Monday, October 3, 2016

I hardly remember all that happened this past week.  For P-day last week we had a Nerf gun war with the Elders in our district.  It was fantastic!  The Elders in charge planned it well in advance so we were able to be prepared and obtain our guns from our ward mission leader.  It was all so well executed.  We arrived a little late from the errands we had to do but the hallways were all blocked off with tables and the gym was made into like a lazer tag arena.  It was so fun.

The next day we had our weekly district meeting, but this time President Robinson and his wife came to visit ours.  It turned out to be really good.  Our district leader gave a good training on humility and I gave a training on Chapter 7 of Preach My Gospel book that is about languages.  I had to make it applicable to our mission which is no fully, but mostly English speaking.  I talked about the mission language and the words we use seem to be a foreign language who have no idea what we are talking about.  We have to explain the doctrine simply so that a child can understand.  The gospel is so amazing and it really is that simple that a child can understand but it is then our job to explain it simply.  It can be easy to go off using words we know but others do not.

We got our tires changed to get studded tires for the winter but one of our less-actives told us that two weeks on the road and they would be worn down before the snow even gets here.  The weather this week has been crazy.  It is late September, early October and the snow has been melting from off the mountains.  The higher portions still have snow but not nearly as much as it has before.  It is cold in the mornings, warm throughout the day, and cold in the evenings.  It is getting dark now that we are driving home up the mountain in pitch black darkness with only our headlights allowing us to see. 

Thursday we had Sisters Training.  There are now 30 sisters serving in the mission.
We had majority in person come to the mission home for lunch and training and some were video-conferenced in.  The Elders were joking about having Elders Training down in Anchorage some day.  They are just jealous that the sisters get their own meeting and wanted to know what they talked to us about.  It was mostly just giving us encouragement and helping us find ways to have joy in the work.  It is starting to get to that point where the season depression will start kicking in and they want to help us in anyway they can.

Friday we do a weekly service at the nursing home serving ice cream and a lady came up to us afterwards and said she had some Elders come to dinner with her and her friend and that she wanted our names to give to them to start dating us.  That was really awkward.  I gave her our names, but not our phone number :). 

This weekend was what we call our Mormon holiday.  General Conference is when the Prophet and the Apostles speak to us from a broadcast filmed in Salt Lake City.  It is 4 hours long on Saturday with a 2 hour break in between and the same thing on Sunday.  Our recent convert, Mary thought it was 4 hours, an hour break, and then another 4 hours all in one day.  We laughed and asked her, "so you decided to come?"  She is so cute.  She knew she had to take her daughter to work so when she thought it was 8 hours long in one day she was sad that she was going to miss 45 minutes of it to drop off her daughter.  Who is she?!  Not even regular, Mormon-all-their-lives Mormons are so enraptured in conference like she is.  Other people binge watch Netflix.  No, Mary binge watches conference talks on what she calls a YouTube trail.  She is so awesome.

Our investigator Timothy had baptismal interview yesterday and is ready to go for his baptism on Saturday.  We are all so excited.  He has come so far.  He has been investigating the church for some time now and he has finally realized that this is the true church.  He is so committed that he quit smoking for good and is excited about getting a calling in the church already.

There are so many people here in Alaska who are addicted to drugs or things of that sort and we see a lot of struggles people go through in life.  It is so amazing to see the gospel change their lives for the better and not make them dependent on things that control them.  Our ward million leader is some kind of a drug stopper or something like that and his drug dog recently had to be put down so he said he has about $20,000 worth of heroin in the back of his truck.  It is crazy the amount of drugs that are in this state, but I know that the gospel can help all who are struggling with this.

That is the majority of the things that happened this week.  There is always too much to say and not enough time to say it all or to write it out.

Many Thanks!!!

Sister Shelley Willden

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