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