Elder John Miller

Elder John Miller

Monday, September 21, 2015

Week 5 in Alaska, Fairbanks

Dear family,

The days are starting to blend together. This has been the fastest month of my life. It's crazy. I got your packages and I am currently typing this message from my new case, which is really nice because it goes much faster this way. I also got all the sweet tarts. I don't remember expressing a love of sweet tarts back home, but I'm okay with it. I don't eat junk food because I don't have the money for it, so candy is nice. Except it makes me sick everytime I eat it. Tastes good though. Not like sick sick, just feeling sick. Basically I have a bowl of cereal in the morning, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, a cliff bar at some point in the afternoon, and off brand granola bars [which are better than name brand surprisingly], and then whatever they feed us for dinner, which is usually good.

Monday was fun. We went golfing for P-day, but since it's been raining for the past two weeks we went to the driving range instead. Elder Jesperson broke a 9 iron that we were borrowing. It was pretty funny. Then we went to the Mannings for dinner and had ribs. Ribs are great.

Tuesday we got dropped by an investigator. We also helped these people move, and they didn't have a piano. That was a pleasant change of pace. For dinner we had fried lasagna. Woah.

Wednesday we got service trapped so hard. Remember that smokehouse? Yeah, we had to go back and work on it more. Everyone in the elders quorum was busy so we got stuck doing it by ourselves. We were there for 6 hours. It was nuts.

Thursday we got service trapped yet again. On the same project. Roofing is less fun than one might think, especially in the rain. We finished it though, which was good. So we don't ever have to go back there again. We were so tired and done with everything by the end. It wasn't conducive to having a spiritual environment. Then we were late to a YSA baptism. It wasn't our best day.

Friday we met a less active family and had a pretty good lesson. They were offended by the Bishop, so reactivating them may be challenging, but that was a nice lesson considering we got dropped like a sack of bricks by one of our investigators.

Saturday we talked to a lot of people, but ended up only teaching Bernie. He's so awesome. He's totally willing to read the Book of Mormon and pray, but he won't come to church with us. He's like 75 and his wife has Parkinson's, so it's understandable, but he's so primed and ready. We'll get him soon.

Sunday was good as usual. We had a great Elder's Quorum lesson, which was nice. Not much else happened that day. We gave out a family proclamation to some people who we're going to visit again soon. They seem quite prepared, so hopefully we can have a good lesson with them in a couple weeks. We're running out of investigators. But it's not for a lack of trying.

I got the boxes I think. Whichever box had the sweet tarts I got. Elder Jesperson and I roll in mail. It's great.

Half of our district is sick. Elder Jesperson and I aren't though, we're staying healthy. So are the zone leaders. But a lot of people in our zone are getting sick too. I'm not too worried though. No sick days for this guy.

It drops below freezing every night. We had the fan on and the window open last night in our apartment. It was frosty in the morning. We're not allowed to open our windows or sliding glass door one October hits. That's a rule for the building. It's supposed to snow on Friday. It's crazy up here.

Every area has bikes assigned just like cars so we don't have to pay for them. We don't use them much except in the summer, but I kind of missed that. So we probably won't use bikes again for the rest of my training. I probably won't bike again till May. 

Today is the equinox, so tomorrow light stops dropping off fast. It's about to get very dar and very cold. I hope it hits -40, but that doesn't normally happen till around January, and I shouldn't be in Fairbanks at that point, plus it probably won't get that cold this year. The last couple years have been pretty mild. (That's if you consider -20 mild).

I'm still doing good. I just keep going. There's always someone else to talk to. MY near death experience for the week was awesome! So we were trying to find this house on a road that doesn't exist and we accidentally went up this really log driveway. As we pulled up close to the house at the end a guy stood up on the porch, made eye contact with us, pointed to a sign that said "No trespassing" and on it there was spray painted a guy with a rifle shooting at trespassers, then he opened the door and went inside. We got out of there so fast. 

And that's the weekly update. Have fun in California. I'm glad home is going good.

Love,
Elder Miller

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