Elder Lawrence of the 2nd Quorum of the Seventy

Well this week Elder Lawrence of the 2nd Quorum of the Seventy came with his wife and addressed our entire mission. His Wife gave an awesome talk on how missionaries are gathering the tribes of Israel as we speak, which I thought was just so incredible! We learned of how Patriarchs are starting give blessings to new members from the lost tribes. Then Elder Lawrence talked to us about our mission's goal for the month of November and ways we can start accomplishing it. Our goal is to have 40 Baptisms in the month of November. We have been starting to ask everyone we come in contact with to pray for us to complete our goal. If you guys could pray for that, that would be awesome. I know we can complete this goal and we are going to have a great time doing it. He also asked every missionary to sacrifice something. I am going to be kinder to the people I am in contact with. I think this will be a great goal. I also strongly believe that our mission will accomplish it.

On Sunday we obviously had church. We partook of the Sacrament and listen to the primary kids do their Primary Program it was pretty awesome to see little kids sing again. Afterward we went to Gospel Essentials class. Bro Crawford teaches the class and he is amazing at it. He gets everyone involved so well that it just makes the time in that class fly by! We talked yesterday about the Definition of a prophet. Which is "A prophet is called by God as his representative on earth."  We then talked about all of the talks that President Monson has given this year at both General Conferences. We talk a lot about his talk that he did about light. 

After church we went and ate dinner at Bishop Dickson's house. His wife looks like the human form of Elsa from Frozen. We talked a lot and they are total nerds! They've watched all of the movies I have seen, plus during dinner Sister Dickson quoted Star Wars. It was great! Elder Polson says that we were weird. I am pretty sure he was completely lost during that whole entire conversation. 

Anyways we will be teaching Ricardo and Pora this week and hopefully be baptizing Ricardo on Saturday.  Pray for them both right now! Ricardo is so prepared and Pora just needs to not cancel lessons.

Well the Church is true....always.

Elder R. K. Northrup

Capsaicin! IS NO GOOD!

I received this picture via text that said, "Good Evening Sister Polson, Kenn Lindh from the Dash Point Ward here.  Just wanted to share a picture of the young lads who graced our home this eve.  Would you be so kind as to forward it to Sister Northrup as well?"  How fun is it to have this capability in today's world?  LOVE!

Well this has been a pretty interesting week, however I forgot my journal so it probably won't be as detailed as I hoped it would be.

The events started to roll in around Tuesday morning-ish because the night before we switched companions for the day. I went with Elder Ha to Korean Branch and Elder Kim went to Dash Point with Elder Polson. In morning we did all of our usual morning stuff, except this time I had to teach Elder Ha English. That was a really weird experience. He asked me why people don't understand him when he speaks English to them. I told him that it was probably his Korean accent that throws people off. We went off on accents for quite a while. Afterward we went to district meeting. Nothing too exciting happened there until the Korean Branch Elders stood up to ask the District how they can help the missionary work progress better when their Ward Mission Leader doesn't believe Joseph Smith was a Prophet. I was so confused on how that guy even got baptized then? We still aren't sure on how to help them with that. (If you have any ideas please let us know.) 

After District meeting we drove to a members house for Lunch. Let me tell you something....Korean food is amazing, except for the Octopus, that has a really weird texture to it. Other then that the meal was delicious.

When the meal was finished we went over to the Bank of America, because Elder Ha needed to do some translating for a Korean guy whose English wasn't very good. I just stood their and explained anything that Elder Ha didn't understand so that he could translate it.

About an hour later we went back to the apartment....now for some back story. Before we went on exchanges Elder Ha made me promise to try Capsaicin. (DON'T EVER TRY Capsaicin)  ...I promised to try 3 drops of Capsaicin. He made some tatter tots, so that I could put the Capsaicin on it. I dripped 3 drops onto one of the tatter tots and placed it in my mouth. My thoughts at this point were "This isn't that bad, why was everyone complaining about it" then a second went by and my eyes got very wide as an incredible burning sensation was spreading throughout my entire mouth. I was shouting milk but when I opened my mouth it made it even worse. Meanwhile, Elder Ha is recording this whole thing, filming me as spilled milk all over myself. After 3 quarters of a gallon of milk and my mouth started to stop hating me, we went back out to proselyte. At 8:30 we re-exchanged.

A couple of days later we went and taught a homosexual couple. Well the only thing your mind pulls up during that entire situation are the words, "This is so Awkward!" Plus, I felt super sorry for there children because they will never know what real family is supposed to be like. Anyways we got into a discussion about Demons because their daughter asked if they were real. She related a story about how she was at her friends house who was telling her that the only way to keep the Demons away is to let her come over and pray over her house.  She said that right as her friend said that the dog outside started barking at the top of its lungs. RED LIGHT! There are two things wrong with this situation. One: The one doing the blessing is a girl. Two: That person does not have the priesthood. I just told her that our church does believe in the followers of Satan but its more like a worldly Demons than actual beasts. A bit later we left and went home. 

Well I love all of you guys, keep being faithful in the church and pray always.

Elder R. K. Northrup

Eating at Panda with Brother Link.  He works there so we get a missionary discount!

The Rains came down and the MUD came up!

Here's the Puget Sound night life!

Well this has been a week full of Flabby Divs! (Only my friends will understand that!)

To start it all off... This week we had Elder Partridge going on exchanges with us. He is being trained by the Zone Leaders. He is super cool and we laughed super hard the whole time us three were together. All three of us went taught this guy named Ted, who if I haven't already told you, starts his prays off with "Grandfather...." I am really not sure how to tell him how he really needs to pray because other people have already tried to teach him the proper way of praying. Afterward we went and did some finding, but didn't find many people... which means zero. Which is good because it only means we can improve.

Later on this week, specifically Saturday, was extremely eventful. We started out going to Ted's house, but when we arrived it was pouring down rain and Elder Polson had forgot his rain coat at the apartment.  He didn't want to get in the rain. Since he was driver he decided to just sit in the car and listen to talks. Eventually we set off again and this time we headed to the housing development called the Fairways. When we arrived we found this massive mud filled puddle covering a big part of the street. It was starting to get so big that is was running down into people's apartments in the Fairways. (I have a clip of it but you might have to wait two years before you can see it.) We later found out that these massive puddles were every which way and so obviously we went through them so water would fly up on all sides. We decide then to head to Sister Partel's neighborhood and go contacting. Eventually we stopped by her house.  She is also a less active so we invited her to church. Afterward we went back to the Fairways to go see if Lot and V were home. Only Lot was and so we read the Book of Mormon with him. We are trying to get both of them to lesson together so they can both be converted into the gospel at the same time, however, it hasn't worked like that yet.  When we finished reading a chapter we headed back out and ended up running into the Sutton (Jr.). They were moving someone into there apartment. I think it was a relative. We of course helped them. They kindly bought us pizza and we talked them.  They are both so funny! We later did a member inspire with the Gardner's and how General Conference is a great tool for member missionaries and how they can implement it into their efforts.

Well guys, the Church is true and you cannot deny. Make sure you strengthen your testimony of that each day. There will be a day when that will be tried and you will need it to be strong enough to keep you on the path without any hesitation! Keep the Faith!

Ponderization scripture this week:

Alma 7:23-24

Elder R.K. Northrup

(Not part of his letter, but pretty funny!)  Last week he talked about the possibility of getting evicted.  The email I sent to him asked him if everything worked out okay with his apartment.  This was his reply.

Well we had to sleep in our car the first night because it was bedtime when they kicked us out. In the morning we went to our District Leader who is Elder Ha who is serving in the Korean Branch and we are now staying there now.

Just Kidding

(Little stinker!)        

               Zone Conference October 6, 2015

Dash Point...... YEA!

Mt. Rainier

Well as you all know transfers happened and I am now in Federal Way, Dash Point Ward. The members I have met so far have been super cool. Plus some of them are famous like Brother Phipps is a 16 time arm-wrestling champion. His arms are massive. We also met Brother Wilkinson who is super funny and he talked with us a lot about the Bible and how you know if Gods signature is on it, so that was super cool. 

At our district meeting, I found out who was in our district and who our Zone Leaders are. Our District Leader is Elder Ha who is serving in the Korean Branch with Elder Kim. Then we have some sisters in our District and thats it. Our Zone Leaders are Elder Tali'uli and Elder Brown. Elder Tali'uli when gets home will be playing BYU football so make sure you keep an eye out for him. He is also a great missionary. He is always willing to give people hugs, but when he gives you a hug he lifts you up off the ground and cracks your back for you. It feels awesome. Elder Brown is also a super awesome guy he is a super down to earth person, and is still about as big as Elder Tali'uli. 

Elder Polson (who is my companion) and I, are doing amazing. We already get along great together. He is just super awesome. The only problem is he just about hasn't seen any movies. Meaning speaking fluent movie quotes won't be quite as fun. Anyways, Elder Polson and I have been teaching this investigator named Ricardo, he is a Brazilian. He just recently married a return missionary who served her mission in Argentina. Her name is Gabriella, she is also super awesome. Anyways Ricardo should be getting baptized some time this week or next.  We just recently taught him a lesson at the Crawford's house in between sessions of Conference on Sunday. We taught him about the Ten Commandments, and had a great discussion about it afterward. They then came out of no where and joined us at the Federal Way Stake Center for the Sunday Afternoon Session of Conference (Epic Fist pump). 

This week we might get evicted out of our apartment because we keep getting letters that we owe $52.76 on rent. Hopefully that has been taken care of, but who knows! We might be living on the street in my next email.

Now for General Conference. It was awesome. My 4 favorite talks were by Robert D. Hales, Henry B. Eyring, Russell M. Nelson, and David A. Bednar. They were incredible, I wrote down so many things that I could improve on as a missionary and things to do as a return missionary. I can't tell you most of them because I wrote them down so I could remember them later. However, I am starting to do one thing and that is to "Ponderize" scriptures. Elder Polson and I, decided to start with Ether 12:6. Everyone else should start doing this too because it will be great to learn from everyone's chosen scriptures.

Well, thanks a bunch for tuning in this week, and remember this is the only true church!

Elder R.K. Northrup 

 Selfie time... Elder Polson Driving and me cheesin!

"LDS-You're under Bondage"

Pay the rent or GET EVICTED!