busy week

Hey everyone!

  Happy Fathers Day Dad!! I hope it was all you ever hoped and dreamed for, and was an amazing day for you!

 This last week was good, zone conference was amazing! Elder Koelliker from the 70 came and did some training. We got tons of insight and the spirit was super strong, especially the testimony meeting at the end. The testimony meeting at the end was the strongest Ive felt the spirit in a long time, it was awesome, they had every missionary in the zone share their testimony, not many of the missionaries in the zone stayed dry in the eye. Then when we got back from zone conference we did exchanges for a day with our district leader from craig(since he has to pass through ketchikan to get to craig anyways), it was super good, we got alot done during that day and this week(for only in our area for half the week). We found another investigator during the exchange, hes a philipino guy and a bunch of his familys lds, he seems pretty solid. We met with Kodie this week, we taught him about feeling the spirit and recognizing the promptings of the spirit. It was good, hopefully we can get him on date soon for a baptism. Then on the exchange we met with Matt again, elder Weber and elder Terry gave him a blessing, he messed up his knee and was about to go get it checked out to see if he had to get surgery and it worked, he doesnt have to get surgery anymore and Matt recognized that it worked too. Oh and remember that guy that seemed cool when we went back to try and see his wife Kim? Yea he did a complete 180 again, when we went over he freaked out on us and was a bum, then he told us that we cant come back. But bishop gave us a referral for over in Metlakatla when we go next, seems pretty promising too. So this week was pretty good here.

 Your week sounds like it was incredibly bitter sweet. Thats so sad that Ammon died!  (Our friends lost their 21 year old son in a tragic accident last Wednesday)  I never got to see him after his mission, I was hoping I would be able to see him when I got back. My heart sunk when I read your emails, its so tough for his family, and especially Aaron (a brother of Ammon's whose serving in the Houston Texas Mission)  on his mission, he was such a good person. Its so nice to have to plan of salvation laid out for us for this reason exactly.
 
It sounds like Sunday was great with Tannon, and Blake and Nancys farewell  talks. All 3 of them are going to do super good on their missions. Theyre going to be great as mission president and wife and Tannons gonna do great too. Im excited for them, its gonna be great, its gonna be weird not seeing uncle Blake and aunt Nancy for 4 years.Tell them all congrats for me!
 
  So overall this week was pretty good, and hopefully this week will be just as good if not better! And hopefully we'll get some sunny blue sky days here this week! Hopefully this week will be grrreat for you guys back in the warm sunny weather. Love you guys!

 Love Elder Roney

Hey everyone,
  This week was good, we actually got over to metlakatla on thursday and friday. We slept it the church, it was aweful. It was like 84 degrees all night, toasty roasty, and we slept on the floor on just a sleeping bag or whatever we slept it haha. Then in the morning our phone alarm decided not to work so we ended up waking up at like 8! Garbage! haha and for showers we had to go to the pool and used their showers, interesting trip for sure. But im not bitter, k? But we were able to meet with some less active members over there which was great, but unfortunately the person we set up a lesson with bailed and went to the beach with his family because the sun was out, but he wants us to come teach him next time were over there, hopefully that will be soon.
   We picked up 2 new investigators! We found them in the former investigator section in the area book and we went over on saturday and they pretty much taught us about the book of mormon and how things support it, it was awesome. Their names are Jamie and Cliff. They seem super solid. Then we werent able to meet with Kodie this week, he had something come up on saturday that stopped him from being able to come to the lesson. Then  we tried meeting with kim this week, she wasnt there but her husband was, he was super negative last time we stopped by but this time he was prettty cool and said it would be fine if we came over. Then Matt, he ended up going on a date with one of the lds summer workers, so now were gonna tag team him to get him to church and teach him and all that, its pretty sweet, next time we have dinner with the ysa members theyre gonna invite him over too.
   Oh and its zone conference tomorrow, so Im in Juneau typing this at the church. Thats why this isnt so detailed, but next week ill do better I promise (: But its pretty sweet, were spending our pday in Juneau, and elder Satinis here too so I got to see him again, hes fun to be around. Same with his companion. Well, I gotta go, but Ill send a better email next week, promise haha.

 Love you guys!
 Love elder Roney

Schooooools out...for...summer!

Hey everyone!
  I'll start out by responding to some of your questions. Willard got his test results back and he doesn't have anything wrong with him, no cancer. We didn't end up going over to Metlakatla because the weather was too windy and so the float planes couldn't take off safely, so were going this thursday and friday. And we will be sleeping in the church, fun stuff right?  We are going to bring sleeping bags with us instead of borrowing from members over there.  The natives over there I don't know too much about, but  the island is a reservation so they pretty much have their own little laws they go by.  The way the plane ride is paid for is by the mission president, he goes online and gets the reservations for us, then since they're all paid for we can change the reservation to whatever days work best for us if it gets cancelled or something, its pretty sweet. When it got cancelled president Beesley told me to just pick when we go over and for how long then let him know.  And once we're over there that family or another member will pick us up and drop us off at the church then we walk everywhere from there. It's a small island though, so its easy to get around and there's not super annoying steep hills to walk up so its easy.

 This weeks been pretty good, we met up with Kodie again and taught him about the 10 commandments. He grew up in a christian home so he generally knew about them but didn't quite understand what they meant or said so we just read out of exodus 20 and went into more detail about what each one was saying and meant. So it was a good lesson. This next time were going to listen to John Bytheways talk Solo Flight with him about feeling the spirit and recognizing it, it should be good, he's definitely felt it we just have to get him to recognize that he has.  We were able to meet up with Matt again, he ended up hurting his knee, he fell down some stairs and he thought he tore his ACL, but he got an MRI and found out that nothing is hurt, which is awesome, because if it was torn then he would have to leave to get it fixed and probably wouldnt come back depending on how long it took to heal (he came up to work with the cruise ship stuff). So now since nothings hurt we still have him as an investigator! And we taught him a little bit more about the Book of Mormon when we met with him and then gave him a restoration pamphlet to read before we come back. So he's doing awesome, hopefully we can meet with him on his next day off. Then we havent been able to meet with Kim again yet, we tried going to see her at her apartment but when we did her husband answered and he was less than friendly or welcoming. He was in the middle of hosting a meeting service for the church of God, so he's definitely not a good or promising candidate to be taught so far haha. So we're just trying to get ahold of her to teach her again.  Then we were able to have Ty Detmer give us a fireside about his conversion, he was up in Juneau and we had it broadcasted to us down here. It was good, he didn't have any single moment where he knew he needed to join the church or anything, he said it was a gradual process. It was super good. Then at church one of the young single adult RM members that are up here to work for the summer told us that he's been working with someone and that we're going to start teaching him haha. It was awesome, the work definitely speeds up in the summer time. Other than that the weeks been pretty good, alot of contacting referrals, less active members, and potentials and alot of tracting around in the rainy/sunny/cloudy/windy streets, the weather here is bipolar. But it's definitely starting to get warmer, it's been in the 50s and low 60s lately, it's been kinda nice. And when the sun comes out Ketchikan is so much prettier and awesome! I love it here, oh yea and we got our transfer call on Saturday. Were both staying here, I'm so happy that I'm staying in beautiful Ketchikan another transfer. And it sounded like your week was good, it's gotta be nice to be out of school for summer, all the kids here are super excited to be done haha. So anyways, sorry this letters so short but I gotta go, if I missed anything I'll put it in my next email. oh yea and what day is Burke and Andrea gonna come in on the cruise ship? June 28th? Anyways, love you guys! Hope you all have a wonderful week, and a good fun summer!

    Love Elder Roney


(funny photo!)

Memorial Day

Hey everyone!

    Sorry, the university and public libraries were both closed because of memorial day, so youre getting an email today instead of yesterday. So this week was good, we had like 3 good sunny days, it was super nice! I wore my short sleeve shirt and realized how pasty white im getting haha, extremely! But its ok because I fit in with alot of the locals haha. Weve had tons of cruise ships lately, a couple days ago there were 4 ships in, and tons of tourists, some that like to walk out into the middle of the street in front of traffic without looking... im not sure I like some of these european tourists so much, theyre crazy! Oh the Jones family wanted me to tell you thanks for sending Xavier cookies, so thanks (: And we ran into another LDS tourist couple that they told us they were playing "who can spot the elders first" game at every stop haha, so they ran up and were excited to tell the other one they found us. Theyre from Canada, and definitely sounded like it haha. And there are alot more people in sacrament now that the summers going and theyre all moving down for work and vacation.
    Were gonna head over to Metlakatla probably tomorrow, im excited for that, we have a couple people that want us to teach them while were over there and the bishop wants us to visit a few people over there. And were gonna be sleeping in the church while were over there, should be fun, basketball for exercise in the morning, maybe ill touch the rim..or not.. im not bitter, k? We got 2 new investigators this week! We found them both tracting lately, one of them is Kim, she let us in(I think she was the first person to let us in and teach her so far in my mission) and we taught her about the Book of Mormon and gave her one to read. We went back to visit and and said shes been reading it and she likes it so far and we set up a time to come back and teach her more! The next ones pretty much the same thing, but he didnt let us in haha, we tracted in to him, his names Matt, we taught him about the Book of Mormon and gave him one to read. When we went back to see him he told us its comparable to the Bible and hes enjoying reading it, we set up a time to come back and teach him more! So pretty awesome week on the finding aspect. Then we taught Kodie on Wednesday, taught him a few of the commandments then committed him to keeping the Sabbath Day holy, continuing to pray and read about the Book of Mormon, and being obedient to the commandments. It went super good, he told us that he got one of his prayers answered through the Book of Mormon, pretty awesome! He wanted a sign then what he read said exactly what he asked in his prayer, sweet stuff. So hes coming along great, he just needs to learn how to recognize the spirit and the promptings of it, so thats what were gonna focus on this next lesson with him. Should be good. Then we met with Willard again, we taught him about the liahona/scriptures and how when we are diligent to them and do what they teach us we can recieve more guidance from our Heavenly Father. And some members gave us more referrals, so this week we were trying to contact them as well as some of the less actives in the ward. So it was a pretty good week overall. Also, Elder Webers doing good too, hes definitely progressing and becoming a better missionary. Kinda stressful sometimes knowing that his training is what will make the way on how the rest of his mission goes, oh my heck!
     Glad to hear that everythings going well back at home, sounds like Brolins choir concert was good with a little bit of excitement. (At the year end choir concert for Broin a girl fainted and another one ran off the stage with a bloody nose.)   Congratulations to Tannon and Brooke for graduating! Free at last! Free at last!   almost. (: Well, I hope your week is filled with sunshine and happiness and good smells! Love you guys!

 Love Elder Roney

 Heres some pictures, one of the Disney cruise ship and just one of Ketchikan and the cruise ships, enjoy

3rd decade starts...now!!

Hey everyone!
  Theres those pictures I promised to send you guys! Lots and lots of totem poles, me inside of a totem pole! the inside of that building that im in, then the boat docks, the cruise ship that came in today,  then the picture with two cruise ships is what the main road looks like when theres tourists and cruise ships in.
  So this week was good, my birthday was good! Thanks for those presents! They were all wonderfully perfectly good, I love those shirts and ties and socks, I used one of the ties and the long sleeve shirt and new socks on my birthday! It was nice to be wearing new socks, and that backpack is perfect, along with everything inside of it! Some of the goodies are gone already haha.And I love that back scratcher so much, then that Jazz playoffs towel was awesome, I love it! Too bad they didnt make it further in the playoffs.The space pens awesome, best pen ever, I use it so much. Then all that cereal haha I loved it, I need to actually buy milk now haha. It was fun getting those packages, the lady at the post office was a little phillipino lady, and when she brought it out she said, dont open these until your birthday! It was kinda funny with her phillipino accent. It was fun to get those packages and that card, thank you guys so much for those wonderful packages full of goodness!
And the Thomas family baked me a home made cake! awesome family!

We taught kodie again on wednesday. Hes still super interested in the gospel, and has some super good questions. He told us this last time that when hes in lessons with us everything that we teach him and the answers we give him to his questions all just makes sense. So that was awesome, one step closer to knowing for himself that this is the true church. Then we had a lesson set up for today, but she had to cancel and we re scheduled for Thursday. So that should go well. And we picked up a few good potential investigators as well, other than that we've been trying to contact lots of people taught in the past and all that good stuff. Were gonna try that bbq idea that dad gave me again, this time were gonna both hand out flyers to somewhere that he Havent tracted haha and were gonna make posters and put them on light posts and post them around town so we can get an actual turn out haha. Then were gonna invite members and tell them they cant come unless they bring a non member friend, hopefully it should be a better turn out this time. Maybe well get some tourists too haha. Oh and speaking of which, one of the tourists was walking up some stairs up the street from our apartment and ran into us on the way to the car and hes LDS! Hes from southern Utah and right away when he saw my name tag asked me if I'm related to the Nu Skin Roneys haha. It was super random and kinda fun. So a pretty good week, it sounded like all of yours was pretty good too! I might be headed over to Metlakatla again soon too! Im excited for that, its fun going over there. But I hope this week is just as good as last week was for all of you! Love you guys! Hope you have a wonderful warm sunny day there in Utah!

 Love Elder Roney

 Sorry this was a short email... At least you got some pictures! (:

Hey everyone!
   This week was good  I have a question for Braedon that I forgot to ask on skype, was your mission presidents name president Donaldson? President Donaldson from the missionary department did some training and he was talking about how he served in San Diego as mission president, and I think he was talking about the Preach my Gospel DVDs that they were making while Braedon was there.
 
The work started picking up this week here, we met with Kodie this week again just before basketball. We taught him the gospel of Jesus Christ, hes still awesome, he had some good questions and definitely is searching the truth. He accidentally got into some anti mormon stuff on the internet, so that brought up most of his questions, but we cleared those right up so it was good haha. And were gonna be teaching him on Wednesday and Thursday this week, should be good. We also got in with a lady that weve been trying to see for a while, shes usually not home, and that went good. Kind of a bummer though, she takes care of her parents and the state is trying to take her parents away from her. She was out of town and she hires some people to come stay and watch her parents while she was up in anchorage, and her dad had some seizures, I guess they happen alot, and the person called 911 because she didnt know what to do, so now the state is saying shes unfit to take care of them and is trying to get them out of there. So that was kind of a crazy visit, but it was good to finally get in. Also today we had a lesson with a lady we tracted into last week, thats why I didnt email earlier today. It was good, she belongs to the Seventh Day Adventist church and was curious what we believed in. So we started teaching her about the Restoration and I shared Moses 1:35 and that brought up a whole other discussion about the book of mormon. Haha so we only got through one point in the first lesson during the whole 30-40 minutes we were there, oops haha. Shes got a really firm belief that the bible is the only true word of God, but the lesson was good because it helped her understand why we use the book of mormon and that its not a replacement of the bible, and she wants us to come by again. So that was good, it ended up being a good lesson. And we saw Willard, that native guy again hes still doing good, hes waiting for the test results about his lung cancer, he didnt have much time or I was gonna see if he would share some of his peoples history that his grandma taught him but we didnt have much time with him. So hopefully next time Ill find out more about his peoples history and how it goes with the book of mormon like he was telling us.Oh and last night we saw this less active guy, he lives on a tiny sailboat on the docks. We just stood on the docks and talked to him while he was sitting in the boat. Kind of a weird visit haha, he was drinking when we got there and im pretty sure that he was on some drugs too. Like 5 minutes into the conversation he started talking about how the rebels over seas steal the supplies that the church sends to help with humanitarian aid stuff, and how the ones with the guns (and does shooting actions and sound effects while hes telling us the story of how the rebels do it) get the supplies and win. Then started mumbling stuff and got gradually quieter at the end of each sentence. Then he pulled out a lighter and started snapping his fingers and making a funny face for a minute then played with his beard, it was weird. Then when we were walking away he had us stop and said hey wait a minute I wanna show you something, so we stopped while he got something out of his little boat. Turns out he wanted to play his trumpet for us, and he started playing taps and kept messing up and told us how it wasnt his favorite mouth peice. Then when he was done we left and he kept playing while we were walking to the car. Very strange way to end the night haha.
 
It was good to see you guys yesterday on skype! Everyone looks a little different, but good. You guys are lucky its so warm there, I wish it was warmer here.   Elder Weber loves it cold and cloudy, hes crazy.  That was an awesome song on the ukulele Brolin, good job, keep it up! And Averys so flippin tall, oh my heck, howd you get so tall anyway! Braedons lucky that he gets to fly for free! Congrats to Virginia for getting invited back to teach another year! And Im glad Britts doing good still, hope youre liking your job! And hopefully you win in that upcoming tournament Dad! Thatd be sweet, And Happy Mothers Day Mom!  Hope it was just wonderful for you. Oh and I'd use one of the ukuleles if you sent one up. And I got those birthday boxes and card today! Thank you guys so much! I just love getting mail! It makes me so happy to see mail in my little po box. So that was pretty much my week, it was pretty good and pretty interesting haha. Well I gotta go, I hope your week will be as good as last week! Love you guys!

  Love Elder Ashton Roney

Hey everyone!

 So this week was pretty good, tons of rain, but good. When we woke up yesterday it was raining pretty hard, and it hasn't stopped since. And right now the rain is going sideways, the weather here is crazy. We had some training that we called into.   it was about feeding the light and the dark wolves inside of you and making sure you're doing your best to feed the light wolf. So  that was good, and it was stake conference for us on sunday. President Beesley spoke and he talked about the snake river. He was talking about how it's a calm enough river that it makes you think that when your river rafting it you could put down your paddle and lay down but if you don't pay attention you might drift off to the side and get stuck with all the drift wood, so you need to constantly be lightly paddling and making sure you dont drift off to the edge and get stuck. And he related that to life and how we need to constantly be checking where we are and not letting ourselves drift off and get stuck. Stake conference was good.   Oh, and there's a summer worker here from Heber.  He said that he was in uncle Burkes ward. His name is David Horne (I think that was his name), and he wanted me to say hi to uncle Burkes family for him.

The cruise ships started coming in, the carnival came in yesterday and another one came in today. I guess there's gonna be a new cruise ship everyday, I'm excited for that. The cruise ships are taller than the houses on my street, its pretty sweet. (Ashton's apt. is a block away from the port and on a hill) and we are allowed to make contact with the tourists coming off the ships.  It was fun to do that when I was in Homer. So I found out that haircuts are at least 20 bucks here, so since we have some clippers in the apartment I decided to cut my own hair during lunch the other day. My hair's alot shorter than I wanted it to be though haha, I used these left ear and right ear attachments and I thought, "awesome I don't have to worry about messing up around my ears", so I used it, and I didn't pay attention to how short the attachments are, and they're pretty short, so I had to make the rest of my hair look normal with it. So now I have a short buzz haha. And as soon as I walked out to the car with all the rain and cold wind hitting my head I decided it was terrible timing to do that haircut haha.  But hey, I saved 20 bucks!  It's so nice to have a car and not have to bike around in the rain, my head would freeeeze if we didn't have the car!   Oh and we went out to Saxman city last monday, it's the native village here, there are some sweet totem poles.  It was a neat place.  So that's the exciting news of the week hah.
 
We taught Kodie this week, we taught him about tithing and fast offerings. The lesson went really well.  We had a kid from the ward join in the lesson and he shared some experiences about tithing and bore his testimony of it.  Kodie says it all makes sense and he agrees with it. So that was good.  He wasn't able to come to church though, he had to work. But he's been coming to wednesday night basketball. we do basketball every wednesday night and kids invite their non member friends and all that stuff, it's fun.  Also, we set up a lesson with this guy named Archie, we met him tracting at the end of last transfer. We're teaching him today at 6.   We're gonna teach him about the Book of Mormon and invite him to read it, it should go pretty good, I'm excited for it. We've been trying to set something up with him the past two weeks or so and we just haven't been able to catch him at home, but we tried again yesterday and he was home! He said it wasn't the best time but we could come back today, and we set up a time. He seems pretty interested, it'll be good. And we met with Willard, the native guy yesterday, he's still awesome.  We shared a message out of ether 12:27, it was good.   So that's basically the week, it was pretty good.
 
It sounds like your week was great there at home! That's pretty sweet that Brolin got a ukulele  There's alot of missionaries that play the ukulele up here, and some of them are ridiculous. Keep it up Brolin and youll be amazing too!  Averys 6 foot 4 now?!   Oh my heck, how'd you get so tall, and why am I not taller then?!  That's sweet that he had his prom, thats always fun, it looks like you had a fun group. And congrats on the win in tennis.  And it sounds like the golf tourney was fun, that'd be nice if the weather here was like it is there haha. It sounds like everything's going pretty good down there, and everyone had a pretty good week. I hope this weeks just as good as last! Love you guys!

  Love Elder Roney

 And here are some pictures of the cruise ship and some of the totem poles. enjoy!