Winter Isn't Quite Here.

The daylight hours are still pretty normal here, the sun is down by 7:30. I'll make sure to let you know when daylight is getting weird.

My companion said something really funny this morning. "It's going to be weird going back home because at church we won't hear anymore hunting testimonies where people have lost sight of a moose, and found it right after praying."

Gotta love Alaska.

Something interesting about the fashion here: back at home there were certain shoes and brands that were really popular, and shoes that everyone wore. Well here, you are in with the fashion crowd if you wear Extra Tuf boots or Bogs. Kind of like Vans or Toms or Nikes are popular back at home, Extra Tufs and Bogs are popular here. The difference is that they are actually pretty good quality footwear.

Colombia, The North Face, and Carhartt are among the popular brands here as well.

The Reindeer Farm is holding an annual Fall Festival, which we have the privilege of helping with. It is a lot of fun, and a great way for people to see our missionary badges. We helped out at the potato launching station and the hay maze. I got to stand on top of all the hay bales and give assistance to those who couldn't find a way out. (Mostly to little kids). It was a lot of fun.

We ate dinner at a campfire, and I got some pretty sweet pictures on the frozen ice bank.

The boy who was poached from us was baptized this Saturday. It was awesome. The font is in the mother's lounge, which is extremely small. Everyone packed in there to watch the ordinance, and we stood outside in the hallway. We didn't see the actual baptism, but boy could we feel it. I was standing in the hall listening, and then all of a sudden I got a super punch from the Spirit. It was crazy how extreme the feeling was. I didn't know what it was at first, because I was just standing there, and I didn't connect it with the baptism. My heartbeat was going extremely fast and I felt super warm inside. After a little bit of thought I realized what it was. "Did you feel that?" I asked my companion, "You bet I did. That was a good one." was his reply. It was an awesome experience to be able to distinguish and identify the Spirit. It's cool because I can disprove the theory that it was a Placebo effect, because I didn't even watch the baptism! I wasn't even in the room! And I still was hit by a spiritual train. It was awesome.

We were super tired today, so after personal study, we began our comp study with a prayer, did the necessary things, and then laid in bed as we listened to some general conference talks. It was a great comp study :) Don't worry, that's definitely not how we usually study. It was just a P-day style comp study!

Comp study p-day style.

Elder Nichols dared us to try and hit him. He was standing out in the field photographing us as we shot him. I'm gathering my ammo.

Remember the picture of the trucks in the water? That was knik river. It had overflowed. Now look at it. A glacier is at the head of this river, so once it froze, the water stopped. I'm walking out in the middle of it.

We pulled over and took this picture. This is courtesy of Elder Nichols camera. It's a bit nicer than mine :) We took this picture on the bridge. We cross this bridge almost everyday.