Yeah PICTURES!!! :0)

Yummy coconut cupcakes...


Cute missionary!

Beautiful Temple grounds...

Linz with her last companion (2nd in the field)!

At the beautiful Temple!

Lindsay and her new companion!

Tracting in the rain!

Another Update from the Pavement Pounder

May 5th 2009 – May 11th 2009

Ok so here is the update… some of this will not be news to my family because I just spoke with you yesterday for Mothers Day. Which was awesome!! It was weird though because it didn’t even seem like it had been very long since I talked to you. Anyway maybe Christmas will be a longer stretch… So here is what I have been up to:

Tuesday:
We met with our Ward Mission Leader and he is really great. He has lots of spread sheets and information for us. He holds weekly meetings and they are serious well they actually just meet the normal protocol but this is the first time I have seen the plan followed  Each week someone from the RS presidency and Elder Quorum is there. Which is really helpful. Anyway he has every member of the ward taking a 3 Sunday missionary training class. And I mean every ward member he has the Stake helping cover classes so everyone will be able to attend. Pretty cool. So we have a lot of people in the teaching pool here which is awesome. I think we will be busy, I love busy

Wednesday:
We had Zone Meeting today seems like we have a great Zone everyone is super friendly and nice which is different then my last Zone. We have so much to do here but it is very frustrating because we don’t know anyone or know where anyone lives. Luckily I have Trent’s GPS which has been saving my life. But even with it things are challenging we are trying to get maps and figure out where everyone lives so we can use time and miles more effectively. Although there is a lot to do it is very frustrating and slow to get starting because we just don’t know where to start and how to get a hold of people

Thursday:
Well my new area is very interesting…. There are a lot of trailers and it is pretty scary. There are some nice homes but most of the neighborhoods are trailer parks. The Elders left a big note explaining where we should not go after dark. It is about half our area anyway we were tracting today and met this guy it was so interesting he believes almost everything we do preexistence, modern day prophet, heirs with Christ. All of that but he belongs to another church. It was complete news to me that anyone believed that… other then our church. But they have a sketchy story as far as how the authority was given to them. Anyway he came to the church, we do church tours as a tracting approach and teach the first lesson, so anyway he had this map of the biblical history of the world that stretched across the whole gym floor. It was really intense!!! He showed it to us and then told me how Ham descendant of Noah, was the one to construct the first pyramid and that it is actually a altar to God. Then he explained that before scripture prophets used to read the stars and that the Sphinx is Virgo, which represents Christ birth thru Mary and the Lion tail is Leo, which represents second coming. Now all of this new information was really interesting to me who would have thought??? Not me so needless to say he is not getting baptized but I did think the whole thing was pretty entertaining

Friday:
Well we have met a few investigators now… Brandon is 17 and is on date for baptism May 16th. We met him briefly Wednesday at the church and he had a huge hickey on his neck. As we prepared for our first lesson with him we read his teaching record turns out the Elders generously left the Law of Chastity and Word of wisdom for us to teach. I know it was really nice of them. So my companion is really worried about this because she doesn’t like to teach the Law of Chastity it is pretty awkward. So we decide to read from the youth pamphlet and I tell her I will talk about the awkward parts…. Anyway in the lesson we are all reading along and it comes to her turn I hadn’t looked ahead but the next paragraph had all of the details of the dos and don’ts needless to say she turned a little red. But she pushed thru. I felt so bad but it was kind of funny later. Turned out he was good in both of these and has committed to live these laws including abstaining from passionate kissing from now on!! He is really a great guy!


Saturday:
So today we decided because it was bright and sunny it would be safe to venture into the trailer parks what an adventure. Although one might think people who are a little less fortunate might be compelled to be humble and in turn would be more receptive you would be wrong. We ventured out with bright hopes but they were quickly dispelled. Almost everyone has a huge dog and a KEEP OUT sign. Somehow they thought we would read the sign and realize they meant us. We ventured past the fence at one house where we saw only a little dog and a woman out front. As soon as we entered 3 huge dogs came bounding around the corner and jumped on us. The largest a german shepard kept trying to bight me but don’t worry the Lord protected me the most interesting thing was this lady made no attempt to stop the attack. I was the only victim as my companion abandon me at the first sight of danger. Needless to say she also did not decide to be baptized. We also on the way back to the car came across a dead squirrel it had been dead for quite sometime and was in the later stages of decay. The strange thing was someone had spray painted it blue. Maybe it was some form of art…. My favorite thing about the people we came across was this, at the end of every door approach once they reject us we ask if we can do anything for them meaning service, but they always ask us to pray for people or for things like their bad knee. This is really funny to me… you don’t want to hear a message about Jesus Christ but you want us to pray for you????

Saturday:
I am feeling pretty exhausted. We are tracting a ton and trying to find people that we are suppose to be teaching. We got really lost because there was a new development not on our GPS or the map. On the map it was a huge forest but that was not true. It was pretty frustrating then after we found the people we had an appointment with they were not even home One cool thing did happen we went to a members house to call them on a mission we didn’t even get to there lesson. A friend of theirs Rusty was there fixing the computer. He seemed to be listening to what we were talking about and I felt prompted to engage him more in the conversation. Turned out he had lots of questions we ended up teaching the first lesson and he said he would come to church. It was so neat!!! He is a really smart guy and I am excited to teach him.

Sunday:
Rusty came to church and so did another investigator Dave Turley. Dave has been to church about 3 times and the first time he came he had already purchased a scripture quad. We are teaching him on Tuesday!! It is a little complicated because he lives outside of our mission. We are on the furthest edge south so it can be complicated sometimes. We are in the process of getting Stake approval because the fellowship is in our ward. Anyway we gave Rusty a manual for Gospel Principles he had read the lesson for Sunday as well as 3 other chapters he is really on fire and we are so excited to teach him more. It is nice to see the work finally starting to progress. There is always downs as well, Brandon didn’t come to church when we talked to him later he said he was not ready to be baptized but still wants to meet. It is kind of the dance of the mission two steps forward two steps back. But the work does move forward. I love love being a missionary and am excited for this new area.

Love always,
Sister Graf

Transfered
To Puywalup