Spanaway - September 26, 2011

Lots of good stuff happened this week:

 

We've been struggling to find new, as always, and since almost none of our peeps are home during the day anyway, we started to take our bikes out and just scout out neighborhoods for the Latinos. We've been blessed with some really great potentials! We biked around for probably a good 6 hours this past week and we got to talk with 5 or so Hispanics, but more than half of them are interested in talking with us! We also had another interested part member family fall down out of the sky at our feet, and we're taking them on a church tour on Thursday!

 

Mari has been making a lot of progress! We did that fast with her on Saturday, which was interesting because we had a mission wide fast on Sunday too, but it all worked out. She came to sacrament meeting even though she was feeling sick and had a great excuse, and as far as I know she enjoyed it! The whole Sunday was missionary themed and President and Sister Weaver came and spoke! It was all pretty fantastic!

 

I don't know if I've told you, but there's a media initiative coming here to the Tacoma-Seattle area. Starting next week there will be mormon.org commercials playing on the major networks, billboards up by the freeways, etc. We're way excited to see how it will affect the work. At the very least it will generate a lot of questions and we will hopefully be seeing a lot more member referrals!

 

=)

 

<3

 

Greg

Spanaway - September 19, 2011

Here are some miracles to report: First of all last week before stake conference a member came up to us and told us that he wanted his 12 year old son to have the missionary lessons so he could be baptized! He just finally got custody over him so there shouldn't be any problems there. So we taught him on Sunday and officially put him on date for the 2nd of October! We had to teach him at the church because they live in Kent, which happens to be a bit into the Seattle mission, but they go to church here so we'll baptize him!

We met another man last night in Graham who was actually taught and went to church for 4 weeks when he was living in Seattle, but now he moved down into our mission and we have a lesson scheduled with him in a member's house for Wednesday. Again, that was basically just a miracle that fell out of the sky; God has just been placing people in our path basically, for the which we are very grateful.

While most of our investigators have stopped progressing, Mari is doing fantastic. She obviously has doubts and questions because so much of what she's read with us contradicts what she's firmly believed for most of her life, but she's very open. We were trying to commit her to just pray straight up about the Book of Mormon because that would resolve the concerns she's had, but she told us 'I don't need to do that, because I already know the answer. A better question to ask me would be will I follow through and prepare for a baptism.' The Spirit's always way strong when we teach her and the main thing that's keeping her from putting herself on date is the obstacle of tobacco. But we're going to try and do a fast with her later this week and just do everything we can to help her take that step.

So we also had a fantastic P-day today! We all got together as a Spanish zone, which is something that we're not able to do very often, and we went to the Point Defiance Zoo, up at the very north tip of Tacoma, near the Puget Sound. It was pretty awesome; we saw polar bears swimming right up next to the glass, tigers, falcons, elephants, the whole she-bang, which was pretty legit.

Anyway, love you guys and I hope you have a fantastic week!

Greg

Peace out

Spanaway - September 13, 2011

Well, here's the news: It was transfers and someone was in line to get transferred: Elder L went to Shelton, and I got Elder R, who just spent the first two transfers of his mission in Shelton.

 

He is from West Jordan Utah, sings bass, and has a sweet testimony. I'm way excited to work with him this transfer and we've already seen the miracles coming in.

 

We went tracting after our transfer meeting yesterday and Edwin, a 14 year old kid, got permission from his mom and let us come in so we could watch Finding Faith in Christ with him. He loved it and we started talking about baptism, and he committed to be baptized on the 2nd of October. We'll need to work with his Mom to get permission, but we're way excited to work with him. And I'll add that it was the very first door that answered to us in this transfer.

 

Afterwards we went back out to work and we found another kid (18-19ish), JJ, who wanted to come down to the church so we took him down then and there to the church. He isn't on date, but we're not going to give up on him.

 

Last week on Thursday we finally saw Mari, and we had a way powerful lesson with her and she committed to be baptized on the 25th. She came to church (stake conference) and we had a broadcast from Salt Lake that was legit. She has some issues with a couple things she didn't like and wants to wait on baptism, but she's still way open and as long as we follow the Spirit we'll be fine.

 

She doesn't like the idea of tithing, though that's just because she doesn't understand it very well so we can take care of that. President Packer also talked about a story from when he was in the military, and Mari was anti-war even before she joined the Jehova's Witnesses; she told us that she believes that it's wrong to kill kill people and even though we obey the laws of the land, when they conflict with God's laws, His laws take precedence. So admittedly, it's a legitimate concern and we're not entirely sure how to help her. Obviously she just needs to gain a witness of the Bood of Mormon. We're thinking of sharing the story of Captain Moroni with her too, but we'll see.

 

Mari still says that she feels a fire, a joy whenever we're over and teaching her, and says she knows we're full of the Holy Ghost, so it'll be a matter of time before she gets baptized. She just wants to wait until she's more sure.

 

I'm way excited to serve in Spanaway! It's hard work, but we have faith that baptisms will come, and more importantly our brothers and sisters coming unto God by accepting that first ordinance.

 

I hope you all are well, y ¡siempre recuerden que les amo! Sean fieles, y para siempre Dios esté con Uds.

 

Con cariño,

Greg

Spanaway - September 6, 2011

Hope you all had a happy Labor Day! We certainly did; we played some Ultimate, and then we did a couple go cart races, which was way fun. Finally we checked out Guitar Center in north Tacoma and I got to play around on their keyboards for a while :)

 

As far as investigators, we had a great miracle early last week. Guillermo decided that it was his time and put himself on date to be baptized this coming weekend. We went through all the baptism interview questions with him and the only thing he needs is to get married. Unfortunately, we talked with both of them about marriage yesterday and they don't feel ready to do it yet, even though they've been living together for several years.  But they committed to start reading the Book of Mormon together daily to seek personal revelation on what they should do, so just keep praying for them. It was a miracle when he decided to get baptized, and we can expect another miracle as they choose to get married.

 

Mari, as far as we know, fell off the face of the Earth. We weren't able to see her last week and when we tried to call, it went straight to her voicemail so her phone was probably off and she didn't get the texts we sent. We're wondering if maybe something happened with her mom, but we'll see and we'll keep trying to contact her.

 

We had a great church tour this week with someone named Carmen. English missionaries had been teaching her brother and weren't making any progress so they finally referred them to us. It can be really frustrating when you find out that English missionaries are poaching investigators that should have been referred to you. A problem is that the potential investigators don't like saying 'no' so they'll agree to take the lessons in English just because they're talking to English missionaries, but when we go up and ask them, they admit that it would be better in Spanish. Ah well, the two cases that came up in our area this week got resolved so it should be good now.

 

Keep up all the great stuff you do! ¡Espero que tengan una maravillosa semana! También ¡ojalá que disfruten el sol que tienen allá! A member of our ward just got back from a month long trip down in California, including San José and he said it was sunny y que hacía calorcito :)  (Translation:  I hope you have a marvelous week.  Also, I hope you enjoy the sun that you have there.)

 

¡Les amo, y cuidense! (I love you and take care.)

 

Greg <3