Elder & Sister Knowles

                           Week B41 Feb. 22-28

                               Put me in coach, I’m ready to play

                     Look at me, I can be 2nd base

Congratulations, Caden!  Thanks for calling us with your good news on Saturday!

Preaching:In the middle of a large round table was a large delicious pot of stew.  The people sitting around it looked sickly and weak.  Each person had a spoon with a very long handle strapped to his or her arm.  Because the handle was so long, the person found it impossible to get a spoonful of stew into their mouth.

Sister Missionaries at Northwest Harvest

In the next room, it was like the first with the stew and the long handled spoons strapped on, but the people here were laughing, happy, and well nourished.  You see, they had learned to feed each other.  They had learned the truth about service.  President Monson said that real joy is well within our reach as we become aware of our power to give to one who is needy.  May we become Christ’s agents and in such nourishment find true joy and happiness.      

Monday p-day:  We kind of took it easy today, laundry and letter writing and delivering a birthday present to Estrella.  FHE was in the evening and Art taught the lesson.  Nothing special, pretty much the same group of people attended.  We did find out that Johnny Joel didn’t get his passport renewed.  Someone told him differently than what we had told him and he went with what they said.  We will have to help him in July when they do it again.

Tuesday District Meeting:  We thought we were having district meeting and then got a text that it was zone meeting and earlier than we had planned.  We had to hurry but we made it on time.   Most of the meeting was role playing.  We did have to leave early to go and teach English and Joseph showed up to tell us that he had gotten a job.  We are happy for him.  The Muslim ladies at the front desk said they were sorry that we didn’t have anyone to teach, but we said we were happy he got a job.  That is what we had been working towards with him.  So, maybe its time to move onto something different.  If Sara doesn’t come on Thursday we will be cancel it. We walked to the post office to pick up a letter and made a few visits along the way.  No one was home, but we were able to talk to one man out working in his garden atone members home.  We will send the Elders to follow up with him.  No one came to ARP, so it’s probably time to cancel that class and move on to something else. Skyway B came over after we got home so they could us our fob, to get into the building, to check on an investigator.  She was also not at home.   Lots of no one home or no shows for most of what we did today.  Love missionary life.  

Wednesday: 

We sacked and boxed rolled oats at Northwest Harvest with the Sister Missionaries.   Our group was too small to divide and too big for one room so it was a little crowded at times.  (They didn’t divided us.)  After the service project, we stopped and did some shopping, with the Elder Sisters before going to lunch.  Sister Larson had invited some of her kids to go to lunch with us so we could meet them.  Sister Larson has extended for two more weeks until Sister Beck arrives.  Most of the evening was spent doing paper work and Joyce practicing the piano since our Bishops meeting was canceled. 

Thursday:  Our plan was to walk to the Acostas and help get B-Boy on the bus, but we were to late.   We did end up walking to the school to check on the English class for Estrella and a video she needs to watch so she can volunteer.   We might volunteer at this school, when our English class is over, so we came home and filled out the applications and watched the video.  Since Joseph has a job and Sara is a maybe most days, we’re probably done.  Karen had called and wanted to walk so we walked the trail along the power lines (Chief Sealth for Seattle).  The Union Gospel Mission, where Karen and Diane live, finally approved us to volunteer there, so we will sign up to serve dinner there once in a while.  The weather has been great all week and it was nice to get out and walk in the sunshine.  In the evening we visited Joyce Johnson and Joyce read the Book of Mormon with her.  We ran some errands and then attended the missionary meeting.  We found out about more lessons the Elders want us to help with.  A little more notice from them would be helpful.   We know they are working hard so we don’t mind.

Friday institute:  We had a very good class today.  They talked about the keys and church organizations.  The Elder Sisters were with us and we all went to lunch after along with the Crabtrees. They were the housing missionaries before the Holidays.  Our order at Sam’s club arrived so we picked it up and also worked on getting Arts prescriptions filled.  We had to make a few phone calls but we think we have it worked out.  We will find out on Monday.  It has been so nice all week, until this evening and now the rain is back.  The 4:00 pm appointment was late.  The kids hadn’t gotten home from school yet, so Joyce and the mom went to school while the rest of us (Art and Skyway B Elders) stood out in the rain.  The lesson did go well once we got started.  Joyce taught most of it on prophets.  The Elders asked her to do it,  so she was ready and did a great job.  We didn’t have time to go home before our next stop.  We were waiting then found out Joanna was running late so we made a quick trip to see if we could catch Tesloach at home.  No luck, but we did find out that Skyway B has had contact with him, but not his dad.  We took Joanna and Karen to Bellevue and the Family History Discovery Center.  They really enjoyed it and they are both excited to start doing some family history and getting some names ready for the Temple.  The Temple is still closed so they had to take pictures and look at the Temple from outside the fence.

Saturday:   It was supposed to rain today, but it ended up being a beautiful day.  Our plan was to ride the bus to the church, but we missed it by two minutes.  We took another bus that got us close then started walking.  Casey Smith stopped and gave us a ride the rest of the way.  We spent four hours going over the ward roster with the ward council and the missionaries. The clerks will now move out the records of those we know have moved.  The Bishopric will do all the “do not contacts” and will do something with them as per the church guide lines. Even with all our work from before, we still have lots of visits to make.  Now, we will decide which ones we will visit and which ones the Elders will visit in our area and the Elder Sisters and Skyway A will do the same. All the missionaries have been working on this for years so we are glad something is now getting done.   After that meeting we walked to the Acosta’s to check on a few things and ended up helping Sun Shine try to get her keys out of the trunk.  She locked them in. We walked home to get tools, then, we had to leave, but Richelle’s boyfriend got the back seat out and found them. We did get Estrella to watch the training video so she can now volunteer at the school.  It was in English so not sure how much she understood, but it’s done.  The lesson for Princes Joy went well.  We had Dylan Sablon there so he could teach her in Cebano.  After the lesson he explained to Sister Acosta about Priesthood blessings and she wanted a blessing for Eldrex, so we took care of that.  Bro. Sablon did the blessing in Cebano so Sister Acosta could understand it.  After the lesson Reymark and Eleazar wanted to play basketball, so the Elders played with them until time for them to go.

Sunday:    The rain is back.  We started off with a text from Skyway A asking if we could contact someone about a ride to church.  We did even though we didn’t have room in the pick-up.  He never responded.  We picked up our usual group and went to church.  It is different with so many Acostas gone to the Philippines for the grandmother’s funeral, but at least the ones that came to church, stayed all three hours.  Since Joyce only had Princes Joy in her class, Brother Munson, the YM President, decided to join the Primary class for lesson time with Princes Joy’s brothers, Eleazar and Reymark.  We were not long into the lesson when the Bishopric came in to ordain Eleazar to a Priest in the Aaronic Priesthood so that he can baptize Princes Joy next month.  They also set apart Remark as the President of the Deacon’s Quorom, since he is the only deacon.  We also went and got Estrella and Sunshine out of Relief Society so Sunshine could be set apart as the Relief Society Assistant.  Now, they just need to get a calling for Estrella.  After all that we only had 15 minutes left of class time, so Princes Joy voted to finish doing the plays that we had started doing a couple weeks ago.  It was fun to see the YM Presidency and the Bishopric all in costume doing our plays with Princess, Reymark, and Eleazar.  It was a good Sunday.  After church, Karen came over and ate dinner with us and then Joyce and Karen did Karen’s  homework from the Hope Gospel Mission.  It was three pages of questions from the Old Testament and reminded Joyce how much she loves the Old Testament.  It was delightful!  We got to face time with three families and talk to Mom and Dad and that was our Sunday.

Hope you all have a good week.  We love and miss you.  Art and Joyce