Monday, November 27, 2017

InsPIEration

I look back at our area book to see all that happened this week and it amazes me what all happens in just one week. I constantly think that these events happened forever ago and not just this past week. I can’t include everything that happens but here are a few:



P-day: We got asked two days before to help a family move on Monday. Normally we don’t do service on our p-days but it was really late notice to get many people from the ward to help and not sure if anyone who could help saw the FB post our ward mission leader sent on the ward page. It was just us and Sister Galloway, the member who notified us about the opportunity to help move her neighbors who aren’t members. We were able to talk to them a bit about the church and found out they have attended before. We were helping to clarify misunderstandings about the Doctrine of our church. Later we went shopping and played a bit with the elders before going to dinner. That night we did an FHE with some members who then helped us to photograph pictures for #LightTheWorld. 



Birthday: My birthday was Tuesday and I turned 24. We had district meeting which went a little long and then worked on Facebook. I have learned to not ask questions on or around your birthday because it takes the fun out of being surprised. My comps had planned a surprise party for me with the sisters in Palmer and told me we got permission from the Zone Leaders to go take pictures in Chugiak. They played it off that they needed to get wifi for directions and stopped at Colony chapel where the Colony and Lazy Mountain sisters were there to help celebrate. We had a lesson scheduled with some former investigators that evening. They are super nice but aren’t interested in changing churches right now. 



Door: Wednesday morning Sister Johnson realized that she had left her iPad in the car all night long. We were putting our coats on for this freezing weather (it hit the negatives this week). We couldn’t get the door to open and eventually Sister Johnson climbed out the window to then open it from the other side. It seemed like our door was just frozen shut. We carried on throughout our day and later that night we were returning home from the ward Pie Night social from the bishop’s house to find it hard to get in through the door. I would just like to mention that I did not touch the key nor the door this entire time. My comps were trying their best to try to unlock the door but it seemed stuck. One of my companions tried it again and saw the key was starting to turn but soon realized it was just the key turning and not the lock. She pulled it out with the broken piece attached by its last thread and then the key broke in her hands. We called the landlord and she was just happy that it didn’t break inside the lock. We waited in our heated car for the landlord to come with another key and we called our new investigator to get to know her over the phone. She lives in Anchorage but goes to church with a close friend of hers in the Beach Lake Ward here in Eagle River. She has had some traumatizing experiences in the past and right now is only comfortable to be taught by female missionaries. So we are beginning to teach her but are trying to do our best to help her transition to be in the ward she is suppose to attend. 



Thanksgiving: We party hopped as we always do but this year I paced myself with food and ended up only having two dinners with one set of desserts. I didn’t take seconds at either which was good but it didn’t have the same feel to it as most Thanksgivings do where you gorge yourself. Our ward mission leader suggested that we sing for people we visit because singing the hymns helps to bring the Spirit the quickest. We tried it as we went to people’s houses for Thanksgiving. Brother Holt, our WML, said he was inviting a nonmember family over and wanted us to stop by but not wanting it to seem like he had invited us. So we stopped by at a random time and we talked to everyone for a little bit and then we sang For the Beauty of the Earth. Afterwards we shared Alma 26:37 “Now my brethren, we see that God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth. Now this is my joy, and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever. Amen.” A couple days later on Saturday we got a text from the Arctic Valley elders that they met the family we sang to on Thanksgiving (they were shown as formers in their area book) and they are now their newest investigators!!!!! Tender mercies and it is so cool to see that an action of ours helped them to start wanting to visit with the missionaries. Miracles. 

Needing Pie: On Facebook Friday morning we saw that one of our members had reached out to Sheyla in fellowshipping her on our group chat we had created which was awesome and that Annett was responding to some Thanksgiving messages on a group chat as well. It was a tender mercy to open up facebook messenger and see that.  The rest of the day was long and tiring and we were just in the need for some pie. We figured there might be some members who are in need of getting rid of pie! We first thought of Sister Betz who makes the best desserts ever and gave her a text. Later that night she was excited that we had asked. She said her mother-in-law was in town visiting that wasn’t a member and thought we should come by and share a message. For some pie... I think we can make that happen. :) She made this amazing pumpkin cheesecake that was to die for. I love this time of year because pumpkin is in season. We shared with them the new #LightTheWorld video for the Church’s Christmas Campaign with the advent calendar and they loved it. Sister Betz was very grateful we came by and for us it felt inspired that we asked her for some pie and having that want for pie turn into a missionary moment.


Sent from ALASKA!
Sister Shelley Willden





So Many Things to be Thankful for

This transfer is already half way done.  The days are long; the weeks are short.  But then I think, "we went hiking just Monday?  It feels like forever ago."  Well here are just the highlights for this week:"

P-Day:  Well, yep, we went hiking.  I haven't hiked since I was in Wasilla and it was fun not to confined to just the cultural hall in the church.  We were rushing a little because we were a bit behind with laundry and emailing.  We did the fastest Walmart shopping ever.  We met up at the church to go hiking at Thunder Bird Falls which was my third time hiking this trial. But it is still beautiful every time and this time there was snow which made pictures a lot different. Afterwards we had planned on having a fire at one of the bishop’s house but we were a bit early so we played scatterball for a little bit. Then we drove to have s’mores around a campfire and played this game where two on a team would throw a frisbee to try to knock off a can on top of a pole. It is harder than it looks but a lot of fun. 
Facebook: We got Facebook this week during zone conference. Approaching Thursday we were to watch videos recorded as part of District 3 (film segments of missionaries in a different mission showing us what they are doing and applying the skills of missionary work). During zone conference we were trained on using Facebook by watching more videos and talking about what we will be doing. The time came for us to download FB and log in to our accounts. Some of us needed to figure out our passwords and try to change it if we couldn’t log in. We are limited to what we can do on Facebook and as of right now we are limited in time to use it too. We have 30 minutes Tuesday through Friday morning to do what we need to. Hopefully we will be allowed more time in the near future. We also got trained about the new Christmas initiative which is very similar to last year’s as they found a lot of success and positive results from it. We are thinking of different ways we can spread the world through FB and helping others to remember Christ this Christmas.  
Friendsgiving: We attended a youth activity where the youth invited their friends to a little Thanksgiving meal. At the end they played this game which was very similar to speed dating. The inside chairs would rotate down a person and the two people would answer a question about Thanksgiving traditions, people they are thankful for, and even favorite Thanksgiving foods. One of the adults sat across from Sister Johnson and said, “I’m excited; I haven’t been on a date in 20 years!” So funny. There were a lot of people there who aren’t members which was great. 
Sing for Fireside: Normally when people find out what I went to school for they usually want me to sing. This time one of the members we had dinner with said that some of the members are performing for a fireside on Sunday which was in 3 days from then and that the director was looking for a singer. I don’t usually like to sing in front of people songs that I don’t have down with lots of practice but I felt impressed that I should offer my talent. In this way it is more of a service and I feel better about performing for those types of situations. I went to the practice the next day and the director was so appreciative. Mind you I still have a cough from my sickness last week and at times the cough makes it seem like I’m dying. I prayed a lot and drank over 160 ounces of water on Sunday to prepare to sing. It was only because of the love of God that I made it through the entire 7-minute song without one cough or even a need to clear my throat! #blessed
Saturday: So many tender mercies (miracles to be thankful for). So long story short my mother sent me a birthday package in the mail and said it will be getting to Anchorage no later than 3pm on Saturday. Normally that would be fine and it would just be sent to me later but she said there were things in the package that needed to be refrigerated. That made things a little more complicated especially since the mission office isn’t open on Saturdays. Tender mercy is that Sister Johnson got permission to attend a baptism in Anchorage on Saturday so, after a lot of communication with Sister Jeppson in the office and the post office, we were able to pick it up and keep it in our cold car during the baptism. While we were there we went to take a picture in front of the temple and I was blessed to see some of the members from Soldotna who came up from the  3-hour drive to attend the temple on that day. What are the odds of me running into them?! Some other minor tender mercies happened which made the day pretty great.

Sent from ALASKA!
Sister Shelley Willden 

And Then There Was Three

This was a very long week.  My companion went home this week due to medical challenges, so I was Emergency Transferred (ET) again; both times out of Anchorage.  This is now my 7th official area on the mission, having had 12 companions, and third time "pink washing".  No one can beat this record!  So much has happened that this is post is going to be day by day.

Monday:  Your typical P-day.  We did laundry and emails at the Weaver's house.  I am going to miss them so much.  They were wonderful!  We then went shopping before meeting up at the church.  We ended up playing missionary ball, volleyball, chair soccer, and I taught an elder how to play Catch Phrase.

Tuesday:  We had Zone Conference; well the first half.  We are getting Facebook now for our mission and President wanted MLC to experiment with it first before he tolled it out to the other zones.  We had interviews later that day.  I had Sister Bowers go first and then President pulled me in and told me that she is going home and that we were to cancel all of our appointments for the rest of the evening and pack.  We didn't know exactly when she would be flying home so we just had to pack up everything we could.  The Huffman sisters bought us dinner that we could eat while we packed.  Our District Leader, Elder Poppleton, quickly organized a funeral to happen that night.  Sister Richards and Randall were down for MLC the following day so I got to talk to them.  We all stood in a circle to say something about Sister Bowers and she handed people little trinkets she had collected on her mission.

Wednesday:  We thought she would be leaving today but didn't find out until closer to noon that she would be flying out super early the next morning.  So we basically hung out at the mission office.  Sister Bowers needed to check the weight of her luggage and do some logistical things.  I helped Sister Moffitt with stamping the seals for the certificates they give to returned missionaries.  We left to eat lunch at McDonalds.  We got the call from the STLs that I was getting transferred to trio with Sister Johnson and Sister Yeates in Eagle River.  They had pink washed it a week prior and apparently the ward was super excited to have sisters back.  We went back to the mission office two more times.  The first time to talk to Dr. Moss (I had him look at my throat because I was starting to get a sore throat), and the second time to say goodbye to some more people for Sister Bowers.

Thursday:  We needed to be at the Strawberry Chapel at 6:30am, which we were to get Sister Bowers to the airport on time.  I hugged her goodbye and she said she would email me all the details when she got home.  We then headed to Eagle River.  Our Vehicle Coordinator, Elder Jeppson, was super nice to let up keep the Nissan rogue and replace the truck they had.  When I got there Sister Johnson was on exchanges with Sister Burdick.  We did studies and I feel asleep towards the end because my sore throat was turning into a sinus infection.  They had me go to sleep so I slept for a good 2 and a half hours.  Later we drove to Eklutna (halfway between Eagle River and Palmer) to exchange back. 

Friday:  Well this day my sinus infection turned into a chest cough.  I felt, at times, I was hacking up a lung.  After studies we went to the church to have a mini district meeting to be trained on the safeguards of Facebook prior to our Zone Conference  We are to watch 33 videos on Facebook trainings and safeguards over and over again for the rest of our missions.  There will be set aside time Tuesday through Friday in the morning where we are to do Facebook things.  We will be trained on it more this Thursday so a lot of our questions won't be answered until then.  We spent the rest of the day doing only weekly planning.  We had to start from square one again in order to catch me up.  I started crashing a little after lunch so they made me take another nap.  We didn't even finish planning before dinner with the Betz.  They made hamburgers and then pumpkin cake!!  So good.  Sister Betz did the lesson for us as she was doing an assignment for her online class.

Saturday:  Feeling energized, but just having the symptoms of the sickness, we went zone tracking.  Normally it is district tracting, but since President created a new language zone, the Chugach Zone got a lot smaller.  We met up at McDonald's afterwards for an apparent zone tradition of getting ice cream.  Ice cream wasn't going to help with my sickness so what did I get instead?  Cookies!!  Well they were 3 for a dollar, I couldn't pass that up.  We all were losing our energy trying to plan our church lesson and do goals.  We then had to get to our dinner, which was at a dinner group.  The ward is doing this to help the members fellowship each other and to help reactivate the less actives.  The one we went to even had some non-members come as well.  There were a lot of people who came and then they started playing Kahoot.  It was just funny to see older adults doing things like that.  We visited with some people  but then I started getting to the loopy stage and we finally went home.  I still don't have the area book so I sit in the back of the car reading.

Sunday:  I was a bit overwhelmed by the number of people who attended the Eagle River Valley ward.  I hardly know anyone so it was just being surrounded by a ton of strangers.  This Sunday was the primary program so there were more people who attended than normal.  For Gospel Principles we were in charge of giving the lesson.  The lesson was on scriptures and we asked two questions and they took up most of the time commenting.  We then split up the class into groups to each read about the four standard volumes of scriptures we read in our church:  The Bible, The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.  They gave great insights and one member helped a lot with an investigator who is from Anchorage, but for some reason attends our ward.  We then went to RS and the lady giving the lesson called us the night before wanting us to teach a portion of it.  She ended up getting called out to attend one of her children getting set apart so she turned the time over to us.  We just asked some questions, and the class did well at sharing their opinions and talking about member missionary work.  We visited some people and had a good dinner with the Marchants.  That night we decided to play this jelly bean game called Bean Boozled.  You pick a jelly bean and it is either a good flavor or a bad flavor like canned dog food, dead fish, or moldy cheese.  In order to see who was to pull from the cup we played BS.  If you were caught lying or you called someone out for no reason then you pulled a jelly bean.  It was a lot of fun and I ended up getting only bad ones.  The taste wouldn't come out of my mouth!

It is fun to be in a trio at time because it seems like we have a sleepover every night with the way our beds are set up, but we seem to get distracted all too easy.  On Sunday they found the records for one of the people they were teaching who said she was baptized when she was fifteen.  It is great that we found them and can now help her to get to the temple!

Sent from ALASKA!
Sister Shelley Willden     



Keep moving forward through the fog

This, by far, was the fastest transfer week ever.  So much has happened especially when you are pink washing an area.  The ward apparently applauded when they heard sisters were coming to their ward.  I don't know if I can narrow all that happened down to a few events so this might be a tad long.
P-day:  We met at the Institute building for p-day today because we needed to sign transfer journals and we are all tired of volleyball.  Our institute has a pool table, foosball table, and a ping pong table.  We played Uno for a little bit and went around YSA playing different games.  Mack took us out to eat sushi again!  For FHE I said my goodbyes to people.  I will miss the Fairbanks YSA fam.
Drive down:  Our logistics for transfers was for me, Sister Vellinga, and Sister Spencer to drive down from Fairbanks to Anchorage.  Normally this is a 6 hour drive if you are going fast.  The roads weren't as bad as I thought they were going to be.  There was a lot of fog though.  This entire week we have had fog.  It was almost impossible to see where restaurants were in Anchorage to go eat.  Though the fog subsided when we got to Denali.  "Stop and have lunch in Denali,"  the APs said.  Well Denali is all shut down for the Winter season.  There wasn't even a place open for a restroom.  We took some great pics by the wonderful sights on the way down.  We stopped in Wasilla for lunch and then drove to Palmer for me to get a fireweed milkshake.  Oh how I love those shakes.  We got to the Strawberry chapel just in time.  There was a trunk-or-treat happening, so we got some candy!
Trio:  Spent the night with Sister Randall and my new companion, Sister Bowers.  In the morning they had to finish packing and we dropped off some of our luggage at the Brayton chapel because we couldn't fit all 11 suitcases in our car when we would need to drop Sister Randall off at the airport.  There are a lot of missionaries in Anchorage.  It seems like a party every time we all end up somewhere.  Later, after Sister Randall was dropped off at the airport, we were shown to our new apartment.  It is far from "new" though.  Elders have lived in this apartment for at least the last three years.  We were given cleaning supplies by our ward mission leader whom we had dinner with so I went to town on the bathroom.  Later that night we met Alisha.

Alisha:  She was being taught by the Huffman sisters but she recently moved across the street landing her in the Brayton ward.  She is an investigator already on date, which is fantastic.  We met her with the sisters, then brought over Sister Long with us the second night and then the third time dropped off a box of clothes and helped to clean her house prior to Sunday.  On Sunday she called frantic while driving.  It had snowed Saturday night and she didn't have snow tires on to drive to church.  She called saying she wouldn't be able to make it because she needed to get those on and was sliding around and ended up in a ditch.  Her brother, thank goodness, was able to pull her out.  We watched the Restoration with her that night with the Weavers who brought their daughters to help distract Alisha's two-year-old son, Luke, and get to her ten-year-old daughter, Linda.  It went really well and while watching the video about Joseph Smith she said some of her questions were answered.
New Car:  "You have not because you ask not" - my philosophy in life.  If you were to ask Sister Richards how many times I said that the three months we were together she wouldn't be able to count.  As we are pink washing an area, we get whatever car the elders were driving.  Well it was a truck.  The trucks don't have good turn radius and they aren't the best in the snow.  I asked Elder Jeppson, our vehicle coordinator, if there was a better car we could use and he said the only ones we could do is a Subaru or a Jeep, which are both worst than the trucks.  I told him if there was another car that came available we have our request form in.  Later that evening he called us saying one of the elders would trade cars with us!!!  Whoot whoot!!!  It's a 2016 Nissan Rogue; back-up camera and all.
District Tract:  Saturday morning we went district tracting, more like with the zone for it seems like everyone was there.  We got our street the Oceanview sisters wanted us to tract.  We see this guy in a car just stalling out in the middle of the street.  We knock on a door and ended up waking up a sick kid ... our bad.  When we walked back out to the street I saw the car still there.  We didn't necessarily approach his car but he started rolling down his window.  He was telling us about his neighbors car that got burned down just last night.  Part of the tree is burned; the lamp post next to the car is destroyed, and the neighbor's second car on the side was burned.  After talking to him for a while he shared with us his shooting story that happened to him earlier this year that made him loose his thumbs.  It's a crazy story where he ended up killing the drugged guy who shot at him who had followed him home.  We testified to him that things happen for a reason and offered him a copy of the Book of Mormon.  He said prior to that event he would consider himself atheist, but now believes there is something more.  The Lord prepares His children to receive the gospel with a willing heart.  Hopefully we can get in contact with him in a couple of weeks ... amazing guy.
Girdwood:  We spent the rest of Saturday in Girdwood, which is another town about 45 minutes away from Anchorage, that has a branch we are in charge of.  We visited with the Branch President who talked to us about the people and the Branch.  He nad his wife took us out to eat after that and we rode in their car; I played with their 5-month-old baby.  We ate and talked some more about part member families and ideas to find more people to teach and we asked questions about their missions.  They met each other serving in Italy.  They were a lot of help and I was grateful we got to meet them because the next day we were told that the Girdwood branch is now going to be covered by the APs.
Because of all the fog that we have had, we talked a lot about how this applies to life.  If we just waited for the fog to disappear to see where we were going, we would never move from our position.  We have to move, even just taking a few steps.  If it's only what we can see in front of us, then it is enough for us to take another step.  In life we aren't going to know all that will happen for us in our future.  Take it one day at a time and life seems to work itself out.

Sent from ALASKA!
Sister Shelley Willden

I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go

Well my last full week is done in Fairbanks.  I'm getting out before I freeze over so that is a plus, but I have really enjoyed Fairbanks.  I got to know the majority of it serving in the YSA.  Here are the highlights of the week:

P-Day:  P-day on a Tuesday because of zone Conference Monday.  We had the APs stay up here for P-day and even Barrow staying down for the rest of the transfer.  Everyone in the Zone was here so we played volleyball but missionary style.  WE had four teams rotating basically playing king of the court.  After that we played chair soccer.  So many people having a chair not even five feet away from you most of the time is ridiculous.  We had to eventually make it so each person had three lives or else the game would never end.  We played lightning (knock out basketball game) and then dodge ball too.  For FHE we did pumpkin carving.  It's hard to do the small, intricate details so I found a design on Rachel's phone that wasn't too bad.  It's a witch, but you can't really tell until you have a light in it in the dark. 

Nenana:  We drove up down to Nanana for our service day.  While at the senior center having lunch Sister Richards had the idea to shovel driveways as a service.  We told our branch mission Leader, Brother Verhagen, about it and he said we are "cool missionaries", :) He told us where we could get shovels and he drove around the Main Street asking whose place we could shovel.  One was a man named Robert from the senior center.  He has attending church in the past.  As we were doing other sidewalks we talked to him more and we asked him if we could visit with him when we return and he agreed!  We shoveled sidewalks, driveways, and even church ramps for other churches.  For once it was a good thing that it snowed.  Though it all melted this week.  It is fine for it to snow if it is going to stay freezing, but not when it toggles between degrees surrounding freezing.  That means the ice melts and refreezes causing it to layer when it continues to precipitate.  Not good when you are driving on this.  We helped out at the library afterwards before having dinner with Evelyn.  We drove home and the roads weren't as bad as I thought they would have been.  Everyone kept talking about freezing rain but it didn't come until a couple of days later.

DJ:  We had a lesson with him Thursday after dinner at Rachel's house.  DJ is in a culinary class and made break that he brought over for us to eat.  He made this cream cheese spread with passion fruit which was to die for.  After dinner we asked him how he came to the conclusion that he wasn't to be baptized and shared with us his experience with his sister and realizing he needs to be baptized.  He says he still doesn't know if he believes this Church to be true yet but he is working on it.  We extended an invitation for him to be baptized the 18th of November and he accepted that date via text the next day!  So excited.  Too bad I won't be here for it.

Productive Day:  Saturday we had things scheduled every two hours starting from 1pm.  We did our studies and lunch prior to that and the day just flew.  The zone Leaders in 3rd ward were having a baptismal service so we invited DJ to come and he came.  It was a really good service.  The people who spoke about baptism and the Holy Ghost did a really good job.  The guy who got baptized shared his testimony which was really powerful.  After that we had a lesson with Craig.  Kaiana and Ethan came as fellow-shippers.  Craig serve a mission and knows all that we are teaching him but at one point he confessed that he hadn't read his scriptures all week even when he committed to do so last lesson.  Sometimes it is really fun to call people to repentance.  The Spirit takes over whatever it is I'm saying and it is awesome.  Craig committed to read again so hopefully he does.  I'll write Sister Richards to see if he does.  We then drove out to North Pole for dinner with Mack and Taylor, his friend who returned from serving in Iraq.  We then drove over to the city of Ester to have a lesson with Corey making good time.  He got called into work at the first station so we had our lesson there.  We invited David to come as a fellow shipper since he works as a firefighter too.

Transfer call:  So I am pink washing (taking over an area where elders were before) Brayton.  This ward is in the Anchorage zone meeting at the building in the same parking lot as the temple.  That is always exciting.  My new companion is Sister Bowers.  She was in the Cook Inlet YSA, but now we are both starting new in this ward.  Sunday I said goodbye to the YSA Ward up here.  It doesn't feel like I'm leaving.  It never really feels like you are leaving; especially only after two transfers.  We are to drive down tomorrow at 8am to Anchorage.  Hopefully the roads won't be too icy.

I've enjoyed serving with Sister Richards.  I'm going to miss her and the fun times we have had.



Sent from ALASKA!
Sister Shelley         



"How about getting me baptized"

So much has happened this week from Sisters Conference down in Anchorage to exchanges to zone conference.  The snow has finally come and is deciding to stick around.  It's cold, but we haven't hit the negatives yet.  Here are the highlights:

FHE:  We played sardines at the stake center for FHE.  Jessie was the first to hide and I was the first to find her.  Curtis was the best player though when it came to leading others astray, he came in to hide with us, but then Sister Richards came in.  He got right up and said we weren't in there and went out to lead her to look on the other side of the building.  He then came running back in once he was away from people.  It was a lot of fun. 

Sisters Conference:  We flew down to Anchorage at 7:40am Tuesday morning.  The whole day was spent like a zone conference.  They had some senior couples give training's in the morning and most of it was talking about our self-worth and how beautiful we are.  It was like a session of women's conference.  Each of the STLs had get-to-know-you games and also to give training.  This is where the meat was.  We all centered it around Christ.  We had a panel discussion with President and Sister Toone which was really fun and ended the evening with a testimony meeting.  Sister Richards has trouble sleeping so we asked if we could sleep in a separate room in the mission home.  We got to sleep in the General Authority room.  Anytime a General Authority comes from Church Headquarters they sleep in this room.  We were able to get sleep while all the sisters sleeping downstairs didn't go to bed until after midnight or 1:00am, if they got any sleep at all.  The next morning we were able to go to the temple which was really nice.  Because we are so far away up in Fairbanks we aren't able to go every other transfer so that was a real treat.  Afterwards we changed into p-day clothes and played in the gym for a little bit waiting for pizza to be delivered.  After lunch we went on a hike closer to Girdwood on your way if you were to drive down to Soldotna.  That was fun and we all took a ton of pictures.  I think that is what caused my iPad to go kaput.  The next day my iPad couldn't keep a charge and the next thing I knew it was dead.  It is getting looked at right now so hopefully they can fix it before transfers.


DJ:  We had a lesson with him on Thursday with Rachel and a friend of hers up from Utah came as members present.  We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ and asked if he would be baptized.  He said that he doesn't want to rush into things and wants to make sure that he does all he can to find the church for him.  But as of a few minutes ago he texted us out of the blue saying "Sooo ... how about getting me baptized."  OH MY GOODNESS !!!!  Such a tender mercy right now!!

Exchanges:  We spent Friday having a lot of lessons.  William (a less active we have been trying to get a hold of) texted us back and agreed to meet with us.  Right now is not a good time for him with coming back to church or even reading the Book of Mormon so hopefully he will be prepared by The Lord for later to return to the fold.  We had a lesson with Mack which went well.  He said it is the highlight of his week to have us come and teach him.  We are soon going to just pass the torch over to his Home Teachers to keep visiting him.  Later we had a lesson with Dalen and Ethan present which went well and it was a lot easier to chit chat with them this time.  We had exchanges that night and I went to North Pole to be with Sister Langford who came out on the mission the same time I did but we just have never served around each other.  It was a lot of fun.  We did service to take down a health fair that happened that weekend and I was able to take some booklets home about exercise and eating healthy.  We had a lesson with one of their investigators and he is so elect.  He was making analogies with us about how the Gospel of Jesus Christ can be related to like working out and other things.  He agreed to be baptized, but wants to wait for his Mormon girlfriend to come visit for Christmas to do it while she is there.  We helped to celebrate Elder Voss's birthday and then we went to the adult session of stake conference which was really good.  President Toone came and spoke and he was amazing.  He is a great speaker and is super funny.

Zone Conference:  We had interviews with President and he basically told me my transfer call.  I won't spoil it now as I know the majority of the call but not everything so next week's post will tell you what is going to happen.  We had zone conference.  It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the training's.  We had our talent show afterwards and Sister Richards and I went first.  We pretended we were doing a singing act.  I start to sing and Sister Richards doesn't so we get mad at each other and start to stage fight.  It went really well and the zone was eating it up.  It was a lot of preparation that we had to do for this, including getting a wrestling mat to borrow and getting it all lined up to look like we were actually fighting.  At the end Sister Richards kills me by snapping my neck and we worked with the zone leaders to twist a plastic bottle at the right time for the sound effect.  We had a lot of laughs and I think everyone had a lot of fun.  I was super exhausted later that evening.  For FHE we did pumpkin carving.  Rachel and I worked together to carve one.  She took out the guts and the pieces that needed to come out as I carved the witch design.  It didn't look like much in the light but when we put a flashlight in it in the dark it turned out pretty nice.


Sent from ALASKA!
Sister Shelley