Hey friends hey. It was a good week. Like a really good and amazing week as I look back on it. I know I say this all the time, but seriously I adore being a missionary. Every time Monday rolls around and I get to share with y’all some of the lessons I’ve learned this week and the miracles we’ve seen, I’m just at a loss for how great Heavenly Father and our Savior, Jesus Christ, are. They are so amazing and I feel so lucky to be a teeny tiny part of His whole big plan. My heart is so full💕
For some reason this is a long one, sorry.
Using my magic Sister Dunlop powers, I convinced some of the elders to come and hike the Palmer Butte with us last PDay and it was freaking amazing up there. I love Alaska. Throwback to when Sister Christian, Sister Mataele, and I climbed the Butte last December in -20 and froze our little toesies off [almost]. I love outside and am super enjoying the fact that I don’t have to bulk up in a parka & snow boots and cover my mouth with a scarf before I go out the door everyday...yet.
It’s coming though.
On Tuesday morning our district went and helped one of our former investigators move. Didn’t know that going on a mission included being part of a moving company, but I guess it does. When we got to the new apartment and started unloading the truck, one of the elders was being a baby so I had to carry his share of couches and tables up the stairs #godunlop. There were all these skinny doorways and steep staircases that we had to squeeze all the stuff through so I think I got my workouts in for the rest of my mission just with this one moving day. I was sitting in one of these big fluffy chairs in the moving truck and all of a sudden the elders picked me up in it and carried me out. It was terrifying because one elder was really tall and the other was really short and I was just set up to fall out and die. Made it back onto Earth safely.
AWESOME MIRACLE #274 of this week: there’s this family, the Channers, that we’ve been working on getting back to church for the past little while but their lives are so busy and all over the place that it’s tricky for them to make it. Their oldest daughter hasn’t been baptized yet and so we’ve been working on that too but there’s a couple of things that need to be ironed out in their fambam before that can happen, so we’ve just been working on loving them and helping them have a DESIRE to come back to church. Everything starts with desire. One day we stopped by and caught them at home and planned a night that we could come back and have dinner with them #superblessed. Tuesday night we go over and Sister Channer’s dad had made us LEGIT chimichangas (@mamalaura they were so freaking good, cilantro in them and everything). Then we played games for a little while with the girls until Brother Channer came home from work. It was kinda awkward at first because we couldn’t tell if he wanted us to be there or not, but he started playing the game with us and all was well. Eventually we had to leave before our car turned into a pumpkin and this is where things became really amazing. Brother Channer gathered us all together and we knelt to pray. The Spirit was there as he prayed over each of his three little girls and asked Heavenly Father to help them be strong and courageous. My heart. I absolutely love the Channers. Hopefully things start piecing themselves together so we can help them get back to church and be sealed as a forever family someday.
This weekend was just jam packed with spiritual awesomeness. I feel like the Spirit has just had me on this buzzing high for like four days-it’s amazing. We had interviews with President Toone on Thursday night and I know I rave about him all the time but seriously, I adore him and am so grateful for his love and council. AAM is the luckiest. We had Wasilla Zone Conference on Friday and it started out with all these spiritual pep talk trainings from the APs, Zone Leaders, and President Toone (always a fan) and then tender mercy of my life is that the Relief Society Presidency in the Big Lake Ward [#shoutouttoauntruthanne] made us CAFE RIO for lunch🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼. I haven’t had that cilantro ranch in like fourteen months and dang, it was good stuff. After lunch it was time for the Talent Show. We planned out district talent and skit the day before and never even practiced our companionship one. Luckily, nothing was too big of a hot mess. At least I don’t think so. Sister Toone has videos of our talents so I will have to snag those from her, but it was pretty awesome. For our companionship talent, Sister Yeates and I did that thing where one person is the face and the other person is their arms (hopefully you know what I’m talking about), but we did a makeup tutorial which resulted in eyeliner across my forehead, mascara in my hair, and lipstick down my nose. Super pretty. For our district skit we did a “mock district meeting” and was just making fun of all the dumb things that missionaries [sometimes] do. Then (this is the best part) we did a dance to this remixed Primary song and taped glow sticks all over our bodies so we looked like those glow stick people. It was pretty freaking awesome. Just the fact that I got the elders to learn and perform a dance was a big fat miracle. President Toone said it was his favorite talent he’s seen so far in the mission #duh. I’ll try and get video proof for you for next week...
Saturday morning was frosty and cold but we went out to district tract in Wasilla’s area before having lunch at Burger Jim’s for Elder Masters’ birthday. After that, we were driving along and passed Peggy’s (our former investigator who we helped rake her yard last week a ton) house and I felt prompted we needed to turn around and go invite her to Stake Conference this weekend. So we flip around and pull in her driveway but realize she’s not home and I’m like dang it, I swear we needed to come here and talk to Peggy! And then [as He always does], God provides. Peggy pulls in right behind us. Booyah! We invite her to the conference and she said she would try and make it! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaas. Love life.
There’s a couple of people in Memory Lake that absolutely no one knows anything about and one of those is Brother Pack. Sister Yeates and I had stopped by his house late Friday night but his house was pitch black inside so we decided we would come back another time-probably in the daylight-and try and contact him. Saturday afternoon, after seeing Peggy, we were in the neighborhood again and figured “why not” so we stopped by. He let us right in #missionarymiracle. Brother Pack is an older man and he and his girlfriend were sitting at the kitchen table when he invited us in. They gave us chocolate chip cookies and OJ (with pulp, which I don’t think I’ve had for like a year #bless) and then Brother Pack jumped right into “Deep Doctrine” questions about exaltation and the Spirit World. It took us kind of by surprise but luckily we were able to answer his questions and ended up sharing the Plan of Salvation with them. We found out that his girlfriend isn’t a member of the Church [yet] but that her parents had both recently passed away (also not members) and she had heard from Brother Pack about eternal families and temple sealings wanted to know more. She even told us, “it’s so interesting that you two stopped by because Lloyd (Brother Pack) and I were talking about Mormon temples not even an hour ago,”...lolzies it’s like the Church is true and this is the Lord’s work or something. Then she started asking about our missions and I got all weepy when I was able to share with her just a fragment of all that I’ve learned so far and how I’ve come to know Christ in a way that I would’ve never been able to know Him without serving a mission and how I’ve seen His hand in my life each day and all these amazing miracles. Missionary work is God’s way of sharing His love with His children. We shared when video of President Monson announcing the age change of missionaries from General Conference a few years ago, and the Spirit was so strong. We said a prayer with them and then had to bounce for our dinner appointment before Stake Conference but they said we could come back anytime so that’s a good sign.
Wasilla Stake Conference was awesome. And want to know what made it even awesomER?! Sister Yeates and I were sitting in the front row of the gym (on the cold & hard chairs because apparently you have to show up 45 minutes early in Wasilla, not 30, to get a cushion pew) with Brother Lonnie Evans and in walks Miss Peggy. There’s this feeling you get as a missionary when an investigator comes to church that is one of the best feelings ever. She sits right next to us and eats the whole Conference up. Afterwords, a bunch of members that knew her came up to her and loved her and I just about melted inside. Go Church. PEGGY LET US TEACH YOU!
During Stake Conference on Sunday morning, President Toone was up at the pulpit speaking and being passionate about the gospel and inspiring the members to be better at missionary work and just doing his President Toone thing and then he asks for all the full time missionaries to stand up. Up pops Elder Kaibetoney, Elder Brown, Elder McGee, Elder Litchford, Elder Masters, Elder Stewart, Elder Hawkins, Elder Tauvalau, Elder Bauers, Elder Pullan, Elder Wright, Elder Pierce, Sister Yeates, and I. And I totally start crying. This is my team, my family. I love these people. We’re just a bunch of twenty year old trying to save souls and spread joy. When you think about it, it’s a pretty big and crazy job. But it’s God’s work, so even in our hands it’s all going to work out. And we have this amazing mission president who believes in us and he’s standing up there telling the members of the Wasilla Stake that we are here to help them share the love they feel with those around them and help them bring the truths of the gospel that they hold so dearly to their friends and family and coworkers and neighbors. It’s amazing, really. And I feel too lucky to put into words that I get to play a little part in it all. God is good.
Awkward Sister Dunlop story for your week: Sister Yeates and I accidentally chaperoned a single adult lunch for two. Yikes. Before Stake Conference started, we ran into Sister Larger in the hallway. She’s the single adult rep in Memory Lake and is the sweetest lady ever. She said that after the meeting she was having a lunch at her house that a ton of the single adults in Wasilla were coming too and so she invited us over to have lunch and meet them. Missionaries love free food, so of course we were there. We drive out to her house after and see that no one’s there yet and don’t want to be awkwardly early, so we wait a few minutes and still no one has shown up. Eventually we just go inside and hang out with her and her two middle school boys for like fifteen minutes before this one random dude shows up. That’s it. It’s so awkward. But the food was good. The guy keeps hitting on Sister Larger and her boys are sitting right there and Sister Yeates and I are just at such a hard core loss as to know what to do so we finally escape our way out of there as soon as the guy starts showing off magic tricks. Oh man. Almost as awesome as Sister Fa’anunu and I crashing those weddings in Fairbanks. Almost.
One more thing: we almost got charged by a moose while we were tracting this week, we came around a corner and it was this big mama moose with her ears back and the hair up on her neck and Sister Yeates pulled out her tablet to take a picture and I was like nope and had to drag her away from the moose as we power walked backwards to the car. Tourists.
If you ever think you don’t make a difference, THINK AGAIN. God puts each of us in the right place and at the right time to inspire, lift, build, and love others. I know without a shadow of a doubt that Heavenly Father will NEVER EVER ask us to do something we can’t handle, He will ALWAYS provide a way for us to do what He asks. And often times, it requires a big huge leap of faith for those things to be accomplished, but that part of learning and growing into all that He knows we can become.
1 Nephi 3:7. There’s blessons all over the place. God doesn’t “half-bake” in the miracle department. Ever. Things always work out better when you trust God, I can for sure promise you that much.
XOXO Sister Dunlop
