Spanaway - October 3, 2011

Hi there!

 

I did really enjoy conference; I didn't get too much out of the first session because I was watching in Spanish and was too busy worrying about Juanito not showing up so I wasn't really able to concentrate. But then after that first session he finally came and we baptized him there at the stake center after the second session. That was just a way stressful day; we were late in the morning because we missed our exit, went over the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and had to pay the toll to get back on the Tacoma side. It was a relief when it was over.

 

As far as talks that stood out to me, I really liked President Uchtdorf's on Saturday about how even though we're so small compared to all of God's creations, we are important and we mean everything to God. Also, in the very last session, I loved the talk about choice and swimming in the shallow water. In the end, there are only two choices: following Christ, and following the devil. I bet it would be interesting to review all the activities we do every week and consider which of those choices we're making as we do that activity. Also, I'm planning on reading the talk about the Book of Mormon and how it clarifies Bible teachings with our investigators. 

 

Mari has continued to make a lot of progress. She couldn't find her Book of Mormon for a few days so she instead read about halfway through the Principles of the Gospel book. We were way surprised when she pulled out her notes and asked us questions to clarify stuff about Michael the Archangel... haha. But she's solid and wants to get baptized as soon as she quit smoking. We're not sure what more we can do for her; we've fasted with her, given her a blessing, given her cinnamon sticks to use instead of cigarettes, looked in the church addiction literature based off of A.A for ideas, etc. I think she'll do it though; she's made so much progress just from studying the Book of Mormon and once she comes to church on a more regular basis she'll find that strength she needs.

 

Sadly, most of our other investigators have either fallen off the face of the planet or they continue attending church but have no desire to be baptized. But we'll continue looking for those prepared :)

 

Les amo muchisimo y espero que esten bien. Sigan firmes!

 

Greg

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

Spanaway, WA -- August 22, 2011

We had a fantastic week! Gregorio finally accepts the Book of Mormon as the word of God and understands that he needs to get baptized. We had a powerful lesson on the Book of Mormon and got on our knees right there and prayed with them and just waited. We were literally down on the ground for a good 15 minutes. But he felt the influence of the Holy Ghost and knows the Book of Mormon is the word of God. He's still hesitant about a solid baptism date but he's reading Alma 34 where it talks about not procrastinating and is praying about a baptismal date. Concepción still has a lot of doubts, but she'll come along too.

Mari is working on quitting smoking; she just wants to finish off the cigarettes she has right now before she starts. But we gave her some things that should help her make those steps. On Saturday we watched Finding Faith in Christ with her, and we feel she's willing to come to church now, except that she's usually having to do something for her family, either watch grandkids or take care of her mom with dementia.

On Tuesday we had a sweet miracle: Our dinner appointment cancelled so we called a member so that we could eat, and that member happened to be working with a less active member who overheard our conversation and offered to feed us. So we met this less active that we'd never even heard of before who we wouldn't have been able to find because her address was wrong in the directory, and what's more, her husband-boyfriend is a nonmember that was taught by missionaries a year ago and likes coming to church when he can. We've been trying to set up tours and appointments with them but so far they've always been called in to work, but we have another appointment tonight which will hopefully go through.

The meeting with Elder Perry was pretty legit. Elder Clayton, one of the presidents of 70 came too, and we certainly had a spiritual feast about study, companionship unity, and stories from Elder Perry's missionary and military service. We also talked about Less Active work and using Less Actives to bump up our lessons each week to 20. It was really weird to see the Seattle missionaries too. At one point Elder Perry asked our mission presidents how many lessons each companionship taught each week on average. Seattle said '6 or 7' (I know, we were all shocked when we heard that). President Weaver is still really new and didn't know the exact number but said jokingly 'A whole lot more than that,' and to an apostle! The entire room just busted out laughing.

Hmmm, what more? We had some fun on P-day today by playing some board games. Usually we just get together with the zone so there were 5-6 of us that played Godswar Risk (a pretty fun version of risk that involves mythology).

Anyway, love you guys! I hope all is well!

Elder Greg

Spanaway, WA -- August 15, 2011

Hello Family!

 

All is going well. This was a great week for us all! The Spanish zone broke a record in that together between the 8 companionships we found 31 new investigators! We were blessed with 3, which is the most we've had in a week since I got here. We gave a church tour to Ricardo and Kimberly, a young couple from Honduras who are cousins to one of our less active members. We also had a miracle when a member brought a friend, Juan, to church, though seeing him will be a bit difficult because he's a truck driver and technically lives in Yakima (way far away, plus out of our mission).

 

Mari is doing awesome; we tried to bring fellowship over one time, but we felt like it made her feel way uncomfortable. She's more or less willing to come, but also has to take care of her mom with dementia a lot of Sundays. But she's been reading in the Book of Mormon, and she committed last night to start working again on quitting smoking, so we'll be working hard with her to do all those things so that she'll be more able to feel the Spirit so that she'll gain a spiritual testimony of the Book of Mormon so that she feels the desire to be baptized by someone holding the proper priesthood authority of God, thus making her first life-saving ordinance and covenant with our Heavenly Father. But, all things step by step, line upon line, etc. :)

 

The bishop is in Spain this month on vacation with his grandkids and our ward clerk is being deployed to Iraq, so it'll be intersting to see what happens with the ward in the coming weeks. I'm not trying to say that the leadership is incapable or anything, but the ward itself is still relatively young and most people are converts and just don't have very much experience. But it'll be interesting to see how everything works out. :)

 

I'm super excited to hear from Elder Perry this Friday! We have zone conference next week too, so it'll just be a spiritual feast!

 

Hmmm, what else? Did I tell you about the Paella I had a few weeks ago? Before bishop left, he cooked us the national dish of Spain (he's a chef), which consists of Rice (which turns yellow because you use saffron), shrimp, mussels, octopus, chicken, etc. It was the first time I'd ever eaten mussel or octopus like that, and it was absolutely delicious! I haven't eaten anything too weird yet, but my papa Elder Liechty and my new little brother Elder Wilde ate menudo last night, which is that soup made out of cow stomach.

 

I love you guys and I hope all is well! Say hi to my Berkeley friends for me and tell them that I love them!

 

Les amo, y ¡que tenga una superchida semana! ¡Guarden la fe!

 

Con amor,

Greg