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

Harry Potter Exhibit (and baptisms)

I wish I had a picture of Jason's baptism but I lost my camera then found it long after the service was over. I'll get one with him so you can know what he looks like but he is awesome! We have another baptism this week and then Suzanne, who is ondate for November 20th 2010, is progressing wonderfully. She is a hard core punk type of girl but really sweet at the same time. She makes my day. Teaching her feels more like hanging out than a lesson and she has the best input. Transfer calls is this weekend which means I probably wont be E-mailing next week. I am super nervous about tranfers. It's looking really likely that I'm going to be leaving because we need a LOT of zone leader trainers. We are going to need 2 new assistants and 8 new zone leaders within the next two transfers. We also have a large group of District leaders going home which is really disappointing.

As far as what happened this week a lot did. We had Elder Ringwood come to our mission and I wasn't able to talk to him about the Hamilton's and Bottema Tile because I got the news a little too late but he is a very spiritual guy. I loved having him come to our mission. He knows everything about the Book of Mormon. It's amazing. We were also able to attend a missionary fireside only if we had investigators and recent converts coming. He gave a really powerful presentation on Moroni Chapter 10 and we went thru all the details. I wrote a lot of notes and the past couple of personal studies I have been marking my scriptures up a lot. Then on Thursday we had a mini zone leader council with him on how we could improve our mission. He said he was really pleased with what was happening. It was a lot of fun to get to talk to him more personally and on a one-on-one basis. Then on Friday we were in charge of car inspections which was kind of fun because now we know what the car coordinator looks for when he inspects vehicles. We are getting a new car at the end of the month but if I get transfered I wont even be able to drive in it. haha

I am getting extremely nervous about this Saturday. I really want to be here. Everytime I get this attatched to an area, transfers comes. Sigh.

Change of subject. We went to a Harry Potter Exhibit today and it was awesome! I was having a blast. It was at the pacific science center which is 5 min from my apartment. Really... It's super close so this made it fun because after our museum tour we were able to take 15 min power naps at our apartment before finishing the rest of our P-day stuff. The exhibit had a lot of things that were used in all the movies and you could see the detail and look at the hard work and effort for the props. You weren't allowed to take pictures so I have very limited pictures. It was highly enjoyable and I was able to learn even more about Harry Potter and the movies.

Thank you for everything! I love you all! Keep being strong

Elder Bottema

Preparation Week

With a baptism this weekend, one next weekend, meetings, and zone leader responsibilities. We had a week full of getting things prepared for all our events. We did a lot of teaching to help our investigators progress towards baptism. We had a couple leadership training meetings and baptismal interviews for other people in our zone. And last but not least we are preparing for Elder Ringwoods tour this week.

We as zone leaders are especially busy and still trying to keep our teaching appointments, finding fellowship, and contacting makes it all the more stressful. Last week was a one meal a day type week and it looks like this week will be really similar again. Today we are meeting some Elders who are singing at a fireside wednesday night with Elder Ringwood so that'll take up a large part of P-day. We also have zone conference Wenesday, then Elder Ringwoods fireside with a musical number Wednesday night, then we have been assigned car inspections for another zone conference on Friday. Not to mention our baptism on Saturday. Oh yeah and a special Zone leaders council with Elder Ringwood thursday from 3:30- 6:00. Holy cow. In the middle of all that we have appointments, calls to make, blessings to give and less-active members to visit/teach. It's just one of those weeks.

This transfer has been the transfer that has gone by the quickest on my mission thus far. It has to do with multiple reasons. 1) Lots of success 2) Zone leader responsibilities 3) Used to being a missionary. Life as a missionary has become so normal now. I heard from a psychologist in our ward that if you can go 1 month without something you can live your entire life without it. It's all about disipline or in church vocabulary, "Enduring to the End."

We had some pretty cool miracles this week with people just walking up to us and basically asking us how they join the LDS chruch. One was a girl from New Jersey whose friend got baptized and she saw her on facebook and then her friend on facebook told her to check out the chruch. She instantly thought, "yeah right." But soon after that she has been getting "signs from god" that she needs to do this. She loves how her friend lives and wants to have something similar. Perfect! We can accomplish this! =)

I've really enjoyed this past month and am excited for the events happening. I really hope I get to stay with my companion another transfer but we have so many zone leaders going home within the next 2 transfers that it looks really unlikely. I pray and hope we do. I've been really fourtnate since the end of May to have good companions. Lets keep it that way!

I enjoy everything you all do for me. Continue doing whats right and you'll have overwhelming peace.

Love,

Elder Bottema