked at bikes to get some prices to compare.  We are thinking about getting a couple, but not sure if they will work in this area.  There are lots of hills and a high crime rate.  None of the Elders use them here. We needed to stop at Wal-Mart for a few things for dinner tomorrow.  We are having a family over.  It was “ma tin it” today. We went out knocking on doors.  The homes were far apart and we didn’t have enough time to get to all of them so we decided to go and see a less active lady we know who lived close by.  She had just gotten home from work so it worked out.  She and Joyce get along very well.  She wants us to start teaching her because she has lots of question about coming back to church.  She also taught us a few words in Tagalog.  On the way home we stopped and watered the little garden we planted in sister Swatack’s front yard.  Renee was going to come over and read with Joyce but she forgot and we had a meeting we needed to go to when she remembered and called.  She is going to come over tomorrow.  After our meeting with all the missionaries we went with Skyway B and taught Raymart Acosta the first lesson.  He has been sitting in with his family when they were taught the new member lessons so he already knows a lot.  They are a fun family to visit. His mom and sister came home just as we were leaving, so we got to try out are new words we had learned.  They even understood us, and we understood their response and we were able to respond back, with a little help.  We always get home late when we teach the Acostas so it was a short night. 

Friday:  We had to get up early and put dinner, for tonight in the crock pot before we went to institute class.  We went out for lunch with the Bensons after our class and then made a trip to Bee Hive Books to pick up a few children Book of Mormon readers.  We took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in Tacoma.  After we did our shopping we came home and got ready for dinner tonight.  Renee came over and read a few chapters in the Book of Mormon with Joyce.  The Skyway B elders dropped by to show us all the money they had found.  We have a contest every day, with the elders, to see who can find the ost money on the streets. 

The Dangs came over for dinner and then we walked across the street to the park and let the girls swing.

Saturday:   We had a meeting at the NAAM in the morning for a new display.  The artist (Debra Moore) that did the pieces was there and she gave a tour.  She works with glass.  It was pretty cool.  The Puyallup Stake was having an open house for their new Family History Discovery Center that we were invited to.  The Stake President gave us our own personal tour when he saw our name tags.  They had a fan chart on the wall that the High Counselor over family history had made.  Art was looking at it and found that they have the same great grandfather (Joseph Croft Knowles).  The center is built to get people excited about family history and to us as a missionary tool.  We are excited to tell the people at the museum that are interested in family history.  The Stake President gave us the number to call if we have people interested and they will give us a private tour.  They were closing the center when we left so they sent all the leftover cookies home with us so we could give them to the Elders.  We met the Bensons there and went out to dinner with them.  When we got home Skyway B elders were in the park contacting so we had them come over and divided up the cookies.  The Spanish Elders came by and took some and we saved the rest for the Skyway A Elders.

Here is a little preaching:  We have been working one on one with a lot of differ people the past few weeks.  Some are making slow progress and some don’t progress at all.  It would be easy to give up on them and move on to something else.  In fact sometimes we feel, since they won’t try very hard they deserve what happens to them.   When we went to the Rodadenrum Gardens this week and saw the Bonsai Trees and learned that it takes 6 or more years to create a tree, and found out about the wires that are used for support and training, we came away with a little better understanding of what patience is about.  Then, we went to a meeting and one of the members we thought we should quit working with showed up.  She prayed and thanked Heavenly Father for not letting the missionaries give up on her.  It was rather humbling and gave us a shot in the arm to try a little harder.  We have to keep remembering that we can’t always see the results of our efforts on our time schedule.  Anyway, you know what we are trying to say.  We love this work and are thankful for each of you.

Love, “Elder and Sister” Knowles