Season 10: North Tapps. Episode 5: (_____)

Exchanges with Elder Perkins selfie :D

We had someone trying to visit us yesterday :D This was a dog walking around our apartment complex and it was so friendly.

Howdy Howdy!

Things are going great here around Lake Tapps!

Our pool of investigators is always getting refreshed. We have old ones dropping and leaving us, but we have more coming in! Its wonderful! I am so grateful for the goodness of Heavenly Father. There are so many people prepared and we are so grateful to be used as instruments in find them!

Here are some experiences this week:

While teaching one of our new investigators Victor, we brought by a recent convert with us. It was a really great lesson and Victor had real questions and real intent. The recent convert was even a Stevens Minister at one point just like Victor was. Right now the biggest concern we have for Victor is to make clear that we dont believe in re incarnation haha. Our recent convert basically made it seem like we did, so that will be great to overcome.

We tried to visit another potential named Mike last week, but we were prevented by a scary dog. It was very dark and so I leaned out my window and the dog was following us barking lots. Its eyes reflected green and it was really scary! So we didnt visit him because we didnt want to get bitten by the dog. We came back another day and talked to him and he is very interested! He was wondering when we could come back and was happy to see us. He is a truck driver, so his schedule is very crazy and changes all of the time so scheduling with him will be an adventure.

While on exchanges with Elder Perkins, we were in Fife tracting and knocked on this one mans door. He was African American and asked "Are you Jehova Witness'?" We said no and he invited us right on in. He asked us all of the questions missionaries liked being asked like "What is the difference about your church and other churches?" and "What is The Book of Mormon?" He was SOOO prepared. We met him on Saturday and the Elders had a follow up lesson Yesterday (Monday). He is already at 1 Nephi chapter 8!!! He is so prepared and we are so happy to have left the Surprise Lake Elders with someone super solid.

Yesterday while Elder Nelson and I were tracting, we knock on this womans door to find that she had investigated the chrurch before and she almost got baptized when she was in 3rd grade. She was very willing to meet with us and if her husband is alright with it we will be meeting this Wednesday. Her name is Amy.

The last of many awesome experiences that I will share is that someone who works at the Food Bank we serve at every week accepted an invitation and came to a mission devotional with a member! She is the funniest lady and she gives us so much stuff while at the food bank. Like last week we got this like 4 foot tall teddy bear. We are going to dress him up and call him "Elder Bear." We havent been able to follow up and see how she liked the mission devotional just yet, but it is wonderful that after probably years of missionaries serving at this food bank she is beginning to accept invitations :D

Love you all so much! The work is wonderful. I know that even amidst investigator dropping us that The Lords hand is over those he has chosen (1 Nephi 1:20). Look for the shining rays of light amidst your storms of life and I promise you that your week will go better.

Love you all!

Elder Sumsion

Season 10: North Tapps. Episode 4:

A selife at the end of our exchange with the Assistants on Tuesday.

Another picture from Mission Leadership Council

Howdy! All is well in with Elder Sumsion in Washington. The work is progressing and we are finding more new investigators! Its also tough because a large amount of investigators and potentials are dropping us, but we are finding more than that are dropping us so that is a good thing.

One of the persons we are working with is named John. He is a former musician who has sang in across the country including Utah and has known about the church for a long while. He is a cancer survivor and said we could come back and teach him after the Holidays when we talked to him in early December. We had an amazing lesson with him that went just so super duper solid. As President Eaton says, it was "church video" (which basically means it was a textbook example of what a Preach My Gospel missionary should be teaching like). He said he would be baptized on February 6th if he knew is were true by then. We are excited!

We got to have a couple of exchanges this week. I was with Elder Mousser one of the assistants on Tuesday the Wednesday in North Tapps and in Clarks Creek with Elder Meyer on Friday to Saturday. I love exchanges! They really are an exciting and unique part of missionary work. They are one of the best teaching and learning experiences and are so good! I love them.

On Friday night Elder Meyer and I were trying to find one of their investigators homes while walking around in the cold night at about 7:30pm. It was pretty foggy too and this is near down-town Puyallup. Elder Meyer was a little lost, which in the end turned out to be a very good and inspired thing. We were walking around and saw someone off in the fog. We said "Hi" and introduced our selves. She said she was walking to the bus stop and said we could walk and talk with her. We were walking and talking for about 15 to 20 minutes and we were able to teach her the restoration. Her name was Erin and this encounter was so meant to happen! She was super prepared and accepted for missionaries to visit her where she lives, which is in Lakewood (in the Tacoma Mission). She accepted a copy of The Book of Mormon as well and was very happy she met us. She said that she usually takes a different way when walking to the bus stop, but decided to take the way she took that nigh. We were in the exact spot we needed to be in to meet Erin and I am excited for her to continue learning about the gospel! The Church is true and Heavenly Father wont let those who are sincerely looking and trying to find the truth from receiving it.

Also do you remember when I went on Blitz with Elder Meyer about 2 months ago and that man who stopped us and told us that he wanted his daughter to get baptized? Well good news, she got baptized on Saturday :D

Love you all! I love my mission!

Elder Sumsion

Season 10: North Tapps. Episode 3:

Pictures from Mission Leadership Council on the 1st.

This is all of the Zone Leaders and the Assistants to the President minus Renton.

Starting on the left going by (companions are infront of them) Assistants and the Zone Leaders for Graham, Kent, Puyallup South, Auburn, Puyallup (apparently we are the shortest Zone Leaders haha), Federal Way, and Maple Valley.

Dear Family and Friends,

 

To answer your first question we did not stay up til midnight for New Years Eve, but we did change our stove clock to 11:59pm to make it feel like it a little. We celebrated by eating Ice-cream and drinking our last bottle of black water. It was some simple good stuff.

Its been a really good week though for personal growth! We got dropped by a very promising family on Monday. It was completely out of the blue and made no sense. We tried our best though and we know that Heavenly Father is pleased with our effort. They said we could still teach their son, which may be a future way in.

Congrats to my Brother and new Sister-in-law, Brock and Sydney, for married on the 30th! I was on an exchange in the Puyallup area that day with Elder Beaudette and we had an awesome contact that morning with a man and his fiance. When he said they were getting married, I mentioned that they were but that I was out here being a missionary because I know the sacrifce is worth it. He really connected with that and a return appointment was set for the following Friday. I wasn't present at the lesson, but I found out yesterday night that Elder Beaudette and Elder Tripp had a great lesson and they both committed to baptism on the 6th of February! It was such a happy moment! Also that one less active man who talked to Elder Meyer and I while we were on an exchange is doing well. His daughter who he said he wanted to help her get baptized is getting baptized this Saturday! There are just happy moments all around.

Last night we had a really awesome opportunity to follow up with a potential who had no interest in hearing about the restored gospel, but he was very interested in family history! He let us in to use the restroom and we told him more about the discovery center and he was just so interested! We talked to him about it and Elder Nelson and I could really feel the spirit as we did. It was powerful and he said he is going to sign up for an appointment. I am excited to see his progress because I know that as he continues to do that great work especially in a consecrated church building, he will recognize the Spirit and the truthfulness of the Gospel.

Thanks for all you do! I am excited for this new year of 2016! I love life and being a missionary!

Elder Sumsion

Season 10: North Tapps. Episode 2: Good Christmas Week

 This is Starting from the left Elder Kelley, Elder Graham (my trainer), me, and Elder Chance. We are singing "Angels We Have Heard on High" tomorrow at our Christmas activities as half of a mission. We are super excited because we love to testify of Christ through song! I love singing together in a quartet! I miss doing that more often!

                         

Howdy!

Even though Christmas happened and most people are on a holiday break, Elder Nelson and I certainly weren't taking a break. We have been working hard to find more and more people to accept the restored gospel and things are happening!

We were able to have that lesson with Martha and Aida on Christmas day in the Puyallup Discovery Center (this is the website for it and the pictures on the website are of the actual room! Those arent just some random photos, those are the actual room in the church building where we had the lesson on those couches.  http://www.puyallupfamilyhistorycenter.org/discovery-room.html ).

Martha and Aida have such a funny dynamic. Martha the 8 year old is so converted and wants to be baptized. When we invited them to be baptized Aida said she wouldn't because she doesn't know it is true yet, but Martha said "I will!" Another example is we invited Aida to say the closing prayer, but she declined. Then Martha (the 9 year old :D) said she would help her mom and so AIda said the prayer with Martha whispering it into her ear. Its so great that she helps out so much and she also said an amazing prayer!

They were set for coming to church and basically to come by themselves, but we got a text about 20 minutes before saying Martha was sick so they wouldn't be able to come. Elder Nelson and I were disappointed (not discouraged. Its okay to be disappointed. Discouragement is what is the bad thing) about that, but we are so excited to teach her this coming week! Its so hard when things that you have no control over happen like that. I have that tendency to be to hard on myself and it took me a moment to slow down and think that there realistically wasn't anything more I could have done to help them stay. So my simple invitation is when things in your life happen that you cant really control, don't beat yourself up about it! Choose to be happy and focus on the good.

I love this. How can we be ungrateful when we remember all of the bounteous blessings that God has given us! If we remember what He does for us every day, we wont have to be sad or discouraged because we will naturally be happy about what we have been given. 

2015 is at its 11th hour. I can say serving a mission here in Washington has been the best year of my life so far. I know that it certainly hasn't been the easiest, but I can catalog 2015 as the year in my life where I was a full-time missionary for every last bit of it. I have grown and changed a lot and I am still not done. I still have the rest of my mission and my life to continue to become more like Our Savior. I plan on making goals to become more like Christ and progress for this next year. My simple message about goals that you make is that you need to own, care about, and remember your goals that you set. If you don't honestly care about the goals or if you don't remember them, or if you don't make a plan to achieve them these resolutions wont likely be resolved at the end of the next year. Did Astronauts ever get to the moon without first designing the vehicle that will take them there? They couldn't just wake up one morning and wing it to the moon. Make a plan of how you are going to achieve your goal and then stick to it!

I love this gospel. As I study the doctrine everyday, my testimony is renewed and strengthened. One of the most important goals that I invite you to make for this year is to firmly resolve that you will read The Book of Mormon everyday, say multiple prayers throughout the day, and attend church every Sunday possible. These 3 things make or break our testimony. I invite you to become more firm in the Faith this year and in every year continually. So if you are not, start. I promise you will be able to tell a difference. Ask yourself "Will you I do these things?" These are some of the smallest things you can do that will make the biggest differences in your life. By small and simple thing are great things come to pass!

Stay Celestial!

Elder Sumsion

Season 10: North Tapps. Episode 1:The Time for Christ.

Howdy Howdy! It is an amazing time of the year for remembering Christ because more people start to do it than normal. One of the tracting approaches our President said we could try out is just inviting people to come to church because the Sunday before Christmas is usually when people who usually don't go come. We invited a lot of people to come and we had 3 less actives come to church which was super duper happy! All it took was an invitation to come, remembering to follow up, and actually doing it. Really that is the key to missionary work. Invite people to do things and follow up.

We haven't been able to make contact with Martha and Aida for a while, but yesterday we were able to talk to Aida at her door. We decided to go tract out her whole neighborhood to find her so we just "happen" to run into her. It worked. Preach My Gospel says "There are many honorable ways to find people to teach." :D She said she is going to come to church this Sunday and also that she has just been super duper busy with work. She was open to scheduling something, so we set up an appointment on Christmas to teach her which is going to be great!

Last night we were tracting in this huge neighborhood that is huge, but very hard to find without a map. We knocked around in a cul-de-sac and ran into a less active man. He said we could come back later and was very friendly. His records aren't even in the ward, so it was great that we ran into him. Its really insightful to see how we are used as missionaries to bring back those who have gotten astray back into the fold. 

You meet a lot of interesting people while tracting around here in Washington... I remember my seminary teacher Brother Jepsen who lived here in Washington as an apartment manager telling us stories about one crazy man who talked a lot about aliens and them coming to get him. I thought "sure you see and hear of people like that in the movies, but there aren't really people like that." There certainly are people like that I can tell you! 

In the end, this week has been pretty slow, but things are going to be picking up. Elder Nelson and I are going to be following up a lot more with potential investigators we find and that will certainly yield fruit. We are most certainly going to have baptisms in the coming months as we invite more and more people!

Happy Christmas y'all! Don't forget to invite one of your friends specifically on social media or in person to look at christmas.mormon.org. Invite someone to watch it and follow up later to see how they liked it. Be sure to just try it!

Elder Sumsion

Season 9: North Tapps. Episode 5:

 Two trees that fell over in the storm that totaled 2 cars and damaged 3 others. Elders in our Zone had permission to help out with this to help clean up. It was some good work!

In order starting from the left, Elders Kelley, Dalley, Perkins, Sumsion, R. Nelson, Z. Nelson, Kidwell, and Cabrera

The roots for one of the tree's that fell over.

Elder Nelson and I did it! Bacon Pancakes!!!!

This is a picture from exchanges with the Assistants. This was my first apartment
and it still is super duper small compared to the other places I have served in.
That is Elder Berkheimer on the ground.

​Howdy! I figure instead of telling to every time how little amount of time I have to type these emails, I am will instead spend that time typing it because that lack of time happens pretty consistently.

I have a lot of pictures to send so this email is pretty long because "A picture is worth a thousand words." Its tough because I can only send 2 at a time, so sorry about the barrage of emails. There was a pretty bad windstorm on Wednesday morning and as a result President Eaton gave permission for missionaries to go around and look for service opportunities and have other missionaries come and help. That happened in our Zone where two trees fell over and did some huge damage to 2 cars totaling them and damaging 3 others. Missionaries in our Zone helped out and the following emails are pictures.

This week we were able to go on exchanges with the Assistants. They Assistant area is Clark Lake where I started my mission or my first area! This week also celebrated the 1 year of being in the mission field. And guess what? I went back to Clark Lake on an exchange into my area 1 year exactly from when I got there! It was so great! I enjoyed it so much and learning from Elder Berkheimers great example.

A family we taught last week dropped us, but we did find a great former last night who seems really promising. We are going to be having our next lesson in the Puyallup Family Discovery Center next week. Its going great!

Love you all! Things are wonderful here in Washington! Share the video! I havent forgotten of what I have invited you to do, just try it out!

Sincerely,

Elder Sumsion

Season 9: North Tapps. Episode 4:#ASaviorIsBorn

A selfie with President Eaton and Elder Nelson while at our apartment.

Elder Nelson and I at Mission Leadership Council at the Mission Home.

Hello Friends and Family!

This week Elder Nelson and I had the opportunity to go on exchanges with President Eaton! It was only for 4 hours, but each of those hours were fantastic. He ate dinner with us at our apartment and then we went out finding. One of the things that I really looked forward to was seeing President Eaton tract and learn from his example. Towards the end of the evening as I was reflecting on what I learned I recognized that I was being way to hard on myself about how I did in tracting. When someone would say no it didn't seem to phase him at all. I am sure he still has things he wants to fix and do better, but he doesn't spend to much time on how it went. As I focus more on pleasing God more than myself in the way I tract and not myself, that is where I will find true success and more fruit. I am working on being less hard on myself when things go poorly and I am glad to learn from Presidents example.

I am out of time again and I would love to share more with you and I got to go. I am doing well and striving to be a progressing missionary. Love you all! Share the gospel with someone this week! It is literally the best gift you can give this Christmas season. Just try it this way!

Go to your Facebook friend list and pray about who you can specifically share christmas.mormon.org with and the video on it "A Savior is Born." Then send them a message with the link letting them know why you like it!

Its super simple and I challenge you to do it.

Love,

Elder Sumsion