Thermals

Hey everyone!

 This weeks been pretty good, cold but good. Yesterday it was -23 and its been in the negatives most of the week, most of the time around -10 or so, so not terrible but still cold. We went tracting yesterday and we ended up only tracting one house, haha. But not because it was cold or anything, but because the first house we knocked on let us in. The guy who answered the door was completely drunk but let us in right away. Turns out he's inactive, from Orem, and Hyrum Smith is like his great great great grandpa haha. His friend Gloria was there and she was sober, so we were able to teach her therestoration and it was an amazing lesson. The cool part is that he was the one who initiated the lesson and he was testifying about everything we taught and he helped out quite a bit. It was a good tract haha. She lives in Shaktoolik, anative village that you have to fly into so we might not be able to teach her again for a while because she goes back this week sometime to help herfamily with some stuff. She said that shes terrified of flying and will not fly if the weather's bad though, so pray for bad weather this week so we can teach her again haha.

  

  I might be headed over to Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island sometime this transfer or next. We talked to president about it and he told us that if we come up with a good plan and have everything arranged then there's a good chance to go over. So we've been working with a  lady in the ward in getting things set up. President Beasleys requirements are that we have a place to stay, and someone to show us around, and someone to protect us haha (he said that it takes about 6 months for the people over there to like you enough to not want to kill you, but we've heard otherwise from members who are from Savoonga (: and he only heard that from members in wasilla)  So far we've figured most of it out, we just need to double check about the housing arrangement. It'll be awesome to get to go over there if President approves it. And the oldergeneration over there speaks Siberian Yupik so the member we're working with is teaching us a song in Siberian Yupik, it's pretty cool. She took us out for a walk on the iced over ocean, it was pretty neat. We're hoping that through all this we can help her become active again, because I guess its a big step even to be able to meet with her.

  

We saw the Iron Dog come in this week.  It's a 1000 mile snow machine race that goes from Wasilla to Nome to Fairbanks, it was kinda neat to see it come in. In a couple weeks the Iditarod comes in, it's gonna be awesome to be at the finish line this year. (Last year Ashton was in Eagle River and helped as a volunteer with the "Start" of the Iditarod.)  On Monday we went on a hike, probably the coldest hike I've ever done in my entire life but it was good haha. It took like 10 minutes of keeping my hands inside my coat to warm them up from being outside holding my camera for less than a minute, it was pretty crazy.  The wind chill is ridiculous here. I met a guy in the branch this week who's a gold miner on one of the dredges here.  He's on the show Bering Sea Gold and his names Ian Foster. He's pretty cool, he said that he'll send us a text when theyre filming in town so we can try to be in the background or something haha. Oh and today were eating dinner with Carol and she's feeding us eskimo food, were gonna be eating mucktuck, fermented mucktuck, cormorant, and walrus, then I think she said seal oil as well.   I'll make sure to take pictures.  She said that missionaries in the past have thrown up ... pray for me haha 

  So now to answer your questions, right now we get a decent amount of sunlight, the sun comes up around 9 and it goes down at like 7/7:30, so like 10 hours or so of sunlight, it's nice. Um I'm kind of warming up haha, I just wear my winter gear that I brought out with me and I'm good for the most part. Elder Allens cool, he's from Vegas, he's been out almost a year, he came out with Elder Weber, and he's learning russian. Oh and by the way, that guy Mot Mahoni, he's not in this branch, he lives down in Wasilla area so I don't thinkthere's anyone up here that he baptized.  From what I hear all of the people he baptized are active. Hopefully I'll get to meet him someday before I leave Alaska though, I think that would be pretty cool to meet him. And this branch, they're definitely a bare minimum kind of branch, but the people arereally good people. That's awesome that everyones doing so good, everyones getting married, holy smoke. Thats awesome that Avery got a full ride scholarship to UVU, congrats man! 

I have a question to ask you guys. Can you send me up a pair or two of thermals?

Love you guys!  Love Elder Ashton Roney