9/4/13 Weekly Update

Hey Everyone!! I made it to Alaska, and am settled into my first area. I have an email with some pictures I will forward after this, but I forgot my camera cord, so more pictures will have to wait until monday. My first area is the O'Malley Ward in the Anchorage Zone. My trainer is Elder Springer. He has been out for a little over a year, and he is 20 years old. We are getting a long nicely, he really wants to work and so do I so we are doing our best. The past elders in this area were bad and disobedient and lazy, so the ward has no trust for us. We dont get fed often and we don't get much support, but Elder Springer and I are faithful we can turn it around with our passion and work ethic. Alaska is pretty dang depressing. It is gray all the time, and rains all the time. The number out here are small so far, but I'm trying to change that. Our mission standards are 1 baptism/month, 3 on date per week, 3 per week at sacrament, 10 member present lessons and 20 total lessons. We don't do hardly any tracting because we have so many less actives to visit, so it's hard to pick up new investigators. With our plan to reenergize the ward to help us we hope to turn around the referral game and pick up new people to teach that way. But man, it is tough out here. I wish it was as productive as our mission is haha. We flew in on monday and had an orientation. We had an interview with the mission president and he told us our areas. The next day (tuesday) we met our trainers and had a training meeting. This morning they had a leadership meeting so I was seperated from my companion already. I was on splits with another missionary, and we did the extra training study, but I didn't get a whole lot out of it. Neither of us really knew what we were doing though, so hopefully tomorrow my trainer will have a better time with me. I'm having a hard time now that I am split up from my MTC district. We had all become so close, like family, and now I never get to see them. The mission rules about email are you can email anyone in the world who is not in Alaska, so I can't email any of them except for the three who are in Ohio, (hi guys). That will pass as I lose myself in the Lord's work, which I can already see the blessings from. We have 1 investigator with a baptismal date and we just taught him. He is having a hard time quitting smoking, but we taught him that as he tries to, and has faith that he can, the Lord will bless him with strength to move forward and be able to quit the habit and join the church. It was a very awesome experience. How is everything in the ward at home going? I miss everyone there a lot, and I hope things are well. I hope the mission effort is still going strong without someone as awesome as me there to help you. They say you can request to go to the bush areas, and I already did. They have missionaries in Barrow, Nome, Dutch Harbor, Bethel, and Ketzibue (spelling haha). Those areas are very remote. The missionaries live in teh churches and most of those areas dont have cars. In Barrow it can get to be -60 degrees and they still work. With no car! I really want to spend a few transfers there just for the experience. Scuttlebutt says that those are the most depressing areas because the people have given up all hope and just crawl into a bottle of booze, but they are also the most spiritual because you can feel the spirit so strongly since you have so many trials to go through. I'm sorry this email is so short, but I really haven't done a whole lot here yet. I'm still settling in and we are meeting the members of the ward council and trying to visit less actives. It's hard when neithe rof us has an alaska GPS haha. I'll forward the email with the pictures to all of you. I miss you all! Love, Elder Pawson