I finally feel like summer has hit!! It has been sunny almost every day!! Even though it is still only about 75 degrees, just seeing the sun makes it feel like summer. Last P-Day was super awesome because Elder Atkin and I went to Saltwater State Park, which is right on the Puget Sound. It was really fun to just be in nature, especially close to the water. A cool thing about the Puget Sound, or at least the part by us, is that during low tide the water goes almost 60-70 feet out because the Sound is pretty shallow. You can walk along the ocean sand during low tide. We flipped over some rocks and found a ton of crabs and other ocean life.
This week has been super good. We set a baptismal date with someone!! Her name is Martha. She self referred herself to us. She met with missionaries in West Virginia. We talked with Martha over the phone and extended the baptismal invitation, and she accepted! She seems pretty ready. The only problem is that she works in a care center and can’t meet with anyone right now. We set a date for July 27, but that might have to get moved back.
We met a guy named Nelson Valdez this week. He is paralyzed from the waist down, and has absolutely no attention span whatsoever. We could not even get through one verse of scripture with him. He made some pretty funny comments. The best one happened after he got distracted by my name tag. He thought it was in Spanish, and when I told him it was Portuguese and that I served in Brasil, he got super excited. He asked me, “Isn’t Rio de Janeiro the downtown of Brasil?” It was pretty funny.
We started meeting with an old lady named Velma this week. She is super sweet. She was contacted once by missionaries almost a year ago. We went to contact her this week, and we ended up teaching her the Restoration. She loved it! The Spirit was super strong, especially when we said the first vision. It was a really good lesson. We went back on Sunday, and she didn’t really have time, but she decided to just talk with us for a couple minutes because she felt bad. We read part of 3 Nephi 11, and she loved it again! She loved the fact that it is so simple and straight-forward. She said the prayer at the end of the lesson, and it was super pure and powerful. She thanked Heavenly Father for us teaching her. It was awesome!!
We have been doing a lot of creative finding, including some stuff on Facebook. I have been posting ads for free service on a bunch of community pages. This week, we had an opportunity to serve someone named Kristin. She lives in the Hylebos area, so we went over there with the Hylebos Elders and pulled a bunch of blackberry bushes out. It was pretty fun.
We also did some service at the Federal Way Senior Center. It is run by volunteers, and no one had done weeding there in a couple months. We went there on Wednesday and did some weeding for a couple hours with the Dumas Bay Hermanas and the Star Lake Sisters. It was pretty fun. They were definitely very grateful. We are going to go back there this week.
On Tuesday, we had our second district council. It went pretty well. The Dumas Bay Hermanas are doing super good. They set a baptismal date for Solidad this week, and she is super solid! It was super cool. The Lakota Creek Elders are doing pretty good. They are getting outside and doing some productive stuff, but they are not being super effective. I am going to do an exchange with them this week. It’ll be good. During district council, I had the Hermanas and the Elders do some role playing for the first part, and then I led a discussion on personal revelation. I think it went pretty well. There was pretty good participation. I based it off of two talks from the last general conference - Prayers of Faith by Elder Eyring and Continuing Revelation… by Elder Cook. Everyone prepared pretty well for the discussion by reading the talks.
The Boyds gave us a ton of food again. I guess this is the upside to being in a ward where the average age is 60 and up. They called us and told us they had some food for us. When we got there, they gave us a huge crate of food - canned goods, butter, bacon, Jimmy Dean sausage rolls, enchiladas, 72 eggo waffles, syrup, hamburgers, bread, cheese, mac and cheese, and a bunch of other stuff. We literally couldn’t even fit it in the fridge. It was awesome.
Scripture of the week: Alma 31:26-28. I really love these scriptures. Alma was truly a great missionary. I want to pray as earnestly as he did, and be saddened at the sight of ignorance and sin as he did. I want to have the same love and concern for those I teach and am called to serve. I especially love the last verse, where it states that there was no trial or affliction that they had that could not be overcome by joy in Christ. It then states that this happened because Alma prayed with faith. I think that we can all follow Alma’s example to pray with faith. I think that he sets agrat example here by the simpleness of his prayer. He was not blessed because of the eloquence of the prayer, but because of his faith. While we should obviously refer to our Father with respect, it does not matter the words we use if we lack faith. If we have faith, our Father will hear our cries and we will feel His presence in our lives.
I love representing the Savior in Brasil, I love my companion, I love the Gospel and Atonement of Christ, I love my family, and I love my Redeemer. I am ready and excited to work harder, learn more, and love better this week!
Love,
Elder Warren Matthew Dudley
Photo 1-3 - Saltwater State Park on P Day
4-5 - Gotta love hammocks on P Day
