Week 39 Sept. 27-Oct 3
Visit
friends often, so the path to their home doesn’t become
choked with weeds
And it doesn’t hurt to
write them once in a while either
Sunday: The Muckleroys left early this morning. We got up, fixed breakfast, said good-by, and
got ready for church with all the phone calls Joyce makes to see who is going
to church and who needs a ride. A few
less actives that we had contacted last week are coming for the first time in months. We
had the pick-up full with four in the back and three in front. Sister Vergaro and her grandson, Ivar, didn’t
stay the third hour so we had more room going home. We were just glad that they came. Ivar is 15, so we could potentially have
another young man to pass the sacrament.
Reymark and Eleazar passed the sacrament in their new clothes we bought
them, for the first time since they were ordained. They looked so handsome! Joyce had Ruth, Rubi, Michelle, Sunshine,
Princess Joy, Mhina (an investigator) and Donny in her primary class. They
loved the coke and Mentos lesson.
Reymark came to her class at the end so he could make a paper doll. Between the four sets of missionaries in the
ward we had two investigators and ten less active members at church. Two more investigators
would have been there, but they are sick along with a couple more less active
members that have committed to come to church.
Plus seven of the thirteen most recent converts where at church. We know 7/13 doesn’t sound great. Sometimes there are no less active members or
investigators there. We know one of the
recent converts has moved and really we only have two that we are really
worried about and work is one of the biggest problems with him. The other we have lots of contact with, but
aren’t sure what her problem is, besides being sixteen. We thought it was a pretty good day and we
had a good meeting so we hope they will all be back. We have General Conference, followed by Stake
Conference so it will be three weeks before we have a meeting at Skyway. We will be making a lot of visits to keep up
the interest in attending church. After church we came home and did our favorite
thing, TALKED TO THE FAMILY. We did manage to watch the blood moon and
find one new investigator between calls.
Monday:
We were so glad to see the morning arrive. A member of our ward is always predicting
earthquakes and Mt. Rainier erupting, so the blood moon last night had him
going. Art would have been pretty mad to
think that he had dieted the week before the world ended, so he felt better
when the sun came up as usual. Plus, we
didn’t get transferred, but several of our favorites, (we know we aren’t
supposed to have favorites, but we do) in our zone and ward did. We can just hope we get to see them
again. Art keeps telling Joyce not to
get so attached, but it’s hard not to.
It usually is P-day but because of transfers it will be tomorrow. We have things going on both days so we won’t
be going anywhere. We rode the bus down to the Skyway area for a visit and then
missed the bus for our next visit and ended up walking a bunch. We did find another Buddhist Temple. It is Laotian and they are not as friendly as
the other ones we have been to. We made
our last visit and got to talk to Crystal Silverhorn and give her some
cookies. It was a beautiful day to be
out and about working. We rode the bus
home to meet Skyway B elders at our place.
Elder Palo is being transferred and wanted to copy the pictures we have
of him. When an elder has been in an area over six months they tell them Sunday
night they are being transferred so they can say good-bye. He will still be in our zone so we can still
see him once every week at district meetings.
After they left we met Karen and rode the train to the Mariner’s
game. It was a little bending of the
rules, but Karen needed a break and we are member support. She has to be in by ten so we had to leave
early and made it by 9:55. Mariner’s
lost 3-2. Evan Gattis plays for Houston
and hit a home run so that was exciting for Art, plus all the junk food.
Tuesday. Joyce spent most of the morning hemming pants for Joyce
Johnson. Then, we met her at 1:30 and
took her to lunch. Joyce still has more
pants to hem. Eric is six months old and
wears eighteen month clothes so they are too long for him. We think it is funny
when Joyce J. worries that he isn’t eating enough. We did have a visit for the Skyway B elders as
they were on their way to transfers.
Elder Palo is getting sick so Joyce loaded him up with medicine to take
with him. She has become the Zone
Mother, so the elders call her when they don’t feel well. After our lunch out
with Joyce J., we walked to the Acostas for an English lesson and gave them a
bunch of t-shirts we have collected the past few months. They are always handing them out at the
ballgames and service projects and we have no place to wear them. We had a good ARP meeting at 7:00. The Skyway A elders called at 6:55 to see if
we were coming to teach at 7:00 with them.
Sometimes we have a communication problem so we didn’t make the teaching
appointment. They had forgot to tell us,
but we couldn’t have gone anyway because of ARP. After the excellent ARP class we stopped at
one of Joyce’s V.T. ladies and made a visit there at 8:30 p.m. Her name is Margarita and she has been
through the temple and we had such a nice visit. Margarita rides the bus to the temple on
Saturday and was wondering if we could ride the bus with her and go to the
temple with her the Saturday after conference.
It is out of the mission, like most everything, so we shall see. It would be so wonderful to go to the temple!
Wednesday: District meeting was today and we met most of the new
missionaries in the zone. Elder Zamora is our new D.L. He is a Spanish speaking elder and he used to
live in our building. Our new district
consists of: Elder Palo and his companion,
Elder Kidwell, Sister Wright and Sonasee and Elder Serrine, Elder Zamora’s companion. After our district meeting we went to
Wal-Mart to shop for tomorrow’s dinner.
We were going to take a p-day and go for a ride, but Tesloach wanted a
ride to YM so we went home and cleaned some.
Since we were taking Tesloach we called and invited Reymark and Eleazar
to go. They were almost ready to say yes
then backed out. We have been trying to
get them to YM since they were baptized so we will keep trying. We stopped by to pick up Tesloach and when
we called to tell him we were there, he then told us he was at a park and
wasn’t going to Y.M. Since we were
already on our way we went to the church early and Joyce practiced the piano
until time for our missionary/bishop meeting.
It went very well, with some new plans since we now have a Ward Mission
Leader.
Thursday: W. W. again with okay results. From there we made our run to the
museum. This time we were able to make
contact with Stacie to find out what she wants us to do on Saturday. They are having a big conference on Family
History and she wants us there from 1:00-until-4:00. I guess we will miss the second session of
conference. If you didn’t know, October is Family History Month. We are mostly going to be at the museum to
answer questions and do a little presentation about indexing. Since we are not experts, it may be
interesting. At 3:45 we picked up Annie
and Luz and they came over to teach Joyce how to make Pancit. Art made two different kinds of peach pie and
one strawberry pie for dessert. They
tasted okay, but they didn’t look as good as he had hoped. Annie and Luz also brought some kind of side
pork and eggroll looking things with a banana inside. The Skyway B Elders, Bohne and Jiao, and Karen
came over at five for dinner and the lesson.
There are still some Word of Wisdom issues so they pushed back Annie’s
baptism and the lesson went a different direction. We took everyone home, then went to our
missionary meeting. It was another good
meeting, with more talking about people and less about the calendar.
Friday: The morning was filled up with the Institute Class and lunch
with the senior missionaries (Elder Sisters and the Bensens). We came home so Joyce could finish hemming
the pants for Joyce J. In the afternoon,
we took Ruth, Rubi, Mhina and Joanna out to eat. They picked a Thai place and then couldn’t
find anything on the menu so we had to leave and go somewhere else. Our next stop was Popeye’s, a Louisiana fast
food place. They liked it until they got
our order wrong. By the time we got it
straight we ended up with double the order so the kids really loved that. Plus the manager and a women were fighting
over something so we got dinner and a show.
At 6:00 we met Skyway A at the church, which ended up being the Spanish
Elders instead, for a lesson with Mhina.
None of our keys, for the church, would work so we went to her house and
had the lesson outside. They won’t let
anyone inside their house. Then, we
hurried back north for a lesson at the Acostas.
Ivar, from a few doors down, also
was there. Meeting with the Acostas is
one of the highlights of our mission. We are trying to get the kids interested
in YM/YW. We had a short testimony meeting at the end of the lesson on the
Priesthood, then out came all the food.
Elder Jiao (from Beijing, China) is our new Elder, Elder Bohne’s
companion. They had made some Bluet for him, (boiled duck egg, with the duck
somewhat developed) but he ate it with no problems, he even liked it. They tried to get Elder Bohne to eat one
again. He would not, so Richel and
Michelle each ate one. Richel loved
hers. Michelle hated hers and spit it
out in the kitchen. Cheap entertainment for
us! How we love the Acosta family!
Saturday
we thank God for a prophet: It was so nice to attend conference
with all the missionaries. We have to
go to the Stake Center and it is mostly just missionaries, but there were a few
members there today. After the 1st
session we had to leave and go to the museum.
They wanted us there from 1:00 until 4:00 and when we got there we found
they only needed us at 3:30 so we were able to listen to conference on the I-pad. We could have stayed at the church since they
never used us at all. They wanted us to
talk about indexing, but the computers still won’t work and we think we are a
little intimidating to some. Joyce is
fighting a bad cold so we came home and put her to bed which is not easy. After resting, Art made the soup for Sunday
lunch between sessions, and Joyce, carefully, made the cake, so as not to get
germs in itJ
Preaching: We have been studying what it takes to be a good teacher and
a good student. For a lesson to be
effective both must have the spirt so that the Holy Ghost can do the
teaching. We can’t control what the
teacher does, but we can control what we do and how prepared we are to
learn. When President Kimball was asked
what he did in a boring Sacrament meeting he said, “I don’t know, I’ve never
been in one.” (Art said, “Well President Kimball has never been in a meeting
where I talked”). We have thought about
his statement and decided that we have a few things to work on to be better
learners.
Hope this
letter finds you all well and excited after listening to conference and ready
to become better teachers and students.
Love Joyce and Art
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