Elder Northrup's FINAL mission Skype.

We were able to gather together with family on this Mother's Day Sunday.  Grandpa and Grandma Northrup, Grandpa and Grandma Thayne, Roxanne, Mitchell, Talmage, Grayson, Afton and Halsten Thayne, as well as the Rod Northrup family were there to skype!

We started the call of by having Karter ordained an Elder.  How cool is that??  Can't believe this is the last time we will be skyping from this mission.

Go to Church, Go to Church, Go to Church Church Church!

This week has been grand! I'm really enjoying my time here!  Still hoping to go to Puyallup though, that would be sweet! Whatever happens, happens. I will just have to roll with it.

We have been doing a lot of thinking this week on how we can get the members to do missionary work themselves. They seem to be struggling with that. We came up with starting a Preach My Gospel class! Bishop said he would think about which I am hoping he says yes to it, because it would be great!

We did service like always.  We seem to be the masters at that! This time we helped Bro. Johnson do yard work.  We also gave a hand to Sister Hixson and we helped one of our investigators stack wood. 

Albert was the one we helped stack wood with! I also killed many spiders during the service because I am pretty sure Satan has a mighty hold on there minds. I took care of them with this ax that I was using! Take that you disgusting creatures!

After we helped Albert we taught him more about the Book of Mormon and invited him to be baptized! He said that that seemed like the most logical thing to do. I was like was so happy with that answer. We also invited him to church.

Thursday we were walking along minding our own business when the rain started dumping! We were soaked but this time I wasn't upset because it was a warm rain and it stopped soon after it started! That how the rain should always work! Go ahead and take notes Washington. We also had a thunder and lightning storm that night is was so awesome! I haven't heard the sky mumble in so long!

Saturday was our main proselyting day and we went every where inviting people to church! We invited Darren Moss, Jerry, the Martins, Albert, and Adam. 

Sunday came around and guess what!  Nobody flippin' came to church! This is the bane of a missionaries existence! Come on people its really not hard, plus its not even that far away! The sacrament was still good though and we had a great rest of the day!

I love you all and you all a wonderful week!

Elder R.K. Northrup

The Spirit... it is an energy. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.” (A slight change to a quote from Star Wars)

This week has been so good! I have been basically pumped with Spirit-roids! I'm not sure why but I have been crying tears of joy, as well as ones of Sadness. Luckily more joyful ones though.

We were able to teach this awesome black guy named Darren Moss! He is so cool! He has a lot of faith. He is a Detective for the Tacoma area. We taught him a lot about the Book of Mormon. He said he would read it! The Spirit was testifying so hard, he just needs to listen more intently. We being the bogus missionaries we are, we totally didn't invite him to baptism. Thank goodness we can repent and try again!

Sister Martinez is doing really well. She is happier and happier the more we see her. She even made it to church this Sunday! Putting that as a win in the books!

We weren't able to see Jerry this week, which was sad, but he was busy. Slightly understandable.

We also had exchanges with the Zone Leaders. I was with Elder Tripp in Firgrove. Guess what we found???  A family! They are the West family and they are super good!  Brother West just retired from the Army. (He did Artillery and Hazmat.) He is a really open guy. Please pray super hard for this family!

The spirit has been so strong with this week. I have been kind of a baby! I finally feel like the Son's of Mosiah! It is such an awesome feeling to have. It pushes you so hard too. I love it!

That was basically the week! 

Oh... one more thing!  You all remember Laura and Tim from previous emails? Well they dropped the Graham Sisters! What the crap!   I had to binge eat some donette's not to get to upset with them!  Ugh the exhaustion is real!

Anyways, I love you all and hope you are all doing very well.

Pray for these people Kylie, The West's, Sawyer, Jerry, and Darren Moss!

Elder R.K. Northrup

Walking is how we get where we are going!

My last picture with Elder Pratt before he goes home.

I am exceedingly EXHAUSTED beyond compare.

Wow! and Wow!

This week was pretty rad!  We are still struggling to find people to teach so we started tracting out our less actives and part member families lists. We had some interesting experiences.

Most of the week went by with no real events.  However we did have interviews which is always so stressful for me. I would rather President just answer my emails then talk to me face to face. Oh well, anyway, they were good and I got some good advice for finishing my mission strong!

That same day we went to the Vogels for dinner and they made street tacos......SOOOOO GOOOODDD! Elder Kofford and I each had ten! We would've had more but then we might have gone into withdrawals. So this week we are going to start making our own! I totally advise you to try this recipe out because it is amazing!

On Friday we went out to do a lot of PMF contacting. We started off in the Southern part of our area! The first few houses nobody was home....ugh, great! We decided to head further south and we went to this neighborhood with a PMF family in it. What happen next was a total disgrace! This use to be mormon lady totally fell away from the church and was basically shoving us a bunch of lovely crap about the the false "Mormon Doctrine." During the entire time she was yapping, I was just staring at her with the face of complete and utter disappointment! The word that best describes my face is "Unbelievable!" Later in her lecture she turned to me and said, I am mostly talking to you because you look like you are really grumpy with me and then told me to read the bible so that I know that what I'm teaching people and that I should just go home! Thanks for nothing! 

Anyways on to bigger and better stuff! We met with this guy named Jerry! He is sweet, (plus he is in the roofing business). We taught him the Restoration. The power of that lesson is so cool! He asked a lot of good questions to heighten his understanding, I love it when they ask sincere questions. He also told us that he has never been baptized because he never knew which church was the true one! Well that's where we come in! We invited him to baptism and he accepted to be baptized as soon as he knows it is true! Wahooooo! Pray really hard for him people, he is so close!

Sunday came around and we were invited into the Stutz house. We talked with them and we asked them if we could possibly teach there less active daughter and her best friend who is a non-member! Well, they excitedly jump on that invite. Right then and there we had another restoration lesson. The whole family was present and we shared our testimonies of the Restoration and how it has been a blessing in our lives! Ahhh so powerful! Please pray for Sawyer and Kylie. They were the ones we were teaching the most!

Well that was basically our fun filled week! Love you all! 

Also way to go Karter for getting your mission call and being ready to serve the Lord and his people!

Elder R.K. Northrup

The only day this week of SUNSHINE!

Soaking wet again!  Sooo annoying!

My Companion who is also wet.

Antiques Roadshow

This week flew by, in fact I am not really sure what we did this week. We definitely worked hard though. 

We visited with the President Wells this week and talked about some the people we are working with. He is sweet dude! He also asked us for people in the ward that he should go visit and we gave him a few names and he said he was working on them.

We also took his son out to visit this man named Henry Jenkins the II. His son is a great kid and will be an amazing missionary. We sadly didn't catch Henry Jenkins the II but we did catch Henry Jenkins the I! We talked him a bit and asked him some questions. Hopefully we built his faith a bit while we were there.

We also found another investigator. Her name is Hannah. However when we went back to their house for our return appointment they just canceled with us and said they were busy at that time. 

Then Saturday the same thing happened with Adam, he wasn't even home! Come on Adam! Oh well we will catch him soon.

We also met with one of our potentials named Albert and he has the most old antique things, and around his house, that I have ever seen. We could've probably had Antiques Roadshow in his backyard! We talk to him about the plan of salvation and did major "teach people, not lessons" it was pretty cool. So good to teach someone again. He told us that we could come back in a few weeks he just need time to ponder what we had talked about with him. We left with a book of Mormon as well and invited him to read it.

Well thats all I can really remember thanks everyone! Love you all!

Elder R.K. Northrup

We shared the Armor of God with the Martin's, so Brother Martin shared his Sword of the Spirit with us...

I always knew I would fly an x-wing!

Pretty Cool Fish mailebox.
(His eye patch says Elder Northrup)

The last 12 weeks!

Well as you all know Elder Rudd the studd left me last week. Now I'm with Elder Kofford. He is a good companion and works hard.  So far we don't have a ton in common, but he is a good guy.

On the upper side of things we have found some people to teach finally. That's a good sign! 

We found this dude named Adam who doesn't like how all of these churches are turning in to commercial ministries with Rock bands and things like that. He said that he hasn't gone to church because of that. Plus, his Dad has been trying to get him to try out the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints. We got him right where we want him!

We also met this man named Henry and told us how much he loved his family. He told us we could come back on Thursday and teach him. SO GOOD!

Prepare to feel the spirit people! 

We talked to plenty more people that were all super cool. We even had this family named the Wisti's randomly invite us to have dinner with them from off the street. They are a really cool family, sadly they are set in there ways as of right now. 

That pretty much been our week sorry that its so short.

One of my goals in case I haven't told you is to finish the entire Old Testament before I go home. Lets GO!

Elder R.K. Northrup

Good Bye Elder Rudd!  (Sister Shari Jean Morris, Me and Elder Rudd)

Elder Kofford and Me

Never a serious picture!

Come on!

Graham Zone (One of these things is not like the others)

Well pretty upsetting week. It pretty much went down hill the entire week and then fell off a cliff the past few. (If you can't tell I'm a bit upset).

The entire week we haven't been able to find any new investigators, pretty devastating!

On Tuesday we had to break the sad news to Laura and Tim. We had to tell them they couldn't get baptized now until they get married. Which always been the rule, but the story behind this situation is kinda long and don't really feel like going into it.  That was really hard and Laura and Tim were pretty devastated. "So exhausting!" As Elder Rudd would say.

We did some more service this week which seems to be our forte'. We helped the Green's move out, Brother Hendricks get rid of a bunch of tree limbs, and helped Brother Stokes put up part of his fence. That was a total blast the whole day!

General Conference was super good!  Loved all of the talks that were given. I think my favorite talk was by S. Mark Palmer. He talked about his experience of being a mission President and how important it is to be charitable and try your best to understand what all of your missionaries go through and how to be their friend. I wish that talk was given sooner, but better late than never. G con was definitely the best part of the week.

We got transfer calls on Sunday night. Elder Rudd is getting the boot. He is going to the top of the mission, one of the best Zones: Renton! love that place. Super sad to see him go though we had a blast together.

On Monday we got another call I was hoping it would be a call to have me be training again, but it was the worse thing that could have happened. It was President telling me that I am being released as District Leader, which just made transfers even more upsetting because I knew that meant I was going to be going back to Junior Comp. Ugh! Lame! Oh well....I guess.

My new companion is Elder Kofford. He just was a Zone Leader which is going to make me nervous, because the fun of being a missionary may have just gone out the window. I hope I am wrong though.

Come on!

Well I love you all and hope you all had a great week. Enjoy the words of the Prophet. See yuh all soon!

Elder R.K. Northrup

Sopping wet from the rain!