Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

This week was a hoot and a holler. I got to go on exchanges for three days. Our investigator gave me an awesome present. We had Christmas. Got to FaceTime the family.

I got to go on exchanges with Elder Janes for three days while Elder Hoyer and Elder Taylor went to Valdez to check up on those missionaries. It was really crazy looking after two areas. Elder Janes and I stayed busy 24/7.

There's this awesome neighborhood all lit up with lights. The best part is that it's tuned into a radio station so the lights are set up to match certain notes on different songs. Everyone goes to it pretty much every week so we decided to stop by. I took a video. I'll attach it below.

We taught Dawn again. This time her family was there as well. They actually came to church on Christmas which is a huge step for them. Dawn has been hoping and working with them trying to get her kids involved which will then lead to her husband getting baptized. She's amazing. She hopes her husband gets baptized soon that way he can baptize his daughter. The family still has a ways to go so it won't be anytime soon but it's still incredible seeing the progress they are making. Dawn actually got me a gift since I've been here so long and have taught her everything. She gave me a silver token with my name and the Ten Commandments engraven on it. It's amazing. The reason why she put the Ten Commandments on there is bc when we taught her the Ten Commandments the spirit was so strong. The lesson went on for over two hours, and at the end we all just started crying. It was weird but awesome. By far one of the best experiences on my mission.

We went to our first counselor in the mission presidency's house for Christmas Eve. We went as a zone since he lives really close. It's was pretty fun. He's been holding on to our presents for the past two weeks so the best part was actually getting the presents we should have had earlier.

 Facetiming the family was fun.

 Happy New Years

                              

Christmas gift from investigator Dawn

                                 

                               Facetiming with Bennett!                             

 

Every year our family gets matching PJ's

for all the cousins. So I sent matching 

jammies for Bennett and Elder Hoyer!

All he needs for Christmas is a Flowbee!

Not a whole lot has happened this weeek. The only exciting thing is that we had Zone Conference. Elder Hoyer and I have been struggling to find effective work recently. We have plenty of stuff to do but nothing really effective. That's been a bummer.

I tried cutting my hair again. It didn't work out too well. I started out by doing the sides and back with a number four (attachment on the hair cutter) and thought it looked good. I started to feel a bit more confident and decided I could do the top. I grabbed the biggest size I could see and just went straight down the middle up top. I looked in the mirror and said "oh fetch!" I guess the biggest size was a five and I had no clue as to how to clean it up and make it even so my hair has been looking a bit spotty these past few days.

We had the Valdez Elders come stay with us for Zone Conference. They spent two nights. It was super fun having them stay. It was Elder Stoddard and his companion. Elder Stoddard and I came out together and became pretty good friends. We pretty much stayed up all night talking. Zone Conference was pretty fun as well. I was dead tired after sitting in the same room all day.

Happy Holidays

Here's a photo of the Palmer Zone. Idk why my forehead is so shiny but whatever it is here it is.

Baby isn't cold outside...and inside!

Hey. This week has been solid. The heat in our apartment went out again. It's so cold my eyelashes keep freezing together. The Palmer Stake put on this nativity show for all of Palmer and Wasilla. Church was only 45 mins long. The way it's supposed to be.

This week our apartment's heat has been off. It was absolutely freezing. It was the worse feeling. We would come home after a long day in the cold and have no source of heat. We literally ran a little space heater in the bedroom 24/7. We did all our planning, exercises, studying, eating, etc in the bedroom. The only time we would leave the room was to shower and get ready for the day. Even then we didn't spend a whole lot of time in the actual apartment. It got to the point where I cold see my breathe in the apartment. To our joy our landlord responded and helped get the heat running again. We are now back into the swing of things as usual.

Its been getting really cold up here. As I always write about. But for some reason our mission president has really been pushing getting outside and talking to people on the streets. It's really funny because there's literally no one outside so it makes it really difficult to accomplish anything. It really only works for the missionaries down in Anchorage. Just the other day we were walking in the streets looking for people and my eyelashes would get stuck together. It got so cold they were freezing together as I blinked. It's crazy. The worse part is everyone says this is warm for this time of year. 

The Palmer stake has an annual nativity show. They get everyone from the community to bring nativities from all over the world, big and small, traditional and crazy. It was awesome. They also have live nativities with kids. It was unbeleiveable to see every room in the church building filled with hundreds of nativities. It was absolutely amazing. Everyone from Palmer and Wasilla as well as people from Anchorage come up to see it. It goes on Saturday and Sunday so our church services were shorter. We only had sacrament meeting for 45 minutes. That was neat.

Anyways hopefully it gets warmer or snows more. One of the two.

Elder Ogden

We have to dress all the up for the outside

Bennett's doing all the talking:

This week has been pretty neat. Elder Hoyer is officially my new companion. We attended a surprise party for this random old man. We had the Ward Christmas party. It's finally cold outside.

Elder Hoyer is really different from Elder Agad and Elder Bacon. That's for sure. Elder Hoyer isn't very social. He likes to stay quiet. It forces me to do all the talking, which is interesting. It's definitely going to be an interesting transfer serving with him. He's been telling me a lot of stories how he reports people to president. There's a good number of Elders in this mission who don't really like him for that reason so I'm kinda seeing this transfer as a test from president. Jk. But for real it probably is. 

On Saturday we got this text from Linda inviting us to her 89 year-old fathers surprise birthday party. Linda is a lady we accidentally visited. For some reason when we showed up at her door we were planning on meeting Alvin, a potential investigator who apparently doesn't live there. Linda is super Jewish. she goes to Jerusalem at least once a year and plans on moving there. The one time we met her she talked for hours. Anyways she invited us to this surprise party so we decided to go. When we showed up there was only five other people, a pastor and his wife, Linda, and three random old ladies. It was odd. The only gift we found that we could give was a physical copy of 17 Miracles. Hopefully the old man watches it. The pastor gave us a weird look when he saw what it was. Lol.

We had the ward Christmas party on Saturday. That was super fun seeing everyone at the church. It was amazing seeing our investigators being involved with the church. It's getting cold here. That's for sure. It dumped just the other day leaving a bunch of snow. I had to pull out the sorrels.

Happy holidays
Elder Ogden

Staying in Fishhook:

This week has been interesting to say the least. We went hiking at Hatchers Pass, we had Thanksgiving, we received transfer calls, and went to a Baptism.

On payday we went hiking at Hatchers Pass. It was pretty fun. Elder Bacon and I came up to a lake and decided to walk on it. It looked all the way frozen. We started walking out towards the center of the lake and all of the sudden we heard this deep crack. We immediately stood still. It sounded like the ice cracked on the entire lake. It was super freaky. We didn't go any further.

We spent Thanksgiving with the Deans family in the ward. They had a lot of friends over. It's a big thing in Alaska to spend the holidays with friends because nobody really has family near them.

We also had the opportunity of seeing an investigator get Baptized in the Matanuska ward. I was able to help teach her for multiple lessons simply because Elder Agad could speak Tagolag to her. She's the Philippino that fed us the nasty egg thing.

We also got transfer calls. We had to wait till Saturday morning. We were left freaking out all night because we had no clue as to what was going to happen. We'll to my surprise Elder Bacon is leaving and I'm staying. I'm going to be spending six months in Fishhook. Possibly seven and a half.  I honestly have no clue as to why I'm staying here for so long.

My next companion is going to be Elder Hoyer. Everyone who's served with him has told me I'm going to hate my life. One elder who I talked to broke his own hand out of anger because Elder Hoyer drove him crazy. I am so scared to serve with him. Sorry for the short email. I didn't have a lot of time this week.

Elder Ogden

Looking super cold in Alaska!

The District

Interesting Referrals:

This week has been great, as always in Fishhook. I got a jumpsuit, went on a three day exchange, have a new investigator who wants to be baptized, also had an interesting conversation with a Baptist Pastor.

Last Monday we went thrift store shopping. Again. This time I stumbled upon a bright orange jumpsuit. I immediately said to myself I have to have it. At the same time I realized it would be pointless to buy it because when would I ever wear it. But, I bought it anyway. I also found a hat that went with it so I had to grab that on the way out as well. It's probably one of the best things I've ever seen at a thrift store. The sisters in our district were giving me the dirtiest looks when they saw me. 

Elder Bacon took a trip out to Valdez for three days with one of our Zoneleaders so Elder Brown and I stayed back looking after both areas. It was very hectic. There was definitely a lot of work to be done. It was super fun serving with him for three days mainly because he's super chill and Elder Bacon's kinda the opposite.

We haven't been able to do any tracting this week. It's been getting freakin cold. On Saturday we went district tracting. Everyone wore heavy duty clothes trying to keep warm. Unfortunately we only lasted twenty minutes until we all agreed to head back to the cars. The worse part about it is that this is a really warm winter so far. There hasn't been an extreme amount of snow. Mild wind. The sun's kinda out. But for the most part it's just fetching freezing for no apparent reason.

We've been receiving a lot of referrals from other missionaries or members. We received one of a man named Phill. He seriously knows absolutely nothing about the gospel. He grew up in a JW (Jehovah Witness) family and at the age of 18 he decided to read a little more about other religions. Because of that decision his family disowned him, won't talk to him, won't acknowledge him or anything. It's super sad. But he's been feeling a lot of love from the members and finally knows what it means to feel the Holy Ghost so he's eager to come to church each Sunday. He's amazing. All of our investigators are amazing. I seriously cant believe how lucky I got with my first area. Our investigator Dawn Dominico has been setting up her appointments and bringing her own fellowshippers as well as reading all the material we ask of her. I wish I could stay here for another four months but, unfortunately transfer calls are coming up and I'll most likely be sent down to Anchorage. It's bound to happen sooner or later.

Another referral we received recently was a man named Bill. We knew nothing about him other than his address. So we stopped by Saturday, not thinking much about it. Maybe share a quick message. Bill turned out to be a Baptist Pastor. He has written six pages of reasons as to why the 13 Articles of Faith are wrong. He had actually met missionaries before and handed them these papers a while ago. Well . . . the missionaries gave us these papers in first transfer and they've been sitting under my books for months now. I never planned on meeting this man because the papers were full of contention. But this random referral we had just now received was this man. So we went through the Articles of Faith with him. It took over three hours. I never thought I would talk so much on such a simple thing. The worse part was the fact that he didn't agree with the third Article of Faith. He thought all you had to do was accept Christ and your saved. According to him you can say you've accepted Christ then go sin all you want as long as you confess Jesus Christ is your savior and redeemer. I can't describe how frustrated I was. It was unbelievable. But we did leave him with a Book of Mormon. So that's good.

 I also drove past the five time Iditarod champ while he was training again. This time I got a video. 

Elder Ogden
                      

The Orange Suit                                            One of the roads we drove on

Don't mix Dinner with Politics:

Alaskan 40 mark: 20lbs down. 20lbs to go. I don't know if I was already at 20lbs but I weighed myself the other day and saw that.

This week was eventful in a way. Trump was elected president, we had interviews with President and went to the Temple.

We don't hear a lot of info being out in the mission field. The stuff that we do hear is all biased from people we talk to. Alaska is really into politics so they all try to bring it up in any conversation. The night Trump was elected we had dinner at a crazy members house. He is a HUGE Trump supporter. It was the weirdest thing. He started out by telling us about the election then somehow started talking about Muslims and other Middle-Eastern groups and how evil they all are. He started yelling about the Tribes of Israel and how the Muslims are horrible people. In all this his family was just laughing and cheering him on. He was cussing left and right. Elder Bacon and I had no clue what to do. We're not allowed to talk anything about politics. I seriously can't describe how weird it was because he's talking about a horrible thing yet he was using scriptures. Alaskans really get into their politics.

We also went to the temple. It's always amazing going there. I love the Anchorage temple so much. It's so cool how small it is yet it's still really functional. And it helps that the paintings on the walls are absolutely stunning. Interviews were chill. Nothing crazy happened. Except our zone have some Elders that are pretty bad. I asked them how it went. They both said President and his wife were crying because of the things these Elders have been doing. I don't know how it is in other missions, but there's a lot of missionaries that do apostate things here. 99% of the reason for that is because all the missionaries are so spread out. President is literally flying all over Alaska each month. We keep visiting Chickaloon. It's really pretty out there but the people are absolutely crazy. Every time we mention it members tell us to be extra safe out there. We've been good so far. Here's a fun scripture a member showed us in regards to the election.

Helaman 5:2-3 Helaman 7:4-5


Elder Ogden

                    

        Zone Temple Trip                                               Bennett & Elder Bacon

                                                                Road Kill