Hello fam+friends! We’ve survived another adventurous week in Wasilla. It’s an ICE RINK up here [because it was really warm and all the snow melted, then it rained and cooled down so everything froze into a slippery mess] and as such, Sister Melton and I have had some pretty epic wipeouts this week. Bruised elbows, borderline broken fingers, etc. #hardcore #AAMproblems. 

Long story short, we spent a huge part of the week contacting people from lists that the ward auxiliaries had given us and Christmas partying. It was a good time. K cool. 

On Saturday night we had a pass off lesson with the Fishhook elders with this cute lady that told us about how she feels like something is missing in her life, but she doesn’t know what it is (@PMG!!) and we are really excited to start teaching her. She got really sick yesterday and wasn’t able to make it to church, but we have an appointment set up with her later this week #staytuned. 

In other news: because our zone is so small, President Toone is dissolving the two Wasilla districts this transfer and now we’re just one big district/one tiny zone. I love it. Also, our mission is getting smartphones in a few weeks which means we can finally be in group texts and send emojis 😍🙌🏼🎉

We are all just praying for some snow up here so it can look like December already. I haven’t worn a coat all week✌🏼

XOXO Sister Dunlop

WASILLA DISTRICT (the cooler district because it has the Sisters in it)

   WASILLA ZONE #homiescanbetogetherforever

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas - Wasilla, AK

Hey fam&friends. Happy December. Can you believe it’s December already?! What on earth. It’s so dark up here. The sun rises at 11am and sets around 3pm. We’re all just counting down the days until December 21 so it can start to be light longer. The weather in Wasilla this week has been garbage-rainy and upper 30s with those glacier wind gusts that rips the air of out your lungs.

This week. 

We drove up to the Willow chapel (bless) on Tuesday for District Meeting and had a training about having the faith to find the elect people whose hearts are open and ready for the gospel. We were talking about training and at one point an elder said, “what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? You get shot. That’s quick,”. Maybe it’s only one of those things that’s funny if you’re a missionary but Sister Melton and I have been joking about that all week #thingselderssay. 

There are a handful of girls that come to the Young Women’s activities on Tuesday nights regularly that are not members of the Church [yet] and the YW President wants us to start teaching them so she invited us to go to their Smoothie Wars on Tuesday. YW is the BEST. I want to be in YW for the rest of my life. All three of the YW that aren’t members showed up and we got to know them and set up lessons and it was just all good errywhere. I’m pumped. 

The weather on Wednesday wasn’t all that bad and so we got our tracting pants on and went crazy. We knocked out a whole neighborhood sharing the #lighttheworld video, inviting people to the Wasilla Ward Christmas party and the Messiah concert, and we’re giving the Book of Mormon out like Halloween candy. It was awesome. And it wasn’t even that cold. 

Thursday morning we had a Trainer/Trainee Meeting down in Anchorage so Sister Melton and I road tripped it down there, then stopped at the Mission Office to snag a box of Book of Mormons and other fun missionary things like that, then lunch with Sister Melton’s mom’s cousin in Beach Lake (who I had met last year in Lazy Mountain haha), and then made it back up to Wasilla in time to go and help an investigator couple decorate their Christmas tree. Someone needs to make a brilliant+genius invention that makes Christmas lights less of a struggle because those things are ridiculous. Every. Year. You start by having to untangle the knot ball of lights and then checking to see if they still even work and on the rare occasion that they do, then you have to risk your life by stringing them in the tree and try not to bleed to death. Someone should fix that. 

Sister Fa’anunu and I went on exchanges in the Colony Ward this weekend. I love that girl. I had to drive because she doesn’t have her license and I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say that we spent the majority of our exchange being lost. She’s new to the area and I have no idea where stuff is in Colony. We survived. It was a good time.

The Wasilla Zone has started “Zone Blitz” where our entire Zone (the smallest in our mission #notmad) all comes out and tracts out a huge part of someone’s area together. It’s the best. On Saturday we planned to blitz in Wasilla so earlier in the week, Sister Melton and I had prayed about knowing where to take the zone and had felt prompted to go to this neighborhood that neither of us had been in before (#pinkwash). We drive over there to check it out and it was this grumbly trailer park in the boonies with shacks and little cabins built off the trailers. Someone was hanging out with these barrels on fire in their backyard. Someone was chilling in a field all by themselves doing who knows what. Someone had pushed their trailer INTO this dirt hill and it was just suspended there-probably illegal but AK has weird housing laws (aka like none, or at least none are followed and people just do whatever they want). ANYWAYS we decided this neighborhood was calling our names because everyone needs the gospel so Saturday afternoon we met up with the elders and started divvying out who goes where and they started freaking out because past elders that had served in Wasilla had been to chicken to tract this neighborhood. Listen kids, it’s going to be fine. So we’re all out there working hard [and praying harder] and at the end of it all, every companionship ends up with at least one return appointment. BOOM. 

Yesterday was a little crazy. We only had Sacrament Meeting because a huge part of our ward was involved in the community Messiah concert that day so there weren’t enough people to play the piano in Primary or teach the Sunday School lesson or things like that, so Bishop Walther just canceled the last two hours. There were two performances of the Messiah, one at 2 and one at 7, and some of our investigators said they were coming to the one at 2 and then others said they were coming to the one at 7, so we ended up going to both. Holla. In between them we watched the Christmas Devotional broadcast at the Stake Center and had twenty minutes to run home and break our fast with some mac+cheese (bad idea) before heading back out to the Messiah. Go team. Sundays as a missionary are insane. 

Hopefully it starts dumping snow soon so Alaska actually starts looking like Alaska. It looks like Break Up up here. Life is good though, I can’t complain. 

Read your scriptures and #lighttheworld. 

Love you all from Alaska and back. 

XOXO Sister Dunlop

Wasilla 11/27/17

Hi friends. 

Here’s a one minute update of this week: I dyed Bobbe’s hair blonde from a box, locked the keys in our apartment, survived three Thanksgiving dinners, helped a hoarder move a pile of stuff from her driveway and into her fourth storage unit, tracted in ten degrees+glacier wind+dark, ate a 1/2 lb Reese's pb cup #noshame, sat through a three hour meeting with Bishop and his counselor and a homeless lady that wanted to get a ride from Wasilla to Soldotna, and Zone Blitz tracted out Settler’s Bay’s area. Go team.

Use your life’s energy for good.

XOXO Sister Dunlop

WAZILLA - 11/20/17

Facebook. So weird, but awesome. I found out that pretty much all I’ve missed from not being on Facebook over the last 15 months is that everyone got married while I was gone. Kids these days. At Zone Conference on Tuesday when they had us log on, I had no idea what my password was because I hadn’t been on for forever and a day and so that was a mess but shout-out to Dad for saving the day. Facebook as a missionary is sweet! It’s so much easier to contact members and investigators-share talks/videos/scriptures with them through group chats, teach lessons through video chat, etc. It’s another awesome tool that Heavenly Father has given us to help Progress the work even more. 

We are still working on finding people to teach; people who’s hearts are willing, people who are brave enough to ask God for themselves, people who are ready to build their lives into something better. It’s whatever. We are teaching this single mom and her two daughters that we tracted into a few weeks ago and they are the nicest people ever. They went up to Chena Hot Springs yesterday so they weren’t able to come to church but we had dinner with them last week and taught the Restoration and gave them the Book of Mormon and they are it right up. We love and adore them. 

Miracle. At Zone Conference, Elder Ryan told us about this part member family that he had taught a little bit when he was serving in Settler’s Bay that Sister McGee (#legacy) had found when she was serving in Colony. Long story short: we found them on Facebook (holla) but couldn’t get in contact with them to set up a time to meet them and all these things were just working against us and then yesterday we are sitting in sacrament meeting and they just casually WALK IN. Sister Melton and I flipped. They stayed for all of church and we got their phone number and they said we could come by for dinner some time and all this good stuff. God is good. 

Story time: we were force fed someone’s pet rabbit this week. No lie. There’s this super nice heart of gold lady that just moved to Wasilla and she asked us to help her unpack some things and clean her house. We go over there and she has this whole surprise lunch set up on the kitchen counter for us with this mystery meat. Then she tells us that it’s rabbit...so then have to be nice sister missionaries and put some on our plate (I took one tiny baby piece and then piled salad on top of it so I might be able to get away without having to eat it #ignoranceisbliss. We are enduring to the end of this meal and that little piece of rabbit is chilling on my plate still and Sis. Melton leans over and is like “try it” and so I put my big girl pants on and right as I put it in my mouth Sis. Melton asks the lady where the rabbit came from🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️. The lady tells us that it was their pet rabbit *Sis. Dunlop tries not to throw up and die all over their new apartment* and that they had butchered it the night before with their friend. Alaskans are insane humans. We survive lunch and then the lady has us go upstairs to start folding laundry and right as we get to the top of the stairs, there’s this empty rabbit cage #ripthumper. My life. She had signed up to feed us for dinner a few nights later and we go in the kitchen and there’s this new little rabbit in a box on the floor...probs our dinner for next week, stay tuned. 

“...take upon you the name of Christ; that he humble yourselves even unto the dust, and worship God, in whatsoever place he may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that he LIVE IN THANKSGIVING DAILY, for the many mercies and blessings with he doth bestow upon you,” -Alma 34:39

Be thankful in all things. 

Wear your seatbelts & angels are real. 

Love y'all from AK and back. 

XOXO Sister Dunlop

Humble & Kind - Wasilla, AK 11/13/17

I’ve come to a point where the weeks feel like months and the months feel like moments. This week felt forever long. Last Monday night Sister Melton & I were super brave and had dinner at this person’s house that we had tracted into the night before. I know that sounds really sketch but it turned out really good. They had pulled into the parking lot as we were finishing up tracting their apartment complex Sunday night and I was just mentally preparing for them to just sit in their car awkwardly until we walked away or something (but this was also right after a dude had just answered the door in a towel with shampoo bubble still in his hair so at this point, nothing really phased me). But they didn’t. They got out and recognized our little black name tags then started talking to us. It was a single mom and her two daughters and they have a friend living over in Palmer who is a Mormon and they had been to dinner at her house when the elders were over there once. Then they invited us in to their apartment and gave us a bunch of leftover Halloween candy and said that we could come over and have dinner with them whenever. No one had signed up on our dinner calendar for Monday night-another PSA to #feedyourlocalmissionaries2k17-and so we had to put our big girl pants on and eat dinner at a stranger’s house. It was amazing though, way worth it. The Palmer member came to dinner too and we all just got to chat about the gospel and Jesus Christ. They invited us over to their house again for dinner on Wednesday night so that should be exciting.

I’ve just got to say that God prepares people’s hearts for the gospel; I have such a testimony of that. And it’s been such a huge blessing to be an instrument in a little piece of it. Last week, the YSA branch president called us and asked for us to go and visit a lady named Erin, who wasn’t a member of the Church [yet] but was going through some rough patches in her life and had asked that the sister missionaries come and see her. Sister Melton and I are the only sisters in the Wasilla area so we get to go on all these “Sisters Only” adventures and experiences all of the time, sorry elders. We contacted Erin and set up an appointment to meet her on Wednesday afternoon. Sister Melton and I had picked some of our favorite scriptures that talk about God’s love (because you can never get too much of that) to share with her and then by the end of it, we found ourselves setting a baptismal date with Erin. Her heart was so ready and all we had to do was walk in there and invite her to follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the Priesthood authority. It was amazing as the Spirit buzzed in the room. God is so real. Plot twist: Erin is moving down to Kansas City at the end of November to live with her sister (who is a member of the Church) and so she will probably be baptized down there so some of her family can be there. We are going to teach her all the lessons and then get in contact with the Kansas City missionaries to pass her off to them. Church is true.

Last Sunday night, we went and met a potential investigator in our Area Book named Bobbe. She’s this cute little old lady who the elders had met years ago and we felt like we needed to try and stop by and meet her. We showed up and the apartment complex was locked but luckily by sheer miracle (but really God), someone had seen us try and get in and came and let us in the apartment #majorblessed. We knocked on Bobbe’s door and she let us right in and we talked to her about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. She ate it all right up. This lady loves God and dogs more than anyone in the whole world and just wants to do whatever God wants her to do. She said we could come back and teach her more later in the week and so we come back and the apartment is locked again but luckily someone ordered a pizza and the pizza man snuck us in #againmajorlyblessed. Bobbe was being all weird and so we asked her what was going on and she told us that she had told her lady friends that she was meeting with us and they freaked out and started showing her a bunch of Anti-Mormon YouTube videos that scared Bobbe and left her with a lot of questions that we tried to resolve for her. Bobbe sat on the couch while we sat at her feet testifying and flipping from scripture to scripture showing her proof of what we taught. It felt like we were fighting for Bobbe’s soul, and we were. At one point Bobbe burst out, “why do you girls even do what you do?!”. And then the feels. I’m sitting on a dog hair covered carpet at the feet of this sweetheart old lady and in my attempts to convey just a sliver of what being a missionary has meant to me and done for me and why I knock doors in the Arctic cold and why I labor to love and labor to learn and every little aspect of missionary work, I totally start crying. Full on tears. It’s because of Christ’s peace. Eternal joy. God’s love. We all need it and so I’m out here to share it. Then Sister Melton drops her fire testimony and we are fighting for Bobbe because she needs the light of the gospel so bad in her life and we want nothing more than for her to receive it. She says the prayer at the end thanking God for her Mormon sisters and then tells us to save her a seat at church tomorrow. But she doesn’t show. I thought she was in it to win it with us. *only keep reading this paragraph if you want your heart to break too...Bobbe sent us a big long text this afternoon about how much she loves us but that she doesn’t want to disappoint her friends by letting us visit her. I know. It’s such a bummer. We’re so sad. Her heart is just not ready yet, it will be though. Eventually. Sister Melton after experiencing her first drop: “this feels like a breakup text!”.

A few more things: a lady just moved into Wasilla and she is a recent convert from Palmer and it turns out that Sister Christian, Sister Mataele, and I taught her when we were in Lazy Mountain together a year ago #smallworld. We have Wasilla Zone Conference on Tuesday and let’s just say that some big things are happening in AAM. Stay tuned. Super excited. Other than that, I have no idea what’s going to go down in Wasilla this week. Every day is an adventure, that’s for sure #alaskansaretheirownbreed.

Here’s some pep talk scriptures that have been keeping me alive these last few weeks:

Mosiah 24:14-16 “I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions. And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up there burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord. And it came to pass that so great was their faith and patience that the voice of the Lord came unto them again, saying: be of good comfort.”

Moroni 10:32 “come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.”

Isaiah 41:10 “fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

Doctrine & Covenants 121:7-8 “peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment. And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes.”

Stay warm down there kiddos.

You can do hard things.

Lots of love,

XOXO Sister Dunlop

Jesus Take the Wheel - Wasilla 11/6/17

In the MTC they always tell you “if you just make it to Sunday, you’ll be fine” and it was a “just make it to Sunday” kind of week this week. I feel like we’re running around with our heads cut off and we keep singing “Jesus Take the Wheel” whenever we start losing our minds (which is actually a lot) but Elder Ellis told us in General Conference that we’re strengthened in the struggle so...here we are [tracting in the fresh foot of snow we got a few days ago #blessed]. First of all, my baby Sister Melton is a CHAMP. I’m such a fan. Early Wednesday morning, Sister Yeates and I drove down to Anchorage for transfer logistics in the craziest, thickest fog I’ve ever seen. The next twelve hours after that were just a blur. At one point there were like twenty missionaries slipping all over the parking lot loading luggage into mission cars and trucks and then I found myself sitting in this tiny room with President Toone and five other elders waiting to get our trainees and then Sister Melton and I were eating pizza and having our first companionship study and then I was with my departing missionary homies (you know who you are) and all the new kids at the temple. It was insane. Eventually, Sister Melton and I were road tripping it back up to Wasilla (which is normally about an hour and a half from Anchorage, but this time it took us three hours) in this crazy fog but once we get to Eagle River, we get trapped in the worst traffic jam Alaska has ever seen. The entire population of Alaska was on the road. Once we made it back up to Wasilla, we had to make a quick Qdoba stop because #hangry and then came home and slept like rocks.

Day #1 of pinkwashing in Wasilla wasn’t as rough as I thought it was going to be. It’s actually kind of nice because there’s so many things you can do-meet members, tract, contact investigators, etc. There’s a ton of potential investigators that have been sitting in the Area Book for who knows how long (literally some of them are +3 years) and so we decided to go through and meet everyone. We set up a lesson with a lady who ended up living super far out in the boonies (and we later found out she didn’t live in our area #oopsies) and when we get there, she pulls out her Book of Mormon (what) and has all these questions about God and prophets and life after death and tells us about how she wants to find truth out for herself and wants to do what God wants her to do and we invite her to be baptized and she is open to it and it was just miracles all over the place. We stopped by a members’ house and they invited us for dinner and let me just tell you that was an experience #freezedriedeverything. Then we went and tried to contact a potential investigator in this super sketchy apartment complex and I think I scared Sister Melton to death #welcometothemission. She’s a trooper.

Day #2 wasn’t quite as gold. We had a struggle bus Weekly Planning session because we know like one person in our area and then we helped Peggy and Bobby with the Memory Lake elders hang up some Christmas lights and Bobby almost staple gunned our fingers to his house. Sketch. Then we had a referral to try but it ended up not being an investigator and instead it was actually was the first councilor in the bishopric, so that was awkward. We had a lesson with this new member who told us she served her mission to the Interior Lamanites and she has this greasy rat dog that watches tv and eats toast with her that was crawling all over the place and then there was this hungry dog in the backyard throwing itself against the door trying to get in and eat us. Love mission life. Then we tracted this street and the wind and snow was blowing all over the place. No one had signed up for dinner (PSA: the missionaries don’t care if you just feed them grilled cheese, they just like being fed #feedyourlocalmissionaries2k17) so we went to Wendy’s for some 4 for $7 (#alaska) and then Sister Melton had lost her allotment card so we went back to our apartment looking for it and in the process of our searching, our phone broke. Literally broke in half. The old Wasilla elders had given us this trash phone where the screen wasn’t totally attached to the keyboard because some screws were missing and so the next hour was this hot mess process of trying to find some elders that could get us a working phone and looking for Sister Melton’s allotment card. There have definitely been brighter days.

This email is getting ridiculously long so: we had Saturday morning crepes with the Young Women’s President, did some service with the elders at this Family Carnival Day that no one showed up to, tried to set up an appointment with an investigator and a recent convert showed up instead (#awk), survived church and met a few more people, tracted in the snow and dark, felt prompted to stop by a potential’s apartment complex but it was locked and we couldn’t get in and then #faith and someone let us in and we met this cute lady and talked to her for two hours about the Restoration and she was so excited and told us about the “warm fuzzies” of the Spirit. I love being a missionary.

XOXO Sister Dunlop 

Wasilla 10/30/17

Hi friends. 

Long story short: we went to the temple last week so we didn’t get to email and I’m pinkwash (where they take the elders out and put sisters in) training a new missionary in the Wasilla Ward starting Wednesday. Life is insane. But good.

XOXO Sister Dunlop