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| Me at the Mission Office picking up supplies this morning for the Zone |
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Elder John and I at transfers which take place at the Maple Valley Stake Center. |
Howdy!
This week has been great. Renton is great! I love Skyway! The Skyway ward is the 3rd largest ward in the world membership wise (meaning there are wards that are larger geographically, but this ward has the most members in it!). Not all of them are active though... there are about 1000 members, but only about 125-175 are active. Yesterday it didn't seem like there were a lot of members even at church. In Elders Quorum there were only 3 attending if you don't include the missionaries and the teacher. This ward attendance wise is like branch size. But I love it!
We drive around a mini-van. There are only 2 in the mission. The Puyallup South Zone Leaders have one and we do. Its a light blue Grand Caravan. The Elders serving in Renton in the past have apparently named it "Mohanna" haha.
There are just so many people to talk to in this area! North Tapps was pretty rural compared to Skyway. Most of the ward is actually in the city of Seattle and there are tons of apartments! We could spend the whole day just talking to people outside, but we are busy! The work is going great and we are getting it rolling. Elder John and I are focusing a lot of finding this week, because if we are going to be helping a lot of people repent and to be baptized, we have got to be led to them.
We had a great experience Saturday morning. We were going to some members, but we couldn't find them because I left my GPS back at the apartment. We drove around and couldn't find them at all because a lot of the roads look the same. We decided to visit another investigator figuring we got lost for a reason. That was soooo true! We got out of the van and noticed about 5 different folks doing yard work. We offered to help and eventually got started talking to one about the gospel. Her name is Crystal. We ended up moving to a different location because we were getting in the way of the people doing yard work and taught her a lot about the restoration there on the spot! She had lots of questions and was very interested.
She is looking to get back into church. She used to go to a Pentecostal church, but stopped going a while ago and never went back because her previous boyfriend was not religious. They have broken up and she has gotten back together with an ex boyfriend and is now pregnant. She is definitely so prepared and were grateful we were led to her! She understood a lot of the restoration and committed to come to church the next day. She didn't make it to church for some reason, but we are having a lesson with her at the church on Tuesday. We are excited to help her repent and begin to see her life change for the better as she accepts this gospel.
There are more people we are working with right now, but Crystal is the most promising one. A part member family who Elder John has been working with before I got here are the Gastons. Brother Gaston is the non member and he struggles with smoking (and Sister Gaston). We had an amazing lesson on Saturday with them about the Word of Wisdom where the Spirit was facilitated and we gave them a blessing of strength afterwards. They committed to fast as well on Fast Sunday to overcome it as well. At the end before we were leaving though, they told us that they were going to their other church in Tukwilla. It was tough because it was a spiritual powerhouse there, but they chose to not come to church and for now have chosen the church in Tukwilla. They will still let us come by which is great, so we will be addressing that and some other concerns this week.
Things are wonderful! The new apartment I am in is now in ship shape and organized, so the Spirit can now be better facilitated. If you would like to take away any lesson is that you should clean your dwelling place more often haha. The Spirit dwells in a clean house a lot more than a dirty one. The Temples are kept clean and organized for a reason :D
I love this area and I am excited for the miracles of being led to more prepared people this week. It will happen as we exercise more faith!
Sincerely,
Elder Sumsion
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