Excerpt from Letter to Parents 5/30/2017

I am doing great! This week we have MLC (Mission Leadership Conference) up at Zion's Camp which should be super fun! And we will be getting everything ready for next week when the whole mission goes up for Zion's Camp! I am way excited for it. It should be a blast! 

This last week went by super fast! We got an awesome referral for this guy named C who is from the Congo. He is way cool and we had a ton of fun this last week going to the YSA events going on! Funny story, we were all riding with the Braunbergers, a senior couple in the ward, and at the end they asked if we were hungry and would like some Round Table pizza. Both Elder Sutton and I, feeling too shy to take them up on the offer, said that we weren't. Right then C sighed humorously and said, "C'mon guys, don't be shy. Let's take them up on it. Let's get some pizza!" Hahaha! To which the Braunbergers laughed and took us out to eat at Round Table Pizza. Elder Sutton and I have had a blast teaching C about the gospel and he is on date to be baptized on June 11th!! (In case you're wondering, C speaks English super well!)

Love you all and have a great week!
Elder Bullough 

Numbered as the Sand of the Sea 5/22/2017

What a great week!! As you can see we had a baptism for T. A few years ago T got into a motorcycle accident. He was a very successful man and due to the accident he now has a lot of brain damage. His family moved in with him not too long ago to live and take care of him. They are members of the church and when a couple of missionaries knocked on their door a few months ago they were excited to have T take the lessons and be baptized. After a few weeks of him coming to church, talking with the bishop and us teaching all of the lessons he was baptized last week! 

This experience taught me that God loves all of his children! Of course I already knew that but it was a good reminder to see the influence that the Holy Ghost had on him to prompt him to take the lessons and to get baptized. It was not an easy step for T to get baptized but with the help of Heavenly Father he did it! 

Well have a wonderful sunny week and love you all!!

Elder Bullough

The Suters, T, Elder Sutton, & Elder Bullough

Happy Mother's Day 5/15/2017

Hey everyone!! I hope you all had a great week! Elder Sutton and I had a ton of fun this past week. We spent most the week proselyting. It has been pretty good weather here in Tacoma except for a couple days of off and on rain showers. I had a chance yesterday to give a talk in Sacrament meeting in my new ward and lucky for me my topic was on mothers, so that was pretty easy to talk about! I had fun preparing it and got a lot out of it. I'll share with you all some of my highlights. 

1. In the Book of Mormon story of the 2000 stripling warriors it says that their great courage and faith in the Lord came from their valiant mothers!

2. In the Bible we learn of one of the greatest mothers, Mary, the mother of Jesus. Think of her example: She is called by the Angel Gabriel to bear a son who would become the Savior of the World. Then while growing up she sees at many times first hand the miracles that He preformed. She expressed her faith in Jesus Christ and her love and support for His purpose throughout His entire life and ministry. And in Christ's final events when he is on the cross who does He think of but His loving mother Mary. I can only imagine His thoughts were: "who will watch after her? Or who will take care of my mother when I am gone?" When on the cross in agony Jesus says to his "beloved" disciple: "Behold Thy Mother!" Jesus Christ was the ultimate example, especially in His expression of love to his Mother.

Love you Mom!!  Hope that you all have a wonderful day and week!! 

With Love,
Elder Bullough

Very Busy Week! 5/8/2017

It's me again! This week has been soooo busy.  Probably the busiest week of my mish.  Here is what we had:

• Monday- I went to the "Mansion" (a way nice house the mission owns by the Puget Sound) a day early to learn some new responsibilities.  We get a new car (Toyota Rav4). It's awesome! That night we meet with president to figure out what we will train on for the meetings this week. Sister Blatter makes us some good soup.
• Tuesday- Drive to seattle, pick up the new missionaries, feed them, take pics of them, interview them, and introduce them to their trainers. Then we had to take the departing missionaries knocking, bring them to the cheesecake factory for dinna (definitely a blessing), bring them to the Blatter's house for going away dessert and things, and then take the elders to our house to spend the night. 
• Wednesday- Wake up and have the departing missionaries at the Blatter's house by 9 so that they can drive to the airport. Come home and study as fast as we can for the two trainings that we have Thursday and Friday. Go to district meetings and afterwards finally have some time to work for the rest of the day. The last 30 minutes of the night Elder Sutton worked on a piano medley for this week's fireside.
• Thursday- We have the New District Leader training from 9-2. Afterwards we use the two hours before dinner to figure out our Mission Leadership Counsel training, and we work the rest of the night. That night, we get home and we use the rest of the time before bed to figure out more of our training.  
• Friday- Wake up at 5:30 and finish the training. We go to MLC (Mission Leadership Conference) from 9-2. We come home, plan for next week, and have time to work the rest of the day and see people.  
• Saturday- We finally have a free day, so we knock and see the people we need to. We found some way cool people. One might get baptized the 16th. Then there was a little drama with two missionaries going home this week, but it's all good now. We figured it out.
• Sunday- We have church meetings from 7:15am-2:00.  We have a "break the fast" meal with the YSA ward--basically just a party where we get to eat and chill with college students and people that are our age in the army and talk about life and get them to tell us about their friends that we can teach lol. Then we go to Sister White's house in Lakewood for a second meal. We then immediately head to the fireside where we meet for practice. We herd up the missionaries and practice the songs for the missionary choir, and we prep for the fireside at 7:00. The fireside goes great!! Sutton played a dope song on the piano, the ladies love him.:)  We rush to the office at 8:30, collect numbers, make the WaTac facts for the week, talk to president about next week's goals, do a conference call with the mission, and get home at 11pm.  
• Monday- Wake up at 5:30 and start again :)  

This week should be less busy. We have a training for all the new missionaries and their trainers tomorrow. Friday we will have exchanges. We will split knock a couple nights this week, and Sunday is Mother's Day!! I LOVE YOU MOM! I love being busy. It feels so productive. Life is great. I love the WaTac and all the missionaries. They are such good people, and it is amazing how much you grow to love them when you work so closely with them. Peace out!

Here are some pics that we took today and throughout the week. Hope you enjoy! 

Love, 

Elder Bullough

Elder Bullough with his new companion (Elder Sutton)

God's Not Dead! 5/1/2017

This week was Sweeeeet!!! So we had transfer calls and tomorrow I will be heading out of Lakewood and over to Tacoma to serve in the YSA ward and in Skyline! This week was definitely the cherry on top as we had 3 baptisms of the people that we were working with! 

S and J- They are a way cool family and actually have been a part of the church for awhile but their records were not in the church. So we had to re-teach and baptize them. They were so cool and it was fun to work with them and to see their testimony grow as they learned the lessons basically for the first time again. We could see the change almost immediately! They began to live the gospel more in their lives and change some of the things that they were doing that was contrary to the gospel. God also helped them gain a greater faith as we taught them the principles again. J, who was originally baptized years ago to please his wife, now was doing it for the right reasons which made all the difference. Anyway long story short they were baptized and confirmed yesterday! When I think of this family I think of a talk by Todd Parker: "True Doctrine Understood, Changes, Attitudes and Behavior." -- In essence the title summarizes the talk.

R was also baptized on Sunday. Such an elect person! We found her like 3 weeks ago and I invited her to be baptized and watch conference and left. Well, when we were on exchange Elder Anderson and another elder knocked back into her and she had watched conference and wanted to come to church the next week. We went over almost every day for these past two weeks and she was baptized yesterday as well! --Good thing God knows who is ready and who is not! 

This whole transfer we had been fasting for miracles and it was such a neat experience to see everyone who was baptized this transfer. God worked some great miracles in our area and we had 6 people get baptized this month, 3 of which came right at the last day of the month—ironically, the last day of the fast! 

Love you all and have a great week! 
Elder Bullough

Elder Anderson, Elder Fuentes, S & J, Elder Schmidt, & Elder Bullough

R's baptism

Elders Bullough, Anderson, Schmidt, & Fuentes

Two Baptisms! 4/24/2017

This week was crazy! First, we had stake conference which was a blast but everyone was super anxious because we were all going to hear the news of the realignment of the wards in the Lakewood stake. Because of size and lack of leaders they discontinued two wards, but on the bright side we got a chunk of each area so that is pretty cool! Elder Anderson and I are pretty happy because we now have a lot more apartments that we can knock! 

Then we had two baptisms on Sunday afternoon! A is a little 9 year old boy who just moved up with his family from Bakersfield, California. His mom and brother are both members but he was not old enough when they were baptized a couple years ago. A couple weeks ago, late in the evening, Elder Fuentes and I had knocked on a little apartment complex and talked to N, the mother, and asked if she would like for A to take the lessons and be baptized. She agreed, so we started seeing them a couple times a week and he was baptized yesterday! It was so cool to see how happy he was for the baptism-- when he got to the church he started running to the doors because he was so excited! haha! And another great thing is that we are going back tonight to teach the father, P, because he was so touched by the baptism. 

The other baptism was for S. S is N's step-daughter and had just moved here from Hawaii. We went to visit N's family one night and S happened to open the door and we started talking and she agreed to take the lessons and meet with us! She was really having a tough time with the new move and all of the stress of finding a job and a house, but she realized the change that was happening in her life when she would meet with us. She said that she noticed a huge difference from when we came and started teaching her and reading the Book of Mormon with her. Eventually this realization resulted in her making the decision to be baptized and to follow her Savior more in life. S was so awesome and accepted everything that we taught her and agreed to start living the commandments more fully before she was baptized! I know that her baptism will be a remarkable step for her new life here in Washington, and her family just got that much bigger! 

--Side story so you can understand our stress on the day of the baptism.. Church started at 10am this Sunday and we got a bunch of people rides to church and everyone was set and ready and all of the T's were crossed and i's were dotted. Well S and her family were all planning on coming to church when they realized J, the daughter, wasn't there... she was stuck in traffic on her way home from her aunt's house. Church ends at 12 so we told them to come and make it for however long they could. Well one hour went by... nothing. An hour and a half goes by... no S. And at the last moment S walks in with the whole family with 5 minutes left to go in the meeting!! Pheww! It was just as stressful as a sports game going down to the wire lol. But we were so happy that she made it! Anyway, better late than never!! 

Well love you all and have a great week!

A's Baptism

S's Baptism

Golfing with Elder Anderson & Brother Price today for P-day

Pictures from the "Central Zones Conference" on calledtoservewa-tac.blogspot.com:

Happy Easter!! 2K17 ~ 4/17/2017

Happy Easter Everyone!! It was a great week here in the Watac! Especially here in the city of Lakewood! We had sunshine and great weather all Saturday and Sunday-- such a blessing! I loved this Easter on my mission and it has been so far one of my favorite days of the mission! Easter is such a great time for families and is traditionally the day that many people go to church to remember the Savior Jesus Christ and his Atonement. Easter is all about our Savior and how He died for us and was Resurrected! I know it's a day late, but if you have not yet seen the short video clip "The Prince of Peace" go watch it! https://www.mormon.org/ 

Update:
E, who we have been working with, was baptized on Saturday and confirmed just yesterday on Easter Sunday. I can't think of a more fitting day to become a member of the church haha! It was apparent that one of the best attributes about E is his meekness and submissive character that allowed him to accept everything that he was taught and to follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized. E is so awesome and accepted to live every commandment and standard of the church before being baptized, trusting that the Lord will bless him for it! I am certain that he saw some of those blessings almost immediately just by the happiness and the joy that he feels now compared to when we first met him. E was referred to us a couple weeks back, by missionaries who were in a different ward than us, when he decided to go to one of our churches in a nearby city. He had been going through a rough time in his life with a recent divorce and the absence of his daughter in his life. Elder Sutton and I were the first to go over and showed him a video that the church had put out called "Mountains to Climb." The next time we came back E had been watching a few more of the short videos and reading the Book of Mormon. He said to us that he felt a major difference in his life and was once again starting to feel purpose and joy. This new chapter is one that he will cherish, as he continues to learn and live the gospel. 

Elder Anderson, Elder Fuentes, E, Me, & Elder Schmidt