Our New Calling

First of all, you must know some things about the Seattle 1st Ward. They are incredibly friendly. They are very diverse, in race, in background, in economic circumstances but they are a vibrant ward family. We've never been in a ward quite like this one, and it's very fun. The ward has a good number of older couples that have been pillars in the church here in Seattle for years and years. Then there are the younger families that have just started to move back into the city in the last 3-4 years. So in that time the primary has grown from 7 kids to 40 or 50. The nursery has 17 kids and it's still growing with the summer interns still moving in. Last year they had about 50 convert baptisms. So this ward is changing in many ways and it is very exciting.

We knew when we talked with the Bishop on the first Sunday we were here that he planned to give us callings while we were here for the summer. We were pleasantly surprised that the ward wanted us to be so involved, even though we were only going to be here for 12 weeks. We figured that they'd probably give us a small calling to fill in some corners in the ward while we were here. Well, last Sunday we found out what we were going to be called to do, and it is quite different than we had expected. We have been called to be ward missionaries with two other couples that are here for the summer internship. But this is not your ordinary ward missionary calling. We were given the assignment to contact all of the inactive members and find out who they are, what their situation is and invite them back to church. Why aren't they already on top of this you might ask? Well, they have about 300 active members and about 450 inactive members. And many of those records have been rolling in in just the last few months. It seems that the big city is a good place to disappear if you want to. The Bishopric cannot keep up with it, so we have been asked to contact as many of the inactive members as we can (that means in person). We're hoping to get through at least 300. We've only got 10 weeks!

This is a huge undertaking for us! We spent Sunday evening getting all of these contacts onto our spreadsheet and mapping them all out (with Justin's cool mapping program that he built for his Elder's Quorum calling in Topeka). This way when the couples go out (one couple watches all the kids while the other 2 couples go knocking on doors) we can be much more efficient because we can get everyone that lives in a close proximity, rather than just jumping around to different neighborhoods. Justin and I have already been out once and it was a very interesting experience. It feels like a mini-mission. And walking around certain parts of town at night made me very grateful that the wives will have our husbands with us. We are trying to dedicate 1 weeknight and every Sunday afternoon to this effort. I think that we will be able to make a huge difference in the ward by doing this work this summer. I hope that we have some success with it!