I love being a missionary!  And I love being a missionary in Alaska!  And I love serving as a CES/YSA missionary in Alaska! And I love my companion!!  And I love that we never have to get transferred or get another companion!!!  And we are so blessed to be in Alaska. Fun to look out our window and see our neighborhood friends.

If we were in Florida or West Virginia or Chicago, I think I would say the same thing about wherever & whatever we were doing, because I know the Lord knew where we should be.   I was meeting with our Institute Director, Justin Reeder this week and showing him some of the things on our Master Plan that we had been working on and finishing.  About ¾ of the way through our discussion, he stopped, turned and looked at me and said as he pointed to the things we were discussing “This is why you were sent to Alaska!  What you and Sister Cox are doing is exactly what we have been needing!” Covid took a major toll on the YSAs in Anchorage, in many ways.  So many of them have not returned and we need to find them.  But as I’ve said before, we need to implement the organization the Church has set up, get it going, use local members, to make a sustainable organization that will continue to grow after we go home.  It’s taking a huge amount of effort and working with people to get the ball rolling.  But we feel like we are getting some momentum and pray it continues.  It’s been a lot like setting up a new business, but harder when I’m not the boss, and its church, not work.  But my experience in setting up new businesses and re-organizing new wards 4 times in 5 years is working to our advantage in what we are doing.  Big difference is I don’t have the final say—so to speak.

We had a combined 3 Zone conference this week.  There were about 70 missionaries so a good size group.  That included for the first time the service missionaries and their leader.  Although we do not get involved in the proselyting practices, lessons, presentations and breakout groups, in zone conferences, we decided to meet during the breakout sessions with the service missionaries, and had some good discussions. One was:

·       “begin with the end in mind”. That has to do with the big picture & daily picture as well.

·       In the big group, we talked about accountability to God for our goals and what we want to accomplish. In order to be accountable, we should set daily attainable goals, and begin the day committed to each other & to God to accomplish, what we decide to do.

So, these two principals were what they were teaching to the young missionaries. I was thinking, good grief, how many times in my life have I heard that?!!  So instead of tuning it out, I tuned in and thought how can we use these principals in our companionship? 

Now, the one of the biggest obstacles that I am facing here on the mission is the morning time. It is so hard for me to get to clear my head and get my body moving.  I am not like my companion who wakes up, gets out of bed and by the time she is to the closet, she is in her workout clothes and chomping at the bit to get going—or do whatever we’re going to do.  I am still struggling to sit up in bed, let alone be ready to leave and go walk at the mall or outside.  It usually takes me a least a half hour and then wash my face with ice cold water to finally start to come alive.  Then I’d have to get dressed yada, yada, yada.

Although I’ve been sleeping much better it doesn’t seem to improve those first shining moments of the day!  It may be/might have a tiny bit to do with my advancing years, because I know I’m not the only senior missionary battling this.  It has made our mornings really out of sync and we just can’t seem to get on the same morning page.  The morning is our study time, prep time, planning time, etc.   Carolee and I talked after the conference about these principals and how we could implement them into our missionary work.  So after much conversation, we have decided to have our planning meeting at noon every day. Since we effectively work the swing shift our nights don’t get over till around 9:30 PM.  From noon to 9:30 is a pretty long day being at it.  And it worked great this week!  I can’t believe that it took 5 months into our mission to be able to figure out our mornings!  In that planning meeting, we will then be able to begin with the end in mind—decide what we want to accomplish that day and make sure that what we are doing fits into our long-term goals. This helps us prioritize what we do each day, then be accountable to ourselves, to each other, and to God each day. At the end of the day, we report how we did. If we did not do so good, we can repent and try to get better the next day. We are not perfect, but we need to be trying our best. 

That’s what my comp keeps telling me.  And she is a really, really good comp!!!

 We had some fun activities this week that Carolee covered in her entry.  I have an additional picture of the outhouse races that was pretty creative.  A group entered as the Bob Ross Pine trees.  You’ll see they all had wigs like his hair and a pine tree attached to the back of the outhouse.  Can’t you still just see Bob Ross painting a pine tree and talking in his low monotone voice?

Think Groundhog Day...                                                                                                        

This Fur Rondy celebration as they call it here is short for Fur Rendezvous.  We were able to see the Open World Championship Sled Dog Race from a trailhead right by the Institute.  The teams ran a 26 mile course on Fri, Sat & Sunday and then added their times to see the winner.

The trail was freshly groomed then had 3 new inches of snow, so it was beautiful.  I imagine that some of those teams will be in the Iditarod which starts this weekend. We will be able to volunteer  for that, so that is coming next week. 

This is Gary's favorite thing!  I want it to keep snowing and snowing.  I know, I'm weird. There is snow everywhere, piles are deep on streets, main roads are mostly clear but with a center strip  of ice on each lane.  All subdivision roads are snow packed. And the front loaders and dump trucks never stop hauling snow away and putting it in huge piles that are 3 or 4 stories tall.  Bulldozers just keep plowing it up higher and higher.  Some are saying that the piles may not melt this summer.😕  

Carolee mentioned in one of her posts about being grateful for not having headaches anymore.  My sister Diane asked about her headaches, so I felt it deserves an entry since it is a major miracle in our lives. 

Carolee’s Miracle.

For almost her whole life, Carolee wakes up with a major headache.  Not migraines, but most days it takes 2 Excedrin & 45min of intense exercise to get rid of them.

We are always on the lookout for something to help. She has always had bad posture and in the last 20+ years standing in front of her quilting position like she’s looking at a phone did not help the issue.  We’ve looked into exercise routines, stretches, PT, diet, sugar and everything else we could think of. To no avail.  Excedrin has been a way of life for many years. 

So sometime in January, I got an ad on Instagram, that talked about this wheel thingy that is 4 inches in diameter and the claim is that it places your neck at the correct angle which helps stretch the muscles and corrects the curvature of the neck. When used for 10-20 minutes a day, it claims will eliminate a neck hump and relieve neck pain and headaches. It has a channel for your spine to keep it straight. It is called a Chirp Wheel for 29 bucks on Amazon.   Sometimes she doesn’t like my Amazon solutions.  So, I bought it without telling her (you did what??) and while it was on its way, she had a conversation with some other sister missionaries about some of the health and neck challenges they were having.  Since I hadn’t told her about my purchase, that conversation facilitated her listening to me and she was more willing to give it a try.   

She has been using it now for almost 4 weeks and it has totally eliminated her headaches!

She lays on it before she goes to bed, it stretches her neck out and Wala the miracle happens!! No headache in the morning.  I don’t even ask her anymore; she has moved the extra Strength Excedrin into the medicine cabinet instead of her night stand!  It is a life changing miracle for her and us.  One we have been praying for for a long time.

Snow sculptures at                                                                             Fur Roundy.

This is what the roundabouts can look like, but its also what every cul de sac looks like.  It is crazy awesome!! 😄

 Gary has had a miracle too.

My struggle sleeping at night because of neuropathy is old news and well documented, I think.  I take Lyrica twice a day to be able to stay sane.  However, laying down and having my feet up triggers pain that I have a hard time dealing with.  So, I take Lyrica and a Tylenol PM at night.  Sometimes I can fall asleep before the reaction to lying down hits and sometimes I can’t.  Most of the time I can sleep about 1-3 hours without waking up from the pain. The Tylenol PM is supposed to help me go back to sleep.  But not so helpful...so some nights I am up for hours.  I am usually so drowsy from the meds that I can’t read, so I resorted to playing mindless games on my phone and finding any comfort food I could place my hands on or invent.  Needless to say, the quality of sleep has been pretty poor and the affect on my waistline pretty profound!   

So next is how things came together in my mind that resulted in a paradigm shift for me.

We have become fans of the series The Chosen.  I will not defend nor advocate our position, so just hear me out.  In the 1^st season, and in sporadic spots throughout the next season, I noticed that when it shows Christ or any of the Apostles go to bed, as they lay down, blow out the candle, they say a prayer. The prayer is usually a recitation from the Law of Moses that goes something like: Blessed art Thou Oh God, the king of the universe, the creator of all things, etc. etc. and then Bless my eyelids to sleep and body to rest—something like that.

Then, in Come Follow Me we talked about the condescension of God, and how far he condescended from his throne next to Elohim, the Highest of the High, to the lowest station of human life in order to sink below all to know how to succor his people. That reminded me of how great He truly is!

And made me question, how often do I recognize His greatness? Or praise Him on a consistent high enough level?  So I decided to start doing that as I went to bed.  At first it was a bit awkward trying to insert it into a typical prayer, but I realized that in our culture of praising him, and acknowledging his greatness is usually expressed as hymns.  So now as I go to sleep, I am reciting the words to hymns that praise Him.  How Great Thou Art, I Stand All Amazed, Praise to the Lord, the Almighty the King of Creation, Praise Ye the Lord, etc.   

The impact has been huge for me! I have fallen asleep so quickly, even with my toes, feeling like they were going to burn a hole through the mattress, even with my feet feeling swollen, prickling and numb, it did not matter—I went to sleep. And even though, I awake during the night, if I will go back to bed soon, and repeat the same process I go back to sleep quickly, with fewer times awake till morning.

I keep track of my sleep with my Fitbit. It has been amazing to watch my sleep scores go up. I still do have some bad nights, but this is a miracle for me to be able to get the sleep I need. Last night I slept for 8 1/2 hours and got the highest sleep score ever. My stake president blessed me in my setting apart, that I would get enough sleep to carry out my labors. It took me a while, it took watching the Chosen and remembering in the Book of Mormon, where it tells us to pray, as we lay down to sleep.  But this has been like Alma & his people being strengthened to bear the burdens placed upon them. The burden is not gone, but for now I am able to bear the burden I am carrying. 

Both of these “miracles” are a testimony to me that my Heavenly Father is aware of me & Carolee.  We have not asked why we have had to carry these burdens, but we have faith in the Lord that He will take care of us.  I am so happy that he has relieved Carolee of her burden and that I’m able to get better sleep.

When you look for them, little miracles or divine interventions are happening all the time.  We can identify them almost daily.

The gospel is true; Jesus loves us; we love you all and pray for you always.  Gary