The funnies of Alaska

10, 12 August 2015

I going to send you a grand ole picture of a very common occurrence in Alaska.
We were at Walmart last week, and my companion was printing pictures.
This little 4.5 foot tall native Alaskan women with a thick upick (I
have no idea how to spell that word, but it's one of the common
languages here) accent comes up to us and sits down next to us and
becomes instantly our best friend, smiling like crazy at us and
talking about her entire life's story, speaking in very slow
me.as.ur.ed. English. Haha we had a Book of Mormon on the table and
she picked it up and said: can I Look at your book? We told her of
course and she flipped through it.  I asked her if she would like one
and she said "oh. I have one." And I asked her where she got it and
she didn't really answer me. I asked her if she'd read it or would
read it.... And she didn't really answer me. I asked her if we could
come teach her sometime and she said: "come back and see me at
walmart!" Haha I asked her if I could have a picture of her and she
was delighted. So here you have it.

Well I didn't really mean to send that already. So here is more. 

This week we ran to the end of our things to do.  We have contacted all the investigators we have. We have contacted all the less actives that we can work with. We have pretty well tried all the former investigators, referrals, and potential investigators. We have called a bazillion people and are waiting for calls back. It's at that awkward point that we have tried so many people that if we call them again they will probably think we are professional stalkers. Which is true. 

It's all fine and dandy to be out of things to do with your companion, (especially when she is as exceptional as my companion is) but on exchanges it gets REAL awkward fast. One day this week we kept running into garage sales, and I was with a new missionary on her very first exchange and we ended up just going from garage sale to garage sale because that was the only way people would talk with us. I felt awful that we didn't teach a single lesson the whole day. We tried tracting the street until we found lots of JW material, so we figured they probably wouldn't be too interested. Then one elderly guy said that we had just been there a week earlier i tried to explain to him that it was someone different and he was pretty insistent that It was us. I laughed to my companion about it and she said "where did you tract?" And when I told her it was Innes street she died laughing cause... Well she had tracted there on exchanges a week before. We are even running out of places to tract haha. I guess we'll just have to continue finding creative ways of using our time cause it's getting a little interesting. 

Speaking of interesting ways of using time.... Right after this we are going to go sing and read scripts and pray with a non member guy who's in a coma. His mom is a potential investigator and this will definitely be a first. 

We also had a lesson with Eve our Thai investigator this week. It was our first lesson with both her and with the Thai translator, Josh, who just served his mission in Thailand. It was the most stressful/amazing lesson of my life. Basically indescribable. It was super tough, because we had to be very very simple in everything we explained, because 1, she could barely understand us, and 2 she has 0 Christian background and so literally doesn't understand what we're talking about. It was great to have Josh there to be able to translate things and to explain things much better. I've just never taught someone who doesn't even understand the concept of prayer before, so it was really challenging. But it was so rewarding as well. Things started to click for Eve, and she talked about how she's felt the Holy Ghost before (after we talked about who the holy ghost is and what he does), but just thought she was crazy. Thai people are very superstitious apparently. But it was just so cool to watch how things would start to make sense for her, and how she would get so excited once she understood a principle. So we're pretty stoked to keep working with her!! Our next lesson with her will be tomorrow. Oh man, it'll be a trip explaining the plan of salvation to her! 

Also last p-day we had a zone car wash that was a blast! Our zone is one of the closest I have ever served in and that's been a huge miracle. 

Well it's been a mixed bag week, and on a mission, even those are the best! 

Sister Galli

P.s. Craziest thing of my life! Sister Dall and I are made to be besties. We discovered this week that her little sister and I both had the same violin teacher when we were children, and that means that sister Dall has watched me as a wee child play screechy violin songs! THEN we discovered that sister Dall and I were in the SAME group at Brighton girls camp (the likelihood of that is like 1/1000000.) and spend a week together doing ridiculous stuff! Craziness.