Elder Roney

Hey everyone!

 This email probably won't be too long, sorry. On pday we drove out towards one of the villages to see how far we could get, we only got like halfway there but it was a cool drive. On the way out there we stopped at the train to nowhere and took pictures of it. It's a train that they were building from Nome to Council but something happened that stopped them from finishing so now its just a rusting old train. I'll send pictures of it. We drove through an old village called Solomon.  It took less than a minute to drive through and we only saw one house that looked like people were living there, the rest looked pretty old and abandoned. We're getting kuspuks made for us by some people here, we're pretty excited, they're gonna be neat. Kuspuks are like the traditional eskimo shirt/sweater thing that they would wear seal and bear hunting, and they wear them when they dance. The lady had us buy our fabric and trim and everything.   I never realized that so much went into something that looks so simple. We saw another herd of muskox the other day while we were on the way to an investigators house. They're definitely a weird animal. Weather was goodish for most of the week, then it snowed again today, haha.  This weather makes me never want to live in alaska. Then we got a call from the assistants with our flight information to go down to zone conference, we leave on the 13th and come back next friday.
  We were able to see Iskander this week, he's doing good.  We taught him the law of chastity. He's having a hard time accepting it though, we're gonna work on that with him though. We weren't able to see Angela because she went out seal hunting with her husband/family last week.  Then they got back and the next day or so they left to go bear hunting and have been out of town since. Hopefully they shoot the bear soon so she can get back and we can start meeting with her again.
  I sent out a letter to you guys, you asked for my birthday list so I sent it to you, it's pretty short. I haven't gotten your package yet, but it should be coming in pretty soon, hopefully today.  To answer your question dad, eskimos have a few tribes but some of them are mainly inuit, then there's yupik, siberian yupik and there might be more but those three are for sure.

 I'm glad everyones doing so good, it sounds like it was a pretty fun week for you guys with the wedding and the art shows and everything else. Well I gotta get going, love you guys!

 Love Elder Ashton Roney

 And here are some pictures :)