Week 86 - Mission Tour

Hello everyone!! This week has been really great! Somehow we've been pretty busy while still being in quarantine.

Starting on Tuesday we drove an hour down to South Hill to record Elder Johnson and another sister from the mission performing The Prayer for the Why I Believe that happened Sunday night. So we were there for 6 hours just getting audio recordings and video footage. It was pretty fun.

On Wednesday the first counselor in our mission presidency, President Winn, and his wife came to Silverdale to meet with the zone. And basically it was a cool little devotional pump up thingy where he used a little bit of an object lesson with basketball and it was about not being a quitter. So it was really great to get that pump up to keep pushing forward from within the walls of our apartments.

Thursday we drove up to Port Angeles to drop off the mail that Winns gave us for the missionaries up there, and then we also got haircuts from a sister up there who cuts hair. So that took a really long time and was really fun. It was nice to be able to see PA again.

On Friday we had a mission tour with the first counselor of the area presidency, Elder Whiting. It was a big meeting with the entire mission over the zoom app. That was probably the highlight of the week. There was a lot that he talked to us about and inspired us to do. He also gave us some assignments to memorize scriptures for each of the lesson points for each lesson, write a page on an alternate introduction to the Book of Mormon and talk about what it means to us. The last thing that he asked us to do was to do a very deep dive on one Christlike attribute while we are here in quarantine, and the attribute that I've felt impressed to work on is that of charity and love. So if anyone has any ideas on how to develop that attribute from my current situation, it would be much appreciated.

Saturday was really great. We got to have interviews with President Leishman, and I also got to mow the lawn which is something I haven't done in a very long time.

Sunday night we had the Why I Believe devotional that was really amazing. You'll all have to watch it if you didn't get a chance to. You can find it on the Facebook page that we have.

And throughout all this craziness with being so busy we had a pretty amazing miracle. Two weeks ago we got a referral to a lady named Sheri. She actually referred herself which doesn't ever really happen all that often. So this week she reached out to us again to set up an appointment with us. Then right after that happened we got a text from a Utah number. It was Sheri's member friend. He told us that he had already been teaching her the basics of the missionary lessons, that she has been living the word of wisdom for the past 2 weeks, she's been reading the Book of Mormon, and she's even started to do food storage!! It was incredible! And then on top of that he tells us that they set a goal for her to be baptized at the end of the month. It was a miracle. That's the only way to describe it. So through the week we were able to teach her a few times, introduce fellowship, and do a virtual church service with her. It's been amazing. So we're pretty excited to continue working with her for this week.

So that's the big updates from this week. Love you all!
-Elder Smith

The zone with the Winns

Week 85

Hello everyone!!

This week was really good. We had another virtual zone conference where the trainings were just pre recorded and sent to us via Facebook. We also made a few different videos for our Facebook page Come Unto Christ in Silverdale so those will probably be posted throughout the week. On Sunday we had a Facebook Live video, and so we're hoping that it will help out the page since it's been on the decline a bit lately. This next Sunday we will be having a Why I Believe devotional that will be live on all 15 of the mission's Facebook pages. So hopefully that will help things as well.

We were able to teach the Depretto family a little this week, and Rachel has been out of town the entire week. We didn't have a lot of success with reaching out to people this week. Hopefully this week will be better. Hope you all are doing well! Love you!

-Elder Smith

Pictures:
-The different ways in which we teach lessons over the phone
-Recording stuff for Facebook
-Exchanges with P12KBI (Poulsbo 1st and 2nd, Kingston, Bainbridge Island)

Day 54 of Quarantine

Hello everyone!! This has been a pretty eventful week, at least for quarantine, and so that makes it a good week!

To start off, we got in contact with our investigator, Rachel, this week. It was kind of crazy, because she missed our first appointment on Tuesday, but then on Wednesday evening we thought to give her a text to see how she was doing. And because of that little bit of inspiration at that moment, we were able to provide her with comfort since she had been having a pretty awful day. By the end of our conversation, she was talking about wanting to get baptized, so we had a lesson set up for Thursday. We were planning on answering some more of her questions, and putting her on date for baptism. Unfortunately, she never answered her phone when we called, and for the next few days she never texted us back when we would send her messages. We were a little frustrated. Then last night we thought to text her Happy Mother's Day. And she replied! But she also didn't know who was texting. After a little bit we found out that she got a new phone so she didn't have our contact info and that she was in Idaho now with family. Hopefully we'll be able to keep teaching her over the phone this week.

Also this week we decided to go through all the people in Area Book again, and on about the fourth call we talked with a guy named Anthony. We had a pretty good conversation with him about the Book of Mormon and where it came from. His biggest concern was that it wasn't in the Bible, so we'll be trying to call him again this week to resolve that concern.

That same day we were supposed to have our carpets cleaned, so we had moved literally everything off the carpets and vacuumed so that it could be cleaned. So we spent that day at the church which was pretty fun. Unfortunately the carpet cleaner guy's truck that had just been repaired the day before broke down and so he didn't get to clean very much of the carpet. So it was a bit of a disaster for him since he was doing the job so he could pay his next housing payment. Plus he lived north of Seattle which is on the opposite side of the Sound from us. So he should be coming back sometime to finish the job though. So all our furniture is in the kitchen for now.

That's most of the exciting stuff that happened this week. I hope you're all doing okay whether you're in quarantine or not. Love you all!
-Elder Smith

Elder Johnson and I doing our emailing.

Day 594 - May the Fourth be with you

Hello again! With transfers, this week has dragged on to be super long. On Wednesday we got to transfers and exchanged luggage into cars and left super quick. It was awesome how fast it was! So now I'm here in Silverdale with Elder Johnson, and things have been pretty good up here.

Yesterday on Sunday we were able to give a recent convert the Aaronic Priesthood and help him administer the sacrament to his family for the first time. It was a pretty cool experience, and by the sound of it he's had an amazing journey to get to this point. So now we'll be teaching him the recent convert lessons as well as teaching his two sons so they can get baptized as well.

We're working with a few other solid people, but I don't know a whole lot about them just yet. I should know a little bit more by next week though. Love you all! Hope you have a great week!

-Elder Smith