Week B47 Jan 11-17
It all works out
Preaching: Sister Benson gave us this story and we wanted to pass it along. Elder Renlund, (a cardiac surgeon), had a man come to Utah to see if he could get some medical help. The man was in serious condition, and needed a heart transplant. They waited for a donor heart and it got to the point where the man only had days to live. A donor heart became available, and the man was able to receive a transplanted heart. However, his body rejected it and the transplant was not successful. He was kept alive by machines, waiting for the slim chance that another donor heart would become available. He started having other problems, and organs started to fail & shut down. Fortunately, another donor heart become available, and no one else in the West could use this particular heart, and so the man received his second heart transplant. All was going well with the second transplant, and he was scheduled to be released just 8 days after the surgery. On the 7th day, just the day before he would be released from the hospital, Dr. Renlund went into the man’s room at the hospital, and the man was very upset! Dr. Renlund was thinking of things that could be wrong, and causing the man’s distress and anger. He asked the man what was wrong, and the man sputtered, “The oatmeal is cold and the milk is warm.”
This man had been in critical condition, and had almost died 3 times, and yet he was upset about the cold oatmeal. The man was not grateful for being alive, having the blessings of receiving two donor hearts, surviving the major challenges of two transplants surgeries, the blessings from our Heavenly Father, or that He sent His Son to this earth to Atone for the sins of the world.
Elder Renlund went on to teach, how often do we see the problems of cold oatmeal in our life, and not appreciate the great blessings-the whole Big picture! We are all going to have some cold oatmeal in our lives, but we need to remember to see the big picture and count our blessings! Don’t get stuck and focus only on the cold oatmeal…
Monday: We let Sister Harrison pick where she wanted to go today since she only has nine days left. This is her last p-day that we can do something. She chose to go to Snoqualmie Falls, which is just across the mission border. She wanted to see it before she left Seattle and she is not planning on ever coming back this direction. The weather was terrible with rain and wind. We thought we may get some snow since we do get to 1300 feet. We only stayed at the falls long enough to take a few pictures and then went to the gift shop to warm up. The wind was blowing so hard it kept turning the umbrellas inside out, which was rather fun! On the way home, we stopped in Maple Valley and ate lunch. We needed to stop at Wal-Mart on the way home to pick up a few things. Joyce is planning on putting hearts on the tree (Christmas Tree) so she can leave it up and then change the ornaments each month. Art needed a poster board for his puzzle he is trying to put together. We are having a bunch over on Sunday and he can’t get it finished by then and we need the table. It is a hard puzzle, that is keeping him busy, thanks, Allison! He did get the lego Space Needle put together that Josh;s family sent; he’s exercising his mind… The rain finally stopped, but was back by the time FHE rolled around. There wasn’t a real good turnout there. Sometimes the weather keeps people home.
Tuesday: The rain is back in full force and it has turned cold. At least it is cold for us. We had our district meeting this morning. It was a good discussion on teaching with a member present. Most of the missionaries have the same problem of finding members that will teach with them. We have a new set of Elders in our district so Art didn’t have to role play as much. He had to spend some time walking Elder Jones back to other meetings. He is in a threesome and the other two were in other meetings. They are very careful about being alone and having at least two Elders together when a sister is around. After the meeting we had to hurry to our English class. We still only have Sarah and Joseph attending. We haven’t heard anymore about the Alaskan fishermen we were expecting. Joseph and Sarah are on different levels so it is a challenge to teach them together. Today we worked on long and short vowel sounds, nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns. Joseph can read some, but Sarah not much at all. After class we got a new library card and checked out some beginner books so we can start reading with Sarah. Joyce worked on our taxes until time for the ARP class, which only gave her time for a good start. We only had Karen and the Elder Sister at the class, but it was such a great meeting!
Wednesday:
Thursday W.W.: The sun was shining today. We made it to our W.W. meeting then did more shopping for the dinner on Sunday. We got ready for the English class, walked there, nobody showed up, then walked home. We’ll have to see what happens next week with the class. They warned us that sometimes the students don’t show up. Joseph is from Tanzania and Sarah is from Ethiopia. We don’t know why they didn’t make it to class. We rode the bus to visit with Joyce Johnson. Sister Knowles reads the Book of Mormon with her then quizzed her on her citizenship test. She has study a lot and should do well on it when she takes it in Feb. It was Richel Acostas birthday today so we walked a card (and present) to her place. She wasn’t at home so we left it with her dad, Ric. On the way back home, we ran into Michel and Richel as they were getting off the train. We were able to visit some and wish Richel a happy birthday. We had a meeting at the NAAM so we had to skip our missionary meeting. Our meeting was about all the new things they have going on and the new displays. It was good for us since we have a tour tomorrow and we haven’t been at the museum for a while. We had ridden the bus there and one of the other docents, Minnie, gave us a ride home. She though it was too scary to ride the bus after dark.
Friday institute: We had a good institute class about the sacrament, but we had to leave early to get back to the museum on time for a tour. We got there just a few minutes late and then found out the tour wasn’t for another thirty minutes. That gave us a little time to brush up on things and plan our attack. We had 75 students so we divided them into two groups and Joyce did the touring displays and Art did the museum part then we switched groups after 30 minutes. The groups were still too big and 30 minutes isn’t enough time to cover everything so we just did the best we could. No other docents would sign up so they were glad to have us at least. They were fun kids, high school students from Highline. They were good to discuss and we had good conversation about the displays, art and especially about the new exhibit on nuclear power and the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. We stopped at home long enough to grab a bite then picked up the Sisters and drove to the Renton Stake Center for interviews with President and Sister Eaton. We mostly just visit, but we only get 10 minutes so you can’t say much. After the interviews we went to dinner with the Sisters, then home and in for the night. Sister Harrison goes home on Thursday so it’s the last time we will get to go out with her. Joyce has decided to take the tree down so she won’t have to worry about the decorations each month. She said it would have been fun if she had grandkids to help her. Now we just need to find a place to store it.
Saturday: The rain is back. We spent the morning catching up on a few things that needed doing and cleaning for the dinner tomorrow. We’re not sure what to do since we may have as many as 20 people and we only have chairs and tables for 12. Many are a maybe, but we’re praying they all come. Several are not members that we are trying to work with. Karen wanted to walk around Seward Park so that got us out of the apartment and onto the bus. After our walk Karen wanted to take us out for dinner, so we rode the train to Columbia City. She can only buy cold food with her card so we went to an organic food place and ate in the deli. We needed to deliver the invitations for the dinner tomorrow so we rode the bus to the green house Acostas, The Elder Sisters gave us a ride home, (they were on the way to our place to bring us a cake for tomorrow) then we walked to the Holly house Acostas. We came home and spent the rest of the night making a Snickers salad and wrapping potatoes for tomorrow.
Sunday: We got up at 6 a.m. to make the stroganoff and get ready to leave by 8 to pick up Phillip, Karen and her friend, Diane, so we could get to church by 9. Church was so good, on using the atonement, that we can never be perfect, but we try and Christ makes up the difference. I had Estrella, Sunshine, Michelle,to Primary class, as well as my 10 year olds, Ruth and Rubi, and Princes Joy who is 8. I bribed them with gum for bringing their scriptures so that we could start marking them as we studied the introduction to the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith history. They were writing notes in their margins and highlighting as fast as I could write things on the board and we did not get through all of it. Sunshine said that she loved class and they all said that they learned so much. I am so glad that we gave them their own scriptures for Christmas and that they will learn how to use them. I take so much for granted… We took our people home and then got ready for our dinner party at 1:00. First Holly house Acosta’s came, then the Elders, then green house Acosta’s came and we had people in the dining room around the table and in the living room around a small table and on the couches and chairs. It was a delightful party. We feel so blessed to have them all as our friends. We ended up with 3 investigators which was good, and 16 people total, so that was good for our small apartment. The elders gave a short message before they left about the feast we just had and feasting on the words of Christ. It was good. Then, Joyce took the kids to the park to swing and play on the zip line. Art entertained the adults at the apartment and especially talked with Irma, Jenefer, and Mary Ann, our investigators, to make them feel comfortable. We feel like the dinner was a success. They stayed around and chatted for a long time, even when Joyce got back from the park. The missionary devotional was in Puyallup, so after visiting with AnJ’s family and Jacob’s family, we picked up the sisters and headed to the devotional. The investigators that we were to pick up for the Elders cancelled, so we went with just the four of us and it was such a wonderful program that we wished we would have had our carload of investigators come to it. On well, we have learned that all we as missionaries can do is to invite, and people have their agency. We also got to see some of the missionaries that have been transferred to that area.
Love Joyce and Art
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