Alaska is getting colder..

Hey everyone!
  Sorry the email is so late today, the university here was updating all the computers in the computer lab until 3 so we haven’t been able to do emails until now.
 So I got that envelope from mom and also Braedon, Virginia, and sister Voeks package, thank you all so much! it was nice to finally get some mail. So in my apt. we don’t share it with other missionaries, but there is another missionary apt. a couple minutes away.  
We do still have a vehicle, and it’s a good thing that we do too, the past week or so its been in the negatives quite often. Unfortunately we don’t drive a truck anymore, we have a little pontiac vibe, and were the only ones in our district who don’t drive a truck.
Eagle River is like a suburb of Anchorage, but its a good size town. Thats cool that bishop printed you off a map of Eagle River, that’ll give you more of a perspective of the size. I do get along with Elder Macpherson, he’s a good guy. He played football for snow college, he was their kicker, he’s a pretty fun guy, easy to get along with, he’s a good missionary, obedient too, and he’s from Alpine, so not too far from Orem. Does Virginia know any Terrys? One of the elders in my district, Elder Terry went to Mountain View High School and graduated same year as me.
The wards good here, they feed us every night, they’re good about that. Alot of the members are working with friends and co workers trying to get them ready for missionary lessons too, they’re a solid ward with lots of member missionary work going on. One of the lady’s in the wards mom is in uncle Blake or Brookes ward, I don’t know her maiden name though, so I don’t know her moms last name.  It doesn’t snow as much anymore, it snowed last night though and we got like 3ish inches, so that was fun. Its definitely not warmer up here than in Homer, since Homers by the ocean it keeps it warmer I think, even though it wasn’t very warm. And it snows more up here and the snow sticks, because in the actual town of Homer it rains after it snows so it all turns to slush, at least when I was there, I’m sure its sticking now or will be soon though.   I’ll try to stay warm, its kind of hard here sometimes haha.
On Thursday we did service at the nature center in the woods out in the middle of nowhere splitting wood and it was -15 degrees, my hair and eyelashes had a little bit of frost on them when I was done haha. And we tract almost everyday and its usually single digit temps or in the negatives, like the other day we tracted  and I think it was -10. Crazy stuff! Oh and I don’t think we can skype, that’d be awesome if we could though! If I find out otherwise Ill let you guys know.  This last week was good though, and it sounds like your guys' week was good too, that's too bad thanksgivings not gonna be big and with all the Roney’s together. Tell everyone going on missions and all that good stuff, congrats and good luck for me.
Some fun things happened this last week. So on Friday or Saturday we were tracting and we tracted into this lady who was pretty dang intoxicated, at first she was angry and calling us swearwords and said " Come in and I’ll read the Bible to you" so we got inside and she started showing us her roserie and her prayer book and all that stuff that catholics have (I think she was catholic) and was showing us some pictures of relatives that recently passed away. Then she handed my this crystal and porcelain statue of a dolphin and said " here you go! Take it! The dolphin's a symbol of peace!" and she kept insisting that I take it, so I took it haha and now we have a crystal and porcelain dolphin statue thats probably a foot or a little taller on my study desk hahah. We found out its worth at least $50 too, its made by Lenox and it was made in 1995, so were going to stop by her house sometime this week when she’s hopefully not drunk and see if she wants it back. She had a crystal unicorn too, it would of been pretty sweet if she gave us the unicorn instead. So thats my crazy tracting experience this week, I’ll take a picture of the statue and send it next week.  We also ran into a Jehovah Witness tracting yesterday and he was super nice, usually they’re grouchy and mean to us, and he knew the bible super good. We taught him that we have a prophet on the earth today and he didn’t know that, it was a really good visit with him. were going to try and stop by his house in a couple weeks, he might be a good potential investigator. Its getting darker here too! It stays pretty dark until about 10ish to 11ish and the sun goes down around 4, maybe a little earlier. Its not even the darkest time of year yet either! But this weeks been good, the works still not super busy but were working on it. weve got a bunch of potentials and a referral from SLC that we’ve been trying to get a hold of, she hasn’t picked up her phone or answered her door yet. So hopefully we can get in and start teaching her this week and get some investigators.
Oh yea I almost forgot! Another funny thing that happened this week that didn’t end up too bad. So we were driving and pulled off to the side of the road to look at our area book(the book with all the info about our investigators and all that good stuff) Braedon can tell you about what area books are, and he went to stop but we kept sliding because it was so icy and we ended up in the ditch haha. It happened so quick and the car was pretty dang stuck, we had to dig out the snow around the car and a member pulled us out.  It was pretty funny, Anyways, I gotta go. Love You guys!!   Hope you have a good week this week!

Love Elder Ashton Roney