Hey friends. I’m still up in Wasilla fighting off Satan #godunlop and trying not to become a human Otter Pop in someone’s driveway and make sure Sister Melton survives being trained in Wasilla. It’s always an adventure, that’s for sure.
We’ve still been tracting a ton, despite the ridiculously cold wind and frozen solid ice snow. Our goal is to tract for at least two hours each day and then get at least one return appointment with someone. We’ve been doing pretty good so far and Heavenly Father always blesses us with some characters to write home about ☺️ and so here’s my favorite tracting experience from this week: the weather this week was slippery, dark, windy, rainy, grossness but we kept doing missionary work anyways #goteam #stopSatan2k18. We were out tracting this neighborhood of apartment complexes and the wind and rain was ripping so bad our faces stung and we were praying that someone would let us in so we could thaw out (not the first time on my mission that I’ve prayed for that). We get to the apartment on the corner and do our missionary thing and the lady at the door tells us that she’s not interested because she’s “already been saved” and all those fun excuses that we hear all of the time. But I was freezing and I was going to get in this door - I’m not throwing away my shot. So I asked her if there was anything that we could do to help her and she said “you can read the Bible” which then commenced Sister Melton and I spitting out the 8th Article of Faith (“we believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. We also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God”) almost simultaneously and then testifying of the Prophet Joseph Smith and the Restoration. She stood there silently and then reluctantly invited us in after asking a few more probing questions. We sat down in her living room and she left to go get something and came back almost ten minutes later with a pile of books. I could tell that it was a bunch of anti-Mormon stuff and she was furiously trying to flip through the pages to find something to throw at us but couldn’t find it. Then she pulled out a little red book from her stack called “Cults” and started reading about Mormonism *eye roll. If I had a dollar for every time someone told me that “Mormons are a cult”, I could end world hunger and then have leftovers to resolve world peace. It’s insane. She jumped right in and started to read it out loud spewing old and outdated myths about the Church that were just flat out false for about five minutes before Sister Melton and I got her to zip it in the politest way we could think (“this book sounds really interesting and there’s a lot of things we would love to come back and clear up for you, but would it be okay if we shared a quick message with you?”). No objection from her. We shared the message of the Restoration and testified of it’s power and truthfulness without a single interruption of anti from her. She felt it and something clicked inside her. She accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon and we have a return appointment with her tomorrow...
We had to let one of our investigators go this week and doing that always rips my heart up - that part of being a missionary sucks. She hasn’t been progressing for a while and hasn’t been keeping commitments either, and so sometimes we have to move on and invest our energy into others who are more ready (readier?) as we invite them to come to Christ. It’s hard. But shoutout to the Area Book app on our devices because in six months from now, her name will pop up again and send the missionaries that are here to go and check in on her - that’s a huge blessing. Missionary work is sometimes like planting seeds and as time goes on, those seeds will grow and eventually be ready for harvest later down the road 🍅
Thursday was Sister Melton & I’s last Trainer Trainee Meeting together💔I absolutely love Sister Melton and have learned so much from her. Alaska isn’t going to look the same when she’s done with it #proudmom. [my last] Transfer Calls come from President Toone this Thursday night and so it will be interesting to see where+how things are going to wrap up for Sister Dunlop in Alaska. Time has seriously flown by so fast - it’s a little scary. Stay tuned.
Church on Sunday was a struggle bus mess. Saturday was full of “ice rain”, which made the streets of Wasilla a giant ice rink and so zero people wanted to drive to church Sunday morning. Someone sent us a mass text that church was going to be cancelled because of the roads and then we woke up the next morning to another text saying that it was “uncancelled” thirty minutes before it was supposed to start - we boogied to church and made it there with the (maximum) seven other families that were there. The whole meeting was an impromptu/pull it together party because no one was really there, so that was exciting and adventurous. Go Wasilla.
“It’s in the DOING, not just DREAMING that our lives are blessed” - Thomas S. Monson
Just go & do it.
1 Nephi 3:7
XOXO Sister Dunlop
PS super sorry about the most pathetic photo selection this week - here’s our Zone photo from Zone Conference last week 🙃
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