New Year from the West Coast

Well the work in Renton is looking up....

 

This past week with Elder Mitchell was the best that I have had since being transferred to Renton.  Elder Mitchell works hard and goes about missionary work in just about the same way that I do, and so far we have gotten along great.  In this past week we found 5 new investigators, which is usually unheard of in the Spanish branches, and taught several more lessons than we were seeing in the past (thanks to several members bringing friends to the New Year's party and us going about tracting in a more efficient manner).  To answer your question, Mom, Elder Mitchell is from Scottsdale, AZ.

 

So we decided to go out and try and do some new finding methods in our area.  We decided that there would be a lot of Hispanic people that ride the bus, so we called up the mission office and got bus cards. We get on the bus and my companion decides for us to split up to we can contact more people. I go to the back of the bus while he stays in the front (don't worry still in sight and sound) and we start contacting.  Lets just say that the back of the bus was a little more shady than the front.  There were seriously people dealing drugs in the back. It amazes me who you will talk to on your mission that you probably wouldn't before the mission.  I don't know the Bible verse, but when Jesus says something to the effect of "the whole need no physician" I guess that hit me a little.  I'm not here on the mission to find people who are whole, but people that need Christ in their lives.

 

It always amazed me to get the viewpoint of other people on who "Mormons" exactly are, and it usually makes me laugh or smile.  We were in the middle of town contacting on a busy street and this guy apparently had made up a song about Mormons and decided to sing it as loud as he could.   just say that the song wasn't really filled with gospel truths or anything that we even believe, and all my companion and I could do was look at each other and smile wondering where he got his information.  I tried to contact him a little but he wasn't very open to listening to anything I had to say about the church, so I just offered him a card.

 

My birthday was great!  I waited and opened your present on the birthday and it is exactly what I had been wanting.  Thank you!  Elder Mitchell found out it was my birthday and took me out to eat lunch, the Hermanas serving in the same branch as us came over and sang me happy birthday and gave me a cake, and to top it off we had a branch party at the church!  This is now the 5th week that I have been serving in this branch and we have already had 3 branch parties.  Talk about crazy!  Really great way for the members to invite friends and family to the church in a "non-threatening" way.  Yes, I did end up getting a cake in the face.  I plan on sending my SD card to Alecia later today with photos.

 

 

  Elder B