Depatures/Arrivals

What an amazing and busy transfer it was. We had 5 baptisms, changes to the mission rules, zone conference, leadership training, disobedience problems, 2 zone leader councils and lots of driving. I still don't know how we accomplished all of that. This transfer is already on such a great start since the disobedience has pretty much dissolved and is unpopular in our mission now. We are able to focus much more on our area because this transfer is interviews instead of Zone conference which is much less stressful. Elder Bunton and I are now in our third transfer together but it was split up. One in Seattle North and two in Federal Way.

This transfer was also much better because we were able to get all the departing missionaries to the airport and greet the new missionaries whose airplane arrived on time. We have a great group and our compliment on missionaries rose so we now have 101 companionship's in our mission and this is not including senior couples. We were able to split a couple more areas and our ward now has two sets of missionaries. Elder Bunton and I and the sisters. Sister Furugen from Japan (who served on UW with me) and sister Mohammad from Utah (whose dad is Muslim and from Pakistan). Her dad was never a member but her mom is and she is here serving a valiant mission. Good luck doing family history!

Our ward is loving the attention of two sets of missionaries and especially that one of the companionship's is sisters. The Federal Way ward is great. They just get it when it comes to missionary work. That is why this ward is so blessed and runs so smoothly because missionary work is the number one priority. We continued to put people on-date for baptism this week and find new investigators.

I love seeing the work unfold here. Most of our baptisms are coming from the Marshallese culture and there are many families here. I think one of the reasons they are so interested in the gospel is because families are so important to their culture and since the church is so strongly for families that rings true to them and attracts them to learn more. Basically, once one family gets baptized, they all get baptized because they bring everyone to church. If we help with the process then it gets accomplished.

This upcoming week is new missionary orientation and it's going to be a lot of fun because this is such a good group. Thank you for all the help and support. I've come to accept that I will no longer be getting any more letters and packages. I've noticed the longer you are out on your mission, the less the letters come. ;) Stay warm, safe.... and DRY!

Love,

Elder Bottema