Week 6 - Richland, Washington

Zone Conference

Another week as a missionary is done. This week, again, was pretty similar to last week in the sense that we are still doing a lot of finding but we are getting so close to finding an investigator and hopefully it will happen next week. During this week we talked with a lot of different people, which was nice. There were even a couple of them who seemed like they liked talking to us! He told Sam that there are a ton of people playing Pokemon Go and they try to talk with them.  He said the Pokemon Go players spend a lot of time around the church and the temple because they are both gyms, or something like that.  We found someone who said we could come back sometime this week anytime after 5, so we are hoping that he likes the message that we share with him and that he will hopefully be our first investigator. We meet a couple of people in a park yesterday that were playing soccer with their family and we talked to the two moms who were just watching and they were super nice. One of the ladies broke her arm while she was playing soccer a couple of weeks ago and we gave her a phone number and told her to call us if she needed help around her house and we are hoping that we can do some service for her to help her out. We also met a really nice lady who asked for our number first incase she needed it for service or to help with her mother-in-law that lives across the street because the mother in law has some memory problems and she will leave the house and just wander around and not know how to get back to the house. If we can help that may get us in the door - but we will see where it goes.

The members in this area are great!  He is in the Temple Meadows and Badger Mountain Wards. They feed us really good food, which is really nice. They also try really hard to find people to invite to the ward parties and stuff like that. I think a lot of them have a hard time talking about the gospel to there closer friends, so we are trying to give them ideas during the dinner we have with them, so they can feel more comfortable talking with other people about the gospel. This week we also talked with a lot of part member families.  We have found a couple of service opportunities that will hopefully allow the member’s of their wards opportunities for contact with them as well.

I had another exchange this time I went out with Elder Hatch. We worked really hard, again, for this transfer, which was nice. I think we were able to accomplish a lot. We found a dog that had gotten out of a back yard and we were able to find where it came from and return it - so that was cool. We spent time at a place we call the ARK.  It is a place where people with special needs come to do activities. We spent 3 hours there making ice cream in a bag, doing yoga and coloring with them. It was an awesome experience.

We are seeing the area start to progress from the hard work and are hoping that we see some more of that this week. 

Spiritual thought:

This week I read a talk from Gordon B. Hinckley that I really liked. It was called "The Times In Which We Live" and the part that really stuck out to me was this: 

Our safety lies in repentance. Our strength comes of obedience to the commandments of God. Let us be prayerful. Let us pray for righteousness. Let us pray for the forces of good. Let us reach out to help men and women of goodwill, whatever their religious persuasion and wherever they live. Let us stand firm against evil, both at home and abroad. Let us live worthy of the blessings of heaven, reforming our lives where necessary and looking to Him, the Father of us all. He has said, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).

This talk was given right after 9/11 but I think it still applies today. Bad things are still happening all around us but we need to look past that as members of the church. We need to see the potential that people have and try to get them to reach it! That is why I am out here as a missionary. When we are walking around we can look at them for the people they are right now or we can try to see them in a way that we can reach out and try to help them gain a knowledge of the church, and help them grow spiritually and reach their potential.  

Love,

Elder Sugden

Morning Study Time

Week 5 - Richland, Washington

This week was very similar to last week. We are doing a lot of searching … so we just talk to everyone we see. Most people don’t really want to hear what we have to say but we have found some people who are open to listening so we are hoping to start teaching them soon. We had dinner with a family last Monday and they brought their father who wasn't a member of the church. His wife had died recently so we shared a message about the temple and how he could be with his family for eternity and he seemed to really like hearing that. We found out later that after our message with him his daughter challenged him to get baptized in our church and he said yes to that - but he is leaving to go back to Florida next week so we won’t be able to teach him.  Hopefully he will follow through with his desire to be baptized. We have also been teaching a less active member of one of the wards and his girlfriend who is not in our ward boundaries.  They like the messages that we are sharing with them and they seem to be coming closer to Christ and that’s the whole goal. We also found a lady who lives next door to us who wants to go on a temple tour with her 95 year old mom.  We are really excited about that and we are hoping that we can start teaching her because she seems interested in what we believe in. This week we decided to walk up to an area where the missionaries before us hadn’t gone in quite a while and it took us around 45 minutes to walk up the hill and we found a person who said we could come back so that was good. We are going to try and go back up the hill after dinner one of these days so we can catch more people when they are home rather than when they are at work. We are going to start having firesides this week on Sunday and we are hoping the members will use that as a tool to help with their own missionary work.

I had my first exchange this week. I went out for the day with Elder Routabush and we worked really hard in his area for they day … just talking to everyone we saw. He is on his last transfer so he we will be heading home soon but it was good to go out with him and work.

Some of the things I have been working on this week are memorizing the first vision and James 1:5.  It’s gone really well and I think that I have both of those things memorized for now. Something else I have been working on is introducing baptism at the start of the lesson so that people aren't shocked when we invite them to baptism later. 

A typical day is ... 

-Waking up at 6:30

-Personal prayer

-Exercise for 30 minutes

-Make a protein shake for breakfast

-Shower, shave, brush my teeth and get ready for the day.

-Personal prayer to start personal study.

-Study for 1 hour 

-Pray to end personal study.

-Pray to start companion study.

-Study with my companion for 1 hour 

-Pray to end companion study.

-Pray to start training to train for 1 hour 

-Pray to end training.

-We go out and work for 1 hour then come back to the house for lunch.

-1 hour for lunch.

From 1 to 5 we are normally out knocking doors and then we have dinner with a member. They usually call on me to pray during dinner because I’m new and they think I have never prayed before … I think ;)

-After dinner we go back out to work and we stay out until 9.

-At 9 we go back to our house and pray to start daily planning.

-Then we pray to end daily planning and get ready for bed.

-We normally go to bed around 10.

That's a lot of praying!!!

In response to a few questions:

We eat breakfast and lunch at our house and dinner at member’s homes. I normally just have snacks for second dinner. We have plenty of time to go shopping on preparation days. There’s a place up here where you can get really nice ties for pretty cheap. Last week I bought 5 Calvin Klein ties for 30$ and that was nice. I also got a pair of joggers that were 10$ and they have a pretty cool pattern on them! We also have a really nice deal at Coast Vida or Subway. We get 60% off our entire order. Last week I got to quesadillas, a drink and chips and salsa for 8$ and that was nice

Scripture thought for the week:

1 Nephi 

9 And it came to pass that he saw One descending out of the midst of heaven, and he beheld that his luster was above that of the sun at noon-day.

10 And he also saw twelve others following him, and their brightness did exceed that of the stars in the firmament.

This is talking about the brightness or potential that Jesus and His apostles had when they came to the Earth. It made me think about what my own brightness was when I came to Earth and am I'm living up to that potential that I have?

My question to you is what do you think you own brightness or potential is? and are you doing everything you can to live up to that?

Elder Sugden

Week 3 & 4 - Richland Washington

I got arrival package, it was great!

The last couple of days in the MTC were really good and we were able to feel the spirit a lot. Leaving my district was a lot harder than I thought it would be – they are great people who will hopefully be friends for a long time.

MTC district and teachers

On their way to WA

I wanted to thank you and mom for the way you raised me, and the values you instilled in me.  I think they have made it easier for me to adapt to life in the MTC and mission because one of the major things here is strict obedience.  Some of the people are struggling doing everything, and so I am trying to be an example others can follow.

Elder Sugden and Elder Ayedalotte

I have been assigned to Richland, WA.  What I have seen of the area so far is very pretty.  My companion is Elder Ayedalotte and he is from Caldwell, Idaho. I like him a lot and he seems like he will be a really good trainer, so we will see how that goes. We cover two wards up here and it would be a biking area but they don’t believe in bikes because they want us to talk to everyone we see and they think that stopping to get off a bike would be a little awkward … so we do a lot of walking. The mission president is in one of the wards we cover so we get to see him often, which is nice. We even gave him a referral to go talk to one of his neighbors down the street. I asked him if he thought he would be able to wear his colorful socks (when we were shopping he really wanted things to be stylish and liked that the fun socks added some personality to his look) The mission president is pretty strict on all the rules and I don’t think I’ll be able to wear colorful socks for 2 years.  In a letter he said that his mission president expects them to be exactly obedient – and that is what he expects of himself and his companion.  If that is not the case then he guesses he will have to learn patience.  I am sending him more plain colored socks :)

President and Sister White

The first couple of days have been good, but it’s been a lot of walking and the area we are in is sort of dead. We have no real investigators so we are doing a lot of finding and the appointments we have had have all canceled on us, which is disappointing.

P-day is going to be on Mondays - and they don’t let us call them p-days, we have to call them preparation days (that’s kind of annoying but I’ll live.) No iPads now but the mission president said the area is moving in that direction so they could be coming soon.

The food here has been pretty good. There hasn’t been anything that I haven’t been able to eat as of yet so that’s been nice - hopefully it stays that way. We go to the members’ houses every night except for preparation days. One of the members owns a Costa Vida and a Subway right next to each other and gives the missionaries a 60% discount.  So I will be eating that a lot! We do the laundry in the members house and we use his kitchen for lunch and if we need food later in the night.

We have been trying to do some service for a part member family but every time we go over there they are never there - and yesterday we found out they did the project without us, so that was disappointing. We are going to start to have missionary firesides for members to bring their friends to help the missionary work in the area increase - so hopefully that will work. Instead of sharing a quick message after dinner we like to help members work on a member missionary plan so that they know how to talk to their friends about the church. Hopefully we can start having some lessons to teach next week.

I’m feeling really good and ready to work.

Elder Sugden

Room situation!
(He's doing a great job with the pictures)

New tie find - I “skinnied” it which is where you make your tie thinner.