Elder Roney

Hey everyone!
  Happy 23rd Birthday Braedon!! I hope it was just wonderful and everything you hoped and dreamed for! :)
  We got our transfer call on saturday, we're both staying in Nome for another transfer :) And we're both happy about it, we're actually going to be able to see Nome when it's not all white everywhere! Hopefully I get sent to Fairbanks or Juneau next, that would be awesome! We're going to be driving out to a couple of the eskimo villages as soon as they open up the roads all the way. In Teller, the eskimo village north of Nome there's one member who lives there and has been stuck in Teller for the winter and we're going to make a trip up to see him. We've been in contact with him and he seems like a super solid member, it'll be good to go visit him. Today were driving out one of the roads to go see the train to nowhere. It's a super old rusted up train that they were building the tracks for to go from Council to Nome and they never finished. We heard it's pretty cool so were gonna drive out to see it today. The weathers been good lately too, it's been in the 20s and got into the 30s once! All the snows starting to melt away, I love it, alot of the snows supposed to be mostly gone by the end of may so that'll be awesome. We had the game night activity and it went well, alot of people showed up and brought games and food, it was pretty fun.
  This week was good, even though I got sick one of the days and we had to stay inside all day. I got pink eye in my right eye and it was the worst. Luckily the head doctor of the hospital here is in our ward and he got me some eye drops which helped a ton. So I was stuck inside all that day because I was contagious and didn't want anyone to get sick and be the cause of their illness. But we were still able to teach alot this week so that was good. We were able to see A------------, she's been reading from the book of mormon and we gave her a plan of salvation pamphlet to read while she's out at her cabin for the weekend. She's awesome and told us that she'll read it on the way to the cabin haha.  It was a short visit but a good one. When we got there they were telling us about walrus' and killer whales, then showed us some walrus tusks that they got and a killer whale tooth that Angelas dad found on the beach. It was pretty cool, the walrus tusks that they have are tusks from a walrus that ate humans, they said you can tell because if it's a walrus that attacks humans their tusks are a different color, kind of brownish, they call them rogue walrus'. (what??? sounds like a myth to me) Its pretty nuts. But A---------- doing awesome and doing good.
  We met with I---------------- this week, and he's still doing good. We weren't able to teach him about the law of chastity this week though. When we got there he was in a good mood, then after a few minutes of being there his dog went into the other room and made a huge mess which put him in a very bad mood . But other than that he's doing really good.
  That's awesome that everyones doing so good, exciting stuff that Braedons graduated! Congratulations!!!! And hes 23 now! Thats a pretty good week for him haha, and a super good birthday present from BYU! :)

  Thats pretty cool that they had Peter Clegg come back to give a talk. I didnt realize that I was one of those kids who would jump on you when you come over to home teach haha.
  Anyways, I gotta go! Love you guys!

 Love Elder Roney

4/22

Hey everyone!
 
  Happy 18th Birthday Avery!!! You're now an adult, that's some pretty exciting stuff right there.  I hope it was everything you wished for and dreamed it would be.
  Things have been pretty good up here in Nome, we get our transfer call this saturday so well know whats happening. We're pretty positive that Elder Allens leaving and we think that I might be getting transferred too, but we'll see what happens. The weather's been amazing this week! It's been so warm and sunny and all the roads are mostly clear of ice and snow.  There are so many people that walk around and do things outside now, it's awesome. Spring's actually finally here! Yesterday some people spotted a polar bear and two cubs a few miles out of town.  The natives say that this is the time of the year that you see polar bears come around if they do. It's pretty crazy, maybe if I stay another transfer I'll be able to see a polar bear, haha. I got to see a herd of muskox this week too, I'll attach some pictures of them. It was cool to see them, we could only get so close though because the people we were with told us that if you get too close they might charge you and tromp you. So we took those words of advice and didn't get very close, haha. We drove out one of the roads that they just recently plowed, in some places the snow was three times as high as I am tall, it's crazy the amount of snow some places get.
  This week we met with A-------- again a couple times, the first time we went over there we were only there for maybe 5 minutes because she was leaving to go to court haha, but it was for something dumb. She got in trouble for selling some of her smoked salmon.  I guess that's illegal to do up here, she didn't know that you couldn't do that either haha. We went over a few days later and found out that it went well, they only gave her a $100 fine. When we were over there the second time we taught her about the restoration/book of mormon and gave her a copy. She said that she's gonna read it and pray about it. It was really good that we were able to teach her about the book of mormon because she told us that until we came over and taught her about it she thought that it replaced the bible, not go along side the bible.  So I was happy that we were able to clear that up, and I think she was too. Shes an awesome lady and a solid investigator too.
  I------------- doing good, he came to church yesterday and we were able to teach him a couple more times this week. We taught him about baptism and we taught him about how things get difficult before something good happens. The next lesson were going to be teaching him is the law of chastity haha.  We just learned yesterday that his girl friend is now moving in with him.   So hopefully that (lesson) goes well, cross your fingers.
  It sounds like you all had a pretty good week, it sounds like Averys birthday was good. That's awesome that you guys got his paperwork finished the night before his 18th birthday haha. Hopefully his board of review will go well.  I'm sure he'll pass with flying colors. Pretty exciting that he's getting his partiarchal blessing too, I love reading mine. That's pretty sweet that Braedons graduating this week!   Fun stuff
  Thanks for sending me stamps and my backpack! I'll probably get the letter with the stamps in the mail today.

 I gotta go. Love you guys!

 Love Elder Ashton Roney

Ill attach some pictures too, one of the muskox, one of me in front of the wall of snow, and one of me on the ocean ice last week(on one of the packed snowmachine trails though)

snow again

 Happy 15th Birthday Brolin! I hope it was an amazing day for you! You can get your permit now!
   This week was good, it was a pretty eventful week. So for 3 days there was a big Kawerak conference, Kawerak is a regional native coorporation, it was awesome! The conference was to celebrate the coming of spring and to start off the whale hunting season or something like that, they do it every year around this time. They did alot of native dancing everynight while it was going, we were able to see some cool dances. There was one that was kind of spooky though but still super awesome to watch.  It was a shaman dance and there was alot of screaming involved, haha.  During the conference, they announced that the people in Savoonga killed a whale, which is pretty exciting I guess. A lady in the ward is from there and she said that she's gonna be getting a good amount of muktuk from the villagers over there.  So I might be eating muktuk again soon haha, yum...   It was pretty cool, one of the nights at the conference they were feeding the community reindeer soup and it just so happened to be on the night that we didn't have dinner.  So we stopped by and ate some yummy reindeer soup for dinner, it was super good.
   We had a bowling activity on saturday, the ward rented out the bowling alley for the night and alot of people showed up, it was an awesome turnout. Most of the people there were either less active members or non members, and all the active members that werent out of town were there too. When we got there we discovered that we ran over a big chunk of metal sometime during the day, so we had to change our tire before we went in, and since it was muddy out we got our clothes kinda muddy, I dont even know how many times I was asked when we got into the bowling alley "what happened? Why are you muddy?" Then me and Elder Allen joined in on one of the games towards the end, I won :)
   We were able to teach I---------- a couple times this week, we're in the process of teaching him the Gospel of Jesus Christ, each time we go over there we teach him one or two principles. So far we've taught him about Faith and Repentance, next were going to teach him about baptism and the Holy Ghost and hopefully get him on date for baptism. He's coming along really well, he's doing awesome, and he's still keeping the word of wisdom too which is a huge step forward for him!
   We picked up a new investigator this week, her name is An------. She seems pretty solid and lives like 2 houses away from the church haha. Shes a subsistance living native too, so on the weekends she snowmachines out of town and hunts and gathers what she needs for the week. She's a really cool lady, she ended up giving us raspberry jam that she made and gave us a jar of smoked salmon too.
  That's crazy that you guys got more snow, unfortunately we did too. Everything was melting and making such good progress towards spring and there were even spots that you could see the ground, and then it snowed again a couple nights ago. This weather really likes to get my hopes up and then smack them right back down haha.   Wait, we have missionaries in our ward now?? Thats awesome, have there ever been missionaries in our ward while we've been there? That's exciting that Kaedon got his mission call to Guatemala! He's gonna love it.
  Anyways, I gotta go now. I'm glad you all had such a good and fun week, love you guys!

 Love Elder Ashton Roney

Somewhat eventful.

Hey everyone!

  This weeks been somewhat eventful, mostly just busy, crazy and ridiculous though. So last p-day we went out to Ians mining camp for a little while, he showed us around his camp and gave us a tour. We got to meet the tv crew who was filming everything and all the other miners there. It was pretty fun, we got to see them film some of the show too. (Bering Sea Gold reality t.v. show)  It was just a quick thing, they just zoomed in on the gold and scuba mask in the background and all that fun stuff for like 2 seconds. Yeah, reality tv is definitely not reality, they filmed it like at least 20 times over and over and over again and did a bunch of stuff to make it look cooler til they got just the right shot. And after a minute or two they wanted it to be smokey in the background so they had Ian light some paper towels on fire and stomp them out to make smoke haha. But it was cool, they showed us a big pan full of gold, he told us how much it was worth and it was worth so much, and it was just from one week of mining!   But on the way to his mining camp we were walking out on the ice and we were walking around on these big chunks of ice and I stepped on this one spot and I fell through the ice/powder! luckily I only fell armpit deep and luckily there was more ice underneath and not water hahaha. (Oiy, Angels were watching over him.)

  Another crazy and ridiculous incident happened this week while we were eating dinner at subway. So we were on our way to subway and we saw a very intoxicated eskimo lady walking down the street flailing her arms above her head as shes walking, kind of funny to see. Then when we got to subway and were ordering our $10 footlongs(theres no such thing as a $5 footlong here) she and her son and his friends walked into the store. She starts yelling at her sons friends because I guess she thought they were just trying to get free subway and werent really his friends and I guess it was his 12th birthday. Anyways, after we start eating our food her son and his friends go and sit in one of the booths behind us and start eating their food. So she starts walking over to their table but before she gets there she stops when she gets to our booth and looks at us, and we both think, oh no something weirds about to happen. hahaha so basically she starts off by tells us in a very slurred eskimo accent, you boys are very handsome, we tell her thanks, then she asks us what our ages are, and we both say 20 and think, oh great is this really happening? Then she asks when were planning on getting married, and in an attempt to stop the weirdness I say, not for at least another year or two haha, but that doesnt stop her, she then continues to ask us to marry her.  But it turned out okish because we gave her and her son each a book of mormon and left hahaha. Theres your crazy and sad Nome story of the week, theres more but Ill just share that one :)

   General Conference was awesome, I really enjoyed it even though not alot of people showed up to the church to watch it besides priesthood session. haha but for the last session we had Iskander there, and for the afternoon session on Saturday a less active person showed up to watch it with us. The talks were awesome and the spirit was pretty strong during it. It was a good last general conference on the mission.

    Iskander's doing really good, we taught him the word of wisdom and he committed to do it for at least a week. I guess the missionaries in the past taught it to him and he said no to everything in it, so it's good that he's going to do it and accepted it, it's for sure a big step of progression. The only thing that might be hard for him to give up is his tea and maybe coffee, but he said that hes going to try it.   He's our most progressing investigator so I won't talk about anyone else today :)

    It sounds like you guys had a pretty good week, those hikes and different adventures in southern utah sound like they were pretty fun. Im so jealous that you guys have been able to enjoy the heat, it's down at 0 degrees plus wind chill again, I just really want the cold to leave and go away for a long long time. Anyways, gotta go! Love you guys!

 Love Elder Ashton Roney