Thanksgiving Week

This week was one that was defiantly out of the ordinary. It started with all the snow which, by the way, is all gone now. Phew! Thank goodness. Then it escalated it school being cancelled, us getting permission to leave the mission boundaries for thanksgiving dinner, and ending the week with a new investigator who was a self referral. YAY!

Thanksgiving was really tasty. We went to our bishops house in Redmond which is right outside our mission and in the hands of the Everett Mission. Sister Jenkins made this amazing stuffing. Mmmm... she gave us two gallon bags to take home and they are already gone. It was that good. So I've basically eaten left overs since Thursday evening. As far as missionary work it was pretty slow this week due to school canceled and being in a singles ward over Thanksgiving. This new week of school will be a blast though for a couple reasons. 1) We had a self referral come to Church this Sunday. Her name is Brittney and we have a lesson with her this evening at 6:00 @ the institute and then at 7:00 for FHE we are making blankets with the ward to give to the children's hospital. I don't have the entire story on Brittney yet but we shall find out tonight!

The only negative thing that happened this week was pushing back Henry's baptismal date due to weather and family circumstances. He is a really sincere guy. He just graduated in architecture and is currently searching for a job. He is only 22 years old. WOW! In Utah, no one graduates till they are older because half the state leaves on LDS missions.

I'm excited to see what the University 2nd ward does this next week. Thanks for the support from home.

Enjoy the holidays. :)

Snow in Seattle!

Yes that's right everyone. Snow in Seattle. I was on an assistant exchange in Federal Way again with my last companion Elder Bunton and it started snowing harder and harder. Snow in Seattle is very unusual. They have no snow plows or anything so the roads are crazy. We were informed by our mission president to head home early and park our cars. We started our drive up interstate 5 when BAM! Traffic! It took 4 hours to drive from Federal Way to Seattle. This is half the distance of Cedar City to Saint George and it took four hours. We had a giant sleep over at our 1 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment with 5 missionaries on Dexter Ave in Seattle. ha ha We then were stuck inside (luckily it was P-day) and our temple trip was postponed. We are driving again today but our cars will most likely have to be parked at 7:00 P.M before it freezes too much again. The High the last couple days has been in between 22 F and 38F. So basically its freezing cold. People forget its moist here so it feels a lot colder. People are babies about driving though. ha ha That's how Suzanne put it anyway (Suzanne from Jersey who was just baptized). We have a half mission activity this week but it might have to be postponed or cancelled as well. We also had to move back our investigators baptismal dates due to lack of teaching them because of weather conditions. Life in Seattle is cold, SNOWY, and full of out of the ordinary news. As much as I want to write more events about this week I must go. I'll have to make it up to everyone. Let me know what I can do. I love you all and keep up the good spirits,,, even when it's freezing.

Love,

Elder Bottema

Fast & Finding Week

Oh my heck this week was so awesome! We fasted and prayed and now have four people on -date for baptism! Here is the cool thing. Two of them are member referrals, the first I've had since being in this area and they are solid. One of them is super excited to get baptized on the 27th of November while another is shaky but has excellent fellowship. Her name is Ghee-hee and get this; she is from Federal Way and was really good friends with Alex Elder. Alex was baptized back in June in the Jovita Creek ward and she sent me a letter a couple weeks ago giving me Ghee-hee's number because she lives up here on the UW campus... better yet in our ward boundaries. So I called Ghee-hee and she remembered me from some of the ward activities. She is a really sweet girl who would be a really good addition to our ward/ the church in general. Alex wrote me again and told me she is coming up here this Friday and will be on the UW campus Saturday to visit Ghee-hee but it gets better. She is bringing up 4 people of Ghee-hee's friends that are all members of the church who I know from Federal way and they are all coming to church and are going to sit with Ghee-hee. She is already being surrounded by these church members who are her best friends and she is going to be meeting even more people from our ward when we have lessons with her this week. Alex will be here for 8 days starting Friday.

I'm stoked to see a Alex as well. This rarely happens on the mission. Don't you love when you have recent converts who move to BYU-I who send you referrals in the mail who you get to see after you've been transferred? I know I do. ha ha

The rest of the week was really good and this Friday I get to be companions with Elder Bunton again because its our zone leader/assistant exchange. YAY! I am setting up a lot of lessons with our favorite people and leaving prime contacting time open to find more people. This week looks like another great week in the WA SEA Mission. Despite the dark days (the sun is completely gone by 4:30 P.M) and the constant drizzle of rain, life here is good. Just as a reminder next week is temple day so I wont be E-mailing until Tuesday. I love you all! Thanks
for everything you do for me.

Your missionary,

Elder Bottema

Texting is Back!

Yay!! Our mission was finally re-approved for texting for zone leaders, assistants and University wards. I've been trying to text everyday since our mission president told us. He doesn't know when we have it again but he's just waiting for the "switch to be flipped." It's on our new phone plan but we are just waiting in anticipation. We had it last year but obviously I wasn't a zone leader so therefore I never got to enjoy the benefits. We had an interesting zone leader council about some of the disobedience that went on last transfer but come to find out our mission is 90% diligent and obedient. We just have a small fraction or handful of missionaries who are not the most obedient.

Our mission is still improving and doing better. We had an awesome day yesterday. We had two non-members who just showed up at church who we are now teaching. We are going to have 3 people on-date for baptism by the end of this week. I prayed and fasted for this goal and I feel really comforted by it. My new zone leader companion is doing great! It's a lot different than training a new missionary. It's really just making a few adjustments here and there and handling sticky situations. He's great though. Our third companion, to say the least, doesn't really have the same opinion as us. Fun times, fun times.

The weather here is starting to get bitter cold. Not horrible but cold and it sure is raining a lot more. Most days start out rainy and then we'll have a hour break of sun and then it just leaves and the rain comes back. Because of daylight savings time it's pretty dark by 5:00 P.M. When December 15th - January 15th comes the sun is completely gone by 4:00. It's so werid. It's a lot darker here in the winter compared to Utah, however, its not as cold so I can't complain too much. As far as news that happened this week it wasn't too eventful. I hope all is well at home. Be safe and stay strong!

Love,

Elder Bottema

Transfer 10 News

What a wide range of emotions. So much happend this week. It started off going on exchanges with the assistants Tuesday. I got to go back to Federal Way for a day! I didn't see any of the members I knew because I was in the Federal Ward.. not the Jovita Creek Ward. But i still recongnized the area. Then we had a miracle message from our investigator Suzanne. She read a chapter out of the Book of Mormon that we left her (2 Nephi 31) and called us saying, "When can I be baptized? Can it be sooner?" It was awesome! So we did it this weekend! We taught her for 2 1/2 hours on Thursday. We taught lesson 3 and 4, the baptismal interview questions, then she had the interview, then we planned her baptism, and answered a couple other gospel questions. Her baptism was on Saturday night at 8:00 and our mission president came. He left quickly because he had to organize tranfer calls (we'll get to that subject later).


I was also privilaged to baptize someone from the Seattle 5th ward. I conducted her interview and she like it so she asked me to baptize her a couple days later. She was a miracle as well. She was found on Sunday and baptized Saturday... the same day as Suzanne. So I was able to have 2 baptisms this Saturday! Suzanne is from New Jersey and her friend introduced her to the church via facebook. She said NO WAY, however, she kept seeing signs and feeling prompted to learn more and here she is. Her friend from Jersey is sending her a set of scriptures with her name. I wish you all could meet her! She is so awesome and has the funniest personality.

One of the reasons I have been on a roller coaster of emotion this weekend is not only because of having baptims, pnemonia, stress, and transfers, its because we had a sort of emergency transfer. I am still in the Seattle North Zone and will be until at least December 14th. We had transfer calls and my companion Elder Bunton and I were staying together. There was a missionary going home so we took him to the mission office on Monday morning. After he had his departing interview he called Elder Bunton in the office, had a quick interview with him, and asked him to be the next Assistant to the president. I felt like I was shot in the heart because we had just made all these new goals, told everyone in the ward we were staying, had a ton of success together, ect. He is going to be awesome at it though but needless to say I felt abandoned.

Our zone was able to hit our goal of 10 baptisms in the month of October. It was awesome to see the faith and desire grow in the missionaries. We have such a good zone. Our goal for November is 15 and we have a lot of work to do. I am training a new zone leader and his name is Elder Adam Frogley. I was his district leader for 4 transfers in Federal Way. We got along really well AND we have wanted to be companions for so long. Our exchanges were always a lot of fun. I also have a third companion who is on the brink of going home early. He came out in May 2009 and we are watching him for a transfer so I am in a tri-companionship. He made some really bad decisions last week and needs a little boost. Pray for me. It's already a rocky start and we haven't even had our first night together. This is my charity and love/ patience test. And were off!!!!!

There were some other events that took place too but I can't remember them all because there was so much that happened. I miss my old companion a ton already but know that I will have a blast with Elder Frogley (who by the way is from Draper, Utah. I've had all the people from Draper in this mission as a companion). Oh one more thing; I've never wanted to go to BYU.. ever... and the past month or two I have never felt more impressed to go there. I guess only the future will tell. Thank you so much for what you all do. I love you!

Elder Bottema