Five Letters! Fairbanks! & HELLO & Dat Gospel Though! & hellooooo & oh my goodness.

11 August 2014

so the world is great when you live in the weirdest place on earth. Please. allow me to confirm to you, that Alaska has the greatest concentration of oddballs on the face of the planet.  seriously.  

So...... life is grand :) i finally this week hit my 100% joy week.  I literally don't think there has been a moment where i have not felt the hope of Christ radiating through my entire being.  Miracle after Miracle folks,  this gospel, the atonement, christs mission on the earth, are all real, tangible, living, breathing truths.  Just having them in my heart makes my soul soar!  and sore.  haha :) 

This little girl decided that i was her sister.  and that sister faupula was not.  It made me feel wonderfully ethnic.

Man i seriously just am dying. today i woke BEFORE my alarm, and realized i had 10 minutes left to lie there and smile!  So i did!  then I got up and went running in a BEAUTIFUL alaska morning (its FINALLY been good weather here.... 70's all week... so of course the alaskans say they are dying of heat and turn on their air conditioners to 60's... i am not exaggerating) but oh.  i love this place.   And its not even because i love alaska yet.  I really still don't have any desire to move here haha. the mosquitos alone are killer and i miss great large groups of people and ethnicity.  but its just so overcome by the love i have for the work!  i heard a baptismal service the other day in spanish and my heart ached for it, but i kinda think a spanish mission is in my future... so why worry about it now?  its been rad :) 

My comp and i LOVE each other.  I tell her pretty much every five minutes (because it makes her uncomfortable and it makes me laugh...we have agreed she needs to work on her expression of love skills) and she tells me in the way she acts around me.  Sure we still have our moments but we really have grown in unity, and people enjoy being around us because of it, i think.  Man i just love this place.  I think that i have just been learning to perceive the will of the Savior so much more clearly. But man. I haven't told yalls about whats actually happening yet!   

We have had miracles here. We are working a lot more with the ward council which has been a strain, but is now finally kicking off.  We are getting to know members of the ward and because they trust us now, are starting to invite their friends and want to be member missionaries.  I am learning to love this gospel and have so much more hope in the world.  Heavenly father really does know what he's doing :).  Hey i love you all.  its dang hard to meet with our investigators because alaskans are the most slow moving people i have ever met and they all think they are crazy busy.  its pretty funny.  They will tell us they have tons of things to do and can't talk then proceed to tell us about their fishing trip for 45 minutes. But hey.  Such is life when you live at the top of the world.

 Enjoy life. That is my goal for you this week. do it in any way you know how but i promise you, with all of my heart, that the quickest, surest, and only way to LASTING joy, the kind that you feel even when you are weeping of sadness, is through applying the atoning blood of the savior, crying unto him. :) 

You'll make it. keep trying. We will all keep trying. 

Love you all




hellooooo
4 August 2014

this week missionary week became JOY.  it tells you something about my pride, and awful natural woman that it took a whole transfer (this is the first day of transfer two... how crazy is that) to get here but i LOVE this work.  oh man.  proverbs 3: 5-6 has become like my life motto.  I have seen in a new way how creative, funny, intuitive, powerful, seemingly magical, and breathtaking Heavenly father is in the way he completes his work and his glory. it has been a complete joy to see.  I have been blessed beyond my wildest dreams. 

lemme just tell you that alaska is full of crazy people.  i am dead serious. the longer you are in alaska the more crazy you become. its a guarenteed fact. haha trying to describe it to you is impossible but Sister faupula and i talked about it for a long time the other day.  its a crazy loco place.  its just all a little.... off. thats all i can describe it to you. Sometime i have to wonder... am i the only crazy person and the rest of this place is really sane?  haha its great.  gotta love a place where its supposed to be first world but having running water is still not actually guarenteed when you are buying a place.  nature still rules here.  Lemme tell you :) 

one favorite thing that happened this week (out of 100+ miracles) was this.... 

Yesterday we saw our investigator Samantha for the second time. She met us at a random gas station.  she had walked an hour to get there with a two year old in the stroller.  She is Native.  she has like a billion super crazy spiritual gifts.  Its prettty intense but thats quite typical for Natives.  She is very interested.  We taught her the plan of salvation in a park and i had drawn it out on a card.  We were  next to a really pretty river.  She had lots of questions and was very interested in the after life because she has had lots of visitations from spirits, her ancestors and evil ones.  she says she can see ghosts.  But the spirit stayed with us in the lesson. During it both my comp and i strayed from the planned topic together and taught her a semi brief gospel lesson. I invited her to be baptized.  She excepted :) :) :) We then got lost walking to church and a 20 minute walk turned into a 45 minute walk. I was so dang anxious.  but i prayed and the lord uplifted me and told me he knew what he was doing. So of course his answer was to send a two inch beetle to land on my back. I still get the heebie jeebies when i think about it.  But it made us laugh after and lightened the mood.  Then testimony meeting was amazing. So many people fellowshipped her. (which is kinda uncommon in our ward) she even participated. And there were like 6 testimonies about the plan of salvation.  That doesn't happen.  But it did.  

I love you all :) Peace :)

oh my goodness.

28 July 2014

so.... yeha. i have zero time and a hundred thousand things to tell ya'll,  so i will make a bulleted list of my favorite things.

• I ate moose meat stuffed peppers last night. yup.  real alaskan now.
• we met this lady walking back to our car and she said:  "could you please tell me the history of your religion?" and sis faupula and i were like.... um.... yeah. we could probably do that. so right then and there we taught her the first discussion. it was unreal and the spirit was CRAZY strong.  we are so excited to talk to her more.
• we felt in weekly plannning like we should pretty much forget/ drop all of our investigators this week.  we did so and miracles followed.  we will recontact them later.
• its true what they say about missions. they are hard.  but awesome.
• i ate dinner at a family's house that i swear was 40 degrees.  I had to go outside to the 50 degree weather to warm up.  gotta love alaskans.
• i love the gospel and i promise that it is magic.  meaning incredible. but more next week. I love you! 

Sister Galli

Dat Gospel Though!
21 July 2014

So i love me some gospel.  mm.mm. Good. yeah this week my trainer and i worked through some kinks.  shes the best. turns out like all our miscommunications came from the different ways we were raised.  once we talked about how we communicate we realized that we were totally on the same page the whole time.  for instance.  when her mother wanted her to clean the house she would say: i am leaving, kids,, clean the house.  my mother on the other hand, had to give me written instructions with check boxes and double check boxes to tell me what specifically to do, probably because i was so A.D.D.  once we figured that out we were like loads better. and miracles have come from our added unity. feels good to get a good cry in comp inventories. we found out we have loads in common. its been real good, sweet and nice ever since.

A little story to illustrate that missionaries have fun too:

Our zone has loads of fun together. lots of nonflirtatious, appropriate fun :) haha.  one of these times came when an elder in the zone bought my comp Sis faupula a coconut to make fun of her for another funny story that happened with a member.  he slipped it to me when we were on exchanges and tol me to put it somewhere funny.  i thought would be funny to put it under her pillow so that she would find it when she fell asleep. I waited as we both went to bed... but she never said anything... i waited and waited but she fell asleep so i wondered if she had already found it and no mentioned it.  The next morning she comes into the bedroom and the pillow was kinda shifted to the side she said: "Why is there a coconut on my bed???!!!!"  turns out she had slept the WHOLE night with a coconut under her pillow.  WHO DOES THAT????????????? and the funny thing was that she said that's the best she's slept in ages! haha i was DYING.  we were laughing forever about that. 

so yeah. we have fun too. even though we are weird nun people.

So continuing to meet what i now call: "choice" people on this here mission. they get weirder all the time. haha  i am learning the art of listening. and it really is an art..... and a gift from God.  that charity though.  its kinda neat. Miracles have happened as i have listened with love instead of trying to interject gospel stuff randomly.  they say the right thing.  or they talk for two hours the first time and we can't get a word in (and i mean that very literally.... NOT A WORD) and the second time they give us a referral, or are open to hear our message.  its pretty neat. 

also that spirit of Elijah is real,  we have a new lady are meeting with and that is largely due to her heart opening. and its amazing.  when i actually stop thinking that i am not good enough and start thinking... dearry me i don't know WHAT to do in this situation besides laugh, and enjoy these people, i find that through that love and enjoyment, the Lord prepares a way. He constantly needs to remind me that this is his work not mine,  but as we've turned it over to him i have felt a very real change. there are little miracles EVERY day All day, but i feel some big ones on the horizon. 

yeah. folks, lets be grateful and loving. because we have so much!  so much opportunity. to those that are not of our faith, share your light.  share your joy... lets make this crazy, evil world better for our presence :) God is real, God is good.

See ya'll next week. (i legitimately say ya'll now.  sorry folks)

Sista Laurel Galli

HELLO

30 June 2014

I have been sent to ...........

FAIRBANKS!!!!!!!!!! Dad guessed it!  oooooh man.  lemme tell you. the drive from Anchorage to Fairbanks is KILLER.... oooh man.  I love this crazy land.  

So...i have a question for you before i tell you any more info about my comp or anything.  

If everyone around you is stark raving mad.... does that make you sane, or crazy?  

That is the question that alaska missionaries ask themselves all the time.  Man i LOVE the people here.  they are truly awesome.  so great.  its like you took the oddballs from every part of the world and sent them north.  seriously hahaha.  its so random the people i meet here.  for instance... my first alaskan meal with a member in fairbanks? Louisiana  Gumbo. super spicy.  it was way good too.  oh and i am officially alaskan now because I have been given fresh caught Salmon in a jar.... AND fresh caught tuna in a jar... by two separate families.  Pretty rad.  I am still waiting to have what i calll "better-n'-beef-bottled-bear" which i have been told about.  an example of a conversation i had this week.  We were talking with Mary, who's rather volumptious (her moto is "fat girls roll to the bottom of the hill first") about religion.  she is a tricky potential investigator because she believes every bit about everyone else's religion.  it was pretty awesome for her to tell us (for at LEAST an hour straight) about how Goliaths head is actually golgotha, and that the jaredites obviously stopped by Atlantis before continuing to the promised land.  Haha she's awesome.  

Now for some parently information.  My COMP!!  her name is Sister Asinate kulupipetea Faupula. (not sure about that middle name) and as you may have guessed she is Tongan :) but from LA.  She is AWESOME and really neato.  she is a sister trainer which means that i am going to be doing loads of splits.  so thats rad.  She and I are a lot alike and therefore its a rather intense companionship but really good.  we have many similar goals and are getting along great.  

I am in Fairbanks 5 ward and we also cover a little branch in Aninana or some lil podunk town like that.  cant remember its exact name.  I will be serving here for probably at least two transfers. We'll see how long we will be here.  i kinda really want to be here in winter for some strange reason... I guess i figure if i am going to do alaskan winter.... i may as well do it RIGHT.  

I was cold for the first two days.  like literally always because if we're inside and its anywhere near like... heaven forbid...70 degrees they turn on the air conditioning.  but then i decided that i wasn't cold anymore and i have been pretty good after that.  

We interrupt this program to bring you a special message from our sponsor:

Miracles happen!  I see one every day and i pray for one every day.  My comp and i have been on a crazy role of recieving simultaneous promptings that lead us crazy places.  For instance, one day we both felt we should:

-go to caribou street. 

-go to carlton street from there

-go to the lewis door

-(a crabby lady told us they didn't exist)

-we looked across the street

-both saw the same house

-knew we had to go there

_"well hey, we are representatives of..."

-they were not interested.

-but were nice

-we felt we had to return

-and make them cookies? 

-next morning got extra donuts at coorilation meeting

-"woah.. we can take these!"

-practiced what to say

-go to the door

-they open

-"oh wow... its you again"

-much colder this time

-shut us out. 

gahhhhhhh so then 

-we both simultaneously thought of a really cute african american family we had passed on the same street that were outside

-gave them donuts

-left a spiritual thought

-i sang a song

-can we come back?

-"sure.  we may disagree on some things but I never turn away angels from God"

oh man. i love this family.  we can't teach them for a week cause they are out of town but i am beyond excited.  that was ONE of our miracles that day. we didn't even think of asking them their names.  they are from Michigan.  have loads of really adorable kids.  

probs have to go now.  but i love you. let me know what i didn't answer.

imma leave you with a poem i wrote when i first got here, thinking of flying in.  

Alaska sits blue, blue

     heave a sigh as I fly, fly,

take a breath, eat the sky,sky

Copious space, grace 

     me, oh infinite vastness

you seep through my face, face

So grand but so small, all

     vibrating time

to your tide, wide

as a Hie to Kolob 

     Take the strings from my heart 

bond fresh start, start

Opulent peaks, speaks

     prehistorically 

mandating awe, flawed-- 

I'm delicate weak, weak

    drinking sunlight elixir

my savior my night, Light

me-Oh love of benevolent

    cherish my tries 

through this dark, mark

In my countenance 

     Sanctity, righteousness--

Grace Face

Love you!  have a wonderful time in your wonderful lives!  keep on keeping on.  

oh yeah and letters are cool. look on my page for my info :)