"I don't know any nuns"

Fall is here.  The leaves have changed so quickly in just one week.  It is pretty, though I wish the trees would have some red because it is all orange and yellow.  I feel like I can't enjoy it because I know Winter is just around the corner, which is accompanied by the darkness.  It is already starting to get dark now at night.  Again, that is normal back home, but I know it is only getting darker day by day.  Here are the highlights for this week:

P-day:  We did some Labor Day shopping at sears and value village.  I got a cute dress for only $3.  We went to the church and played a little bit of a nerf-gun war.  Pretty fun.  We played volleyball after that and I just love volleyball.  We had roasted weenies and s'mores at the Maynes' house.  We played a little bit of spike ball, which I need way more practice with; it is harder than it looks.

MLC:  We had our Missionary Leadership Council this week.  The Zone Leaders and STLs from all the zones come down to Anchorage for an all day training and counseling about mission matters.  They needed someone to drive down a car from Fairbanks, so we volunteered.  It was a pretty drive; it rained the latter half.  I now want to go visit Denali.  Driving through there was legit.  We stopped by the Hensons and Bobby D in Wasilla as we drove through.  Also got fireweed milkshakes!!!  Oh how I missed those so much!  That night we spent the night at the Oceanview sisters apartment with the Colony sisters coming down a day early as well.  It was a party, but my companion and I still went to bed on time.  Sister Jewel and I did these facial masks that were exfoliating or detoxing.  So fun.

At MLC we had spiritual discussions about certain topics like faith and companion exchanges.  We played this game that we play a lot at EFY which is clumping together and grabbing each others' hands to then untangle everyone.  They had the elders do it all together and the 6 sisters do it.  We were done in less than a minute.  They took over 20 and still didn't accomplish the task. One of the APs (Assistant to the President) ended up splitting his pants.  Great day. We flew back around 6pm after the meeting.
Cult:  We were texting people we knew in the Branch about the activity happening on Saturday.  One of the phone numbers we had was not a correct number.  The person texted us back asking who we were.  We told him we are the sister missionaries  He replied saying, "I don't know any nuns", and looked up our church online. Automatically he said we sound like a cult.  Just like you wouldn't look for information on Wiki for an English research paper, you shouldn't look to anti-Mormon material to learn about our church.  That, of course, is skewed and not a good representation of our Church and our beliefs.  The best way to learn about our church is by reading and praying about the Book of Mormon.  As cliche' as that sounds, it's true.  We don't call it the keystone of our religion for no reason.
Tracting Miracles:  Who says tracting doesn't work?  Yes, it is not the primary focus of a mission, but we can't teach people if we don't find people to teach.  This week we were gone for basically two days straight in Anchorage, so this just makes it even more sweet that these things happened in a shorter time frame.  We tracked Thursday and with one person they said we could come back and another we gave a copy of the BOM to him.  A couple of days later we were actually trying to find a former investigator, but didn't have her apartment number.  We decided to just tract the apartments there and hopefully, if she was prepared at this time, would greet us and say that she has met with missionaries in the past. Well on the very last door (not necessarily "4th floor, last door"), was a lady named Ellen who invited us in to talk about religion.  She said she hopes to find a church she believes has the correct teachings.  After a little while she said she is thinking about being a follower of our church.  She already had a copy of the BOM.  The only sad thing about this is that we are YSA, so we teach people between the ages of 18-30 as our branch is consistent of those people.  All other wards are family wards so it doesn't matter the age.  We had to refer her to the 5th sisters to begin teaching.  She is very promising though!
Activity:  We had an activity at the Wright's house this weekend making nachos and then spray paining canvases with leaves.  Dr. Wright invited his Medical Assistant from work to the Activity and she came!  We got to meet her and she is pretty cool.  Had a fun night!  Had to give a talk the next day at church, which went well.  I spoke about how the BOM has increased my testimony of Jesus Christ.  We even watched a devotional broadcast by Elder Bednar about linking our families and keeping our future generations in the Church.  Pretty good!

Sent from ALASKA!
Sister Shelley Willden