Missionary Journal February 1970

February 11, 1970

We went to Poulsbo Sacrament…it was a missionary meeting.  Brother C.R. a convert of one year, told his story.  Parts of it are very interesting. As a young boy he was afraid of the dark.  Once a friend of    his spent the night and chided him for such a fear.  There was nothing to hurt you in the dark.  Then in a more sober thought the friend said..there is something in the dark.  C. said “What?!” His friend replied-The Lord.  So C. R. began praying and received many answers….Brother R. entered the Army and soon forsook his heavenly friend.  He began to drink and smoke and was generally unhappy.  He wanted to talk to his old friend, but just couldn’t.  Then C. noticed two men that stood out from the rest.  You see, C. always wanted to be a man.  He thought his toughness acquired in the Army would make him a man.  After all, he was doing a man’s work.  Nonetheless, inside himself C. R. knew there was something more to manhood.  And he saw it in these two men at the mill. They did not swear, drink, or smoke.  They were strong and honest men-real men.  As C. confided in them, they openly invited him to church.  To make a long story short, one of the mill workers was a stake missionary.   C. was taught the gospel and he accepted it.  And he has his goal for manhood too-that is to be an honorable bearer of the Priesthood and to be the head of his family for eternity.

Poulsbo Ward has some fired up missionary minded people.  We can do a good work here.

I am not overcoming my lack of humility.  I have been planning this week.  I’ve prayed often to make good plans.  We certainly don’t have much to work with yet.  I think I ought to pray for goals.  As far as being humble, I just don’t know.  I just don’t listen to people, I guess I don’t have faith in them or their abilities.  I feel my way is right and have yet to be convinced otherwise.  All of this confidence is just great, but it does not promote good will and it gets me and my work nowhere. I must find a way to honestly humble myself and to be humble.  Any imitation will not work.

March 13, 1970

A lot has happened in the past 4 ½ weeks.  I have a new companion- Elder B.C. from Texas.

Elder V. left to be ZLC to Elder K. in the UW area.  Our companionship was not one of warm closeness.  We worked well together.  So long as we were hard at work, things went well.  I did not humble myself and accept his instruction.  This was an error.  I never understood Elder V. We did not communicate openly.  I must try to emulate his punctuality and diligent attitude.  He is a good hardworking elder.  Elder W., Elder G’s new DLC, says that Elder V. served sometime in a German mission before coming to PNM.

About a month ago our “board” looked very good.  For a while we were teaching almost 18 people.  Now they’ve all but fallen through.  I feel our biggest short coming was in screening and estimating.  We weren’t finding out if they people were really interested.  Then we did not estimate.  I feel that this is very important.  The missionary covenants to do all he can to bring a person to the baptismal waters.

When we estimated F.S. for Feb 28, I knew he would not make it.  But I had a strong feeling he’d be baptized on March 7.  We dropped F. on the 17^th.  There seemed to be no way he’d be baptized.  Yet I knew he would be.  In the course of the next two weeks, F. fasted 2 days about Joseph Smith, met a recent convert- a girl, and began attending seminary!  He came to the baptism on the 28^th. I set up 3 discussions and set his baptism for the 7th. As will be told, he was baptized.

Elder V. knew of his transfer around the 22^nd.  He began preparing me to “take over” the area.  We reviewed volumes of material.  He also left me with the responsibility of our Poulsbo “Missionary For A Day.”

Elder C. arrived on the 27^th . It was a terribly busy day.  I was trying to not drop many of our contacts. We taught four discussions and contacted numerous people. 

I learned something of humility when many of my poor teaching habits were mirrored in a “stakie.”  It was a miserable discussion, but I learned what not to do.  I wish I had time to make up for all of the grief I gave Elder V.  

*note:  In Bill's lock box I found an index card he probably wrote as a note to himself! 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poulsbo,_Washington

"Poulsbo (/ˈpɔːlzboʊ/ PAWLZ-boh) is a city on Liberty Bay in Kitsap County, Washington, United States. It is the smallest of the four cities in Kitsap County. The population was 9,200 at the 2010 census^[5] and an estimated 10,927 in 2018.^[6]

The area was historically inhabited by the Suquamish people, many of whom moved to the Port Madison Indian Reservation after the signing of the Treaty of Point Elliott in 1855. Poulsbo was founded in the 1880s by Norwegian immigrant Jørgen Eliason, who was joined by other Scandinavians who relocated from the Midwestern states. They were drawn here by the availability of land, by the area's rich resources, and by a landscape similar to their native home. The settlement was connected by boats to other areas of the region, including the Puget Sound mosquito fleet, which was eventually usurped by highways built in the early 20th century.

The Suquamish people inhabited the area at the north end of Liberty Bay for millennia and had several names for modern-day Poulsbo; one of those names, tcu-tcu-lats, means "place of the maples".^[7] The Suquamish occupied villages on the Liberty Bay shoreline — among them, ho-CHEEB^[8] — for at least 5,000 years, hunted in local forests and floodplains, fished in bays and streams here, and harvested shellfish along the shoreline.

After the signing of the Treaty of Point Elliott in 1855, most Suquamish people here relocated to the Port Madison Indian Reservation, although the Suquamish Tribe reserved — and to this day exercises — certain cultural and natural resource rights in its historical territory, including Poulsbo.^{[citation needed]}

Founded by Norwegian immigrant Jørgen Eliason in the 1880s, Poulsbo was settled in its early years by a large number of Norwegian and other Scandinavian immigrants because of its similarities to their native countries.^[9] In 1886, I.B. Moe, one of the early Norwegian settlers, suggested that the community should have a post office. Moe suggested the town be named "Paulsbo" (which translates as "Paul's place"), after the village in Halden, Norway,^[10] where Moe spent his early years. The community's petition for a post office was granted and Moe became the first postmaster, but authorities in Washington, D.C. misspelled the town's name, likely misreading Moe's handwriting,^{[citation needed]} and the community became known as "Poulsbo" thereafter. Poulsbo was incorporated on December 18, 1907.

Until World War II, many Poulsbo residents retained Norwegian as a primary language. However, during World War II, the military constructed about 300 residential units to provide housing for workers at the nearby Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton. The population of Poulsbo almost tripled over three years, and the diversification of the population led to the dominance of English as the primary language.

On October 22, 1975, King Olav V of Norway visited Poulsbo as part of the celebration of 150 years of Norwegian immigration to the United States.^[11] His son, Harald, visited 20 years later."