We were down town Seattle today, doing our usual, trying the find lost members. We have kinda complained about the stairs and streets we have had to climb.  These stairs take the cake!! I guess, so far!!! We went up and down stairs, up and down steep streets for about four hours. Along the way we saw alot of interesting people  from well dressed to homeless, talked to a few, none interested in the Church any more,We even had an address for a member which turned out to be a half way house for serious addicts. Fortunately, he was not a patient or an employee, he is still a lost sheep though!!  Mom, loves all kinds of Nature, Trees, flowers, animals, what ever, so here is some color on the streets of Seattle. The cabbage is beautiful surrounded by the other types of flowers.  We have noticed that Flowers are lasting much longer into the fall, than at home. Must be the temperate  weather.  Mom thinks it is COLD! because of the humidity.  The locals must think it is cold, they are bundled up and I'm sweating with a suit on, Drives Mom crazy.

 While we are walking, Mom has to pick up all the different leaves that have turned for winter.  Here is a sample of what she had found so far all over the coffee table. They are pretty!

The following pictures are for those that have been to the Puyallup Fair.  We were walking along 3rd Ave and saw a big sign over the door advertising these chocolate chip cookies.  They come in calf, cow and of course the biggest size the BULL.  We had to buy the biggest to remember our previous life, when we traveled so much. Each fair we went to had some food item that was unique to just that fair. Puyallup actually had three items.  These cookies, then they had a hamburger called the "QUAKE BURGER' the bun was about 10 inches in diameter and had grilled sweet onions about an inch thick on the meat as the only condiment.  If you wanted to spoil it, they had mustard and ketchup to add. The third item was a scone covered with fresh strawberry jam.  All were great, but my pick is the cookie.  If we are on 3rh Ave again and we will be! We will have to do some more remembering.

  

On Friday we were scheduled to take a part member family to the Temple grounds and show the non-member husband the beauty of the Temple and then take him on a tour of the Chapel next door.  When we went to pick them up, we found out the wife(member) was in the emergency room with stomach pains.  They were running tests. She came home late Saturday night, very tired, but with no results.  more tests I guess. The gospel progress gets delayed for a week or so.

This weekend has been stake conference.  Saturday evening was as usual the adult session.  All of the speakers were fairly recent converts (all less then 1 Year).  The North Seattle Stake has 18 full time missionaries assigned to the various wards and the Stake averages 25-35 baptisms per month. One young man, 18 years old, gave as he said "His Story".  He was raised in an Atheist family, who's God was Science. At age 14 he told his parents that he believed there was a God. He said they laughed at his ignorance.  Thus began his search for God's Church. In the next year he dated four different girls, belonging to four different religions.  He went to their Church's and still wasn't satisfied. He said he prayed very intently for guidance and a new girl friend.  He got both the next day.  The girl was a Mormon.  He started his lessons in August and was baptized on Sept 8, 2010. His family kicked him out after he was baptized. He broke up with the girl after General Conference in Oct.  She had decided that Mormonism wasn't for her and quit coming to Church. This young man had a testimony and domineer of a much older man. He definitely knew what he was going to do with his life.  Another young man a little older, age 24. joined the Church less than 1 year ago and is now in the bishopric of a Ward.  His conversion was patterned after the Alma 32 almost exactly. He had the faith to try each principle and then got a testimony of that principle.  There were two other speakers, also recent converts, with the great testimony building stories of their conversions.  This Stake has an early morning Sunday meeting for just recent converts and newly re-activated members (there were about 80 present).  In the regular session of Conference the speakers were the Mission President and the Temple President.  The entire week end was about Missionary work and Families.  What a Grand experience!  By the way the picture is the flower arrangement(Orchid) in the chapel for stake conference.      

This small tree is just the small version of the great big one.  The trunk and branches are all prickly, top to bottom.  We have never seen anything like it!!! It's very different.

Today 11/5/2010 We spent over an hour trying to find an address for a member on and old World War II army base. There were roads going every where.  The GPS wanted us to go down roads that had been blocked off with pipes in the road.  We kept going in circles. Finally we stopped the car and decided to walk on some of the blocked roads. All of sudden we came upon this Indian Tribal building.  These are the pictures of the building.  We never did find the address.  It was Hawaii St. We found Utah & Montana Streets. We guess at one time all the streets were State names, the old fort is big enough.  At least we got some good pictures.

We still have colds, and don't seem to have much energy today. We only tried to find 15 Lost Sheep (we actually only talk to a maximum of 3-4 people, the rest we leave a note about trying to visit them) instead of our goal of 25-30 per day.  We have our second appointment tomorrow with Ben.  We are planning, which idea we should discuss with him.  We can't decide, I guess the Spirit will tell us.  I hope we have the knowledge to respond.  We also saw a light house.  It was very small and there was no where to park to take a picture, except back up a steep hill, we decided we had walked enough for one day. We are finally getting to know the roads a little better, especially around were we live and the chapel.  When we go down town we still have to use the GPS.  There are so many one way streets. I tried one day with out the GPS and I got soooo lost and confused.  I have kinda ignored the down town,  since almost all the dwellings are high rise apartments and you can't get in them, unless the tenant buzzes you in.  We spent one whole day down town and never talked to a person. We are concentrating on the zip codes where there are at least 1/2 individual homes.  Better success rate.

These two Elders live on the floor below us. The one on the left is Elder Dixon from Kaysville Utah.  He is our district Leader. The one on the right is Elder Geddie from Houston Texas.  They have had a baptism each week for the entire month of Oct.  They do there finding on the University of Washington campus. They talk to students that are walking on the sidewalks or on public areas.  They make contact with at least 80-120 people a day.  If anyone wants to talk further then, they take them to the Institute Building for a short get to know.  Then arrange for further discussions with members present from the Ward where the student lives.  We just found out that Elder Dixon is being transferred Tues. and we will be in Different Dist., since we will be giving rides to two Sisters being transferred to the University Area when we need to go to District Meetings or Zone Meetings.  To save time we will be assigned to their District.

We think Elder Dixon looks like our grandson Andy.  There personalities are similar also. Ya think?

We Got up this morning and looked out of our back window, across the Golf Course.  The fog bank at the bottom of the hill leading to Magnolia( The RITZIE area of Seattle), Was beautiful!!!.  We have had more sunny and partly cloudy days, than rain, which we have had 2-3 days of drizzle and very little hard rain.  The weather is supposed to be more rain than usual because of the El Nino effort.

We were driving around trying to find a lost member and saw this small, very red tree and had to stop and get a picture.  We were in the downtown area walking along a street, again looking for a lost member. We look up and there is the Space Needle.  We had no idea how close we were to the central city.

This is  Ben & Teresa, We gave him the first lesson of our mission. How exciting!!!  We really could feel the spirit!! He invited us back next Saturday for another lesson.  He has had lessons from the young Elders and also the Sister Missionaries He really loves his family and we can tell he is a good father and husband. Below is the rest of the family + "Jimmy" the Pug.

         

We have seen this family for three times now. The more times we are with them, the more we have learned about them, the more we have come to love them.  They really need the gospel!!

On Wednesday Oct 20th a Zone Conference was held in a Stake Center about 20 miles South of were we live.  It was almost to the SEA-TAC airport. There are 230 missionaries in the Washington Seattle Mission.  Three Zone Conferences will be held, today (1/3 of the missionaries + the only two Senior couple Missionaries serving in the Wards in the whole mission). Another Zone Conference tomorrow and again Friday. Elder Ringwood (General Authority Seventy) was presiding, accompanied by his wife.  All the missionaries had to be seated at 8:30am.  We sang songs until 9am when  Elder Ringwood, his wife and  President Larkin and his wife arrived. Sister Larkin talked on the importance of extensive planning. With out good planning, nothing will happen to reach our goal.  Sister Ringwood talked about the fact that being on a mission and doing the work as best as you can, is living the Law of Consecration 100%.  President Larkin talked about the importance of Saving the People and bring them to Christ. Elder Ringwood spoke about the Great Missionaries in the Book of Mormon.  The morning session ended at noon.  The local Stake served us all lunch.  The usual funeral potatoes, salads, pastas, rolls.  Guess what! no HAM! We were served all the fried chicken we wanted and gourmet Cookies for dessert.  The afternoon session started at 1pm.  Elder Ringwood asked about 5-8 missionaries, both Elders & Sisters to come up and bear their testimonies.  Then he opened up the meeting for questions we missionaries had.  The conference ended at 2:30pm. It was a very spiritual experience.  We will have these Zone Conferences every three months.  What a blessing to look forward to!!
The other Senior Missionaries are serving in a Ward like we are.  They Elder & Sister Hope from Dallas Texas.  They have been out for 11 months, only 7 months to go.  They are having great success, but it took about 3-5 months before the people had trust enough to allow them to teach.  Mom and I can hardly wait to begin teaching investigators.

These are pictures of our apartment after all the furniture had been delivered, except the right bed.  It took three days to get the queen size bed.  The Office Elders brought a double bed the first day,  We didn't notice until after they left.  We had Zone Conferance the next day.  We told Elder Pratt ( one of the Office Elders), what bed he had been delivered.  He said, " the bed was way bigger than the one he sleeps in", anyway, " I don't know sizes of beds!".  We had to sleep two nights on a double bed. Verlyn, said that if she had to turn over, she would fallen out of the bed.  Back in the day, 47 years ago we did sleep in a double bed for a few years. Back then I didn't think it was so bad!  The problem now I guess is my wide body, so says Mom!  Shes right, ya think?  We finally got our queen bed on Friday.  Now all the bedding fits as it should, not hanging to the floor like with the double bed.  Truth be known the Double Bed was the much better bed!!!  Too bad I have a wide body, maybe we can get the double bed back and Mom can sleep on the couch.  Think she would go for that? What a dumb question!  I would be the one on the Couch, don't you think?

The apartment with banner phone # is ours.  This is a picture of the front of the building, which faces 15th Ave. West, our address.  But the entrance to the building is in the street behind. A lot of the houses

This the back of our Apt. building.  Our entrance is right behind the parked car

 and buildings here in Seattle are like that.  You find the address and there is no way to enter the building, or a door to knock on.  You have to go around the block and enter from the back.  Strange! 






This is Sister Swartz.  We stayed in her basement for a week.  She insisted
that she feed us.  She served us some type of grain, Not Oatmeal. She would
put an egg in and for sweetener we could put apple sauce in. No regular sugar
or brown sugar. Mom told her I liked Hot drinks, so each morning she would have some sort of natural herbal tea.  She made them from nettles, pine needles, mint leaves steeped then served.  It took getting use to.  For dinner she would cook chard leaves and served it like spinach. The main course for supper was almost always some sort of soup.  There was chicken and them chard again, carrots, potatoes, stewed tomatoes, always some sort of natural herbal tea.  This was like New Zealand.  thank goodness for bread to fill in the corners. 





On our Pday Monday in addition to the normal washing, cleaning and grocery shopping. We were invited to go to Paramount Theater downtown.  The theater was build in 1928,  a rich woman here in Seattle donated 30 Million Dollars to get Paramount Theater back to it's original splendor. It's some what like the Capital Theater in down town SLC, but MUCH bigger and way MORE elegant and ornate.  They were showing a Silent film called. "Regeneration" filmed in 1915 in New York. The original Wurlitzer Organ, also re-stored. Was played as background music by Jim Riggs.  He travels all over the country playing the organs to enhance the silent movies like they used to do back in the day. This was a unique experience and one we will remember.  I am trying to get some pictures on the Internet, so far no luck.

 Yesterday we had a very good day. We were finally able to talk to our First door that was opened. She is a member, originally from Salt Lake, but doesn't want home teachers or visiting teachers.  We asked if we could come back, she said ok. They have kids!!! This is a start!!!
We also meet our Zone Leaders & District Leaders + The Ward Mission Leader last night for a quick get to know us.  Don't remember names.  Get them latter.

TRIP TO MISSION TO OUR FIRST AREA

We drove to Heyburn Idaho and visited with my oldest brother Jay & Loa his wife.  We had lunch and visited for about two hours, then drove on to Merdian Idaho to visit and stay with my brother John for the night. we went out to dinner and visited the rest of the night.  Tues morning we left for Seattle.  As we were driving my phone rang.  It was a call from President Don Miller 2nd Counselor to President Larkin(Mission President).  He wanted to know where we were.  We said we had just got into Washington.  He called again and thought we should drive straight to the Mission Home instead of getting Motel as we planned. We said ok, but we got into eastern Seattle in rush hour. We got stuck behind a semi and missed our turn for Mercer Island, we had to drive all the way to downtown Seattle before we could turn around. We were over an hour late getting to the Mission Home.  Sister Larkin and Ally (their 10 year daughter) were waiting supper for us.  We ate and then President Larkin came home from a meeting.  He took us into his office for an interview at 9:30pm(10:30 Salt Lake time).  At about 11pm we were able to go to our room to sleep.  This has been a very long day for an older mature couple.
We got up early, so we would be ready when Pres. & Sister Miller came at 8:30am to take us to our area.  Pres.Larkin and his wife fixed breakfast of bacon and eggs, plus fruit. The Millers came on time.
We followed the Millers to the Chapel in our assigned area, which is the Seattle 1st Ward. The ward area is about 7 miles north and south of the center of Seattle, The Ward goes East of the ocean for about
10 miles.  There are 1000 members in the Ward, but only 123 attend regularly. There 328 members that they know nothing about and have never seen.  There are 23 members that attend maybe once a quarter.  There are 104 they know but don't attend.  There are 115 that want no contact. Our job is to contact each member starting with the unknown, and start to re-activate and reduce the number in the unknown list.We were to be in an apartment today, but all the apartments they had to show us was leased already. So back to the phones,  an apartment was found, but it won't be available until the 19th.  Called Bishop Skog.  He said he would call us back.  We are living in the basement of sister Ritva Swartz.  She is such a sweet lady and insists that she feed us morning and night. 
Our car is still packed until the 19th, we are living out of our suit cases(we only planned for 4 days). our first challenge is how to live out of our suit cases for over a week.

At the MTC we were organized into Districts. Our District Leader was Elder Davis.  They are going to serve on a military base in Jacksonville Florida.  They are from Idaho.  The top picture is Elder & Sister Davis. The couple to the left is Elder & Sister Marie.  They are from France  and are going to Beirut. Lebanon as Public Affairs Missionaries. As far as the Government is concerned.  They are vacation.  They can't proselyte or show any name tags.  There is a small Branch and they can work with-in the branch.

The Young Missionary in the group picture is Brother Barney.  He was our morning instructor.  He Served his mission in up state New York.  What a wonderful young man!!  He taught us alot!!!
Elder Spencer above with us was our afternoon instructor.  He served is mission in Slovenia/Croatia he was also a great influence for us.  It was the young returned Elders and Sister that did  the classroom training.  They were all exceptional in enthusiasm & knowledge.

We are at the MTC in Provo, Utah.  What wonderful experience we are having. We have 26 senior couples in our group.  They will be serving all over the world. Our days have been long, but the spirit is constantly present.  This is such a unique place.  There are over 2200 Elders and Sisters here.  The energy level is over the top!  We had a devotional Tuesday night.  Elder Dennis Nueswander (emeritus) seventy and his wife spoke. What a special night!  When the songs were sung the sound was awesome.  We will never forget this experience. The talks were fantastic and timely for us.  This picture of Mom & I at the world map is a tradition here at the MTC. Everyone gets their picture taken, pointing where they will be serving their mission. 

Today had a number of firsts.
1. All of the bishopric was gone, so I had to conduct Priesthood meeting.
2.  Both Verlyn and I were released from our positions.  Her Primary, Me as High Priest Group Leader.
3.  This was our last Sunday with our ward family.  It was tough on us both.
4.  Yesterday was my last day at Home Depot. The end of 15 years.  It hasn't set in yet,  I guess it will when I don't go to work for a few days.
We only have one week before MTC.  We are trying to figure out how we will fit it all in the Honda.  We think we will need a Carrier for the roof.

We enter the MTC in Provo on Oct 4th for a week. Then on to Seattle for our assignment, We are excited!!, but also humble that Heavenly Father trusts us to help do His Work with our brothers and sisters in the Seattle Mission. Our farewell talks were givin on Sept 19th our grandkids sang two songs, "I know my Savior Loves Me and "If the Savior stood beside Me". They did a wonderful job. We LOVE them Soooo Much!!! Wade Walker a friend sang, " O Devine Redeemer" Thanks Wade. Verlyn talked on the Saviors Love for us and the atonement. My talk was about the Law of Sacrifice.Verlyn's Sister Dora Mae Thompson, LaMar Patton, Brother In Law, Karri McDonald a neice attended. My Brothers, Jay Maxwell. John Maxwell, Jim Maxwell, Sister Verona Lewis and her husband Kent Lewis attended the meeting. Thank you for your support!! all of our childred and their spouses also attended.

The Stake President turned our papers in on Aug 1st. He said if our mission call didn't come by Sept 1st. We could call him and he would check where we were in the process. Other people we knew said it could be 6-8 weeks. We got our call Wed. Sept 8th. We are going to the Washington Seattle Mission. We will be at the Mission President's descretion as to our duties.