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.