Tracting

 

December 3, 2023 

We are down to less than six hours of daylight, and I think it will go down to about three hours by 20^th of December. And even the daylight time feels like very late afternoon. The sun comes up over the mountain in the southeast and it just rises short distance before it dips into the southwestern sky.  Each day seems different, depending on cloud cover and the eventide comes earlier and earlier. We knew it was coming, but it still kind of catches you off guard because you haven’t experienced it before. We use our happy lights almost every day so that we can make sure that we are getting the sunlight to help us deal with the constant long periods of darkness. We take our vitamin D, vitamins and fish oil as well to help. We can feel ourselves getting a little grumpy. The awareness of how we are feeling, helps us to try to stay cheerful.

 

This week on Friday, I took a recently returned missionary from the Uruguay Montevideo mission, and we went out tracting or knocking on doors of young single adults who have not been with us for a while. It was quite cold 14°, but the sun was out when we did it so it wasn’t too bad.  And we made some successful contacts and hopefully brighten some lives as we talked to some people. Our purpose is to invite these YSAs to Institute and to give them the information on where to attend church and other activities. I’ve made a 4 x 6 postcard invitation, which we personalize with their name and it has QR codes, that link them to the various Facebook sites of these different groups. The three groups are the anchorage Institute of Religion, the Cook Inlet YSA Ward, and the Maplewood YSA group, which consist mostly of the Polynesian youth in the city.

 

 There are approximately 1200 YSA names on our rolls in the two stakes. We know many of them have moved or married or not here because they were temporary.  Either way, unless we know they are here, they are lost sheep and need to be found and invited back.  That number is unmanageable for the Ward Leaders to deal with.

So, our goal for the year that we are here is to contact one-by-one all 1200 YSAs. We are engaging some of the young people to go with us which is the best way we have found. Carolee and I have gone out many evenings, and contacted many people.   We are not as efficient as when there is a young returned, missionary with us. Felt like I was in Uruguay again when we knocked on the door and then knocked on other doors in the apartment complex to find out if they knew who we were looking for, and then came upon someone who needed to be minister to. Some of our faith, and some not. Everyone we talked to were kind and very friendly.  It was so invigorating to me, don’t know why, but it was.

We are working on getting an institute council together and are making progress there. They will be able to give us input, feedback, and ideas for activities, and ways that we can interact with the YSA’s and inspire them to come to Institute.

Carolee is heading up an Institute sponsored service activity for our family home evening on December 11. I’ll bet you can’t guess what it is. Yes, you are correct, we are making quilts of all sizes to donate to the Fisher house, which is like the Ronald McDonald house, but it serves those on the military base and the families that come there need housing and help while loved ones are in the hospital with very severe challenges and diseases. She has tracked down quilting frames and the Institute has told us they will purchase all the fabric she needs and supplies to tie the quilts. We will do it at the Institute building and will serve popcorn, donuts and drinks and have a great evening. We’re pretty sure we can get a good turnout.

Seems like there is just not a single pattern for any day or any week, because as we move our feet and are actively looking for ways to serve, it seems they just come, and they are the right thing for us to be doing.

 On a fun note, on Thursday night, we went chasing the northern lights again. This time, instead of going up to the mountain, we went down to the coast, and went down to the very point of Anchorage, which is at the end of the runway at the Anchorage international airport. That way we could look out over the water looking north of the channel and be able to see them.

You can see the whole big dipper in this one with a plane in the distance coming in for a landing.  Apparently, there was a lot of solar activity which is going to cause great activity with the lights. We went right after Institute and it was really cold 15°.  But we got down to the parking lot and we did see them, not as spectacular as the first time, but still were able to see them with the naked eye.  However, with my camera, the iPhone 14 pro max, the pictures were pretty phenomenal. It picks up things that you can’t see, so we saw a completely different show through the camera than through our natural eyes.  It was fun and the Badgers and the Kuerth’s came with us.   Here’s a couple more.