"Nah we cousins"

Welcome to Lynnwood! It's the next area up from seattle, so I'm not far from where I started. Everything's a lot more closer together than it is up in bellingham, which is nice because we're not driving 10+ mins in-between contacts. Most of them we can walk to within a certain radius. A lot of complexes, so a lot of knocking! (yay.)

Last few days in bellingham were nice. Said goodbye to a lot of great people that I'll miss, missionaries included. There was a running gag surrounding me and my non-american-ness, and cultural differences. It was my last day in bellingham, and we go to have dinner with a couple that us and the sisters had been teaching. They'd laid out some paraphernalia on the table so that we'd each know where we were sitting, and told us to go sit down. There were flowers for the sisters, and on the other side there was a whole bunch of USA decorations and a Harry Potter gift pack. I first though "oh, Harry Potter is for me because I'm British" but then remember that elder stoddard is the spitting image of the boy who lived, so the USA decorations were for me. Very funny, guys!

This transfer we saw a lot of what I consider "the greats" leave. Missionaries that I looked up to when I first came in field. Now i realise that in a month and a bit, I'm gonna be the same age as the missionaries that just left. Its a shocking realisation, now I'm considered an old missionary. You want a paradox? It feels like yesterday I got here, but at the same time i feel like I've been a missionary forever. I can remember the whole jounrey to the MTC like it was last night. 

My new teaching companion is Elder Potter. He's a great guy, and I already feel like we'll get along well together. The area is interesting. Right slap bang in the middle is a Boeing airplane factory, so we've got a east side and a west side to our area. 

One of my uncles came into the area, and we had a great time. I really enjoyed him coming over. He took us to dinner

Would add photos and talk about it more, but ive got 1 min left, so see you next week! 

Immigrants. We get the job done

Only a few highlights from this week. Nothing crazy, but another standard week.

The raspberry festival came to lynden. Our zone planned to do a family history stand at the festival, and pulled in a whole bunch of missionaries from the zone to help out. We went and had a good time. It ran friday and Saturday, so we went both days. I was on exchanges with Elder Christensen on Friday, so we went then. He's awesome and we had a great time. 

Saturday we had Elder Oyun with us because his companions were at departing interviews down at the mish office. He's from Mongolia, so we were officially the most diverse companionship in the mission at the time. We had a great time, and had lots of fun. We're getting him tomorrow as well because his companions are abandoning him again to go on the departing temple trip

We also went to a kid in our ward's birthday party, and that was a lot of fun. I got dared to have some really spicy seasoning put on my butter chicken, which i did. I'm not really one to back down from dares involving food or spice, so I decided to go for it. It was carolina reaper seasoning, and safe to say it was a wee bit spicy. Nothing too bad 

(I nearly died) 

Transfer news came out this morning and I found out I'm going to Lynnwood! It's right above Seattle, and should be a good time. Not gonna be a DL anymore, and that's ok. Just means i got less pressure to be obedient 😉

Honestly I would write more, but not much happens up here. Hopefully Lynnwood is more exciting. Now, I'm not saying it's boring up here, but not a lot of stuff that's gonna be worth the time reading the email. God is good, Jesus saves and the Holy Spirit guides. 

Spiritual thought!

Micah 4:4-5

"But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it.

For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever."

The Old Testament sure has some bangers here and there

Football Filler Arc

Honestly not much happened this week. This email could be two paragraphs long, because nothing overly exciting happened

We had a member meal after pday on Monday, and we walk in and they've got the USA v Belguim game on, and they keep it on while we have dinner, so I got to watch a bit of that

We went for district lunch on Tuesday and they were playing Colombia v Switzerland so I also got to watch a bit of that

We had another member meal come out of the blue on Saturday and he took us to a really nice Mexican spot at the bottom of our area. They were playing England v Norway, so I got to watch a bit of that as well

The area is slowing down a little. We did find 5/3 friends this week, but we've not really had a lot of progressing friends show up. There is one guy, Ral, who was referred to us by sisters somewhere in the mission. He speaks Burmese, and his English is alright. That was a true test of my speech because I've been trying to make an effort to bring the accent out more so that I lose it. I had to bring it wayyyyyyyy back for this guy, but we had a great lesson. 

We had our interviews with the mission president this week as well. We spoke about sustainable effort, and the renewing power of the priesthood. Pretty cool 

Literally that's everything that happened this week. We didn't have anyone come to church, had some member meals and just went about regular missionary work. Also, transfers are next week, so yay

Spiritual thought:

Helaman 12:3

"And thus we see that except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions, yea, except he doth visit them with death and with terror, and with famine and with all manner of pestilence, they will not remember him."

Remember the Lord, and that he loves you. If we had no reminders that God is out there, we'd forget him. If everything went our way in life, then we'd forget him. That's the pride cycle right there. The Lord chastens us from time to time to remind us of his superiority and heavenly status. 

Jesus cuts my hair and we recreate the American revolution

It's been an interesting week to say the least. I'm getting more and more tired as the days go by, but having confidence in the Lord is a great encouragement to me. Sure, this week might not have been the best week for the numbers, but we still had a good time. A few standout moments:

I got a haircut from a member in the spanish branch, Jesus. I don't know that much Spanish, and he doesn't know that much English, so it was a pretty funny moment, but he understood what I wanted and we were able to chat a little bit. My comp knows more spanish than I do, so he had to carry the conversation.

Tried to go public contacting, but this area is not built for it. We have the top part of bellingham and it takes up about a quarter to a third of the area, and the rest is open fields with an occasional house here and there. Not a lot of great spots for public contacting, but we figured we'd just try it because knocking has been very slow. Tbf, everything has been pretty slow

Got kicked out of another complex. That makes the third one so far. But we made a yellow dot (someone who might be interested), so take that! We're just gonna baptise her in spite of the owner. 

I guess I should probably talk about the elephant in the room as well. On Saturday we celebrated America's independence day, and honestly I really enjoyed the day we had. The ward had a breakfast to celebrate, and i had a good time. Then we went over to a members house for lunch. The family is amazing, and I love them to bits. We were just finishing lunch, and we were about to give the spiritual thought, when all of a sudden a box of nerf guns get brought out, and the dad announces that since we have both parties here, we are going to recreate the American revolution and shoot the british person, me. Carnage ensues, and I'd like to say I turned full John wick on them, but being severely outmatched in terms of experiences with firearms I got shot a lot. It was a blast. Simply no match for the redneck agenda

Turns out, everyone that was at the dinner was in on it, even the sister missionaries and my comp, and they'd been planning it for weeks. I quite literally got jumped at a member meal. 

At night we got to watch some of the fireworks. We couldn't really see them, so with all the explosions it felt like at points we were living in east France circa 1917, but still it was a good day

A lot of the testimonies were patriotically focused, which I wasn't as annoyed at as I thought I was going to be, honestly (but i still was a bit annoyed at). I'm gonna do a lot of explaining in this next bit as to what my "problems" with people inserting American patriotism into the church, but know that it's just new "doctrine" to me

In the Book of Mormon, it's promised to Nephi that the Americas will be "a land of promise, a land which is choice above all other lands; a land which the Lord God hath covenanted with me should be a land for the inheritance of [his] seed." (2 Nephi 1:5) and Ether also says that it is a "choice land which is choice above all other lands" (Ether 2:10). Apparently, the American constitution was directly inspired of God, because he said so in D&C 101:80. So, welcome to paradise, I guess. Now, I'm not saying that its not true, but this was all new doctrine to me as of a few months ago, and as far as I can remember it'd never been taught to me back home, understandably so. When this new (to me) doctrine gets shoved down my throat i initially struggle to believe it, and honestly still do. I was skeptical if American patriotism had gotten so out of hand and people blurred the line so much between country and God, that country became God. 

It's hard for me to come to terms with that, because I'd never heard it before, and apparently it's now doctrine, and always has been. Haven't quite gained a testimony of it yet. Also not quite sure where I'm going with this, but the Gospel is true and has been restored to the earth. God can do whatever he wants however he wants, and looking at it that way it's easy to understand that any land could be a promised land, the inhabitants just need to "serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ" (Ether 2:12) wherever they are. 

Youre promised land is wherever you make it. You do that by following the example of Jesus Christ, by serving him by serving others and remaining true to your covenants.