A Week Of Exchanges

Dear Family

This was a good week. I went on 3 exchanges with members of my district because Elder Kitchen is District Leader and he goes on exchanges with every Elder in the district and the Zone leaders, which means I do too!

Monday was P-Day. For the second week in a row, we went golfing. Let's just say that I wasn't on par for any of the 12 holes at the golf course we went to. Golfing has never been my favorite thing to do and my frustration with the sport has never been a good thing. Other than that, golfing was quite fun.

Tuesday and Thursday were exchanges. I stayed in my area for those days and was able to finally drive again! It was weird not having driven for a couple of months and took some getting used to again. Exchanges are always a good experience because you have the opportunity to learn from other missionaries and see how they approach the work. It is also really amazing to see more seasoned missionaries approach people and eventually be able to teach and make a return appointment.

On Saturday I went with one of the zone leaders to downtown Bellevue, which is a newer big city. The city is about the size of SLC and probably wouldn't be around without Microsoft. I had no idea how big that company really was until I came here. Microsoft has buildings in almost every city here and there are many ward members that work for Microsoft.

Transfers are coming up next Tuesday. For us it is really up in the air. Elder Kitchen has been here a long time and every transfer he thinks it is his time to leave, but it ends up being his companion. I feel as though I could take over the area if he left. I have gotten to know the people we teach well and also the rest of the ward okay.
Lessons this week went well. We are still in the process of finding some new investigators, but we keep our lesson count up with Members and Recent Converts and Less Actives. I have really gotten to love the people we teach regularly. It is truly our mission to find and research lessons that pertain to the people we teach and will help better their lives through the gospel.

Now more than ever I realize the importance of member missionary work. Without the members, true missionary work could never be accomplished. It is up to the members to help missionaries find and fellowship those we teach so that they may be good members of the Church. That is one thing I have seen with Rebbecca and Jane. The members have really embraced them and helped them become part of the ward family.

Yesterday we had a new investigator who come to our ward by surprise to "spy" out the Mormon Church. He came to our gospel principles class, where he disagreed about the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost being 3 separate beings and the rest of his stay at Church became more of an argument. He wasn't willing to open his mind a little more and see that God reveals more scripture. I am glad that we have strong Church members in our class who know the doctrine (and the bible) really well.

Here are some pictures I took of downtown Seattle in the distance during the sunset and one of a spider web. The spiders are everywhere here and they are big! I have never seen so many of them in my life. Martha, you would hate to go outside here. Once, there was a spider that crawled out of a lady's fireplace. Its body was the size of a quarter and with the legs it was about the size of a tennis ball.


I love you! And the Church is true!

Love

Elder Richard Fetzer