Elder & Sister Knowles

                  Week B48  Jan. 4-10

                                Why are calendars sad?

Preaching: President McKinney gave us some notes he had put together from our meeting with him about mission preparedness. We sent most of it to those we thought might use them but here are a few that we wanted to pass along.  He made his notes after he talked to several missionaries asking them what they wish they had done better to prepare for a mission.  Most of it applies to everyone not just future missionaries.  1. Read the Book of Mormon every day then study it (We have made a commitment to do this so when we are 100 we can say we have read from the Book of Mormon every day for the last 40 years) 2. Develop Christ like attributes  3.  Make the scriptures your stress reliever 4. More thoughtful and purposeful prayers (no soft prayers)  5. Develop social skills: talk to people, be interested in them and ask questions.  One of the great blessing of the gospel is that we can start working  on all these whether you’re 8 or 60 or 80.  Because of the atonement we can succeed.  We know this is true.

Monday p-day:

  We drove to Enumclaw to visit Sister Foster and take her out to lunch.  Enumclaw is a little higher in elevation (900 feet) so they had a little snow on the ground.  Sister Foster is missing the Skyway ward so she enjoyed the visit.   In the evening we attended FHE.  Joyce had to give the lesson, which was on Handel’s Messiah.  A lady was waiting in the parking lot waiting for a friend and one of the members invited her to come and join us so she did and ended up staying the whole time. When her friend came to get her she invited him in but he wouldn’t stay so he left her there.   We invited her to church, but she wouldn’t commit but she is interested in doing some family history.  She was in the parking lot because she thought the church would be a safe place to wait. (We’re not sure there is a safe place in Skyway.)   Her whole story is a little strange and changes.  We think maybe she just wanted to get warm and something to eat.  Time will tell.  We’ll see if she come back or comes to church on Sunday.

Tuesday Zone training:  We went to our zone meeting this morning.  Lots of role playing, and we got some good ideas for helping a few of those we are working with.  The time was moved back an hour so we had to leave early to go teach our English class.  We usually go from 9:00 to 12:00 but they changed to 10:00 to 1:00.  Our English class was our first for the Literary Council.  It was at the East African Cultural Center.

We were expecting five but only one showed up.  They said that’s normal.  People kind of come and go because of their changing schedules.  The Spanish Elders have a man that is interested and they said we could invite him.  We do have to put one more Daily Dose book together for the Spanish Elders, since the Hermana’s took the one for our Zone.  We’re just glad the missionaries are going to use them.  Our 3:00 appointment with Skyway Elders cancelled again.  We think the Elders are going to drop her since she keeps cancelling.  After our first lesson with her we wondered how interested she was.  She seemed to pay more attention to her cats than to the lesson.  Our plan was to teach her in our apartment so she could be more focused on the lesson, but she keeps cancelling. No one showed up to the ARP class which happens once in a while.  Joyce spent the evening making rice bags for a sister missionary (another favorite, she is experiencing terrible headaches) and another  sister we are working with.  Pray for the missionaries.  They work so hard and things don’t always go as planned.  It’s something to do with agency, choose wisely!  Working with them is one of the highlights and blessings of our mission.  Today is the official one year mark for the mission.  We still have a bunch of things we want to get done and we are worried that we may run out of time.  The next three months are already filling up with appointments and we need to get back out knocking on doors and making some visits.  

Wednesday Northwest Harvest: 

We had a fun time doing service today.  At first they wanted all the missionaries to stay and decorate, but one of the worker needed us for another project.  Art was worried he was going to have to color posters.  We ended up doing  three squares.  It’s a bag with three meals in it that they send home with school kids for the weekend.  They needed 120 cases, but we only got 520 bags done in 2 hours, which is better than they hoped for. That’s a little over half of what they need.  An afternoon shift will do the rest.  They kept us all together plus a few of the regulars.  We worked with the sister missionaries.  It will be the last time we get to work with them before transfers  because of a special meeting from SLC that we attend in two weeks.  The Elder Sisters were with us as always on our service day and we needed to drive to Kent for a meeting with President McKinney.  There were two new sister missionaries there. One is serving from her home, Sister Durham, as a Mental Heath Councilor for the mission, and the other, Sister Larson, is going to be Sister Chamberlains companion for a month when Sister Harrison goes home in two weeks.  Sister Beck, Sister Chamberlain’s permanent companion is being delayed because of a Visa problem.  She is from Canada.  We had a good meeting on mission preparation.  After the meeting we went to lunch then home.  We weren’t home long since we needed to take Karen to the E.R. in Renton. Karen was going to take the bus, but wanted Joyce with her for support.  She was worried about letting the doctor give her pain meds, which is an addiction problem for her. Joyce is a big support for her.

With the traffic and the waiting in the hospital all the evening was taken up.  We did get home in time for our meeting with the Bishop at 8:30, but there was no power in Karen’s building so we ended up helping her.  We had to get her a flashlight and more moral support.  We were tired and anyway, we missed the meeting.

Thursday:  We skipped W.W. this morning because we needed to check on school for Eldrex. Plus Art ate a lot of chocolate yesterday.  (Sister Chamberlain had a gift certificate to See’s and it is on the way from Northwest Harvest to the Kent Stake Center). They give free samples and they like us so we each got two samples and everyone gives Art the extra sample. The school turned out to be more than we thought, with a dozen forms to fill out.  We needed a bunch of info from Sister Acosta and we have to send it to the district office.  It took most of the afternoon filling out forms with Estrella and Eleazar helped a lot.  We put it all together and now we needed to find a place to fax it all to the district office as soon as we can get the immunization record.  Our English class was fun.  We have never seen the Alaskan fishermen we were supposed to have, but we do have two from East Africa. They are both a little more advanced than we had planned on so we will have to do some different  lesson plans.  It is rather fun, plus we are learning a lot about other countries.   Our missionary meeting in the evening, went well.  

Friday institute: We had a great class today on Christ and the apostles, and then went to breakfast with the sisters and the Bensons. The fog was terrible but burned off by the time we got back to Skyway.  We did a lot of running around trying to get immunization records and the paper work for Eldrex finished and faxed to the Seattle School District, which we did get done around 5:00.  Sister Acosta sent Joyce home with a cute sweater top for her to wear to church on Sunday.  That was so nice of them, money is so tight for them.  Most of the evening was spent on the phone trying to get tomorrow put together and tying up some loose ends.  

Saturday:  We rode the bus to Bellevue to the temple with Sister Sanchez.  That took up most of the day.  She is so nice and appreciates us very much, so it’s a win win situation.  On the way back to Renton, we got off of the bus early so that we could go  to Staples and  get the copies we needed for the Spanish Elders to teach English in the evening.  We got home  and we put what we could together for them and then they stopped by to pick it up.  The plan is to have the missionaries teach the first 12 English lessons and then we will take over if they want us to.  We just try to help where they need us.

Sunday:  We only needed to pick up Bro. Sprenkler for church. Everyone else either said no or didn’t call us back after we called and left messages. 

Church being at 9 a.m. is hard on people that like to sleep in.  It was our ward conference so there was a big crowd with all the stake people there. We had talks on following the prophets.  Prophets declare their message without fear of criticism because often they are not popular with the world.  We should pray for them, study and listen to their lessons, and follow their council.  Then, we will stand out from the crowd because we dress modestly, do not appreciate or tell off colored jokes, do not use profanity, watch clean media, and have light in our countenances.  By following the prophets we will attract those who would follow Jesus Christ.  We also had lessons on keeping the Sabbath Day holy and receiving personal revelation.  Joyce taught her primary class with 9 Acostas plus Donnie and Jaida.   They had fun popping balloons and answering questions, (but Brother David came to check on them when he heard the noise…:)) The Elder Sisters had us over with the young elders for dinner.  We only have one set now, but it is a threesome (the three amigos).  We had a good time.  

That has been pretty much our week.  Hope all has been well with all of you.

Love Art and Joyce

P.S.  Because their days are numbered:)