Sister Dunlop: Cheechako Takeover

Time flies when you're having fun. My spirit is so tired and worn out by the end of the night, we just crash in our beds and then get up bright and early the next day and do it all over again.

I'm exhausted, but this is the greatest adventure.

Wednesday was the Mission Leadership Council meeting and so Sister McGee and Sister Grieve (the other STL) were gone all day. AKA CHEECHAKO SISTER DUNLOP IS IN CHARGE OF OCEAN VIEW FOR THE DAY WITH HER CHEECHAKO MTC COMPANION SISTER RICHARDS! BOOM! It was crazy and terrifying and so awesome. President Robinson must really trust us haha.

Normally after morning studies, Sister McGee and I spend an hour doing my missionary training. But because both Sister Richards' and my trainers were both gone, we had to train each other haha- just like the MTC. After that, we went tracting in a neighborhood next to our apartment and met the strangest array of people I've met in a while - a retired man who used to meet with the missionaries until "the boys forgot about him" (elders!), a guy from Florida living in his girlfriend's apt and waits there all day for her to come home from work (we gave him a Book of Mormon and told him he should read it while he waits), a weed delivery driver who told us he wanted to pass our number onto his grandma, a business man named Wes, the USPS lady, and a lot of barking dogs. Yay Alaska.

After that adventure, we walked back to our apartment and the Huffman sister missionaries came over for lunch. Then we had to run some things to the Mission Office and pick up some pamphlets and stuff for the rest of our week. I got my Alaska driver's license on Tuesday so President LaVoie (the guy in charge of all the cars in the AAM) would let me drive Rhonda around for the day. PS I haven't driven since August and so driving was real weird at first. Don't worry, we were ok. After stopping by the mission office, Sister Richards and I headed over to the church to do some Bush Branch calls. I don't remember if I've ever explained how we do BB lessons before but basically we call the person and have a lesson with them over the phone- discussing, reading scriptures & pamphlets (if they have them from us- sometimes they get lost in the mail in the Bush), praying, and all that stuff we normally do in a face to face lesson. It's just us calling them over the phone from our church parking lot or Young Women's room and them hanging out somewhere in the Bush with sketch cell service. The hard part about the Bush though is that the cell service is so spotty and there's like no internet anywhere ever. So sometimes lessons don't go through. Like on Wednesday, when all of the Bush investigators we had scheduled to have lessons with dropped off the face of the earth. Cool Alaska Bush, cool. We had blocked off an hour to do BB lessons and I didn't know what else we were going to do so I pulled up the list of less active members of the Bush Branch and started randomly calling and checking in on them. One of them was a super nice old man named, Monte, who told us that he had been really sick and his doctors had thought it might be cancer but after doing a lot of tests, they found that he was clear! Yay! Monte then told us that he had been praying about it and he knows that Heavenly Father is there with him every step of the way. We are hopefully going to keep in contact with teaching Monte and work to get him back into full activity in the Church. We also called a lady named Sarah who is a 2nd grade teacher out in the Bush. She told us that she works Monday-Saturday at the school (the Bush has school open on some Saturday's for the library and things like that) and so by Sunday she is so tired and just wants to relax. Luckily for the Bush Branch, you can call in to church on Sunday's from your bed in your sweats and no one would ever know! So we are going to work with her on that.

Then, we had a lesson scheduled with the Stubbs family but they called and said that their kids were sick so that was cancelled. So Sister Richards and I decided to go back to the neighborhood we had been tracting earlier that morning and finish knocking all of the doors on that street. We had about an hour before we needed to go and teach another lesson and so I knew we didn't have a ton of time. This was kind of a "fourth floor, last door" experience that President Uchtdorf had talked about last weekend in General Conference. So we had about ten minutes until we had to go but felt prompted to go and knock on this dark corner apt door. A super nice lady named Allison opened the door and after explaining to her who we were and what we were doing, she let us right in! We talked to her about the Book of Mormon and taught her about the Restoration of the gospel. She talked to us about how she prays and reads her Bible everyday and how she is wanting her 13 year old daughter to start to build her testimony in those things too. She's been in some other churches before but has never felt like she has found the "right one" yet. She's basically shopping for a church right now. WE HAVE A SUPER GOOD ONE ALLISON, COME AND TRY IT! Sister McGee and I are planning to go and visit with her later this next week. So cool. "Fourth floor, last door" is REAL all you fellow missionaries out there. Don't give up.

Sister Richards and I went to go and teach our newest convert, Jason. He's moving down to Utah in November and we talked to him about eternal families and temples. It's cool to hear him talk about his goals for the temple. Temples are so awesome. Then we had dinner and drove over to the Mission Office to exchange back with our trainers. In summary, the cheechakos taking over Oceanview was successful. Go team.

Other things that happened this week: Sister McGee and I trained at Zone Meeting, we found a less active member in our ward who runs a waffle food truck called Sugarhouse Waffles and is super cute, we met one of our BB investigators in REAL LIFE Saturday night because she came down to the valley to have a baby and so we were able to meet with her before she heads to this hospital later this week (before we left, she said a prayer in Yupik and it was SUPER COOL), the Heckels are doing awesome and the oldest daughter just got called to be the first counselor in the Beehive class of YW and she's so excited about it, and Sister McGee only has like ten more days on her mission so there's been some packing and crying. So crazy.

The overall theme for fast and testimony meeting Sunday was missionary work which was really cool because Sister McGee and I have been working hard to get the Oceanview Ward excited about missionary work. They're kinda in a "lull" right now and so hopefully this meeting got them stoked about the work here. There's tons of missionary work here in this area and there are tons of people prepared to hear the gospel, Oceanview just needs to help us find them.

"Every member a missionary" right??

On Thursday night, President Robinson will be calling us with transfer calls! It feels just like getting my mission call all over again - terrifying but awesome. Sister McGee flies back home to Utah next Wednesday so I will be getting a new trainer to finish up the last six weeks of my training. I'm pretty sure I'll be staying in Oceanview, but we will have to see on Thursday. It's scary because I feel like Sister McGee has been the perfect trainer and perfect fit for me. I've learned so much from her and am so inspired by her. It makes me sad she's leaving me and that I have to kill off my first companion but I'm excited for her to go and be a real human again with her cute family!

Sorry for the rando assortment of photos this week, it was a bit insane.

Anyways, I love y'all.

Go forth and be awesome.

XOXOXO Sister Dunlop