Feb. 1-7   Week 5

                                  There is no joy in Seattle, the Seahawks have struck out.

 We went to church on Sunday.  I don’t know if it was because of the Super Bowl, but it wasn’t hard to find a place to sit.   We stopped by to pick up Mary, but she had spent the night in the E.R. with her leg and she was still in bed.  After we came home we listened to the fireworks go off every time the Seahawks scored.  We knew they had lost because we didn’t hear any the last 2 min.  (I had been checking the score once in a while).  Our nice weather is over for the next 10 days.  Rain is in the forecast and much cooler.

We met a new sister in ward Sunday, Fely Baluca.  Her daughter was here a month ago and asked the Elders to work with her mom to get her active again.  (See what an influence you kids have on your parents)  Fely is a sweetheart, working two jobs to survive, but we will have her and her brother and sister (who live with her) to dinner this week and the Elders will teach them all.  The sister and the brother are not members, so say a little prayer for all of us…

Monday we fed the Elders in our area. We needed to get a few things to feed them so while we were shopping Joyce gave out a pass along card.  We fed them the chilled strawberry soup.  It really is pretty good.  It’s like a strawberry smoothie that you eat with a spoon.  They gave us a lot of helpful ideas and asked us to visit a few people they have worked with.  We were going to go to the temple tomorrow with more missionaries, but the office said they didn’t need us to drive so we are taking a sister to the doctor for the Elders.  Elder Tan is still waiting for a visa so he can go to Tiawan.   Keep him in your prayers.  The ward is doing a 40 day fast now for missionary work.  Someone in the ward will be fasting each day for the next 40 days.  We fasted on Tuesday and, if you want to join us, we are fasting again on the 12^th. 

We took the sister, Nola Faka’iloatonga, to the doc. today and after they saw her they called an ambulance and took her to the E.R.  Her daughter was with the kids so we didn’t know if she could get to the hospital so we followed the ambulance there.  Her daughter did show up later.  She is from Tonga, so she goes to the Tongan Branch.   Her two daughters that live with her are less active members that go to our ward, but they haven’t been to church in a long time.  They have a broken front step so we are going to Lowes and get some nails and a hammer so we can fix it.  Finally, something that Art feels comfortable doing.  We left the hospital and decided to go to the N.A.A.M. since it was close.

  After several detours due to a house fire we got there to find out it is closed on Monday and Tuesday.  The office told us we could go to the temple so we made a trip home for our clothes and went to the temple. After the session, we walked around the temple and took some pictures of the flowers that are out.  Definitely not Idaho.  We made a quick stop at Desert Book and then hit the going home traffic.  It is such a treat to be on the freeways between 4 and 6.

 Wednesday was our District training meeting.  We spent a couple of hours there with more role playing.  The mission is pushing hard for members to become more involved in missionary work.  Our ward is very supportive but some wards in the stake are having a hard time getting members involved, especially the priesthood.  After this meeting we rode to Kent with the Sr. sister missionaries in our ward and went to a meeting with the all the Sr. missionaries in the mission.  There are 3 companionships not counting the office staff.  We are the only couple. The other two companionships are sisters.  The mission is concerned because some of the Sr. are going home in April and they have no one to replace them.  The office is already two couples short so they had to pull in a couple that are doing a family history mission.

Thursday we spent the morning doing a service project with the missionaries in our ward.  We put bags on doors (like scouting for food), for one of the food banks in the area.  We will go back next week and pick them up.  They have all kinds of rules on where to deliver so we had to keep track of the addresses.  We were in a nice neighborhood by Lake Washington.   It is one of the few neighborhoods in our area that doesn’t get food from the food bank. 

Senior Sisters Harrison and Chamberlen

Elder Spilbury and Russell

           

 In the afternoon we went to the N.A.A.M. for a training tour.  They are very excited to have us start an indexing program.  Some of the volunteers do it now but they want to expand it, so more can be done on records for black people.  They are in need of more computers so if you have any ideas on how to get some let us know.  The two they have now were donated by the church.

We stopped by on our way home to check on Mary.  She is still having problems with her leg.  We are going by tomorrow evening to teach her again.  In the evening we met with all the missionaries in the ward and the Ward Mission Leader.  This is a good meeting to get assignments and make sure we are not going over the same ground.  All they assigned us to do is keep knocking on doors. There are too many members in our area that nothing is known about them to make specific assignments.  We are going around to the sisters who have birthdays and taking them some cookies and hot pot pads, thanks to PhyllisJ.  The R. S. said this would be a big help. Our ward is too big for them to attempt this.  The Sr. sisters will do their area and we will do ours. We have called ahead when we have a phone # but have found that most are wrong or they can’t speak English.

 We went to our class Fri. morning and then shopping so we can feed the Elders on Monday.  We invited the Spanish speaking Elders so we will have seven of them.  While at Wal-Mart we ran into the young man who we met the first week we were here and he told us he is getting baptized the 1^st part of March, so we were pretty excited.  We will try to attend his baptism in Federal Way.  His name is Jeremiah Foalima and he is so excited to become a member.  We had an appointment to teach Mary after her dinner, but she had left when we got there.

Sat. morning we went to W.W.  We go to a different class each week so we will met different people.  After lunch we hit the streets.  We had a few birthday visits to do close by our apartment so we walked to them and stopped at some of the members we were looking for on our way to make the birthday visits. We had several not home and 2 not interested but we had a good visit with them and invited them to church.  Diona Vergara wasn’t home, but her daughter was very nice and friendly when she found out who we were. Art asked if they would like Home Teachers and Visiting Teachers, she surprised us by saying “Yes.”  It has rained most of the week and lots today so by the time we got back home we were pretty wet. 

In fact one family, the Bacus’s let us in because we looked so wet.  The girl’s in the family just got baptized and they were so cute when they found out we were missionaries and there for Sunshine’s birthday.  Another lady, Sonia Swatack, won’t come to church because she’s afraid she’ll be robbed while she is gone, but she did give us a piece of cake and she invited us to come back and visit.  She liked the hot pot pads.  On the way home we found some real cool churches and a couple of place we want to try to eat at.  I won’t even take a guess at the names or what is on the menu, we just know they are not McDonalds or Subway.  

Here is your assignment for the week:  One of our purposes in life is to help each other understand and rely on the teaching and atonement of Jesus Christ, qualify for the blessings of the temple, and prepare ourselves, our families and others for eternal life with our Father in Heaven.   Who are the others and how do we do this?   

Finally got some pic on the wall

   Love Elder and Sister Knowles     

  P.S. Don’t forget the 12^th!

     

                                                                             WEEK 4                                       Jan 25-31

Missionary work is like hitting in baseball, if you knock on 10 doors and only find 3 at home it has been a great day.

       We went to church today with Mary so it was interesting again.  It was ward conference so all the stake officers were there. They showed us a new church program that is on service, but it is only available in a few cities in the west, Seattle being one of them.  After church a baptism was held for a young girl so Mary wanted to stay for that.  The Bishop had to tell her to be quiet during the prayer.  She just loves to show her excitement.    She loved the cookies they served after the service.  We made an appointment to take her to the DI tomorrow, and teach her another lesson. 

Mary

   We taught Mary the second lesson on the Plan of Salvation and another short lesson on prayer and the Godhead, then to the D.I. and out for lunch.  There was a Wendy’s close by so we wheeled her over there and fed her. After we dropped her off we headed up to the top of our area just below I-90.  Naturally we got lost again and ended up in Seattle and out of our mission again.  There are about 90 new members the ward just received because of a boundary change and none of them are active.  After we found the address we were looking for we knocked on the door and got no answer.  We tried one more with the same results.  By then it was getting dark so we went home.  You don’t want to be out in our area in the dark.  We will try on Saturday to see if we can find them home.  We have decided that if two strangers knocked on our door we wouldn’t answer it so why should we expect other people to do it.  Next time we are taking cookies with us to see if that will help. 

The Benson's

      Tuesday is our p-day and we were able to go to the temple.  We got lost again, this time it was from some bad direction someone gave us.   We took a car load of missionaries with us.  They get to go once each year.  After the temple they all went to Desert Book.  That is a hot spot for missionaries. The Benson's met us there and we ran into Karla Woodhouse there.  She works in the temple.
      When we got home we decided to move our bed into the back room, where it will be a little safer and have less noise from the street and sidewalk.  We had to clean and do laundry so it was an easy move.
       In the evening we had a meeting with the bishop, so we made a quick stop on our way to try and find another member, there was a light on in the house, but no answer again. 

Washington Seattle Temple

   Zone meeting was on Wednesday for 2 hours with more role playing.  I thought that was over when we left the MTC, but we did get a good quote from a G.A. who visited the mission last month. 
THERE IS NO COMFORT IN YOUR GROWTH ZONE AND NO GROWTH IN YOUR
                                                         COMFORT ZONE

     Thursday we went to W.W. then to Columbia City and walked around.  It is a small town that Seattle has taken over.  There are several addresses there that we are checking on so we knocked on doors all afternoon with the same results, nobody answers.  We did talk to one lady who was out working in her flower beds and we founds a set of stairs we had to climb. Only 81 so not too bad. At night we went to our training at the N.A.A.M.  We are going to take a tour next week so we can watch how they give tours.

    

Here we are working the streets.  Joyce has I-90 behind her.  That is the top of our mission.  This is the area that was just put into our ward so we know nothing about who lives here except that they don't come to church.  It is a long way from the church house and most people don't have cars and the public transportation doesn't come close to the church.  I'm checking out the baseball scores. Go Braves! Oh I forgot, season hasn't started yet.. Not really, we use the phone for directions to the next address.
         Friday morning we went to an institute class for old people, with the Benson’s, then out to lunch with them.  Knocking on doors hasn’t been too productive so we are now calling those who we have phone # for.  We have tried this before and found that most are wrong # or we can’t pronounce the names. We did stop by to check on Mary (she was to have her teeth pulled this week) but she was gone and she didn’t go to the dentist this week.  Sometimes she gets confused.  The move to the back of the apartment has solved the problem of the street noise, but now we can hear what is going on with our neighbors.  We are not used to apartment life. 

       Sorry for how long this letter gets, but we use it as our journal.  By the way, silver stars to all those who have written to us or called.  Jake gets a gold star because he wrote us a story about keeping the commandments.  Here is your assignment for this week.  In D. & C. 4 what are we laying up in store and when we knock what is it the will be opened to us? We could use your thoughts on this.  We have been working on memorizing this section since we quote it before each meeting.

       Saturday we went to a R.S. craft day at the church. They were making Valentines and eating.  After a quick stop at home we hit the streets.  We did much better today.  Of the 6 addresses we stopped at, we made contact with 5 of them and we walked all over the area to find that one of the addresses we were looking for didn't exist.  We did stop at a store to buy some popcorn and talked to the clerk about the church.  Not interested.

     That has been our week.

                                                                              Love Elder and Sister Knowles

 

Our Place

Mt. Rainier

THE TOP OF OUR BUILDING

Missionary work is 90% spirtual and the other half is physical WEEK 3

 We had an interesting Sunday.  We were asked to pick up a less active member and take her to church.  She is handicapped and in a wheelchair (she was burned in a fire ) and hasn't been to church in a long time.  She would clap whenever they sustained someone and yelled thank you after each speaker.  In R.S. she wanted to sing a solo, answer all the questions, read when they asked for a volunteer, and during S.S. she started talking about how we are reincarnated.  After church she wanted us to take her out for chicken.  We told her if we did they would send us home.  She was pretty upset about that so we are taking her to lunch on Tuesday.  Sunday night we attended a mission devotional where they have new converts ( only a few months or less from their baptism) bear their testimony.  It was really good, and they also have a mission choir sing.  It is pretty impressive to watch and listen to a group of missionaries sing Called to Serve.  The Bensen's (a couple we knew from the temple) were waiting for us so we sat by them.  They are on a church education mission.

     Mon. We were trying to find the D.I. and ended up by the temple in Bellevue.  That is out of our mission so I guess we broke another rule.  The only way we know how to get to Federal Way also takes us out of the mission so we break that rule a lot.  We fed the Elders in our ward Monday night and they showed us how to get there and not go out of the mission.  There were five of them.  It was interesting since we only have four chairs and two bar stools, but we made it work.  We are just getting to know them and two are being transferred tomorrow.  I guess that happens ever 6 weeks so we better get used to it.   One is waiting for a visa so he can go to Taiwan.  I thing he is going to the same mission the Schwieder's (David & Gwen) are in.

 

There are a few Seahawk fans here.   Joyce asked what the 12 was for.  She thought it was just Caden's favorite #

   Tue. We drove to Renton and joined Weight Watchers.  Art is tired of his pants being too tight around the waist.  We took Mary to KFC for lunch.  Did we mention the she is black and very loud.  She is always asking us for money.  When we pulled in to pick her up there were 4 pretty ruff looking guys there, but they were very kind once they found out what we were there for.  We do work in a rough part of Seattle. After lunch we drove to Federal Way to go to the D.I. This time we made it there with only one small detour.  After the D.I. we went to Wal-Mart and while we were shopping a young man came up to us and said he would like the missionaries to come see him and he wanted a Book of Mormon.  They told us in the MTC that this would happen, but we didn't think it would be our 2nd week here.  Won't his friend feel silly when they find out that he contacted the missionaries because they never invited him to hear the message of the restoration.   He said he has friends who are members.  Don't let this happen to you. We sent his information to the mission office so they can send the Elders to him.  Today was the first day that we were able to see Mt. Rainier when we weren't driving so we took a few pictures.  It is impressive when you see it on a clear day.  Don't know how your weather has been, but we had sunshine and 52 degrees today.  When it rains it is cold, in the 30s, but the clear days have been nice.

 

view from the top of our apartment

  Wed.   District meeting today in Skyway.  We had to do more role playing, but we did learn a way to talk to people who are walking their dog or dogs.  I think Seattle is the dog capital of the world.   They just had transfers yesterday so it was a bit unorganized so we fit right in.  We had to run a few errands after the meeting.  We needed to get some cards, refill a few prescriptions and mail some packages.  Lots of waiting in line.  At 4:00 we taught Mary the lesson on the restoration and taught her how to pray.   She really likes Joyce.  I think we are making some progress with her.  This is the first time we have met with her that she didn't ask us for money.  We invited the care giver to sit in with us, but she was cooking dinner and said she would next time.  

     In the evening we had our weekly meeting with the bishop and all the missionaries in the ward.  He gave us a few names to check on after we talk to the ward clerk and find out if they are still in the ward.  Just to give you an idea what our ward is like, there our 91 members serving in callings and 710 without callings.  Some of those no longer are in the ward and that is what we are trying to help with.  The bishops action report was over 20 pages.  

      Thur. Another day of running around trying  to get set up.  We went to the mission office in Maple Valley and picked up a few things that we needed and then did a little shopping in Renton for out apartment.   I think we now have our apartment like we want it except for the shower curtain the leaks onto the floor.  We did our training at the Northwest African American Museum from 6:30 until 9:00 and then home.  We did find a few nice places to eat ethic food and the people in our training group gave us more ideas for places to visit.   They were excited to find out that Joyce was a school teacher since they have a lot of school groups come through and nobody knows what to do with them.  We also found that no one walks to their car alone when it is dark no matter where you are at.  

      We are still trying to get with the ward clerk to check on the ward list, but he doesn't return our calls.  

Seattle at night in the background

Mt. Rainier in the background

Fri.  We started off our day with a trip to the N.A.A.M. (the museum) for a tour of the next exhibit and a meeting with the artist that did the exhibit.  It was on 150 years after the 13th amendment and slavery.  She is kind of an angry lady and the display was kind of dark.  The director told us she was not going to allow the young school kids to see it.  Thank goodness.
    We were able to set up a meeting with our ward mission leader for tomorrow and with our ward clerk on Sunday.  Those two meetings are the ones we have been waiting for so we can get some names of members to go visit.  We also are going to meet the Bensen's tomorrow for lunch.  There are not too many Sr. couples in our mission so we have to stick together.
Sat.  We met with our ward mission leader in the morning and we have a meeting set up with the ward clerk tomorrow, so that now we have been given some names and addresses we can start to visit.  We drove to Auburn and met the Bensen's there and went to lunch with them.  It was cloudy and rainy, but 61 degrees.  

      We are looking for a little help. Not money or anything like that.  We need some stories about when keeping the commandments or a commandment has blessed your life.  If you could email them to us it would be a great help, also remember, those who don't respond may get dropped from the email list. Anyway we love and miss you all. 

                                                                                      Elder and Sister Knowles or Art and Joyce

We do miss the grand kids a little

I know we're lost, but we're making good time WEEKS 1 & 2

     We made it to the MTC and finished our five days there.  Lots of role playing and information overload, but me met some very nice people. This is a picture of our District.  The Young's are going to Hawaii, The Merrill's are going to Rochester, NY and The Manning's are going to cover missions from northern CA. to Alaska as a mission doctor adviser and nurse.
 

Our District
 Us, Young's,Sis. Bennion, Merrill's and the Manning's

Our District with Sis. Fisher

Our apartment at the MTC

After the MTC experience we drove to Heber and spent the night with Josh, Rachel, Maddox, Elayna and Haley.

We drove home on Saturday with a stop at the Lowthers.

We packed the pickup with all but the kitchen sink and made a few more visits.

Around 3:00 we started our trip and drove as far as Ontario, OR. where we spent the night and attended church there the next morning.  After church we drove to Ellenburg, WA and spent the night there.  The weather and roads were very good with only a little fog to deal with.

   

     On Monday we arrived at our apartment and checked in.  The mission office had it fixed very nice with furniture.  The zone leaders live in the same complex so we let them know we were there and then we let the Mission President know we made it.  We had a dinner appointment with them for 5:00 so after we unpacked we headed to their home and got to experience rush hour traffic in Seattle.  It took us one and a half hours to go about 20 miles.
     We spent most of the week shopping for the apartment. About $800.00 worth for food and a few things to make it nicer for us.  We did meet with Bishop White and attend a training meeting at the office.  The dinner with the mission President and his family was nice.

Our Area

On top of our apartment complex

Dinner with Pres. and Sis. Eaton

Seattle

MTC here we come

   

Beauty Queens

We just  finished our last week at home and tomorrow we will head to the MTC.  We have been going crazy doing the last minute shopping and cleaning and packing.  Also, squeezing in New Years.  The kids came over and we played some games and one last ride on the RZR.    Art has been sick for a few days so that has slowed him down.
   Tonight Pres. Ames came over to set us apart as missionaries then we will leave in the morning.

Thanks Allison for dinner