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
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