Cooks Inlet YSA, Anchorage, Week 29

Hello,

So this week has been pretty crazy busy. The weather is terrible, it
melts during the day then refreezes over night so it's a hockey rink
outside. Driving on that is super fun. Especially because Elder
Santana is the designated driver and he's from LA, so he drives very
aggressively. He admits it, it's okay for me to say it. It's weird,
because serving with Elder Santana is like serving with a 20 year old,
half Cuban version of dad. It's really weird.

Tuesday we had district meeting and stuff. Then we freaked out Sister
Treu (she's a new missionary) by telling scary stories at district
lunch. She's pretty much convinced she's going to get eaten by a bear
or killed by a moose now. Then we went around and got all our
appointments cancelled on us, so we went tracting. We found an
investigator for another ward, and when we called to tell them they
said that they had already finished tracting that area. And we managed
to not Tract into any of the same people. It was nuts. Then we visited
Marc, still in sweatpants. Sweatpants are the way to teach lessons.

Wednesday we went to do more service for the Iditarod, but since it
was super jam packed with people we left and went to another service
project at a place called Remade, which is basically a Value Village
but with restoration projects and stuff. I could have thrift shopped
for days in there. But they had us organize their basement. The lady
in charge wouldn't call us elders, and one of our zone leaders, Elder
Garver, almost threw down the gauntlet with this woman. A bike fell on
me. That wasn't fun. Then we double dipped for dinners. Alliteration.
Unintentional. Our first was with Dylan Faber and family, which was
suuuuper awkward. But the food was really good, we had lasagna. Our
second was with Erin and Rhiannon and it was pulled pork sandwiches
and by the end of the night I was so full it hurt. Then we went to see
Shantel Tamanaha, we taught them a super good lesson, and then they
gave us bowls of fruit. It's been so long since I've had fresh fruit
of any kind, I actually almost cried. There was kiwi. So good.

Thursday we went back to the Iditarod service and this time we
actually helped. We stacked bags of dog food for 5 hours. Fun, right?
We also played a bunch of games while standing in line to get handed
bags. I taught all the missionaries the umbrella game. They were
angry. They taught me boom boom boom, and I got angry. Good times.
Then our dinner cancelled. Then we were visiting with a less active
and his family gave us dinner. Score. Then I got a haircut that night.
Whitney cut our hair and she brought her friend Eric (who has a Zeus
beard) as the third male, so we were able to teach him. She gave me
hair product. Hair product is weird.

Friday was the first day of my life I used hair product of my own free
will and volition. It's still weird. We had dinner at 3, which was
strange. I'm pretty sure I ate around 7 tuna fish sandwiches. Don't
judge me. It was with Ben Siufanua who brought his girlfriend who's
pretty cool. She's not a member so we taught her with Ben, which was
pretty cool. Then at SASWAFN that night I slew some people at ping
pong. That's a joke, I'm terrible at ping pong.

Saturday was pretty terrible right up until the end when we threw on
the sweatpants and went to see Marc. He had to go early because one of
his residents was having some health issues but we had a really good
meeting with him. He's progressing really well so hopefully he can get
Sundays off soon. It's always a party to meet with Marc.

Sunday was awesome. Another super busy day though. We had snow that
night so the roads were pretty messed up. Then church was really good.
Then afterwards we had a munch and mingle, but it was a Valentine's
one because we couldn't do it last week. There was like no one there
though, so I ate all the spaghetti. I think I'm getting fat guys.
There was also a straight up blizzard, which was super cool. There
were snowflakes the size of small dogs. It was one of the coolest
things I've ever seen. It didn't last very long, but it definitely
made me feel like I was in Alaska. Then we had a lesson with Linda,
who we met two weeks ago while she was bussing tables. She showed up
half an hour early, but so did we, so we gave her a tour of the
outside of the Temple and talked about it and then gave her a tour of
the chapel and talked about it and then the members that were helping
us showed up and we taught one of the best lessons I've had on my
mission. She's golden for sure. This is why you talk with waitresses.

So this was a pretty good week. Hopefully next week will also be
pretty good. I've noticed that the near death experiences have slowed
down, so I'm going to try and bring that number up again. It makes for
more exciting stories. Alright folks, have a good week!

John

Cook's Inlet YSA, Anchorage

Hola mis amgos y amigas

I won't lie to you, the weather in Anchorage doesn't make sense. It
melts and freezes every day. So there isn't much snow left, but there is a
ton of ice. We slide a lot. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it feels like
we're going to die. My shoes are not good at all on the ice, but I
always seem to catch myself before I hit the ground. I slip more than
any other missionary I know, but I never fall. My trainer Elder
Jesperson rolled his truck in Soldotna this week. I thought that was
pretty funny. He's probably going to get red dotted, meaning he'll
never drive a church owned vehicle again. What a noob.

This week's been pretty good. We keep busy. We got a bunch of random
referrals from other missionaries this week, they reassign us their
YSA age investigators, so our list of investigators increased
significantly. Now we just have to go through them all and find the
ones that are actually interested. That's the fun part.

Tuesday was a pretty standard Tuesday. We had the first district
meeting of the transfer which was a pretty good one. Afterwards we met
up with a guy who just got back from college who lives with his
parents. His dad was there and you could cut the contention between
them with a knife. It was a rough lesson. But it was fun because they
had cute dogs that kept trying to kill each other. Or they were
playing. Either way. Then we had a lesson with Marc that night. Now
Marc doesn't like it when we come by in our shirts and ties because
the old people he takes care of think we're FBI agents, so he asked us
to come by in plain clothes. So we showed up in sweatpants. Teaching
lessons in sweatpants is a very strange thing.

Wednesday we met with our main man Moroni. He's going to ask his boss
for Sundays off so he can come to church. He was worried about it
because he didn't want his boss to say no. Moroni is like 6 foot 8,
and is a huge Samoan man. I told him his boss probably wouldn't say
no. I was going to say if he did Moroni could probably just eat him,
but I restrained myself. I probably had the funniest dinner ever on
Wednesday. We were given money, so we just went to the nearest
restaurant because we were tired from tracting. Never go to Weebees.
It's the greasiest place I've ever been. We got cheese fries, and they
were soggy and covered in fake cheese. So we ate them anyways. We were
laughing so hard at how unhealthy the food was. Then I felt it that
night. We ate burgers like 5 times this week, it was nuts. Then we
taught Marc again, again in sweatpants.

Thursday we helped out with the Iditarod. I have a hat that says so
now. We bucked hay and straw for hours. It's the bedding for the dogs
along the race, but there were a couple thousand bales. I didn't know
there were that many dogs and that many days of this race. It was fun
though, we had all the missionaries in Anchorage there. It was
certainly good exercise. And now I can claim I took part in the
Iditarod. We also had dinner with Whitney at a place called Winky's
Wings. So good. I mean, for real though. Wings.

Friday we had meetings like all day. Meetings get so boring after a
while. But we found some new investigators anyways. We taught this
girl named Vina. She's pretty cool, but right at the end of the lesson
her dad showed up and just wanted to bash with us. So we Bible bashed
super hard with this guy. Bible bashing isn't fun, but Elder Santana
gets really hot headed when we have to do it and destroys people. It's
fun to watch. We also found this girl named Liz. She's reading the
entire Book of Mormon because she can. Awesome.

Saturday we had our district tract. Almost got killed by an angry old
woman. Then we ran around all day because every single one of our
appointments fell through. So we tracted. We met this Chinese man who
didn't speak English. So we asked him what he spoke and he said
Chinese. We just so happened to have a Mandarin Book of Mormon in the
car. So we asked him to wait then sprinted back to the car, grabbed
it, and sprinted back. We handed it to him, he said thanks, and closed
the door. It was one of the strangest and most fun Book of Mormon handouts 
I've ever done. Then we met with Marc again, again in sweatpants.
But this time his girlfriend Erika was there. He invited us to dessert
with them the next day. We said no. Because it was Valentine’s Day and
that would be super awkward.

Sunday was pretty cool. We had a regional conference for church. Then
we had lunch at President Robinsons house, there were al gratin
potatoes. So good. Then we ran around like chickens with our heads cut
off because our lessons fell through again. Then we had interviews
with President because it's an interview transfer. Then we had dinner
with the Bishop and there was an activity called Sundaes on Sunday,
where we ate ice cream and got referrals. That's what's up.

So all in all, pretty good week. But that's just how I roll. But not
really. It's hard to be a missionary sometimes, but it's super fun.
And also rewarding. There's your deep moment for the week. Alright, I
don't think I have anything else dumb to say, so I'm gonna peace out.
Have a good week!

Elder Miller

Cooks Inlet YSA, Anchorage

Mazeltov!

Pretty sure that's how you spell that.

So this week was pretty much awesome for the most part. This was
definitely a super busy week, and there's actually pictures this week,
if mom puts them on the Facebook, or whatever the kids are using these
days.

Tuesday was my last full day with Elder Crawford, so we went pretty
hard. We taught 6 lessons in one at, which really doesn't happen all
that often. I got my hair did up as well, and I got some hair product
for free. Does anyone know how to use hair product? Cause I had no
idea. For real though, I'm 19 and I don't even know how to do my hair
up. What has this world come to?

Wednesday is the new transfer day, so that's when we had transfers.
Elder Crawford is off to Fishook and now I'm with Elder Santana. We
went tracting and we ran into a crazy Russian guy named Yuri. We're
going to. Give him a Russian Book of Mormon because he doesn't speak
English. I don't even think he likes us, but I couldn't really tell.
Russians.

Thursday we had our last lesson with Rhiannon. She was super excited,
as usual. Then we talked about funny mission stories with Eli, her
boyfriend. He served in Louisville Kentucky, which is where all the
sisters in Elder Santana's MTC district went. So they knew a bunch of
the same people. It was super funny. We also had a couple other
lessons that day. We ended up having 10 lessons with people who are
reactivating, which I've never done before. Shoot dang.

Friday we tracted. All day long. I feel like these reports et pretty
boring sometimes. Sorry if I bore you. But yeah, that was pretty much
Friday.

Saturday, however, was easily the best day of my mission. We had to
fill th font for the baptism, and while we were doing that we also
listened to th MTC devotional "Feed My Sheep" by Elder Holland and
that's probably my favorite talk of all time. I'm going to get it
somehow. Turns out someone passed away in one of the other wards so
there was a funeral at the same time as our baptism. I thought that was
hilarious. People were walking in and we were like "funeral or
baptism?" Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase baptism for the
dead. But then at 1 pm, Rhiannon got baptized!!! That's right, three
exclamation marks. The man who baptized her was her old high school
drama teacher, and he had a radio announcer voice, which was super
cool. I don't think I've ever seen a happier person in my entire life
than when she got out of the font. Even her parents were feeling it.
10/10 as far as days go.

Sunday the Broncos won the super bowl, as I'm sure you all know. Too
bad I couldn't watch it. I'm not bitter. Because of the super bowl
there were very few people at church, it was pretty funny. What was
Even funnier was that all the Polynesian guys showed up, and they're
all the ones that were taking bets on the game. But Rhiannon got
confirmed, which was awesome. She asked us to stand in on th circle,
which was also awesome. I use the word awesome too much, but in this
circumstance I do believe the word may be instituted. It was quite
awesome.

And that pretty much brings us to now. So yeah. That's about it. I
don't really know what else to say. Have a good week I guess. This was
one of the better weeks of my life, so hopefully you all can take a
part of that with you and have one of the best weeks of your life too.
Peace out.

John

Rhiannon's baptism

Elder Crawford and Elder Miller

Cooks Inlet YSA, Anchorage

Peoples

Firstly, thank you all for the birthday wishes! I had a pretty good
birthday, got some fun stuff, and didn't party at all. I got sang to
by missionaries, which is always terrible. But that's life for you.
This has been a pretty awesome week.

Tuesday was cool. We had our last district meeting of the transfer. We
did transferdamus where we guess where everyone is going. We had the
best grilled cheese sandwiches of my life. The people who made it put
this pesto on it and it was delicious. Then we drove to Wasilla so
Elder Crawford could go to the doctor. Road trips are fun.

Wednesday we got to go on a temple trip, which was sweet. Then we
went to this Mexican place called Xalo's and I had a steak and
potatoes burrito. What is this? It was super good. Backed up the
system for days though. Then we went tracting and actually found
potentials which was awesome. Then we met with Whitney, who's the
best. She's crazy. We work with her because she's less active and
asked us to teach her the lessons. She also offers to cut our hair, so
no more great Clips for me, woot woot

Thursday was my birthday. So that was nice. My parents got me some
apostate clothes which was cool. I really appreciate all the birthday
wishes, but remember that you can send them to me yourself instead of
sending then through other people. Nudge Nudge wink wink please email
me and write me letters. I'm not lonely or bitter. But seriously,
thanks. I love you guys. But we also did a lot of work that day which
was nice. It was just a good day. Woot birthdays.

Friday was also good. We met a lot of people and even got a referral
which is awesome. We also have SASWAFN which was super fun because we
did a game tournament. I got destroyed, but it was fun. The perks of
being in a YSA. Good days. Then we got transfer calls at night which
was crazy. Elder Crawford is going to the Fish hook ward in Wasilla
and my new companion is Elder Santana who is a Spanish Elder, which
should be fun.

Saturday was also good. Looking back on the week, I realize we
actually didn't teach very much. We just went around trying to find
people to teach and getting rejected, which sounds sad, but it's
really not. Looking at this week I can see that we're actually doing
pretty good compared to sometimes. It's fun to realize that you're
actually getting work done, even if it's super slow. But that's Alaska
for you.

Sunday was the fifth Sunday of the month so we had a special 3rd hour.
In this ward they do a question and answer with the Bishopric. Someone
asked about dating and to quote Bishop McCarrey "There are some hot
women in this ward, if I were you guys, I'd grow a pair and ask them
out" That was straight from the mouth of the Bishop. It was so funny.
Then we had a dinner party.

Rhiannon's baptism is this Saturday so that's really exciting. I also
hit bump day this week (6 month mark) so this should be another good
one. Alright people of the universe, have a good one! I'll be back.

John