Home again Jiggety Jig

14 December 2015

Anyone know how to spell "jiggety"? Anyway. no matter.

This was the ultimate week of swashbuckling miracles.

Pam

a short list:
-Pam, an investigator that we ALMOST dropped had her neck surgery and
we were actually able to see her and build a great relationship.  She
chose March 31 as her baptismal date, which is her deceased daughters
birthday.
-We saw ALL of our investigators, including ones we couldn't get ahold
of for weeks.
-we had probably 15-20 nonmembers at our Christmas party, and were
able to get 3 of their numbers to see them.
-the Johnsons came to church

The Johnsons

-I wept profusely and felt loved.
-my rockin companions grasped the area with two hands and already have
things rollin'
-I wasnt trunky!
-We were fed 3 lunches in two days
-We nail painted old people.
-Jonnisue, a recent convert and i were battling to finish the Book of
Mormon, and she won :)
-The Divineys had a lesson of the baptismal interview questions and
they are pretty much set! just a couple of things to tie up.
-The ward council was GUNG ho for an idea we had about starting a 40
day fast in this ward as well.
-we had the best ever p-day last week in Seward, on the gorgeous beach.

I love my life.  God is so good. Thank you for all your support.  I love you.

Jonnisue

Catch you on the flip side!

Photo from this Week

7 December 2015

The ward mission leader sent this photo of Laurel and her companions. She comes home next Wednesday!!

From Seward

7 December 2015

Laurel spent her P day in Seward. This is her favorite photo of the day. If that spaceship takes her home, I'll be really mad.  --Editor

Good gravy Boats

30 November 2015

This is not the video to which Laurel is referring below ;)

What a week!  This ward has decided that we need to sing for our pay,
so we are singing for a relief society lesson, a baptism, and a relief
society dinner all in one week.  All different songs and arrangements!
Thanksgiving was a happy mess, including a cinnamon roll breakfast, a
large dinner, and a cheesecake competition wherein we were the judges.
I am now very well rounded.



We also took some amazing drives this week, passing Anchorage there
were some stellar frozen waterfalls.

We also were able to start the new Christmas initiative!  A Savior is
Born.  I tell you, Heavenly Father really knows how to chasten me.  I
wasn't sure really how i felt about it, but we went to go see a lady
who was gone, so we knocked on her neighbors' door and met a cute
little family.  We asked them if we could share a short christmas
video with them and to my surprise, they said "absolutely!" after
watching it they talked for a great deal of time about how much they
wanted to help people get back into the true meaning of christmas and
accepted the invitation to read Luke 2 with us in a future date.
Sister Galli=chastened.  SO.... be better than I! Share this video. It
will touch people.  You will love it.

christmas.mormon.org

Love you all!  Enjoy this season :)

Sister galli

A series of Hilarious Mishaps

23 November 2015

What a grand week.  First, a bulleted list:

-A drive to and from Anchorage (we have another this week)

-Twice getting stuck in the snow

-1.5 feet of snow

-3 types of fish in the freezer (Halibut, Trout, Salmon, Smoked Salmon)

-A very flooded toilet

-Service in a library, moving, shoveling, foodbank

-3 investigators at church (fistbump)

-a trip down funny river road at night with our relief society president

-zero trunkiness

-a very intense relief society activity where we performed a skit

-one big old cry session because I don't want to leave.

-my last sisters training.

So it was a good time!  The drive was GORGEOUS, pictures included.  I

really had a wonderful time.  One little miracle, we havent been able

to see a bunch of investigators that I really adore.  My companions

were starting to think they were figments of my imagination.  I felt

prompted to fast on sunday for them, and we had those three

investigators at church!  What a blessing.  Sister Larcom was also

fasting for something different, and we didn't know each other was

fasting and neither of us told sistere Grieve, so that was funny.  She

was so mad to be the only one eating :)

Time makes me sick. its been way too fun in this area.

Anyway, fasting works.  I have such a testimony of it.  I am grateful

that when you can't do anything else about something out of your

control, you can always fast.

Love,

Sister Galli

Running in -2 degrees

16 November 2015

Ah.... winter in alaska.  frozen hair, frosty lungs, plugging in cars.  Its been a good time.  

As for the work,

Boy oh Boy.  

Its so good!  LOTS of miracles and LOTS of trials of faith in quick secession. Take yesterday.  Church was GRAND, and then we had 3 investigator lessons cancel.  None of our investigators came to church. So... that was fun. But this is probably my favorite ward.  So many recent converts, so much love.  We have a new investigator that I met here on exchanges in MAY.  we FINALLY met with her last week.  She is 19 and so prepared but also SO busy.  its tough.  one of the hardest things is that people get sick in alaska ALL the time.  I think every single one of our investigators has been sick in the last 3 weeks.  We will have awesome lessons with them, have another set up, then like ten minutes before they call us and tell us that they are sick.  GAH... also.... there is NOTHING to do after around 7:50 if we have appointments cancel.  this place SHUTS DOWN.  people go to bed in the summer at like 3 in the morning and in the winter honestly like 7.  its rough.  

We had the coolest lesson this week though.  we have an eternigator, who has been really progressing lately.  We taught him about all the he could do if he had the priesthood as a father.  All of a sudden i got the strongest impression and started telling him a story i tell very infrequently, the story about how the priesthood helped my mom and I when there were complications before my birth.  I cried from the minute I began telling it.  He teared up too, and after i finished i pretty much just begged him to become a priesthood holder and promised him that he would give blessings that would bring miracles.  that SPIRIT though.  i love it. He was definitely touched. 

Fun fact!  You have to plug in you car at 5 degrees and colder.  Heres a picture. Also a picture of right after we got DROPPED by someone i was SO excited about.  Ben and Jerry's for days. 

pic for the week

9 November 2015

Laurel reports that she is happy to be staying in Soldotna for her last transfer. She will be in a threesome. She had to get a filling today, so that might have filled some of her writing time :).

Snow Halloween

2 November 2015

Winter decided it was tired of waiting.  It snowed a couple days ago,
and surprisingly, it stuck!  We had a frosty halloween, and lots of
miracles this week.

We had been having the HARDEST time with some of our investigators.
These are people who are so ready, agreed they wanted to have lessons
and we just could. not. get. ahold. of. It was driving my bonkers!
One such family is the Diviney's.  They recently moved from Texas and
have been looking for a church in Soldotna.  We taught them the
restoration and they went to a church activity and loved it.  But then
through a series of unfortunate events, and two cancelled lessons, we
lost track of them.  I really didn't think they would come to church,
but as we were leaving out the door I randomly prayed that they would
show. It kinda surprised me.  When we pulled into the church parking
lot, lo and behold.... there they were. They loved every meeting.  we
taught them about the Book of Mormon last night and... mm.  they loved
it.

Miracles!

We also have been working a lot with our little ward council.  They
are so missionary minded, the little sweeties.  It has been so neat to
have built a lot of understanding of the logistics of missionary work,
the role of the ward mission leader, Bishop, etc, then finally have
that apply so much in my last area.  Its been grand!

Sister Dall and I went on exchanges this week, and it was just like
old times, I was so distracted, and we laughed for days.  Our
investigator down here, Vaughn, could not believe how many things we
said at the same time.   She is such a powerhouse.

Well, this pretty well is commencing the fastest transfer of my
existence, its scaring me just a little (a lot)

I love you!
Sister Galli

0 New

Photos from Soldotna

26 October 2015


We got pictures this week.

This waterfall runs into the ocean

Homer Bound

19 October 2015

We are headed to Homer today! I am so excited.  I think i will love
it.  Everyone says it is way more hippie than up here.  So i think i
will fit right in.

Some highlights from this week:
1. People's nice birthday gifts
2. We drove out to the farthest reaches of our area, a place called
"Funny River".  Those folks.... good times.  They all live off of the
Beautiful Kenai River though, that i will send pictures of.  Got to
hear some nice stories about shooting neighborhood cats and lots and
lots and lots of stories about bears.
3. Helping our eternigator Vaughn Pick a new baptism date.
Unfortunately, it will probably be for after i leave.
4. We got stuck in a ditch, then my wonderful comp locked the keys in
the car, but we didnt discover that until we were finished tracting
(and getting chased by multiple dogs off people's properties), we had
our Ward Mission Leader's family come search with us for a good couple
hours. good times.  they finally skillfully broke into our car, so now
I know how to do that.  tricky tricky.
5. We decided to walk to our dinner appointment one day and talk to
EVERYONE we saw.... we saw one guy and his dogs.  Haha.
6. Met Natalie, a GOLDEN investigator who fell in love with the Book
of Mormon and asked us to teach her..... that turned out to be not in
our ward.  Gosh dang those Elders.
7. Selling back massages for book of mormon reading (a women only offer)
8. Haulin wood.

That is just about the extent!  I love soldotna and the peninsula! I
have had a great time.

There are so many miracles around.  We are just starting to learn to see!
Sister Galli
 (P.s. the Book of mormon rocks, tell someone about your favorite book
this week and carry it with you

0 New

Group email

12 October 2015

OK so actually I have plenty of time to write you group email.

So miracles happened on Sunday. A less active bore a VERY long
testimony about how she knows the church is true and needs to come
back into activity, and she brought her friend, who met with
missionaries 20 ago but stopped when she had an abusive boyfriend. Now
she is totally prepared, and loves the feeling that she gets at
church. Even though she has a ton of tattoos, she felt very welcome.
We met with her second hour and have a lesson set up with them every
Friday.
Also, my comp and I both got joint inspiration that we should be at
the church when there was no reason we should be, we couldn't figure
out why when we got there and so we had an awkward discussion in the
hall about what we should do. As we were talking, this girl came out
of a class room.  Turns out she was an investigator that the elders
are teaching and we were able to talk about a lot of things she was
learning and give her a little lesson about the spirit. We really
connected fast and it was definitely a tender mercy.

Oh also, we didn't have a dinner one of the nights this week, and so I
pulled out some halibut from the freezer, rummaged through some spices
and stuff that we found in the fridge, and we ended up with an
incredible dinner. Yay for creative companionship cooking! Sister
Rollins and I have some stellar times.

One last zinger. When I was here about two months ago I met a girl at
Dairy Queen that said she would meet with missionaries. But she just
never really was able or interested after that. I shot her a text this
week and explained who I was and she was so happy to hear I had been
back! She is young, going to school, ice skating semi professionally,
and working, so she has had like zero time, but still really wants to
meet with us. Then we were at Dairy Queen another day, and started
talking to another girl about meeting with us, and she said she had
heard the lessons when she lived in Cali, and wouldn't mind again.
Well.... Turns out these two girls are best friends. So we are jazzed.
We have had a lesson fall through, so please pray that we will be able
to meet with Nadia and Tay.

Alaska rocks.

Sister Galli

Shoot, Shovel, and Shut up

5 October 2015

First of all, a little about soldotna:
I am in a fishing town. It is famous for its fishing and people come all over the world to catch salmon and halibut. But in the winter (now) it gets much more dead. A lot of people farm here. They are pretty sheltered ;) but really really nice. It's got a very "chill" feel. Many people garden, and already in my time here I have seen 11 caribou and 2 moose. They are very common. Also, it snowed like crazy on September 29. :). Weird Alaska. It's warmer here then anchorage though.the population is 

4000 in all of soldotna, but we our ward is way less than that. 

My three favorite Alaskan foods are:

Caribou sausage, :), smoked salmon, halibut. Also a good ole moose roast does me well. 

*we interrupt this program to bring you a miracle**** 

I have always wanted to teach a family, so I started prayingprayingpraying for one. We went service tracting and this lady answered and said that she was happily in another church, so she wasn't interested, but when we asked about service, she was really happy to think of some people. That got us talking and it turns out she knows a Mormon lady really well who had gone on a long car ride with him and had told her the basic premise for our church. She therefore knew that we were Christian. Aaaand she had questions. Her questions were entirely along the lines of the restoration, she asked about Joseph smith and the Book of Mormon so we got to teach her almost the whole thing and she thought it was really good. We gave her a Book of Mormon and she was so excited and said she was an avid reader, so she would read it, and that she would have lots of questions. Unfortunately she said she wouldn't be ready for about a month, because her husband came into town from his out of town job and she was going to spend time with him. But she said we could totally do service in the mean time for her. Oh man when we were talking the spirit kept yelling at me: "this is your family!!!" I am so excited. 

Now for the funny: so the very first thing I did the morning after I got here, was to go do service at this lady's farm. Boy oh boy she is classic homesteader. She looks the part, from her jagged teeth to her hundreds of freckles. We had lunch with her and a bunch of TOUGH Alaskans. Beards. Guns. Eating moose sausage, work on the farm... Yeah. You know the type. They were just beating the fish and game department, particularly with the regulations make on hunting bears, that there even was a limit.  One lady who owns a farm herself, said that she and her neighbors met in a secret night meeting, and they made a consensus about what to do about the Bears wandering in to their yards and land. They referred to it as: "shoot, shovel, and shut up."  Ooooh boy I was dying inside. They then went to talk about wanting to take out the beaver population and illegally kill moose to process. Oooooh I had a good ole time. 

We also had a baptism this week! I definitely don't feel like I had anything to do with it, since I only taught him two lessons, but boy he is absolutely the sweetest kid. So genuine and kind. He truly wanted to be baptized. 

Also, wasn't conference just the best time! 

Anyway, it's been a great week, I love you!

Still heading south

28 September 2015

First, an observation. I have been heading south my whole mission!
From Fairbanks, to wasilla, to anchorage north, to anchorage south,
and finally ending in SOLDOTNA! (Anchorage folk call it slow-dotna,
cause it is a fishing town, and feels like it.)

I think I'll talk in pictures cause I have some grand ones.

First, apartment mold:

You know your apartment is wet, when it's not raining outside, but the INSIDE of every window is wet in your apartment.

Next, our INCREDIBLE ten mile hike we went on last pday. Ten miles :)

Moosen on the hike. We only saw five.

Hike again ;)

Then, Palmer on exchanges

Fall Fell

21 September 2015

Good thing it's 30 degrees every morning. But I'll tell you what,
Alaska pulls of the most BEAUTIFUL 30 degrees you've never seen.
(Cause most of you have never been hear at precisely this time).
Picture: snow dust dark framed spiked peaks, wearing a scarves of fall
colors around their necks, with a cyan blue sky and zero pollution to
dim it. Then picture me shivering without a coat trying to acclimate
myself for winter. Then you've got my life.

Just when I was about to die because of lack of sunshine, it finally
stopped raining. Just watch me get called to go to Juneau next
transfer.

This week we got teaching a fantastically prepared girl, she's half
black, half native, her name is Audrey, and she is the spunkiest,
funnest friend. Good thing we had to pass her off to YSA.
But hey I am not bitter.

As for our other sweet investigators: they have got to be the most
COMPLICATED cases I have ever seen. 99% of the time I am just at a
loss as to what to do with them. But Eve, though we weren't able to
meet with her last week, came to all three hours of church. We also
had one of the young women bring her catholic friend. I was praying
that sacrament would be something simple, like faith, that would be
easily understood by her (she's Buddhist and Thai if you've forgotten)
and so of course Heavenly Father tried my faith, By giving us a whole
sacrament meeting about the law of common consent, as pertaining to
sustaining church leaders, spoken by a very eloquent and intellectual
high councilman. You win some, you lose some.
But then (by sneaky request) we had a last minute lesson on baptism in
gospel principles. So it turned out alright.

Ooh.  Tender mercy: when I went to the temple, my Ward from Fairbanks
was there on a youth trip! It's the only area I've served in that I
haven't been able to go back to visit (probably because it's 500 miles
away) and it was so cool to see bishop, and a few other people. It's
been almost a year since I left there, and they still remember me. :)

Another cool thing. We've been working a lot with a less active, part
member family named the heckels. We go caroling as a district every
Saturday night and sing "nearer my God to thee" to people in our
different areas, and this week we went to the heckels. After we
finished, sister Heckel just broke down and it was one of the coolest
things, to hear her talk about how the lord had been reaching out to
her lately.

It's been a very up and down week, but so it goes! I love you!


Sister Galli

P.s.  We have been doing a lot of practices with the Book of Mormon
with members. How would you describe your favorite food to someone
who'd never tried it? Now try describing the Book of Mormon with the
same zeal, and don't be apologetic. :) it's a great old time. Now
carry a Book of Mormon with you wherever you go for the next week. Now
you are prepped to have a missionary moment!

Of moose and men

14 September 2015


Publisher's note: I think the photo with Laurel and Sister Watts below has got to be a missionary classic.Check out the freshener scent!




I ate so much moose for dinner last night.
It's also 40 degrees in the mornings now...and it's getting dark.
We run into moose on the daily.
It's rained rained rained rained.

And that's your Alaskan update.

So MIRACLES this week.

We went to a gas station and asked the guy working there if he saw
missionaries a lot. He did. Also he had a Book of Mormon. And he had
read some. Yes he had questions. Sure he'd like to meet with
missionaries again. His name was Brandon.

We went to another gas station to buy the product that we hadn't been
able to buy at the previous gas station. The lady there had seen
missionaries before.  Yes she had met with them, about a year ago. Yes
she would like to meet with us again. Her name was Pam.

Then we got pita pit. This really rad girl that works there that we
see all the time got talking with us. Yes she would like to meet with
us. Yes she DID meet with us. Her name was Audrey.

Oh boy there were miracles. We have needed a new investigator SO
badly. For so long. Thursday morning we called sister Robinson, and as
we were getting off the phone with her she said the most inspired
thing: " I hope you meet a new investigator- TODAY!"  That was the day
we met Brandon and Pam. The next day we met Audrey. God is good and he
allows us little success for just long enough that we KNOW it's not by
our efforts that we have investigators.

My dear compy had been sick, and she has been so nice as to allow me
to witch doctor her. It's worked great.

We also got to go to the temple! Everything Is better with a sister
Dall with you.

God has taught me resilience. But I still don't listen to it all the
time. Also, this Ward is FIIIIINALLLLLLYYYY getting more missionary
minded. That's been one of the main things we've been doing here.
Challenging challenging challenging, inviting, cajoling, promising,
begging, pleading, following up following up.... What's it take
people? But we are seeing change. We've got some good ideas on the
horizon.

So I challenge, cajol, and plead with you. Take a Book of Mormon with
you. Give it to someone who you think,probably won't want it, but just
might. It's the most joyful thing.

I love you!

Sister Galli