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.


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Sister Shelley         

“I’ll be good; it’s Sunday tomorrow”

It snowed this week!  I say that not out of excitement, but out of devastation.  Thanks goodness it didn't stick.  It has around some parts of town, but not too much; it's coming though.  The temperature right now is 30 degrees, which is nothing compared to what I know is coming.  This week went by fast, but at the same time, I can hardly remember the beginning of it.  Here are the highlights:

Exchanges with the STLs:  So there is a trio of STLs down in Anchorage who all came up to Fairbanks to go on exchanges with all of the sisters up here.  We picked them up at the airport and ended up giving them the keys to one of the trucks we had been using to get our car fixed for them to go get lunch while we did our emails at the Church.  We, of course, played volleyball with the zone and played scum the card game and even spoons.  Later for FHE we played basketball.  Woot, woot.

Tuesday:  All day Tuesday we had Sister Cox with us.  We had district meeting and elder Paulson asked me to train, but when he found out the Oceanview sisters were coming, he asked Sister Oliver to train instead.  Heck ya!  I kinda liked having an exchange with a trio where Sister Richards and I can stay together.  We had a lot of fun with Sister Cox and talking about all sorts of things while in the car traveling from house to house finding less actives.  We worked on our talent for the zone conference talent show for Sister Cos when we retired to our house and she loved it.  We perform that for the Zone next Monday so our P-day will be Tuesday, not Monday next week.  We met with a less active named Spencer for the first time that day and we scheduled to meet with him for Friday.  We invited Kaiana and Rachel to our lesson and afterwards him and Kaiana talked for a good 45 minutes after we left.  They are already good friends.  We are doing really great work with less actives up here and bringing them back to church.

Nanana Service:  So a continuation of the service we are doing in Nenana.  We went to help out at the Senior Center with a luncheon and we talked to quite a few people.  Old people love to talk.  We had Merry with us which was good because once she says "Verhagen", they instantly know who she is.  We then helped Amie unpack when she came home from a month-long trip to Utah to visit her family.  We saw this book written by this lady who talks about "Dressing Your Truth" and we gabbed with them about it for a while and even when we went to Nenana on Sunday for church.  It's a lot of fun and something I want to look into more when I get home.  We then helped out at the library shelving books and then helping to set up for a kids craft day that happens every month.  The big project we did was later to help clean out a multi-purpose room.  I cleaned the sink with this poly-zag stuff.  It worked miracles, but I had to hold my breath while using it because it was that toxic.  We didn't finish shampooing the carpet but, man, shampooing the carpet takes a long time.  No wonder people usually hire other people to come and do that for them.  On our way home we saw the amazing Aurora Borealis, which was like rainbow across the sky, and then it turned into a huge clump that was dancing around - so pretty!!!

Second Exchanges:  We needed to do exchanges with the sisters and it needed to be this week even though we just had Oceanview up here.  I stayed in the area with another sister while Sister Richards went to their area.  I was losing my energy to keep the conversation going because it kept dying.  I then didn't talk much.  Our day turned into an all finding day which those days can be hard and long anyway.  It made me really appreciate Sister Richards when we were back together.

Nikki:  After church in Nenana we drove back to have a lesson with Tim which we could only stay for a half hour because we had dinner with Rachel at 7pm.  Her roommate Nikki joined us again and we decided to talk about the Book of Mormon using the pictures at the beginning.  At the end Rachel invited her, if she wanted, to read the Book of Mormon, and she accepted a copy and said she wanted to read it!

It is so good to be able to share the gospel with people who don't know it.  It is like a light bulb experience with them.  With less actives it is rekindling the light already in them that just needs more fuel and fanning.  Either way we are doing missionary work and both are rewarding.  The title of this post was a quote from a lady we tracted into.  It just make me think that we are not Sunday Mormons.  We don't just live our standards when we go to church, but our religion is a lifestyle we live everyday.  That is what Christ taught.

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Sister Shelley Willden

Wikipedia is to knowledge as the internet is to religion.

Fun week.  Quite a bit has happened, but only have time to share the highlights.  They say it is going to snow this week. :/  Not looking forward to that.

P-Day:  We finally played chair soccer with our zone.  Well it turned out to be just our district this week as the North Pole District decided to go hiking for P-Day.  We also did Carmel Apples for the holiday and for FHE, we made sugar cookies and decorated them for Halloween.  In the picture, I decorated the cookie with red food dye and had a little bit too much fun.

MLC:  So we flew down to Anchorage this week for our missionary leadership council meeting.  We stayed with the Oceanview sisters with the Colony sisters coming again as well.  All the same sisters, plus Sister Burdick.  We were tired in the morning, but made it through all of MLC.  We had training's and talked about mission stuff, but had a fun activity.  We played keep-the-balloon-up and played it with different rules.  We eventually divided into two teams and had to toss it over President Toone's head.  One elder couldn't do it to save his life and our team won with flying colors.  We of course applied this to missionary work and had a discussion come from that.  When we fly back, Sister Richards and I had dinner and just talked about our futures when we go home.  Makes it kinda stressful to think about, so I usually try not to.

Car Probs:  We finally winterized our car.  No sooner time than before it snows.  Our car needed a block heater so we took it to the dealer and had them put one in while we took a spare truck around to work.  We took Rachel to our lesson with Mack and this friend of his came over and started telling us things he was very passionate about and cussing here and there.  The funny part about it was Mack was cringing every time he cussed.  So funny.  The next day we had an appointment to get our tires studded. They put winter tires on for us a week or so ago but we realized there were no studs in the tires so we had to go back. Everything is ready to go, through, for the winter.

Try the tracted:  We tracked into this guy named Sam a few weeks ago and every time we tried to go and share a message with him, he was always about to leave the apartment.  This time we got him home and he wasn't planning on going anywhere. We visited with him and he shared with us that he wants to consider himself agnostic but is atheist.  Having that religious background, we made sure we explained everything about the Restoration as simply as we could and asked him questions to make sure he was understanding.  The lesson was going so well and he completely was understanding of it all, but then when we asked him to read the Book of Mormon to see if what we are teaching him is true and he said no and wanted to do his own research.  It was like a knife puncturing my heart.  It is sad that we can present the gospel to people, but people can use their agency not to accept it.  We did tell him the websites he should go to learn more.  Just like any English research paper, you don't get your information from Wikipedia.  The same is with the truth of a religion - you have to go to the right sources.  We told him about lds.org and mormon.org.  Any other other site is most likely going to be anti material and not a valid source of information.  Hopefully we can visit with him in a couple of weeks to see what his thoughts are then.

DJ:  We received a text from DJ on Sunday saying that he has gone through some hard times in his life recently and that he wanted to drop the lessons with us but now feels like he needs them more than ever.  We visited with him right after that at the library and he just laid it out to us what has been going on and his feelings about things.  It is hard to tell people that Jesus Christ and His gospel can help us in our lives.  It is one thing to say and testify of it and another to show them.  It takes effort on people's part to receive Christ's help.  He is always reaching out to us, but it is through our actions that distance ourselves from Him.  Repentance is turning us away from our old life and towards the life Christ wants for us and to see us truly happy.

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Sister Shelley Willden

We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet

I fear this might be the last week of Fall.  There's a lot of rumors of snow coming soon. Here are some of the highlights:

P-day fun:  There's a member in our Branch who likes to play the card game Magic so we played with him.  This is my first time ever playing, so it was a bit hard for me to catch on.  I realized that it has it's own language or lingo.  With the game you really need to know the language to play well, but the great thing about the gospel is that i can be taught for even a child to understand.  Mosiah 2:40, "O, all ye old men, and also ye young men, and you little children who can understand my words, for I have spoken plainly unto you that ye might understand ... " and 2 Nephi 31:3, "For my soul delighteth in plainness; for after this manner doth The Lord God work among the children of men.  For The Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; for He speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding."  We are taught line upon line, precept upon precept for us to understand the mysteries of God.  Later for FHE we played charades and then went to the stake center to play basketball with some members with the branch.

Lessons with Less-Actives:  We had a lesson set up with Walter and he wanted to meet at the Steese chapel.  We asked the ZL's for the key, and when we got to the chapel we realized it was the wrong key.  We just waited for him to show up and have him follow us to the stake center.  Fairbanks is small enough for us to travel to all the chapels fairly quickly.  He said he wants his life to be back to how it was when he was investigating the church.  That would mean for him to put Christ first in his life over his worldly tasks.  He said he is willing to do whatever it takes.  We had another lesson with McKinley, but he said he wants to be called Mack.  Him and all the boys and my companion were talking about video games prior to the lesson.  I didn't have much to contribute to the conversation.  We saw Cory this week.  He has been reading the BOM!  We met Alex who has been a convert for only a couple of years.  The member present we brought was Laura who is new to the branch and she, herself, is a convert for a little over two years as well.  We are doing fairly well with working with less-actives in our branch.

Service in Nenana:  We are going to Nenana every Wednesday that we can and are trying our best to help serve the people in the area.  We helped out at the Library, weed the Garden in front of the church before winter comes, and then helped out with this service project with some nonmembers cleaning their trash from their house construction.  There was a lot of us helping which made a huge impact to the pile. They were very gracious for all the help.  The members wanted the missionaries there to help and have presence with these people.
General Conference:  Conference was amazing.  The talks were a lot about the natural disasters going on and how we can help by mainly helping with our families and our communities.  After the Saturday session, a member took all the missionaries out to lunch at Denny's!  That was a lot of money.  This same member took us to dinner the other day and paid for us to get winter boots.  We told him we were good, but he insisted.  On Sunday, in between sessions, we had pancakes that the branch made. Chocolate chips and bacon in the pancakes!  Heaven!!

Conference was really good and I'm glad we get to watch it twice a year.  President Monson is really sick, so he's watching it from his home, but it is so cool that we know that we have a Prophet who is leading this Church under the direction of Jesus Christ through revelation.  Apostle Robert D. Hales passed away during the conference which is sad, but we know he's in a better place right now sent back to Heavenly Father.

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Sister Shelley Willden

We ARE doing The Lord's work

The weather is starting to get to us.  It isn't, by any means, cold as Fairbanks can get (average is 40 below), but it is definitely chilly.  The dark is upon us as the sun goes down sooner and sooner.  Fall was gorgeous, but all it is is a sign that winter is coming. In a way it is like the Second Coming of Christ.  We, right now, are in the "Fall" stage; having a lot of signs (like the changing colors of the leaves) to show that Jesus Christ is about to return, i.e., "wars and rumors of wars", natural disasters, people will find bad things good and good things bad, a marvelous work and a wonder, etc.  Winter is coming ... are we prepared?
Apples to Apples:  I grew up playing this game and I never win at it.  I'm usually always in the boat that I draw the best card for the green card after I already placed a card down, or I am always a close second who never gets picked.  We played it for our FHE activity and I surprisingly won!  With some of them I really was just playing my "discard" card to get rid of it from my hand and it won.  I was excited but it was just a lot of fun to have so many of us sitting around this round table playing apples to apples in a YSA branch activity.

Tuesday:  This day started off pretty rough.  The North Pole sisters had to spend the night before because their CO detector was going off and the firefighters said they wouldn't be able to fix the problem that night.  It was cool to have them spend the night but we ended up going to bed a little later than we planned, which made the morning difficult.  Neither of us were in the best mood and when we sat down to plan out our day we had nothing planned except one lesson in the evening that we weren't too sure if it would pan out.  We put in some stuff to do, but scheduled in four hours of tracting split up into two hour segments. Tracting is not the most effective way of finding people to teach, but when we have nothing else to do it bides our time and exercises our faith to find.  We figures that the YSA (Young Single Adults) would most likely be living in apartments near the University so we started there.  The first complex we went to had a lot of opposition.  Not exactly like a "fourth-floor-last door" situation, but close enough was a lady who answered the door and allowed us to share a message with her.  After talking to her she shared this story of an elder 16 years ago who passed by her on the street, paused, and then turned around and handed her a pass along card say, "I am supposed to give you this card".  16 years later and she still has the Christ pass along card on her fridge.  Awesome story; she was excited for us to give her a Book of Mormon and another pass along card.  The sad part about it is that she is out of our stewardship.  As YSA missionaries, we teach only the members who will attend our ward/branch which will be people 18-30 living in the Fairbanks Stake boundaries.  Afterwards we tried more apartments and found YSA-aged guys all in a row.  #miracle.  Later that day we met up with Aisha.  I had taught Aisha (pronounced Asia) in Palmer while I was being trained and just recently found her up here in Fairbanks working at Taco Bell.  We had her records moved to us and we made her a new investigator!  Then the crazy lesson happened.  We had dinner with Laura and asked her to come to our lesson with Sergei afterwards.  We were talking with him and getting to know him better when it came down to talk about the gospel.  We planned on going over the Restoration, but didn't get passed the first principle because he shared with us that he doesn't believe in God.  Mind you this is a less-active member, so at one point he must have believed.  We asked him questions about how he came to this conclusion and he shared with us his hard life growing up.  The lesson was solely guided by the Spirit because even minutes after leaving I couldn't remember certain questions I had asked him that helped propel the conversation to address his concern.  With a bold invitation we committed him to pray to God to receive an answer about what we were teaching him was true.  A day that seemed would dredge on turned out to be a very productive, miracle-filled day!

Nenana:  We went to Nenana this week which we plan on going to once a week.  They, Brother Verhagen and his daughter Merry, took us around to visit with a lot of people who have some sort of leadership in the community to elicit service opportunities. Our branch mission leader is a strong advocate of the Ammon theory.  He said tracting does not work in their won and that they have brought a lot of people to the gospel through service.  The only thing is that all the people they convert have to move because of the lack of jobs there.  This is a very small town; and I mean small.  If you are driving to Anchorage you'll miss it if you blink.  We have a service project we are helping out this Wednesday there and they are super excited that we are coming to help and meet the lady they are helping.  Also, they said a new member moved in with a non-member husband who said would like to help with the service so we can meet him too.

Dance:  So we texted DJ on when we can meet up with him this week and he invited us to come to a dance he'll be at.  On our missions we can't really dance especially ballroom dancing because we aren't allowed to hold hands with members of the opposite gender.  We came to just support him and to talk with him a bit about meeting up to have a lesson.  He comes up to Sister Richards and asks her to dance ... Awkward.  We had to tell him our rules and it was just awkward.  We did talk to him for a bit and he said he would come to church if he had a ride.  We squared everything away for him to have a ride and he came to church!

Rabbits:  Oh the crazy things we do at Dawson's place.  Last time we were over there for dinner, he and some other YSA members were blowing stuff up for us and melting metal.  This time after dinner we watched them "dispatch" (their words) rabbits.  I held a baby bunny while Dawson hit the rabbits over the head with a 15-pound steel rod.  Then we watched them prepare it by taking off the hide just as I learned in Soldotna.  Sister Richards really wanted to see how it was done because some day she wants to own her own homestead and live off the animals she raises.  She still needs to taste rabbit to see if she likes it but as of right now she is sold.

Lessons Outside:  We set up a lesson with Craig to meet at the library because we couldn't find anyone to come with us.  He said it was a nice day outside and that we should jut go out to a picnic bench for the lesson.  While he was sharing some of the experiences he had on his mission a drunk, native guy came up to our table.  He originally asked us for money or food which we had neither on us.  He then began to harass us by saying some inappropriate things so we asked him to leave.  It took him a while, but he eventually started to leave cussing at us as we walked away.  Craig saw him pull a knife out and was very concerned about a drunk guy carrying a knife around the park.  We waited for him to be far enough away from our car to pull out and leave to head to see the Women's Conference broadcast.  General Conference is this Saturday and Sunday.  Again, this happens twice a year where the prophet and the apostles speak to us as a whole broadcast from Salt Lake City.  If you would like to watch it, it will be on BYU TV or on LDS.org.

Sent from ALASKA!

Sister Shelley Willden