Leadership Training

Wow! This week was so busy I didn't know how to handle the stress. It'll be nice to calm down a bit even though we have 3 exchanges to go on this week. EEK! Our leadership training this week focused all on Preach my gospel and the new teaching methods. The whole point of preach my gospel was to get missionaries to stop following the lessons so exact. The church did a follow-up in 2009 to see what has happened since 2004 and they were not happy with the results. Therefore we have a new training method. Starting in May 2011 the MTC will no longer be teaching missionaries the lessons from Preach my gospel. Instead they will be training on 8 specefic points from preach my gospel such as prayer, church attendence, the doctrine of christ, revelation thru the BOM, and so on. One of the main points they trained us on was teach people not lessons. The training was awesome and it consisted of a lot of MTC lifestyle. Sit, eat, sit and role play. Evaluate and role play some more. haha

It was a lot of fun to socialize with other missionaries as well. This week we have zone leader council again with the mission president and he told Elder Scott and I he'd be making some pretty specefic changes to the individual zones as far as scheduling goes. He actually went out with us for three hours on Saturday night and he brought his two kids Allie and Levi who are 10 and 13. It was a blast and it's still weird to see kids running around our mission president and hearing "DAD!" all the time. It's a lot more fun I must admit.

This blog will have to be short this week due to only 30 min of E-mail time. Hopefully next transfer wont be as busy because I think the stress is causing me to lose weight. yeah... I can't do that. Thanks for all the birthday wishes! I much enjoyed them. Hopefually I'll find time to write letters but I'm not making any promises. I love you all

Elder Bottema

Summer in Seattle

The weather here has been insanely nice the past week. It's been in the 90's with hot sun. It's not too fun when you are wearing black pants everyday but I still enjoy it. I heard this doesn't last long.

Crazy news: We ended up moving apartments because ours was not up to health code. It was pretty disgusting. I wish I took before and after pictures because it took me the entire transfer to clean it and then we moved. It was a blessing. Our new apartment is right next door but the difference is fresh paint, new carpet, and new appliances. It smells a lot better as well. We also got new cell phones in our mission and I'm surprised because they are really nice! I can't believe they'd give missionaries a phone this expensive. It's made for texting and our mission president is pushing hard for texting to come back for the assistants, zone leaders, and university wards. I am definately on our mission presidents side. Who wouldn't be? Hopefully this time around nobody will abuse the privelage.

So as far as transfers go I stayed with my companion and it looks like I'll be with him the remainder of his mission. He goes home on September 20th 2010 and I came out September 30th 2009. Oooh! So he is a full year older than me. He's from Draper and excited to go home but not trunky. There is a difference and I've had trunky companions so I know the comparison. This means I will probably be taking the area over and will most likely be here until the December transfer. I know I'll be here until November 1st at the earliest because that's the transfer after Elder Scott (my companion) goes home. I don't feel like I've been on my mission for 11 months and I don't feel like it's going to end. I feel like I'm going to be a missionary forever so I have the same attitude... still the same Elder Bottema. I assume I won't really start freaking out until the last 3 months. I guess we'll see.

We took some companions to the mission home on August 9th to go home and it was the first time I was destroyed about a group of missionaries going home. This group taught me and helped me a lot when I was new to the mission and I served around them constantly so it was weird to watch them go. I wonder if we'll be good friends or if it'll be like EFY when you leave and tell everyone you'll be best friends and then 2 weeks pass and you can't even remember their names. hahaha so typical. I feel like this is a bit different because it was a longer span of time and you go through every emotion on your mission and in that sense I think your a lot closer. Only time will tell!

Thank you for all your birthday wishes! I probably wont get packages for a while because we don't have leadership training until August 24th. I got one from the Saint George clan and I very much appreciated it. The quarters have helped immensly. =) I also enjoyed the visit from the Hamilton family even though that's a huge no no. I thought it'd distract me but I was too busy to be distracted. We got a picture together and I'm excited to celebrate a Disneyland reunion next October! haha! I love you all and thanks for everything you do.

Love,

Elder Bottema

Hospital Quarters

We have been at the hospital a lot this week. We visit this Lady three times a week who we gave a blessing to two weeks ago. We have also got calls to go give blessings everyday this week and actually have another one we are giving today which means P-day ends at 4:30 instead of 6:00 P.M. This makes it extrememly difficult to wash the car and get my haircut and the reason I need to do all those things is because zone conference is this week on Thursday. This week we have been so busy and I was hoping to get a lot accomplished today, bu,t oh well.

Next preperation day is on Tuesday because it's transfer week. I better not be getting moved. I just got here and I just spent these past 6 weeks trying to get used to the streets in downtown Seattle. Also we are teaching Mariana who is the coolest person ever and she needs to be baptized because she believes everything we teach her.

We had zone leader council this week and President Larkin didn't really change anything. He's keeping the schedule exactly how it is and the only thing he's really changing is nightly calls. Instead of calling the district leaders everynight and talking to them about their day we are going to do that during district meeting. Even last night when we got key indicators for the week are talking was very brief. I got to bed at 10:35 sunday night which is a miracle in it's self. The earliest I've got to bed sunday night as a district leader was 10:40 and as a zone leader it was 11:10. So it was nice to actually lay my head on the pillow and sleep the full 8 hours. Our goal is to get to bed everynight at 10:30 and we are slowly getting there. President Larkin told us he's not going to change any rules or schedules until we can learn how to follow the basic getting up at 6:30, home by 9:00, and in bed by 10:30. After we learn this princple then he will decide what to do next.

Hope everything is fun and warm at home. Enjoy it,

Elder Bottema