Kodiak and back..

Hey everyone,

So to start out I’ll answer questions. I have not met Jason Bills yet, Elder Butler hasn’t either. Hopefully well find him. I haven’t gotten winter clothing yet, when we were up in anchorage we didn’t have time because zone conference ended at about 5 or 6, and its a 5 hour drive back to homer so we had to get on the road, so I wasn’t able to go to REI or any stores. So I’m not that prepared for the winter I guess. My health is good, I’m gaining some weight though because the members make sure you’re full before you leave their house, so I’ve gained 5 pounds already. And its getting harder to be able to run in the morning because it rains almost everyday and its getting cooler in the morning. :( Dad, I’m not sure what you meant when you asked, how are you looking your mission pres.? If you meant to say liking your mission pres. I like him alot, he’s way cool and definitely inspired and called of God. I do feel like Im growing and getting a stronger testimony, and I do feel like I’m learning the doctrine more. Teaching’s getting more comfortable for me.  The hardest thing is just figuring out how to teach with your companion, once you get better at that, your teaching gets better. The ward is very accepting of me I think, I feel welcomed by them. The ward is starting to get busier helping us with missionary work.  They’ve given us some names to go see. The bishop and ward mission leader are good. They just called a new mission leader a couple weeks ago.  He was baptized last year some time, so he’s new and hopefully he'll do good, he seems like he will, and the bishops good too. I definitely am glad Im serving a mission, and I know its the right thing to do right now. One of the things I learned in zone conference is that every phone call has to have a precise reason and only that reason to call.   Also, that the mission is like a roller coaster. Then we watched a short video about driving in snow and on ice and just driving conditions in Alaska. There was a bunch of other stuff that was talked about as well.  In the MTC I didn’t know Elder Flynn because he wasn’t in the MTC the same time as me, he’s been out just over a year.  

So this week was good, it was the end of the transfer, and they called and told us that were staying in Homer another transfer, so 6 weeks for me at least. On Wednesday morning at 10, our ferry left to Kodiak. It was a 10 or 11 hour ferry ride. It was fun but way too long to be on a boat.  The ocean was kind of rough, we had like 6ish foot swells and we were going up and down the whole time.  Elder Butler got sea sick haha, he ended up throwing up alot the last 5 hours of the ride. It was a super cool ride though, we saw tons of huge jelly fish and alot of puffins. It was pretty sweet, and it was way pretty too, even though it rained for alot of the ride. Once we got to Kodiak we were only there for an hour or so then we flew to Anchorage.  Kodiak is way cool, I liked it there alot, the elders there live in the church too. They like in this closet thing behind the gym walls, its kinda neat. The flight was fun too. It was probably the shortest take off I’ve ever been on, we were on the runway for maybe 5 minutes total, and from the time we started speeding up to when we got off the runway was probably 10 seconds, it was way fast. The flight from Kodiak to Anchorage was about an hour long, and we flew over Homer too. Unfortunately it was night time when we flew so I couldn’t see the scenery or anything. It took about 30 minutes to get over Homer on the plane and it took us 10 hours on the ferry to go the same distance. But we arrived in Anchorage at around midnight and we got to where we stayed at around 12:30 or almost 1. Then zone conference was at 10.   That was way good. Brother Walker from the Quorum of the 70 was there, zone conference was really good.  Then we drove 5 hours back to Homer. The drive was super pretty too, all the leaves are starting to change color now.  Oh, and we went to a wedding on Saturday.  A member and an investigator got married on the beach/deck of a restaurant on the spit.  {The ‘spit’ is a long, narrow piece of land stretching into the ocean.  There are docks, businesses, etc on it.}  It was way good, so hopefully he starts coming to church now that his wife’s a member.

A lady in the ward made a funny comment that made me laugh this week, she asked me what my name was and looked at my name tag and said " What’s your name again? Jesus (she pronounce it like Hesuse, like the spanish people pronounce it) Christ? haha oh no thats the name of the church! oh your names on top, Elder Roney" It was funny that she mixed it up I thought. 

Ill explain those pictures. Those are our apartments that we live in, the picture dad sent me is the street up from us, a guy named Chuck lives in those blue ones. Then that is a view of Homer right now, super colorful and pretty. And that picture of the ocean was a picture from the ferry dock right before we got on the fairy. Also, thanks for the package!  I got it once I got back from zone conference, it was on the door step, Thanks a bunch for that stuff, its perfect timing for those blankets too. And tell the Voeks thanks for their package!  The work is picking up too. We’ve been having more success tracting around. Yesterday a guy told us that he has company and to come back in a few days. He was way cool, he told us to come back in a few days before we even did our door approach. So this week’s been good. Its good that everyone’s doing good and staying busy at home. But I think thats about it for this week, thanks for everything. Love you guys! 

Love Elder Ashton Roney