Flood the Stake with B of M's

This week was absolutely incredible. Elder Birth and I have been able to find TWO elect investigators this week through tracting! We of course have followed up with them already. It's been awesome answering their questions and teachings short and simple gospel principles.

Kevin is one of them. He says he recently moved up here from Anchorage and has talked with missionaries in the past. He informed us on his beliefs. He comes from a Catholic background and attends church services there regularly. Even though he doesn't agree with everything the Catholic church teaches, he sees the imprtance of church so he attends there. He stated to us his desires of a great community, a stronger family, more truths from God, and to learn about our prophet. You can imagine how excited I was to tell him everything. From a strong community, to God revealing his word today. We kept the visit short. We informed him we would return again soon. He even wants to meet a member of our church. We hope to have a member come introduce themself next time we meet. This is so exciting!

Zone conference and Stake conference was this week. This week has seemed to be incredibly busy with meetings.

Elder Birth and I were invited to give a training to all the Bishops and Stake Presidency within the Stake. We invited them to continue to fulfill the stake vision. To flood the stake with the Book of Mormon. We talked about sharing and reading just one or a few verses with the people we give copies to. A lot of people can get scared by the B of M because of how many pages are in the book. The missionary department in SLC has been putting a huge emphasis on sharing and reading simple verses and chapters with nonmembers. We also talked a lot on following up and helping this vision not end with just handing out copies. It was awesome to see how the missionaries are working as one with the stake and ward members in fulfilling our purpose.

Every week seems to get better and better as well as faster and faster.

Elder Ogden

Knocking Doors is Pretty Fun:

Solid week up here in the AK.

We've been keeping busy with some tracting. A lot of the people we're teaching right now have been super busy. Some are on vacations. Others have been jam packed with working two jobs. So we've been able to meet some new people through our tracting efforts. I don't know why but once you get in the grove of knocking doors it actually becomes pretty fun. We certainly run into interesting people.

Daniel Haddox, our recent convert has been taking the new member lessons. He's nine years old and amazes me with how smart he is.

Elder Dunn, one of my previous companions, is now in our zone. It's been fun catching up with him and talking about good times when we served together in Petersburg a year ago. Crazy how fast time flies by.

Have a great day!

Elder Ogden

Moving Hay for Dogs:

Hey. This week was absolutely incredible. I don't have a whole lot of time so here's a quick update. 

The stake put on a talent show this past Saturday night. It was a great event for all the youth in the community. Members and nonmembers were there to participate and enjoy the show. All the missionaries in the zone were ushers. Great way to meet new people.

We've been taking advantage of the warm weather recently by spending as much time going door to door. We've been able to see some great success through our most recent tracting efforts.

All of the missionaries in the zone and all of the missionaries from the language zone helped with service this past week. We spent most of Thursday unloading and moving hay for the upcoming Iditarod. This was my first time helping out with the Iditarod. It's really neat to see how everyone in the community comes together for the love of dog sled racing.

Anyways that all from me. I hope you all have a great week.

Broom sticks are perfectly Balanced:

Solid week out here in Bear Mountain. Elder Birth and I have been busy with meeting new people and continuing to work with the investigators we currently have.

MLC was this past week. All the zone leaders serving outside of Anchorage get to spend the night at the mission home the night before the meeting. It's always fun seeing and catching up with some friends. It's pretty wild how serving in Alaska you never get to meet some missionaries or see friends for months. Some missionaries literally travel a few hundred miles to come particpate in meetings. MLC was inspiring as always.

As a zone we got together and tracted in an area on Saturday Morning. I always love doing these big tracting sessions. It's cool to have a bunch of missionaries come into an area and knock out a neighborhood.

Elder Birth blew my mind this past week. He showed me how most all broom sticks are perfectly balanced. I didn't believe him at first but then he showed me and I couldn't deny it. Maybe some of you already know about that but I didn't so I of course had to take a pic.

 Have a great week.

Elder Ogden

          

                

You always have your eyes peeled serving in Alaska. Moose can sneak up on ya at any time especially when you walk around a corner to knock on someone's door.