Frozen Tundra

Hey everyone!

  This week has been pretty good. We had transfers and then all the bush elders and the departing home missionaries went to the temple, then we slept in the mission home that night and left in the morning.

 While we were in the mission home we heard about this member who goes to church out in Willow and we're all pretty sure he's one of the 3 nephites haha. Everything matches up perfectly. He has a darker complection, he's always flying around, he has a job as a bush pilot/regular pilot and he's always flying back and forth to SLC because he works for the church on top of his other job, he doesn't have church records but holds callings, he's baptized tons of people and some of the people he's baptized are like 80 and he baptized them when they were kids, he looks like he's 50 but runs like hes 20 and can outrun missionaries and kids in the ward, no one really knows where he lives or how old he is (but with all the things the missionaries have gathered, he should be like 105), when the missionaries talk or ask about him members get kinda stand-offish and sensative about it, his name is Mot Mahoni (not sure how to spell it),  which is kinda similar to one of the names of the nephite 12 apostles, so with all that and more stuff that I didn't mention we're pretty sure he's one of the 3 nephites haha.

  Anyways, so I arrived in Nome, and my first impression was, wow this transfers gonna kinda suck haha. But I've soon found out otherwise. When I stepped out of the airport doors it was around -10 or -15 with a 10 or 15 mph wind chill and we had to dig our truck out of the snow drift so we could leave the airport. The coldest I've seen so it get here so far is -27, and the winds always blowing. We live above the church (the church makes some crazy weird sounds by the way) and we use the computer in the church to do emails and mormon.org and all that. Nomes a pretty cool place, its a small mining town with about 3000 people. I think they said its like 90 percent native, and aparently there's a sign that says it was the first sin city, haha. Its basically how I first thought Alaska would be when I opened my mission call, cold, in the middle of no where, theres a bunch of eskimos everywhere, and alot of people use snowmachines to get around town. All the buildings here are on stilts because of the permafrost or something like that. We don't proselite after 8, because most of the people are in the bars or sleeping.  So most nights we go to the gym here, except saturday and sunday and on saturday we clean and get everything ready for church.  On sunday we go to the youth home and do stuff with the native kids there. We do alot of service here; we play bingo with the old people, do stuff with the native kids in the youth home.  At the museum we're transcribing a natives journal from the 1800s, we sort books at the library.  Nome's a branch and there was about 25 or 30 people that came yesterday. The members here are pretty cool for the most part. Nome's a pretty cool place to serve, it's a really interesting place.  I can already tell the transfer's gonna be pretty fun and I'll have plenty of stories haha. My first day someone broke into the apartment and ruined part of the door jam, so now it makes a big click sound when you open or close it, haha, but they didn't take anything, so that was pretty weird.   Then a few days ago a drunk native guy stared me down then from across the street he yelled "you should buy me a bottle!" haha. Anyways, this transfer will probably bring some interesting and funny experiences :) My companions name is Elder Allen, he was in my district in eagle river so it was nice to know who my companion would be before I was put with him and to know that we get along. Oh, and I'll be able to send pictures now, because if I forget to bring my camera cord I can just run upstairs to the apartment and get it, haha so I'll attach some pictures today. I got your box this week! Thank you so much! It was fun getting it.   I actually got it at transfers last week but accidentally left it in the mission home.  But then they sent it up to me and I got it a couple days ago hah.

  So that's Nome so far, haha it's gonna be an awesome transfer. We met with one of our investigators this week, he's from russia and hes awesome. Hes only 20 but he's super spiritual and super funny too. At our lesson on saturday he had alot of questions about the holy ghost and trials and adversity. So that's what we taught about that lesson. And then he came to church yesterday and all the talks and the lessons in church yesterday were about the exact same thing that he was asking about on saturday.  So after church he said that he really liked it and enjoyed church, and we asked him if he's thought about being baptized and he said" Oh yes yes! I've been thinking about that, I want to talk to you guys about that next time we meet!" and when he talks he's very enthusiastic about most things, so he's super fun to talk to. We're meeting with him tomorrow, so well be able to talk about baptism with him, it'll be good. this transfer should be good. Oh and I hope you enjoy the pictures! 

Love Elder Ashton Roney