Email to Mom

HELLLOOOO! Greggie and Jessica sound so cute. Hahhaa I can't believe Jessica is already being such a stink. Hopefully she will let me hold her when I get home. Um, and hopefully Adam will be able to get to know her and stuff.

 

Wow that is a cool story about the plane crashing in Alaska. Um it is cold up here.

 

I'm feeling a lot better. Thank you Grandpa for the prayer to help me feel better on Christmas. I appreciate all your prayers. And I'm feeling a lot better. Sister Brown and I have been having a LOT of laughter. Sometimes we get quite silly. She says she has never quite felt as free to be herself as she can with me. That is good. She is going home in March and wants to end her mission strong, she wants to be the best missionary she can be, and she wants to be happy and all that good stuff. I want her to help her have the bestest end to her mission ever! People at every dinner ask us two things: where we're from and how long we have left. She always hates answering the second question.

 

I hope Grandma & Grandpa get a nice home. How nice for them!!!

 

This week I did way better on my homesickness. Sister Brown says it gets lots easier. After a while you are just used to not be with your family.

 

THANK YOU FOR MY CD's!!!!!!

 

Um, if you want in a few weeks or months can you send me my seminary study guides of all the standard works? It says seminary student study guide on the front. For book of mormon, old  & new testament, d and c. Cuz sometimes I just want to understand the bible better. The woman we are teaching luuurves the bible and gets slightly offfended we want her to focus on the book of mormon, yes she needs to gain her own testimony of the book of mormon, but we want to assure her that we study and believe the bible as well, but I have noticed I do not know a lot about it. I need to know the bible as well so I can show how the two go together. Um, but don't send all my study guides if you don't want, and you can wait on them and keep adding things as I might need some other things and I feel very bad so if you just send it all at once maybe that would be better.

 

Hhaha so thanks for EVERYTHING and last week there were like 6 days in a row I kept bringing you and Daddy up at dinners with members and I was thinking, maybe I shouldn't talk about you guys so much cuz then I'd be thinking of you and missing you, but looking back i have been just fine hahaha.

 

Thank you for the pens in the box that had the letters from people in Marina Hills Ward. Hee hee.

 

I write down things to tell you during the week, I'm looking and reading this: "Tell them about the cards" I have no idea what this means. Passalong cards? Gah. Who knows.

 

So the garbage disposal doesn't work in the little house so we dump all foodstuff over the back hill back of the house. Into the snow. So then when I am washing the pot with the eggs in it I have this soapy, eggy water. Cuz we don't have a frying pan, so we scramble eggs in the pot. So then I take this hot soapy eggy water and dump it outside next to the steps of the little house and it melts the snow all the way down and creates this hole. And as I shut the door, I can hear the water cracking as it freezes right away. And the metal door handle is sticky, like if I licked it, it would rip my tongue off like in that movie. In fairbanks apparently it gets so cold, if you touch metal barehanded it'll rip your skin off.

 

Last p-day playing sports, one of the elders hit Sister Brown in the face with a rugby ball. He felt very bad. We have been through a lot.

 

I felt I got depressed last week, if I was left kind of alone I'd have all these dark, depressing, self-deprecating thoughts. Sister Brown says there is not much Vitamin D here and maybe since I came from Southern California, the drastic change was affecting me. Some people have to leave Alaska and move to Arizona after a while. There just is not that much sun. And when it is out, it is weak. She gave me a couple of Vitamin D pills. Anyway it felt good to talk to her about it.

 

SNOW. Yesterday morning, it had snowed about six or seven inches. Let me tell you about snow. It comes down all glittery. The snow on the ground is fluffy and soft and you just sink into it almost soundlessly. It sparkles. When it freezes more, that is when it gets all crunchy and loud.

 

We taught the kid who lives in the cabin next to his family, the lesson was awkward, he barely spoke, so Sister Brown and I didn't really know what his NEEDS were, what questions for him to answer. He has barely any religious background, he barely knew who Moses and Noah are in the old testament. I was thinking that the night we met him he may have been, um, intoxicated. His cheerfulness and then subsequent tears and total openness greeted us...but then when we taught him he was way quiet. And the Spirit wasn't really being quite open and nothing was popping into our heads and so we just...I dunno. And then after forty minutes of looking bored and answering a few things, he still said he was interested, but that he'd give us a call cuz he is figuring out his school schedule, and so maybe we'll be able to teach him again. When we first met him he was just so STRUGGLING. The gospel can really lift someone who is struggling. But then the second time, he seemed fine, so the direction we were gonna take it felt like it didn't apply any more, and he said the whole time that he didn't see how the gospel could really affect HIM, and that is why it is so important to show the person how it is RELEVANT, and we had no idea how to do that for some reason, so that is why it was so awkward.

 

Oh gosh. Oh well.

 

At church we passed around the dinner calendar (it is all filled up yay) and we let it go around the primary room (where all the little kids go the 2nd and 3rd hours of church) and as we left we heard the little kids whisper, "Look it's the sister missionaries!" "Oh the sister missionaries!" Hahha. We felt like celebrities as we waved and walked out.

 

Hee hee.

 

Galatians 5 talking about the fruit of the spirit--once you realize what the results are, of having the spirit with you, you can recognize it so much easier. That has been a real help to me. I know that the Spirit is here, I know that we have the Lord on our side. Reading a lot of verses about missionary work--D&C 84:88 there are angels all around us. When we are teaching and the person is not listening to us but trying to argue with us, and has their ideas set and for some reason they are investigating the church but aren't interested in learning anything, it is really hard to know what to do, it is really hard to remember that we are representatives of the Lord. I tell myself, "Remember the angels!"

 

I am so happy to be here in Alaska. The people here are so incredibly kind. Even the ones who aren't interested. I have not encountered any rudeness. They are happy and cheerful and awesome. It is weird, ever since the MTC, people I meet seem so familiar to me. I can just love them.

 

LOVE YOU ALL! The book of mormon testifies of Christ. It is so important to know that the Lord can speak to more than one nation. It is important not to think he won't speak again. He's not done speaking. hear OCMCO "KNOW YE NOT THAT THERE ARE MORE NATIONS THAN ONE..." hahahha thanks dad. 2 Nephi 27 right? Somewhere in there.

 

Love,

sister ashbrook