Door handle shenanigans

 September 28, 2020

Hello everyone!!

This past week has been good... but man its went by slow haha. We honestly weren't super busy this week, but we have lots of plans this coming week which is great! 

We went over to the Carpenters on Tuesday and there house is gorgeous. They live next to the ocean and the view is to die for. Right when we got there, we were all shocked. They are an older couple and they are the sweetest. We had dinner with them and Elder Bailey gave a quick spiritual thought. They have a bunch of blackberries in their backyard, so they made a blackberry pastry that was way good. We had icecream on top too  

We also had a dinner with the Harris family a couple days ago. They are so awesome! They have a bunch of little kids and they are super cool. We had a great time talking with them. It's nice to finally meet more members in the area. We were actually on exchanges with the zone leaders that same day, but the ZLs ate somewhere else cause we felt bad bringing 6 dudes to a member dinner  Exchanges went pretty well too and we basically just hung out all day. As I said before, we didn't really have many plans. 

Me and Elder Bailey have been running in the mornings for a couple weeks now. We took a brake for a little while cause of the smoke, but we're starting it back up. We use to run around the neighborhoods but now we run on the track at the high school. It's nice cause we can both run at our own pace. Elder Bailey runs like 5 miles... and let's just say... I'm not THAT in shape! Ha! It's been fun talking with him and getting a workout in. We get up at 6 in the morning which is a rip, but only a couple times a week. I've definitely seen my attitude change when I get up and run which is one of the main reasons I do it. It's hard staying inside, so I'll take as many chances as I can to get out and move.

We also played ultimate frisbee on Saturday with Brother Wilson and his group. He's apparently been hosting ultimate games with his friend group for the past 8 years! Every week! (besides during quarantine). They were all super good and it was a struggle. I was a little rusty, but it was still tons of fun. We are probably gonna be doing that weekly now which will be awesome. Also... I missed the game winning catch in the endzone which sucked!! Haha but our team still ended up winning.

We had a mission wide meeting over zoom this past week with some pretty big news! They are gonna start allowing missionaries to knock on peoples doors in three weeks!! I'm still not sure how I feel about it cause I've never done it, but anything's better than sitting around in the apartment.

Here's something crazy that happened this past week. Our door handle on the front door of our apartment just decided to not work. We were all coming back from teaching this women (Mary Ann) and when we got to our room, we couldn't get the door open! We tried and tried but the door wouldn't budge. We eventually went over to the help desk. A maintenance guy shows up and starts hammering the crap out of our door handle. And keep in mind... this isn't quiet (we also got a noise complaint from the people who live below us but that's a story for another day). He straight up breaks the handle so we can get into our room. It took him a solid 5 minutes, but we all thought was the coolest thing ever. It all worked out in the end and he replaced our door handle, so big ups to that guy.

Hope everyone's doing well,

Elder Macfarlane 

Pic 1-4: At the Carpenters 

Pic 5: Pokemon with the Bainbridge Sisters

The Gallon Challenge/ RIP Kingston

September 14, 2020

Hey friends and family!

I'm having a blast serving the Lord here in Washington and hope everyone's doing good and staying safe!

I didn't get a chance to write my weekly email last week, so this weeks might be a little longer ;) haha

Soooo last week was transfers and it was a little sad. Me and my comp (Elder Wilson) are both staying in our area which is awesome, but one of the elders we live with left us. Elder Waddoups was really cool. On his last day in the area, we went to The Grub Hut, which is apparently this super good burger place. My relatives that live in Washington (the Morleys) said you NEED to go there at some point. The burgers were amazing. Elder Waddoups had never gone before, so that's why we went. We also went to Sluys Bakery that day. It's this pretty small bakery in downtown poulsbo, but the pastries are wayyyy good. I had two viking cups, which are basically just cinnamon rolls with a crap ton of cream cheese. They were super messy but super good. That was Elder Waddoups final requests before heading out  that day was 10/10 haha

After Elder Waddoups left, we got a new guy in the apartment named Elder Bailey. It was definitely an adjustment at first because Elder Waddoups and Elder Bailey have like opposite personalities. He's super cool though and it's been fun having a little bit of change. I usually don't like change. All three of the guys I live with are all from Utah now which is pretty funny. Elder Bailey got me into running a little bit and now we run twice a week in the mornings. I still don't love running but it helps me stay in shape and it feels good to get outside. We ran three miles the first day and it was a STRUGGLE. It reminded me of my soccer days with coach Dustman haha. We stay inside alot throughout the day, so it's nice to do something outside. 

Elder Wilson and I did some service and the Millers last week. They are this super awesome old couple and we helped mow there lawn. They were so funny! Brother Miller started talking to me about politics and I just kinda sat back and listened. He was speaking facts, but I'm pretty sure missionaries aren't suppose to get into that too much haha. We couldn't stay there for very long, so they gave us sandwiches to go, which was also really nice. Me and Elder Wilson haven't been doing a whole ton of service this week because we've actually had people to teach!

We've been teaching Kaylie and Lou a lot recently and they are both doing well. They both have a lot of questions and my companion and I try are best to answer all of them. Its fun to finally be able to connect and teach nonmembers. I think thats one thing that has been hard is being inside a lot and not having personal interactions. 

One thing that happened last week was the fire alarm in our apartment went off! At like 8 in the morning!! The maintenance people were apparently just testing to make sure they worked, but it caught us all off guard haha. It would go off like every 30 seconds! It went on for a solid half hour until we decided to just go over to the church (cause we were all in the middle of personal study). Its hard to understand the scriptures sometimes... but its WAY harder to understand them when you have an alarm going off 24/7 

The weather has been a little different this past week. There apparently have been a lot of fires in Oregon and parts of Washington, so there has been a lot of smoke in the air. It's not super bad or anything, but I kinda miss the blue sky a little. Our health person has told us not to do heavy amounts of exercise outside, just to be safe. I'm sure it's not super healthy to breath in a bunch of that smoke.

Me, Elder Wilson, and Elder Bailey started the Gallon Challenge this week. It's a challenge we made up where we all drink a gallon of water and if we don't we have to do 100 pushups by the end of the day. I'm almost positive I can't do that many pushups, so I'm just gonna stick with drinking the water haha. We all use 1 gallon milk jugs and it's pretty funny. I don't know how long we'll keep it up we have a tally and everything. I definitely don't drink enough throughout the day, so that why I agreed to do it :)

BIG NEWS: Me and my companion were serving in the kingston ward, but we had the boundaries changed yesterday! The four of us were all expecting that Kingston would get some more people... and that's about it. Welllllll that didn't happen. They straight up got rid of the kingston ward entirely!! We were all shocked. The neighboring wards basically just split up the Kingston ward in half. President Metts called us up afterwards and told us what was gonna happen with me and Elder Wilson. I was worried that we were gonna be emergency transferred to a different area, but luckily that didn't happen. We are just combining with the Elders we are living with. BUT we aren't technically a quad cause we have two cars haha. We are now serving in the poulsbo second ward. It was kinda sad cause we lost a lot of cool members to the other ward. We also lost both the people we were teaching! (Kaylie and Lou) We didn't lose them, we just have to give them to the other Elders 

Lifes been good,

Elder Macfarlane 

Pic 1: Chilling at the fish park

Pic 2: The Grub Hut

Pic 3: Viking cups

Pic 4: New boundaries