September 8,2024

So everyone, this is the last hurrah!  We finish our mission and leave Alaska on Wednesday  9/11/2024. So we only have 2 days left in Alaska!  Totally hard to believe its been a year.  

 

Sisters Soderberg, Paul & Rasmussen (L to R) during 
District Council

We have had a great week! We fed our district a waffle, bacon & eggs breakfast Monday morning at the Institute as part of district council and had a great testimony Meeting with them! We are again really impressed with these missionaries. Again, to watch these missionaries, in a self-directed meeting talk about such truths was so impressive.  We know all missionaries are not like this, but almost all that we have gotten to know are.   It was a new way to celebrate Labor Day!!  We were asked to sub in early morning seminary on Tuesday, so Gary prepped most of the afternoon!  I started packing and organizing.  Since there was no FHE due to Labor Day, we went down to Ocean View Bluff Park and went for a hike along the coast in a beautiful, dense forest. 

Ocean View Bluff Park-we hiked in the forest to the left

It had been raining so the trail was a little sloppy.  But it was an adventure as we traversed a trail that was not visible from the viewpoint.  We love our out of the  way adventures where we see little hidden jewels.  

Tuesday we taught early morning seminary at the Institute building, the 9th-10th graders. It starts at 7 now due to school start changes, so not too bad--better than 6:00AM!  Lesson was from Helaman, on prophets, so a great one! I can't believe how much we gain from teaching.  I (Gary) do most of the in front of class teaching, but during our prep time, we are discussing concepts, principles that we want to teach and then discuss questions to ask, approach to take.  It is very helpful for me.  Then Carolee will take a part to teach in almost every lesson.  It has been a great formula for me as she helps me stay focused on topic, gives me different perspective and tells me when what I'm doing makes no sense.  I really appreciate her input and support.  We balance each other well as we seem to do.  

After class, we helped the other teacher with some technical problems she was having.  Once it was fixed I turned to walk from around the podium and tripped over the cord from the TV we were hooked to.  I went down hard on my artificial knee and my hands.  Carolee said I jumped up like I was a teenager and I said I was ok.  Chatted for a few more minutes as I showed her my "clicker" to advance the power point presentation with blue tooth.  I didn't want her to feel bad since she was warning me about the cords as I was falling to the ground.  I should have been more careful.  But I was really hurting.  My wrists were sore and my knee was screaming at me.  The next day I could hardly walk, but each day is a little better.  It's Sunday now and it still hurts to go down stairs, but I can sleep without Advil. 😬 

We went souvenir shopping while we were out cause we were out!  We are getting short on time!  Then we went to the institute at noon and I spent most of the afternoon cleaning then making bread for Institute class. We didn’t have missionaries or others so it was quiet! Justin has a great class on the Book of Revelation. I think we had 25 kids there.  No bread left that night!  Carolee has become famous for her bread, dinner rolls and cinnamon rolls--and raspberry jam.  It is such a treat for everyone, even the Stake Presidency who meets there.  If they time the end of their meeting just right, a hot piece of homemade bread is a pretty sweet ending to their night. Most of the time we don't get a slice, so no bread is part of the gift!

Wednesday morning was my last temple day! I was a follower on the first session!  She was sweet to have me do that.  I really hope I will be able to continue working after we return home!  They were very sweet telling me goodbye!  We usually go back to the temple in the evening but a senior sister missionary was showing the movie Escape from Germany at the Institute bldg. so we went to help her and enjoyed the movie with her, Sister Watanabe, Sister Badger and a few friends!  We provided popcorn from our movie theater style popcorn maker.  President Azimi wasn’t sure the movie night is a good idea so don’t know where that is going!  

Also found out that Jarilyn is having a boy!! We are thrilled for her Benny to get a brother along with his 3 sisters!

Due to our Wednesday schedule we went to the temple on Thursday morning!  I love it and the 7 minute drive will be missed!  I did make cinnamon rolls for Thursday night institute. Another last!  We had 12 kids there which was great.  Our last night with Patti Kinkaid. We sure love her! Her and her husband Darrell have become loyal friends and we will miss them.  She has such a pure, innocent spirit that we just love.  We will continue to study the book about gift of repentance from Elder Anderson.

BYU had a football game on Friday so after some errands in the morning, we enjoyed the game and I mended missionary pants!  BYU won, so obviously that was good and Staci and James  and Dallin were there! It was a fun game!  

Saturday,  our last p-day! Carolee was packing (I have not started yet. I am in denial that we are really leaving)  and we spent some time writing talks for speaking in the YSA group in the North Anchorage Stake.  So we decided to have one last adventure so we drove up North to Arctic Valley to see the leaves.  After we were going to Falls Creek down Turnagain Arm to the south of Anchorage, to hike the trail! 

(The following is Carolee's version of a story in 51 words.  If that works for you, then skip the next paragraph where I will tell you the story, not just the facts! 😁)

Carolee:  Lo and behold we had out miracle at the last hour and saw our first bears, crossing Seward Highway!  

Bears!!!  The other cub was a slow poke.

A black bear and two cubs!! Our first, at week 50 in Alaska and with 4 days left here!! It was the last thing on the bucket list!  We can go home now!!

Gary's bear story...I shouldn't have to say this, but every word in my story is true, without embellishment, exaggeration, or stretching the truth.  There is no "binging" going on.  I promise. 

So, after I pushed the 650 pound dead grizzly bear off my chest and holstered my 357 magnum pistol that was still hot from emptying the whole magazine into the grizzly's open gaping mouth,  I checked to see if everyone else was ok...😂

Ok, so here's the bear story.  To preface this story,  we have seen bears before, but we really wanted to see an Alaskan bear in the wild.  It was on our bucket list for our time here and we have gone 360 day without seeing one.    We left our house and as we just started going, I remembered that we hadn't brought our walking poles.  We usually have them in the car but we had emptied the car to clean it for the next missionaries coming in.  So we turned around and went back and got them. We drove off and about the same place, I asked Carolee if she had closed the garage door cause I couldn't remember doing it, so we turned around and sure enough we had not closed it.  So we headed out again and Carolee was cuing up a podcast for us to listen to, but was having some problems.  So before we got on the highway heading out of town, I pulled over and got it going.  We got out of Anchorage with the coast on one side and the mountains on the other.  suddenly the panel truck and car in front of us slowed down and moved a little left like they were going to make a left turn, but then they didn't turn.  In my typical aggressive, critical driving habit (one of these days my repentance will really stick) I was criticizing them when out of the corner of my eye I saw movement in the brush on the passenger side of the road.  I turned and looked and at first thought it was a big black lab dog!  But then I recognized the nose and yelled that it was a bear.  I pulled off immediately into the parking lot  of the Chugach State park and turned to see if we could see it in the brush.  Suddenly it was right to the side of us and it crossed the highway with a cub following it.  Traffic was stopped both ways--like Yellowstone.  Only they stop here, not to gawk, but to allow the bear to cross safely.  So it went off into the trees across and I noticed a road right across from me so we crossed the highway, just after the bears.  I looked back for a second and saw that traffic was still stopped because a 2nd cub was crossing the road.  We pulled into what apparently was a private driveway to see if we could see them.  The reason we went there, was because I got buck fever and I couldn't get my stupid phone to go to the camera and I didn't get a picture of them.  How could I prove to my family & friends that we saw a bear with no picture?  So as we were stopped, we saw the sign that it was a private driveway, so I stopped.  Just then a car pulled up behind me and honked his horn and yelled at me to leave that he lived up there.  So I moved over and let him speed by and suddenly the mama bear and one cub came out of the trees,

This is our Alaskan Black Bear. I think I'll name her "Miracle"

crossed in front of us and disappeared into the trees.  We could see the other cub still trying to get out of some underbrush to follow mama, but we left before he made it.  Now, as we thought of the events of us leaving this morning, if we had not been delayed by those insignificant little things, we would not have seen these bears.  Some call that a coincidence but we don't believe in those any more--they are divine interventions, tender mercies or tiny miracles.  Some people may think it silly to think that, but we had been longing to have that experience, but never shirked our responsibilities to go seek them out.  I think that the Lord is very aware of each of us and it makes me feel like he is in the very details of our lives. Besides, what harm would there be to make this experience happen for us?  It brought a bit of joy to our day and I personally am very grateful for it.  

So, there you have it, 695 words, not counting the Grizzly bear introduction or this explanation.  haha

Falls Creek

We continued on and hiked for up Falls Creek for about a half hour. It was pretty steep, but the name of the creek was accurate.  Beautiful little falls all the way down the mountain. 


Then another little adventure up Indian Creek where we saw more of beautiful Alaska.  We were so blessed to come here.  

We have just had an amazing Sunday day!  We went to the YSA for the last time and got to see a lot of our kids and tell them goodbye!  We then went and spoke at North Anchorage YSA. Very small group but some of our favs like Bishop Afatia, Fen, Cathy!!  After, I came home and made funeral potatoes to take to dinner at Reeders. We had a wonderful visit with them! They have been so kind and thoughtful to us and have become great friends. The highlight was our mission zoom tonight where our district reported finding 200 people this week! Four companionships!  What a huge increase in their teaching pool.  They were able to share with the whole mission some of the things they did and how they exercised their faith and how it just kept getting stronger.  And they remained humble, expressed gratitude and the Lord blessed them. They are such great kids! They are working their tails off. We are really proud of them!  The mission is pulling out of a major slump.

We clean and pack and go to last district meeting, FHE, and Institute and leave Wed morning!  We will shed some tears but we have loved it all and have no regrets!  We are grateful for our call here and the beautiful world we have enjoyed!  The people are amazing as they would be anywhere when you are in the service of our God!