Hello beautiful people who I love so dearly. Hope you know how much I adore and appreciate you guys, I seriously have the greatest support crew in the whole world #beyondblessed. Today is insane because long story short, I have to drive Sister Pike down to Anchorage tonight and we are staying the night there and then I'm dropping her off early early early Tuesday morning at the airport to fly to Juneau and then I am trioing it up with Sister Johnson and her trainee, Sister Willden, in Jewel Lake for the day and then will pick up my new companion, Sister Yeates, from Juneau later that evening and then she and I will drive up to Wasilla that night and go to work! I guess that totally gave away transfer calls...oopsies. The Alaska Anchorage mission takes pride in it's transfer logistics of pure insanity I guess.
This week we had to take our Jeep (yeah, I'm still driving the mom car Jeep of the AAM #godunlop) (her name is Whitney) in to get an oil change and some repairs so we had to call the Colony sisters and let us ride around in their back seat with them for the day. Bless. I love those girls. We went tracting and found this awesome Christian family and the mom is the director of a hip hop dance crew and they're the sweetest people. Hopefully Colony can start teaching them! Then we went and helped one of their investigators with some yard work (in our skirts #classysisters) in the pouring rain so we got super muddy but luckily our Jeep was eventually done so we could drive back to Wasilla and change before dinner.
We had to be in Anchorage at 8am on Wednesday morning for that big six zone conference thing with Elder and Sister Foster that I told y’all about last week. We had to get up so freaking early and meet our zone at the Stake Center to caravan down there. There were SO many missionaries at that meeting in Anchorage. I mean like not really because our mission is only like 180 missionaries anyways and that’s not even that big and not even all of them were there but it's just been a hot sec since I've seen more that fourteen missionaries I guess. The meeting was really good #duh. Remember how I said that President Toone told us how he volunteered our mission to be a test mission for some of these new and big things coming to missionary work in the next six months? Yeah, well we are already starting it. That’s how much faith President Toone has in us. He tells us three weeks ago that something huge is coming in six months and three weeks later he has us doing it. We don't know all the details of it yet but he called it "online proselyting" and how it has to do with Facebook. Idk stay tuned because it should be really freaking amazing and awesome. After the meeting, they ordered pizza because everyone was hungry after sitting and listening forever (it was good, but sometimes missionary
meetings are hecka long) but then the AAM doctor pulled the Wasilla and Soldotna zones aside and made all of us go and get flu shots because we live so far out that this was going to be the only time for us to get them. So we wait a hundred and a half billion years in this Disneyland long line doing paper work and all this to get a shot (the guy doing the shots was a member from the Mt. Baldy Ward so that was awkward/funny/bonding) and then...they're out of pizza and all the other missionaries had left. What. Doesn't everyone know that like half the reason why these giant missionary meetings are so awesome is because you get to see your mission homies?! Dang it. But they ordered another few pizzas for us that we inhaled before getting back on the road and driving a thousand miles back to Wasilla. I made Sister Pike stop at the Yogurt Lounge (Sister McGee's and my guilty pleasure back in my Oceanview training days 1+ year ago) for some pistachio froyo #sorrynotsorry.
Zone leaders sent out a text Thursday morning calling for "dope Zone lunch" at noon so we got our favorite sandwiches from Freddie's and then headed over to the Wasilla Stake Center. The thing about being the only sisters in the zone is that whenever we get together as a zone, we just feel surrounded by a freshman football team. Y'all a bunch of crazies. Then they wanted to try that Human Knot thing and it took them forever and a day to figure it out and eventually Sister Pike and I had to coach the poor kiddos. We went and visited the Evans, a recent convert couple, who have the kindest hearts in the whole world. They made us these necklaces with healing stones (like jade and hematite) in them and are making us these raw diamond stud earrings #bigfan. Then we went and visited Bobby (a returning less active blind and deaf bull rider old man with a "tumbleweed heart”) and are helping him prepare to go to the temple so we are working on helping him do some family history work but he just chats our ears off so our efforts usually just end up in up sneaking in a little gospel here and there. Killer.
On Friday, the Willow elders called and asked us to come and help them with some service at this lady's house. I thought that nothing could ever top some of those things we did up in Fairbanks, but this one ranks pretty high up there. It was bad. This lady and her husband and their two year old daughter literally live in a dump. It's so gross but they don't even seem to care that much. The whole things reeks like soggy wet garbage that's been sitting there for a few years just waiting for the zombie apocalypse to happen some time soon. Like burning plastic and molding Big Macs and old gasoline and just garbage. Garbage. Don't stand downwind or you'll hate you life #wateringeyes. There's more than twenty one (yes, I counted) old cars just sitting around their lot also waiting for the zombie apocalypse apparently. They live in a little tin trailer surrounded by piles of random stuff. I don't understand hoarding but I've met a billion and a half hoarders in Alaska. So for "service" they had us move some of the piles from one end of the lot and put them over in another pile of stuff. The stuff we carried was dripping all over the place as we walked back and forth. So. Nast. We were there for almost three hours and we just shuffled piles of trash around. Probs never going back there again. They need some serious help. Or like a dump truck. Or to move. I would move.
Transfer calls. Sisters usually get them Thursday night but President Toone was busy hosting Elder and Sister Foster this week so he called us on Friday night #thesuspensewaskiller. But like I said, Sister Pike is heading down to Juneau and Sister Yeates is coming up here (from Juneau lolzies) to serve in Memory Lake with me. I'm really excited to serve with her. She's from Idaho and is a new missionary and so that will be super fun. The curse of transfers is as soon as you hang up with President from calls, everything becomes a hot mess mad dash; packing, getting the apartment ready, saying goodbye to people, re-scheduling lessons and appointments, planning the week, cleaning out records, and all that stuff. But somehow it just all falls together #churchistrue. Also, it's insane that I only have three more transfers after this. Being a missionary just feels like normal and ordinary life now. It feels like this is what I'll be doing for the rest of my life, just cruising through Alaska knocking on random people's doors to tell them about how awesome Jesus Christ is and then
having a blind dinner dates every night and just being cold all the time; it's freaking fab. I love being a missionary!
A treasure trove moment of my mission: being able to go down to the Anchorage temple with Sister Fa'anunu and be there for the Luke family's sealing. Sister Fa'anunu and I taught Aaliyah back in February and then they invited us to come to their sealing on Saturday. I absolutely love the Luke family. It was so special you guys. I feel like I can't even adequately describe it. But it was such a blessing and tender mercy to be able to be there and feel of Heavenly Father's love and the Spirit there in that little Anchorage Alaska temple sealing room. Just being able to sit in that room…that is what the gospel is all about. It's about joy. This life is about so much more than just these little day to day things that we get ourselves all tangled up in sometimes. I'm so grateful for eternal families and for the gospel that allows us to grow and progress and learn and love together. God is so good.
Alaska moment for you: we pulled into Bishop Bowen's driveway for dinner on Sunday night and they were like, "hey sisters, look what’s in the garbage back in the back of our truck," da da da okie dokie maybe it's candy or something...IT WAS A GIANT BLOODY MOOSE HEAD! Sister Pike almost threw up haha. It stankkk. Remember how Elder Oaks talked about his cousin having the "road kill coordinator" calling in her ward up in Alaska at my farewell? That's still a legit calling in the Church up here. Parks and Rec has this list you can sign up on where if a moose or bear or some other game gets hit by a car and they have to let it go, they will call you and you have like twelve hours to come and pick it up #freedinner #normalalaskathings #skinninganimalsonthesideofthefreeway. So yep, there's a picture of me with a nasty moose head to finish out this weekly-you're welcome.
Actively be yourself. Lift where you stand. Spread love. Be sparkly, be grand. Kick butt and take names. Smile. Remember whose you are. You can do hard things. You're loved.
XOXO Sister Dunlop
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