Dec. 4th, 2017 update

From Elder Reed:

"Rain, rain, go away, come again another day. Well, mist really. Here in the most peculiar land of Washington, the most common rain is a misting drizzle. Though, on occasion it does rain, like, actual rain. When I got here in the summer, everyone was telling me to prepare for rain all the time, every single day. In my mind I pictured what I knew as rain, from Ohio. I was thinking that this was going to be a very difficult two years if it rained all of the time like the rain from back home. Thankfully, the rain here is nothing like the Great Ohio's rain. These past couple of weeks, there has only been a couple of days in which the rain was anything to worry about. Even then, my feet have remained quite dry and the only parts of my body that were adversely affected from the weather was my nose and knees. 

Because of the much rain here, what comes after? The rainbow of course. It would seem that from around two to four, the sun is always at the right angle in which a rainbow can appear. I have seen quite a few of them this last week alone and even a double rainbow twice! I was not able to capture the beautiful scene because I did not want to risk my camera because it was, well, raining.   

Just gotta put out a plug for this, of course. Light the World is going on right now! It is a great way to share Christ's teachings with anyone that you can. Plus, there are some really cool videos that inspire to share the light of Christ with everyone!!! Just look it up on Mormon.org. Way cool stuff. Also, the Christmas Devotional that was on last night was pretty cool as well. President Leishman allowed us to go and watch it where we could and we ended up watching it at some members house. It was very exciting with the great music and the great talks about the spirit of Christmas and giving more than just presents. 

Well, I hope that everyone has an amazing December and is able to enjoy this Christmas season and share it with others as well!!!

Pictures include our zone activity last week and my new companion Elder Atchley.

-- 

Love from Elder Reed

Hymn 152"

Nov. 27th, 2017 update

[Lots of pictures which will follow Elder Reed's update...]

"Transfer calls are in, Elder Reed will be staying in the Bremerton Ward for another six weeks! Going to be the first quarter of my mission spent only in one area. It is going to be fun. Elder Theobald is leaving and Elder Atchely will be taking his place. I have no idea who that is so this will be another interesting experience for me, getting to know another elder and getting along with for six weeks. 

This week was interesting as there has been some kind of sickness going around and plenty of missionaries have got it as well as plenty of other people. It has made knocking interesting when people cough and say "sorry, I'm sick" and that is about it. My companion got sick for a little while and I do not think that I ever got it, but then again, my immune system must just be better than everyone else's. And that is a conservative estimate. 

For thanksgiving, we had dinner at a members house, and that was a lot of fun. She went to culinary school so she knows how to make food. Very well. It was quite good. And there was pumpkin pie afterwards as well, so I was very happy with that. For breakfast though, the whole zone got together and we all ate at Denny's, courtesy of one of the elders mothers. That was a fun time as well, and now the waiter there might have been a little intimidated by all of the missionaries. 

Well, that is about it, I apologize for it not being that long. But till next week I guess, but don't forget to get at least 6 hours of sleep a night, because that is a good number.

And I went out on the dock, which was open to public access. It was pretty fun.
--

Love from Elder Reed

Hymn 152"

Nov. 20th, 2017 update

"For a couple days this past week, there has been quite a bit of wind. Apparently, this is a normal thing in this area, to have strong gusts of wind every now and again. Some days there were wind speeds of about 20 mph. It is pretty fun trying to walk around in this kind of weather. I say try because if you are going the right direction and on the right street, the wind is blowing directly into your body and for a while, it was almost pushing Theobald and me to a standstill. There was one day when it was lightly raining as well, and that is when it becomes not fun at all. But it is always adventurous!

This week we also had interviews with the Mission President, and those are always fun for many reasons. First, it is one of those few times that we get to meet up as a zone and talk with the other missionaries, and swap stories about something way interesting that has happened. For example, the zone leaders were driving down the highway and some guy hit the back of their car. They drive a Nissan Rouge and had a bike rack on the back, so it bent in and broke their back window. After they got off of the highway and pulled over, they started to give their insurance info to the guy, who then preceded to get in his truck and drive off. When the cops arrived, they had to declare it a hit and run. Way fun stories. 

Another reason it is way fun is because we get to talk with the Mission President's wife, Sister Leishman, while we wait to be interviewed. She is basically our mom away from mom, and we have lots of fun talking with her and what not. This time she wanted us to write our families and had brought a bunch of cards and stuff to write with, so I got everyone in our zone to write a note on a card for my mom's Sunday school class that had written me a while back. It will be fun to see what they think about that. I even got President and Sister Leishman to write a little something as well.

On this past Monday, the entire zone came to our area and did what we call a blitz knocking. I picked a street for each of the companionship's to knock and we got a few appointments from it. Hopefully we will be able to continue to teach those that they found. Our main purpose as missionaries is simply to invite others to come unto Christ, and build upon their faith, never to tear it down. Plus, it is always great when we meet people who will at least talk to us for a while and be nice, because sometimes it is hard to remember that we need to love everyone just as Christ did. But I continue to try no matter what.

That is about all that was interesting this week, hope you all have a great week this week!!

Try to notice all of your blessings, especially the small ones!

--

Love from Elder Reed

Hymn 152"

[No pics this week! - and the Sunday School class LOVED the card from Elder Reed!]

Nov. 13th, 2017 update

This week, Elder Reed shared: "Walking around Bremerton all of the time gives me the opportunity to see a lot of peoples houses, as well as their driveways. And as such, I get to see a lot of different cars all of the time. For some reason, the Kia Sol sticks out every time that I see it, which happens to be too much. (I do apologize if anyone likes the Kia Sol, but I don't really like it) And of all the colors in the rainbow, all but one of the Sol's that I have seen is this olive green color. I believe, if my counting skills are accurate, that there are 6 green Kia Sol's in the Bremerton Ward area, or maybe there is only one and they just like to drive around and mess with me. Who knows. 

This week has been very quick, in that it feels like it has flown by. Again. First, there was Zone Conference. There, we had plenty of training from lots of different missionaries and from President Leishman as well. It was only supposed to last until about three o' the clock, but instead lasted until five. It was still enjoyable though. 

Then on Thursday, Elder Theobald got to give a baptismal interview to someone that some of the sisters had been teaching for quite some time. When we got to the place that the interview was supposed to be at, we ended up having to go to the ladies house because she locked her keys inside of her house, so that was an adventure as well. But she was baptized on Sunday, so that was exciting. 

Saturday was the probably the most exciting day because we were able to hear from Elder Gessel, who is our Area Seventy here in Washington, Elder Kearon, one of the presiding Seventy, and Elder Stevenson, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles! It was quite interesting to get to see these three great men in a less formal setting. I was able to see them as just some normal guys. Elder Stevenson talked about how he didn't really sympathize with people who said that they didn't believe that they felt able to do a certain position. Said he, "how do you think I feel??" It was quite humorous. And it was great because he would just walk around the room and talk with us like we were all old friends and get us to read something with him or share some insight that we had to share. It was a very fun experience. 

And to top it all of, this was another once in a mission opportunity because the entire mission was able to be at the meeting all at once. There was only one missionary who was there that had experienced that sort of thing before. Elder Enosa, who came out on his mission in July of 2015. Yeah, he has been out for more than two years. He is just that good of a missionary. Haha, it is actually because he broke his foot and had to go home for a while, and he also extended his mission another transfer so he is literally the oldest missionary out in the field right now. Kinda interesting how that works sometimes. 

So I had to give a talk on Sunday about the worth of a soul, and it was mostly about Doctrine and Covenants section 18 verses 10 through 16. And then the speaker after me talked about the temporal worth of the body, so you are worth about $160 of raw materials such as Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen and so on. Very interesting way to look at it, he then went on to talk about the spiritual worth of a soul and it was quite a good talk. 

Some pictures of some pretty clouds outside of my apartment. Thankfully it does not rain here as much as it does in Ohio. Good luck to those of you that are out there. 

Till next time, don't forget to brush every morning and night!

--

Love from Elder Reed

Hymn 152"

Nov. 6th, 2017 update

From Elder Reed this week:
"This week, after hearing about how Ohio is doing weather wise, I am very grateful as to what is going on out here in the great Evergreen State. There have been two days now where it has snowed instead of rained, and a couple of people were really going crazy. I was just thinking the whole time 'shouldn't it be sticking by now?' Apparently, they do not get a lot of snow up here, which is not really what you would expect right? Thankfully it has not rained as much as it usually does. Everyone kept telling me that it was going to rain for the next seven months straight and I was never going to see the sun again. Well, they had an extremely wet winter last year so maybe it is going to not rain nearly as much this year. I can hope at least.

I am also very glad that I have a coat that can keep me warm though. Even if it is over three years old, it still does what it is supposed to and 40 degrees has not seemed that bad to me. This last Saturday, our zone did a nine to nine, which means that we all knocked doors from nine in the morning to nine at night. It was a very interesting experience as my companion and I spent the first seven hours on one street, and we could have kept going on that street for a couple more hours except we were getting hungry so we stopped for some subway. A member had given him a gift card in his last area so that was nice. Then we knocked with the zone leaders for a little over an hour.

Elder Enosa and I found this one lady who let us in and we ended up singing some hymns with her while she played the piano. It was way fun for me because I love doing that sort of thing and it was the first time that I had been able to do that for quite some time. We then tried to introduce her to the Book of Mormon, but she wasn't really interested in that. She did share a story with us about how she found a couple Jelly Fish (she lives on the shore) and that they were the big red ones. Way cool.

Almost forgot about Halloween. It was probably the most interesting one that I will ever have. For pretty much the whole day, till four, we helped this less active member set up her wedding. They had some sort of pagan hand binding ceremony with ferries and everything after the regular legal marriage thingy with the priest. Then after that, they had a masquerade party/reception because, hey, it's Halloween, so why not? And to top it all off, it was in a Masonic Temple. Like I said, very interesting. It probably would not have been as weird if I weren't a missionary, but people did stare a little bit as we were directing traffic in the parking lot. 

Later in the evening, all of the missionaries in our zone gathered at the stake center and we played some cards (I won at spoons a lot), and we then watched a movie (The Best Two Years). One of the elders brought a big bowl of candy, which we all partook of. And I was the designated media specialist, because apparently it takes one of those in order to plug in a TV and put a DVD into the machine. I am just soooooo skilled.

I think that that is about it for this week, I think........well, anyway, don't forget to wash your hands after you flush!

Love from Elder Reed

Hymn 152"