Elder John Miller, Anchorage, Alaska Mission, August 2015-2017: Week 12, Alaska, Fairbanks

Dear people of the universe,

This week was pretty awesome. It was the last week of the transfer, so
we had the choice of piling out or going hard in the paint. We went
hard. It was awesome. Everything's on the up and up right now. It just
keeps snowing. I love it. It'll probably get old at some point, but
for now it's just a lot of fun.

Monday we went to go see a couple places because it was my last week
with Elder Jesperson. We went out to North Pole, which was cool. Ill
send you pictures. I nerded out because they had a ton of playmobiles.
It was kind of sad, but I don't really care. Then we went to Hilltop
Truck stop to get stickers. It's at the top of a hill (duh) like 13
miles out of town. On the way back down Elder Jesperson thought it
would be a good idea to turn the traction control off on me. It was so
much fun.

There was this wide curve and there was no way I was going
to resist the temptation to power slide around it. So that's exactly
what I did. I pulled the e-brake, probably the stupidest thing to do
in the snow without traction, and I locked the car into a sweet power
slide. As we round this curve going down hill, we see the semi coming
up the other side. So now we're locked into a power slide in iminent
danger of getting broadsided by a semi. At this point Elder Jesperson
is grabbing both the OH Crap handles. I release the e-brake, punch the
car into high gear (it's a floppy paddle), and try and gas it out of
the slide. After about 1.7 seconds (for an android and people about to
die, that's an eternity) the car finally grips and I can gas it out of
the slide. We almost rolled the jeep. It was awesome. Of course that's
all theoretical.

Tuesday we had the best district meeting ever. It was all about
charity and everyone was feeling it. Then we had a lesson with a
recent convert named Taryn, and we made her teach us the Restoration.
It was funny. She was a little off, but that's what we're here for.
Teaching is fun. We also teach Jersey, her 8 year old sister. It's fun
to teach kids because you have to have creative lesson plans to keep
their attention. It doesn't always work. Kids man. We took Brother
Goddard, our new ward mission leader, to a lesson. That lady was
hostile. It wasn't the best. But he's super excited to do missionary
work again. He went to Chile on his mission. Now he's a statistician
and had 6 kids. He's like 35. He's crazy.

 Wednesday I had the craziest dinner of my life. Nettle had us over
because she had questions about the Joseph Smith translations in the
Bible. She really just wanted to bash with us. Her husband Frank is
super cool though. He has arms the size of my chest. It's scary. After
all the bashing was done (she didn't understand our points because she
really didn't care about what we said. It was awesome) we had this
awesome guava cake. It was delicious.

Thursday we shoveled. We shoveled a lot. We said we would come help
this awesome sister who's going through a divorce shovel her driveway.
Her driveway was the size of our our apartment. But it felt so good to
do service. We don't do a whole lot of it, so it felt good to just
work.

Friday was transfer call day. We didn't get out transfer call till
Saturday morning though.

Friday we had zone meeting. I danced. There's
a video. I'll send it. I actually have videos and pictures to send
this week. So that's a change. Friday our teaching slowed down. We
taught like 12 lessons this week, which is better than normal.

 Saturday,owning we got our transfer call. Elder Jesperson is going to
Sterling on the peninsula to be a zone leader, and I'm staying here in
Fairbanks. My new companion is named Elder Reading. It'll be a good
transfer. We also went by the Andersons. I love them so much. They're
probably my favorite investigators. Maria told me I should be an
actor. They love us. They just have a lot of questions about random
things which keeps it interesting. We can't go in and teach a lesson,
they ask the funniest questions and it pulls us off topic. But we'll
get through all the basics eventually.

Sunday was also fun. We talked, I sang, people liked it. It was pretty
good. Then we went around, Elder Jesperson said a few goodbyes, then
we packed for a long time. It was rough.

So that's pretty much the week. It was good. Hopefully you people are
having good weeks too. Missions are more fun than I thought. This has
been the fastest 3 months of my life. It's been hard for sure, but
it's really just rewarding.