4/2/14 weekly update sick

Hey all sorry I'm late emailing this week. There was a wierd holiday called Sewards day. I don't even know what it is for but the library was closed. Yesterday was transfers. I actually got to stay in an area this time. I'm still junior companion too, which is sweet. My new companion is Elder Stovall, and he is the district leader. It's pretty nice to still be a jc, I think I might be able to go a full year of being junior companion. I'm not in any hurry to get any kind of leadership position. JC for life. Elder Stovall is a convert of about 5 years. He is from Kansas City, MO. He seems pretty cool. I've been sick as a dog for the last week . My face is really congested. I wish I had some of my mothers oils now, even though its witchbrew stuff, it always worked. I bought some drugs so hopefully that helps. I've been pretty miserable. I've having a great time though. I really enjoy being here and I'm loving my mission. Thanks for all your letters and packages! We really appreciate them :) have a great week! Love Elder Pawson

3/24/14 weekly update Tax line

Hey everyone! This week was great! We weren't able to teach as much, but we still got to teach 41 lessons. It was kind of rough though, we had 3 investigators drop us. One of them was the guy behind the tax line. He said we were visiting him too much. We saw him once. Another one that we had to drop was a Part member family. The wife is "active" and her husband was investigating. We would go over there every so often to see her husband, and she called the bishop and told him to "call us off," because her husband hated us. But her husband always said that he loved us coming over. We think the problem is that the wife is lying to get her temple recommend about the word of wisdom, and when we share the commandments with her husband, the spirit tells her to repent. So she wants us to stop coming over. She slammed the door in our face on saturday. I've never heard of an "active" member slamming the door in a missionaries face. Our mission president said to wait for the husband to call us before going back, problem is the wife controls the phone. It's pretty sad. and the third investigator just moved. but thats ok. We got a tuesday night meeting started for the ward missionaries, just like they do in the Wyoming Ward. It's a little different here, and maybe you guys might like to incorporate it in yours. We do half an hour of investigators and teaching needs, then spend half an hour teaching the ward missionaries how to be ward missionaries. Last week we taught them how to prepare copies of the book of mormon to give away. It was super fun! Well the pictures I sent today is a picture of the tax line, complete with 20 gauge shotgun marks haha, a pictuer of my district leader, elder dyer, and a picture from the ward missionary training! enjoy!! Love Elder Pawson

3/17/14 Melted ice road

Hey everyone, this week was pretty sweet! We taught a bunch and worked pretty hard. I'm attaching a picture of the ice road again to show you how melted it is haha. It was pretty scary driving on it, but we made it thankfully. We picked up a new investigator from ehind the tax line last week. He lives 30 miles from the church haha. They have a history of abusing the church for money help or food help, so we will see what happens, but it was nice to not get shot. I attached anothe rpicture to show you what the roads are like out here, they are really more like paths through the woods haha. Sometimes its pretty hard to actually get somewhere. But I'm loving it out here. I hope you guys are well too. love you all! elder pawson

3/10/14 weekly update

Hey everyone. Well this week was a ringer for sure. I'm pretty sure we broke the record for most lessons in a week. I heard the previous record was 50 lessons, not counting active member lessons. We had 59 lessons, and 6 of those were active members, so we had 53 lessons. 22 of them were to investigators and 31 to recent converts and less actives. It was sick! We got to go to the temple on friday with a recent convert named Brent Beaman. He is going on his mission in April to the Missouri St. Louis mission. Pretty awesome. It was so fun to see someone go through the temple for the first time. I loved it! We had an awesome miracle this week. One of our investigators wasnt' home for our lesson, so we left to go somewhere else. We turned down a busy road and saw some dogs in the middle, just running around. After we passed them I recognised them as her dogs. SO we turned around and tried to corral them. We got one and put him in the truck bed, the other ran away. We tried calling her but her phone was off. We ran out of things to do, we knew we couldn't drive the dog home in our truck, so we did the only thing we could, we prayed. We asked for anyway we could contact her. As soon as we said Amen, she turned the corner and was driving straight at us! We then followed her home mand called a member to come over, and had an amazing lesson! It was such a blessing and I knew it was because we asked for it. I included another Iditarod picture, and a picture of my companion. Thanks so much for sending him mail. He hasn't received anything for 6 months! If you want to send him more, or have any christmas care packages laying around, here's our address! Elder Pawson 3250 Strawberry Rd Anchorage, AK 99502 much love! The last picture I uploaded is a wolf that is a pet at a less active members house. He is too scared of us to let us pet him. They have another wolf that is inside the house that loves me and always cuddles with me! I love it!! Hope you are all well, love you all! Elder Pawson

3/3/14 Iditarod!

Hey everyone. This week was sweet! We taught a ton of lessons. We have a few investigators progressing and it looks like we will have some baptisms in the next month. Its exciting! We might be moving out of our apartment which would be sweet. We might move into a members cabin. We have to drive about 8 miles to get to our area, so it would be nice to live in our area. We did service at the Iditarod for the start. it was so fun. I"m going to try to send a video in the next email, but there are a few pictures here. One is Elder SHurtz and I with our trail guard arm bands, and a picture of Elder Dymock being silly. Its taking forever so I forgot what I sent, but enjoy. Things are well here. Love you all and hope you are well! love elder pawson Here's a video from the iditarod. They aren't going too fast because it is just a ceremonial start. THe real start was yesterday in Wasilla. The dogs were so cute!! i had to turn the quality down to send it in an email, but i have sweet HD ones too :)

2/24/14 Weekly Update!

Hey everyone! this week was super busy. We taught almost 30 lessons. That is more than I taught all last transfer. I'm pretty tired and ready for P-Day haha. Our area is pretty remote. The houses are super small and sometimes barely liveable. There are people who live in literally storage sheds with a fireplace. No running water or electricity. Some houses are just super duper small. Some are super run down. One person we are teaching lives in a fifth wheel camper. He murdered someone so he can't be baptised for a while. But its cool to see how much he has changed from the atonement. Another investigators house burned downand so she lives in a trailer next to it. Theres a line where the state/city stops....caring. It's called the tax line. People who live past it don't have to pay taxes, but they don't get city or state stuff, like water or police. So its super sketchy. One lady had a shotgun behind the door while we were tracting. I saw it peek out when she was telling us to go away. I tried talking about her bird but then she got scary so we got away. Crazy stuff out here in Big lake. We got a kind of referral from the bishop, who said his coworker walks her dog by the lake. So we drive over there to look for her. We found her, and parked and tried to make it look like we were just walked and tracting and talk to her, but she walked away from where we were heading. SO we followed her footprints. we thought we would just say we were tracting, but we walked so far that we were not by any houses. So we are just walking through a forest, but we were so far in we just kept going. Well she caught us and asked us where we were going, so I was just like, "Uh, on a walk!" she told us there were no houses and offered to walk us back. We had a good chat but it was kind of awkward. Well thats it from me. I sent a picture of me and elder Dymock, and a super cute puppy mauling me, and uh... oh yea. We saw a car flipped over and it was super recent so we stopped to look in it but they were already gone. They were a drunk native haha. Everyone was ok thankfully, but it looked pretty sweet. Hope you are all well, love you! Love Elder Pawson

2/19/14 weekly update

Hey everyone! This week has been alright so far. I got transferred again. My 4th area in 5 transfers. My new companion is Elder Dymock. We are in the Big Lake ward in the Wasilla stake. Its pretty busy out here, last week they taught 50 lessons. They added a second set of elders here, so thats pretty sweet. Our apartment is huge. The biggest one in the mission i think. Its a nice change from the smallest in the mission, which is what i was just in. Its a little cramped with 4 elders but it will be ok. We have a ping pong table! There was one family that was really sad to see me leave the Samoan ward. They are the Fiame family. They gave me a Western Samoa Tie, some western samoa kukui (coo-coo-ee), which are the beads in the picture. Thats kind of a big deal to Samoans. They also made me an ifaitaga (eef-eye-tanga), which is the thing that looks like a skirt. Missionaries wear that in Samoa and Tonga, and I am gonna wear it when I get home too! They are super expensive so its cool that they made them for us. They also gave us a lava-lava, which is a brightly colored and patterned ifaitaga. super cool. Big Lake is an ineteresting area. Its the far out of wasilla, so its kind of crazy. People living in like, plywood shacks and stuff. Like its super poor. There should be some good success here! love you all and hope you are well! love elder pawson :) p.s. my companion has a rough family situation and never -ever- gets mail. So feel free to send him a letter too :) I love all those quotes, thats pretty awesome, I've never thought of it that way! On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 7:02 PM, Barbara Pawson wrote: Hi, So Elder Patterson posted something on facebook that quoted Elder Bertilson. Here it is: This morning we dropped of missionaries at the airport, who are at the end of their 2 year journey. as we watched them go through security i was reminded of the first set of missionaries we took back in november. elder bertislon said something to me that was very profound. he said, "they are heroes.... and no one can tell. no one will ever know what they have just accomplished. they are heroes." this group certainly lived up to those standards. — with Vicki Hess and 4 others. I love that. It's so true. You guys are heroes.... I liked his status so much that I shared it with this comment: I love the way Elder Bertilson put that. Thank you for sharing it with us Elder Devin Patterson. I completely agree and it is one of the reasons I try to get so involved in the work. It is an honor to do what little I can to help all of these unsung heroes. This morning we dropped of missionaries at the airport, who are at the end of their 2 year journey. as we watched them go through security i was reminded of the first set of missionaries we took back in november. elder bertislon said something to me that was very profound. he said, "they are heroes.... and no one can tell. no one will ever know what they have just accomplished. they are heroes." this group certainly lived up to those standards. — with Vicki Hess and 4 others. And Elder Pena's mom loved it so much she shared it with this comment: Inspiring words from a hero.....I love my missionary and all missionaries who put their trust and faith in The Lord to serve him and our fellowman. Thank you for sharing Barbara Ann Pawson. This morning we dropped of missionaries at the airport, who are at the end of their 2 year journey. as we watched them go through security i was reminded of the first set of missionaries we took back in november. elder bertislon said something to me that was very profound. he said, "they are heroes.... and no one can tell. no one will ever know what they have just accomplished. they are heroes." this group certainly lived up to those standards. — with Vicki Hess and 4 others. We are so grateful for all that you and your fellow missionaries do and for the willingness to sacrifice a part of your life like this. You truly are heroes...and no one knows--sometimes even the missionary doesn't know...... So thank you. Love, Mom