MA & PA PAL

Journal Entry

2011-12-10T15:46:00.000-08:00

Dec. 10, 2011

Dear Family and friends,

We too are really missing our kids. We've been out almost a year and still have a year to go. What were we thinking! If the next year goes as fast as this one has, we'll still be home in no time at all. I can't believe how fast the weeks and months fly by! We have also talked about how sad it would be if our kids got so used to being without us they won't care when we get home, and they will be so involved with their friends and family they won't have time for us. We want to visit them in the spring after we get home on our way to Florida for our "Old Family" reunion! I think it will be really fun! Of course, we're not thinking about that right now, but will be next year at this time!

We do have time to reflect and read quite a lot, though we have been pretty busy this past week with a funeral on Friday, (the guy who was flown south, died of an aneurysm) getting the church ready for meetings on Saturday, conducting and holding meetings on Sunday (The branch president is still gone for a couple of more weeks), then spending Monday and Tuesday sawing up and splitting a second tree that blew down in the parking lot of the church. We hauled it over to a widow's house that heats with wood and now between this one and the one last month she has enough wood for the winter. She really appreciates it. I hope they are about done blowing over, though. When I was young it didn't take three days afterwards to recover! We had to split them all with a maul and wedges and it still feels like work! Then we stacked it on her porch so it will be out of the snow.

Wednesday we did the family history center in the morning, visited in the afternoon, and in the evening I helped teach the community woodworking class at the high school that I've been doing. Next week is the last night, but they asked if I could help again starting in January. It has given us a great opportunity to get to know fanatics. We have the blessing of our mission president to do so. Of course I'm doing it as community service and not getting paid for it. The guy I teach with (the official teacher) attends the Baha’i church with his wife, and the other shop teacher doesn't go to church, but we found out his wife who lives in Montana is a member. She came to visit him for Thanksgiving, and we picked her up for church. She is a recent convert, and will be moving up next fall. We asked Darwin if he'd like to learn about what is wife believes and he said he's not ready yet, but will let us know when he is. Anyway, Thursday was our “P” day for washing, shopping and cleaning the house with Family History in the evening again, yesterday we helped a lady work out some problems with her home loan and insurance company, today we went to 33 mile with a young couple for hamburgers (the only place in the area for good ones), then came home and helped decorate the Christmas tree over at the church, then went and watched the “Snow Dragon” in the Community Christmas Parade. Also visited some less actives and made arrangements to pick them up for church tomorrow. So goes our weeks!

The weather here changes from month to month. Today's paper said we got 11 feet (135.8") topping the previous November record of 68". On December first it turned warmer and windy, thus the trees blowing down, as well as power lines. Weather has been into the 40s, we've also gotten about 10" of rain, so the snow level has dropped to about 18", and most of the roads are nearly clear. I'm really glad, I've been getting really tired of blowing the walks clear of snow every day, often with 2' of new snow. Today was cooler, about 32F, but crystal clear and sunny. The sun rises about 8:45, goes down by 3:15, but hey, any little bit helps! At noon it was barely above the mountains on the Southern horizon, goes down fast. When it does cool off in the evenings the roads get really slick, but at least we don't have to shovel it! We are warm and cozy in our little cottage, we have baseboard heaters heated by water from the church. Like heated floors, baseboards take a long time to respond, so we pretty much set it and leave it the same all the time. Sometimes it feels a little cool when it's windy, when it's nice it's a little warm, but we're definitely not complaining! The church system is heated with oil which is really expensive, but electricity is even more so, and they don't have natural gas available here. Many people spend $600-1200/month just for heating oil. We're really glad it's included with our cabin!

We are planning our branch Christmas party tomorrow; we'll have a dinner at the church, play a couple of games, and exchange "white elephant" gifts. The people seem to really like doing things, even though they are older. We changed it from next Saturday to Friday so one of the part member-less-active families could come, but the dad got a new job so he can't come anyway. His wife and two youngsters will be there. We are really hoping to teach him as we get to know him better. He works as a mechanic in a garage, but works half days Saturday and all day Sundays. Maybe pretty soon he can trade some weeks with others who work there.

Some of our dear friends from Whitehorse called and want us to come have Christmas dinner with them. We'd really love to, but can't unless President Lehman gets back from Washington and is feeling well enough to do without us. We won't know for another week or so. If all goes well, they should be back on the 20th or 21st. I hate to be gone the first week he gets back. We're still trying to find out what the Sunday schedule is for New Years this year. Is New Years Day going to also be Fast Sunday? What are they planning over there?

Well, I guess I'd better be going. I still need to do the paper program for church tomorrow; it's our primary program for our one kid in primary. He just turned 11 two weeks ago, so unless we get some more kids coming next year we'll have to cancel primary and start up a young men's program!

Hope things are going well for you. Did you have a good Thanksgiving? What are you doing for Christmas? We have loved getting family letters from some of you, especially with the pictures!

Love, Elder & Sister Powell

More Snow :)

2011-11-28T05:50:00.000-08:00

We got another 2 feet of snow last night. It brings our November total to 133". Right now it's raining, we hope it stays warm enough so it doesn't snow more tonight! I spent four hours shoveling and plowing this morning, then this afternoon the snow slid off the roof. I'm attaching a couple of pictures of our "partly cloudy."

Hope it's better tomorrow as we leave for Juneau! Love ya. Dad.

Troy & Emma’s Having a New Baby

2011-11-23T05:53:00.000-08:00

How exciting! You'll love this little girl just as much! Have you told the others yet? You really ought to tell Warren and Rachel. It is so much more fun to share your experiences, especially Rachel with her first one. Remember how exciting everything was with Emma when she was expecting Taya? (I know, that was a LONG time ago!) Anyway, tell them and be excited with them! Have you thought of a name for her yet?

It sounds like you're doing a lot of things with your new house. It was fun to get Olivia's message about getting to have snow and her own bed, plus Levi's blog about getting to burn brush and trees and have a wiener roast! That's the kinds of things the kids will love and remember more than anything. I remember the bonfires we had out in the back field when we burned the limbs and brush and junk we had collected, then had a wiener roast when it had burned down.

How are you coming on the remodeling? What are you doing about the plumbing in your new bathroom? Keep us informed with pictures, I wish we were there to be helping with it. It would be a lot more fun (and a lot warmer) than shoveling snow every day! We shoveled most of the day today, and we're supposed to get eight more inches tonight. At least maybe the snow you are getting will help lessen the drought you guys are having. Or is it farther west than you guys? We don't get much news here. We ordered a TV a couple of months ago and it still hasn't gotten here yet. Mail is slow in Alaska.

Tell everybody hello for us. My computer crashed and we have it patched back together a little at a time. Hope to get my Skype back up and running soon. Maybe we can Skype you guys for Christmas?

We sure love you. Dad.

Journal Entry

2011-11-18T05:40:00.000-08:00

18 Nov 2011

Hi all,

Things are going a little slower in Haines now, the snow has hit and so has the cold weather. We have about three feet on the ground now, temp today high of 8 degrees; wind chill is -21 with 30 mph winds. I guess it's a little earlier this year than it was last year, but normal for most years past. I guess they got a lot of rain last year but not much snow because it was warmer. This year it cooled off sooner so we got snow instead of rain.

We didn't have anything planned for Thanksgiving, several of the branch families are leaving to spend it with their families in Juneau and South, so we invited a couple of the widows to come have dinner with us. Well, it kind of snowballed, and it looks like we'll probably have 15 or so, we'll cook some of it here, some of it at the church, a couple of others will cook some and bring it. I think they just wanted a chance to visit and socialize. We're going to take some games over and play games after dinner. They have a fun card game here you play with five decks that is called "Hand and Foot" that we've learned how to play. We also play Farkle and "No Way, Jose," that's a lot of fun. We'll have to teach you some of them when we get back.

There isn't a lot to do here in the winter if you're not young enough to go skiing, snowmobiling, or hunting. We could go to Juneau shopping, but by the time you buy ferry tickets and hotels for two nights, it's $400 even if you don't buy anything! We are supposed to have a zone conference there the first week in December so we'll probably do some shopping while we are there. They pay our transportation, but we still have to pay our food and lodging, but at least that's about half the cost, so we're looking forward to it. I hope the weather is good, if it's stormy, the ferries don't run, so we might not be able to go, or might get stuck in Juneau till it clears. Oh, the joys of living in Alaska!

We had a wind come through the other night that snapped off a pine tree about 12" in diameter about 8' above the ground. Fortunately it fell diagonally across the parking lot, so it missed the shed, our car and our cabin. We need to go out and cut it up this afternoon, it's supposed to warm up to 9, but still with a wind chill of -15, but if we don't cut it up and it snows again we won't be able to cut it up and they won't be able to plow the driveway. We'll block it up and give the wood to one of the ladies in our branch that has a wood stove. She'll be really glad to get it.

Rachel is expecting, the baby is due in February. She was really sick the first four or five months, but is feeling better now in this last trimester. They are really excited. They are waiting until it gets here to find out if it's a boy or girl.

Warren is commuting to Pocatello or Idaho Falls to school every day. He is getting his masters from ISU, also interning at INL in Idaho Falls. We're REALLY glad to have them living in our house to take care of it while we are gone. They are paying all the utilities, insurance and taxes, plus any maintenance that is needed, so it works out really well for both of us. The commute was eating them alive, so they just bought a used Toyota Prius a few weeks ago. He is getting 58 miles per gallon with it consistently, so he says he isn't having ANY buyer’s remorse! They are selling their Subaru and his Dakota pickup to pay for it. He got it from a dealer in Salt Lake for $10,000, which is really a good price. It's a 2007 model with all the bells and whistles--backup camera, blue-tooth phone, Bose stereo system, the works. I told him to try to find us one in that price range to drive when we get back. Gas here is still $4.57/gal, and even with getting 20 mpg in our van, it would be nice to not have to pay $80 to fill up. The nice thing here is that we don't drive nearly as much as we did in Whitehorse where gas was a dollar more than here even.

It's good to hear that Kathy and Reed got a new Dodge van. Is it brand new? I think they are really nice, though I have talked to some people that said they don't think they are as good as the earlier ones. Of course they always say that when a new model comes out. Eric (Bev's boy) has a 2010 Chrysler and they love it. What color did they get? We are really enjoying our Toyota, haven't had any trouble with it other than I backed into our cabin in the snow the other night and broke out a tail light. I ordered another one online, but it takes six weeks or so to get it, so I bought a trailer taillight at the parts house and rigged it up so it will be legal till the new one gets here. Just a little "Mickey-mouse." I'm just glad it didn't do any damage to the fender or break out the back window! I'll bet Lainey is loving having the other van to haul her Cello around. Did they trade in their Malibu? I know they were a little disillusioned with it. They got pretty good mileage, but had it in the shop quite a bit.

The work is going a little slow, people don't get out as much when it gets dark by 3:45 and doesn't get light until 8:45 a.m. We are still visiting the branch members quite a bit, have spent a lot of time doing service for the older ladies. I fixed a couple of stoves, installed a window and a door, fixed several cars, and have spent a lot of time shoveling out cars so they can go to the store. We shoveled out Betty yesterday, the snow had blown level with the top of her car, and we shoveled out about 50' behind it to the road. The drifting reminds me a lot of Rexburg. At least it isn't storming, and the sunshine does a lot to lift the spirit. Also shoveled out Lucy where the plows had buried her car and pickup when they cleared the road behind her. Then jumped the pickup so she could get it down to the shop for a new battery. She is so amazing. She is 87 and still shoveling snow and captaining her own fishing boat. We went over and played Aggravation with her last week and she won both games! She is as sharp as a tack!

We are looking forward to church Sunday, our Stake President and one of the High Council are coming over to speak for High Council Sunday. I hope we have a good turnout. President Lehman and his wife are gone to the lower 48 for six weeks, two members are in the hospital, so it depletes our little branch quite a bit. When you have an average attendance of about 16, just a few is very noticeable!

Well, I guess I'd better go get ready to cut up this stupid tree. Hope you are doing well. Have a fun Thanksgiving! You will enjoy the family. That's the hardest part about ours--we will really miss being with family! We sure love you.

Dondavid and ReNee

Here is my thoughts on the snow. Mom

2011-11-14T05:46:00.000-08:00

Monday Nov 14, 2011

Haines

This week we had our first snow storm. At first I didn’t think it was so bad. It snowed maybe six inches and then it rained it all off on Friday. Sunday we got our first big storm. We got up and had probably a foot of snow. It continued to snow all day. By evening we had another eight inches,. We went to the Konahele’s for dinner and when we came out to leave two hours later, we had two-three feet of snow on the ground. We were grateful that we had gotten snow tires. Still we got stuck backing out of the drive and had to shovel a bit to get out. The roads in town weren’t plowed, and it was slow going home. Most of Haines is on a hillside, so there are a lot of up hills, and a lot of people slide off the side of the road. It costs $400 to get a tow truck to pull you out. It does remind you to be careful when driving. When we got home, we backed into our carport of trees and took our back light out on the side of the house. Still we were home safe. This morning we took one look at another additional foot of snow and realized we wouldn’t be going anywhere until we got plowed out. The snow plow came about 9:00am but told us we had better not go to town for awhile because the town roads weren’t plowed yet and there were two or three cars off the road on our hill. After he plowed and I took a look at the high banks of snow, I begin to wonder where he will put the rest of the snow this winter. The banks of snow are taller than our car right now. While it is rather fun in some ways, it appears this will be a long winter. Dad is out snow- blowing the sidewalks at the church, and our “carport,” and a trail to it—carport picture on the right. At least this gives him good exercise. It is still snowing, and they call these “now flurries.” The flurries consist of 8-12 inches according to the weather forecast. The flurry appears to last all day with just a steady light snow—but it lays done a lot. This is not a flurry in my book, but it is all in the perspective, right. In Alaska, flurries are the same as a major storm in Idaho. With some trepidation, I look forward to seeing a major storm. I guess it can drop 3-5 feet of wet snow in one storm if it blows in off the ocean. Hopefully, this doesn’t happen often. Well it is 4:00pm here and is dusk; it will be dark in half an hour. It is semi-light at 7:00am now —lighter by 8:00am. So that gives us about 8 hrs of light which isn’t a lot different from Rexburg. The sun isn’t up until around 10:00am though and never gets very high in the sky. It just kind of skims the edge of one set of mountains.

LDS Life

2011-11-13T06:07:00.000-08:00

Hi!

This was in the Rexburg Newspaper this week. I thought it was interesting that they put it in. We got an e-mail asking for some of our experiences, and I wrote this and told them they could edit it down to whatever they wanted. They pretty much put in the whole thing! Random!

Love, Dondavid.

Hibbard senior missionaries serving in Alaska and Yukon Territory

By DONDAVID & RENEE POWELL

Guest writers

We submitted mission papers a year ago in October and indicated we would be glad to serve wherever we were needed and for as long as the Lord would like us. In November we received our call to the Alaska Anchorage Mission for 23 months. We entered the mission home on Jan. 24 for orientation, and then drove our car to Bellingham, Wash., to catch a ferry to our first assignment.

Because our mission includes such a huge landmass, we were assigned to report directly to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, in Canada, instead of going first to the mission home in Anchorage. Whitehorse is a city about the size of Rexburg, the largest city and capital of the Yukon.

Our mission includes all of Alaska, the area of which is one-third the landmass of the United States, plus all of the Yukon Territory. Population wise, it is the smallest state, with fewer than 750,000 people in the whole mission. Anchorage is by far the largest city with just over 300,000 people, while Juneau, the state capital, is about the size of Rexburg with only about 30,000

It is the only state capital in the United States that you can’t drive to! You either have to fly in or take a boat. It is a beautiful city located right on the Inside Passage, with a major glacier (the Mendenhall Glacier) right in town, and you can see whales in the ocean from “The Road.” There is one major road called Egan Drive that is 50 miles long and follows the coast. All other Juneau roads connect to it.

Juneau is also the home of our stake center, and we have three wards there. There are no wards in the outlying areas yet, but we have several branches from Skagway down to Metlakatla, many of them on islands along the Passage. There is also a branch in Whitehorse that is nearly large enough to become a ward, and that is their goal. There are more stakes “up north.”

We served in Whitehorse for the first six months of our mission, and shared many wonderful teaching experiences there. We also learned much about the history of the area, as Whitehorse was a major launching place during the Klondike Gold Rush. It is also where the ore was transferred from Yukon riverboats to the train to be transported to Skagway to be shipped south for refining.

One of our early challenges when we reached Whitehorse was to get used to the cold. When we got to Whitehorse, the temperature got up to minus 25 degrees. At night it usually hovered between minus 30 to 40, not counting wind chill. Although we knew it was going to be cold, the clothing we brought with us was not adequate. We had gotten the warmest we could find in Rexburg, as we thought that Rexburg has cold winters.

Whitehorse reminds us of some of the cold winters we had in Rexburg in the late ’70s and early ’80s when it was below zero much of the winter. The cold just gets into the walls of your house, the windows frost completely over and there are cold spots in your house even with the heat turned way up. We soon got used to it, bought Arctic clothing and were fine. The attitude here is, “There is no cold weather. Just cold clothes.” We plugged our car in at night so it would start, and life went on like normal.

The end of February we attended the winter Sourdough Rendezvous at the city park, where the temperature was minus 35 with a wind chill of minus 53. It was well attended, and everyone had a great time. There were dog sled races, flour packing, snowshoe races, etc. They had ice sculptures that were beautiful, with people coming from many nations to carve them. Of course, the sculptures lasted the rest of the winter.

Summers here are beautiful! The days are long with sunrise at about 2:30 a.m. and sunset at about 1 a.m. in July. We drove for four months without turning on our headlights. Of course, we make up for it in the winters! Average summer temperature is 68 degrees, with warm days reaching the mid-70s, and lows only dip to the high 50s.

In Whitehorse we served with one set of “young” elders, and much of our work as “seniors” was to visit and teach families that are less active or part member. We also spent a lot of time doing service wherever we could. We made a lot of wonderful friends there, and were blessed with the opportunity to teach a wonderful part-member family and see the wife join the church before we left. We were also able to teach others in Whitehorse, many of whom the younger missionaries are still teaching.

Because our visas only allowed us to serve in Canada for six months, in August we were assigned to serve back in the city of Haines, Alaska. Haines is a smaller town with a population of only about 1,500 people. There is a fish cannery here, and fishing is the main industry, along with a limited amount of tourism in the summer. It is on a peninsula between the Chilcoot and the Chilkat inlets, only about 14 miles from Skagway, but the only way to drive there from here is to go back through Whitehorse, which makes it a 7-hour drive. The fastest way is to take a ferry.

We are about 40 miles from Juneau, but we again have to fly or take the ferry, so it is expensive to do so. It takes 4 1/2 hours by ferry each way, and costs about $250, so we don’t go often. We do have to go every two or three months for zone conference, but most of our meetings we hold over the telephone. It only takes about 40 minutes to fly, but it costs about twice as much.

Most things cost more in Alaska. Gasoline is $4.57 per gallon, but about a dollar less than in Whitehorse. We are glad! Milk here runs $5.69 per gallon for 1 percent.

The area is beautiful, much like the Island Park/ Jackson area – heavy forests and rugged mountains. Haines is where the bald eagles winter, and by the middle of November, several thousand of them migrate here. Yesterday we drove up the Haines Highway to do some service work, and saw 30 of them on a small sandbar next to the river. It is the National Bald Eagle Preserve. We also see many bears, wolves, moose and other wildlife – much more often than we did in Yellowstone Park.

Our branch in Haines was quite large until the economy crashed. Then most of the branch members moved elsewhere as the fishing industry died out and one of the canneries closed. Now there are only about 50 members on record, and we average about 16 people at church Most of them are older. Our branch president is 77, we only have one Primary child who is 10, and no young men or young women. It does make for quiet sacrament meetings!

Sister Powell and I are mostly involved with service

and membership support here. I am serving in the branch presidency, and we have two other priesthood brethren who attend. Sister Powell is serving in the Relief Society presidency, and we have quite a few widows and part-member family sisters who attend. We have been visiting and working with less active people to invite them back into full fellowship in the branch.

We have a functioning Family History Library here in our chapel, and we serve there two of the three days a week it is open, helping members and community patrons research their ancestors and write their family histories. It is a fascinating and rewarding experience.

One of the things we have come to fully appreciate about members of the church in our mission is their tenacity and dedication to their testimonies of the gospel. Because of the remoteness of most places in Alaska, and the harsh climate, people who are active have a deep, abiding love for the Savior and the people here. They are proud of their Alaskan heritage

, and are ready and willing to share what they have to help others. Haines is a very close-knit community, and we have been privileged to participate in many community service projects.

Missionary service for senior couples is much less intense than it is for young missionaries. We have a lot more flexibility in our assignments and schedules We are able to use more initiative in who we work with and how we meet their needs. At first we were frustrated with the apparent lack of direction, but as we learned people’s needs, we are grateful for our agency. We love the focus on gospel study, and love studying the scriptures each day.

We truly appreciate our family and friends who keep us informed on events and loved ones from home. We have missed births and birthdays, graduations and games, but the blessings we have received far outweigh any sacrifices we perceive. We are grateful for this opportunity to serve and recommend it to all those who are empty-nesters and want to have an incredible experience together.

Wonderful Talk Mom

2011-11-05T06:48:00.000-07:00

Jeffery R. Holland—Nov 5,2011

--Missionary Fireside in Anchorage

The Plight of the Apostles after Christ died.

· How much could they really know? They had been in the church three years or less. They probably felt so inadequate, so humble, and did not fully comprehend what was required of them. And then He was gone. He has repeatedly tried to tell them, I am going to leave. Possibly they didn’t quite believe it. Now he was gone.

· One thing the twelve did—they went to the temple

Why do we go to the temple? To get fortified, so Peter and John went. On the way, there was a man sitting on the steps of the temple about 40 years of age who had been crippled since birth. He was a beggar. The temple is a good place to find people who care where he could get alms. He was carried there every day to beg. (Acts 3:1-13) (Elder Holland uses literary license here) He probably asks for alms and many move past him into the temple. When he saw Peter and John were about to go into the temple he asks for alms. They stopped. Peter said, “Look on us.” The beggar looked expecting to receive something. Probably a dinare-n “widow’s mite or if he was lucky he might get two. And then wow, what did he get. “… Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee; In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.” (Acts 3:6) And he took his hand and lifted him up and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. “And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping and praising God.” (Acts 3:8) Elder Holland said notice those verbs—the man deserved those verbs, he had never walked and now was leaping and praising God. A crowd gathers; they have known this man for years, and they marvel in amazement at what they see. This is probably an understatement. Peter is offended and asks why they are amazed. Why weren’t you amazed before? Then Peter rails on the crowd. Why do you look on us as if we had done this thing.

“the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his son Jesus; who ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go.

“But denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you;

“And killed the Prince of life, who God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.

And his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong, who ye see and know; yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. (Acts 3: 13-16).

Peter goes on to say they are offended because they think the apostles have done this. We are fishermen except when we are given the authority that Christ gave us. He tells them to repent and be baptized and prophesied the coming of a great prophet whom we know to be Joseph Smith. Christ will return, repent until He comes again, until the time of restoration of all things.

Five thousand people were baptized. These apostles were untrained, unlearned Galileans—unprepared, illiterate, common, religious ordinary leaders. Much like today

Now the Pharisees and scribes have a problem. The problem didn’t go away when they crucified Christ. It is still here. They are doing miracles, and now the worst scenario is here. They are being done by fishermen, ignorant and illiterate.

Symbolic Problem: A man is healed, praising God all over the area, and the Pharisees can say nothing. They can’t do anything about this active visual aid who is leaping around. Their problem didn’t go away when they killed Jesus.

Another example also exists. In John 9, we read of Jesus healing a man who has been blind since birth. He spit and made clay and anointed his eyes. The man’s sight was restored and Christ tells him to tell no man. The man was so excited to have his sight he tells everyone. The Pharisees go to his parents and tell them to constrain their son. The parents fear the Jews and tell the Pharisees their son is of age, and they should talk to him. So the Pharisees do, and the man says,” Whereas, I was blind, now I see.” They can’t deny it.

There are three applications we can find here:

1. You can’t argue with the evidence. You can walk away; maybe you don’t care; you can say it’s not for me; but the evidence continues to speak throughout eternity-- this is true.

· You don’t have to do anything about it; you can be through with it.

· This is God’s truth, and you have heard it! We are all a little blind, a little deaf, a little lame, a little damaged, but light changes your life. It can be yours if you want it to be

· By their fruits ye shall know them. The church grows despite persecution. The church is the first into any disaster area; faster than any other organization. It doesn’t ask if you are members or not. We’re there. Can’t argue with the evidence.

2. When you come to the truth, you get a lot more than you bargained for.

· Think of what the man felt in the temple. He thought he would get a coin—What did he get? In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth he walked. No coin but strong ankles.

· How about Joseph Smith.? He wanted an answer to a simple question. What did he get? The responsibility to restore the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

· You have not yet imagined what the Lord promised to those who love him. No idea what this gospel will mean to you. You haven’t seen anything yet. Both here and in eternity.

3. You can’t kill this.

· James the brother of John was the first apostle martyred for the church.

· Paul was beheaded. He was drawn and quartered and parts of his bodies were put on the four corners of Rome, and his head placed on a stake in the center of Rome as a warning to other Christians.

· Peter was crucified upside down so as not to appear to be the equal of the Savior.

· The Lord said to Alma in a pivotal point in the Book of Mormon. “I can do my own work. This is for you.”

· This is the last time. These are the Latter Days. It is a culminating time.

· Joseph Smith was killed, but it didn’t end. It is history. Some believe if you are violent enough, you can destroy righteousness. Violence can’t destroy righteousness.

· Now I (Elder Holland) am a witness. I don’t just witness. I am a witness. You can walk away or walk in. But you have been told. He bore his testimony of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This was a profoundly moving talk. You felt the apostolic mantle on Elder Holland. He spoke with power and authority. He did not mince words. There was urgency in his speaking. There were new converts, and investigators in the audience. I pray they were as moved as I was. To have been told and not “walk in” would be a tragedy.

Stuff

2011-10-31T06:54:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd write you an update. We finally got the white shirts, still no sign of the monitor. I guess we'll just write it off and consider it lost. Bummer. From now on we'll definitely insure and put tracking on anything we send up here.

I put my origional drive back in the computer. I figured since it was working in the external case it would probably work in the computer. It is working fine so far. All of my programs still work, I'm back to Windows 7, sure glad to have it working again. Hope it keeps up. We canceled our trip to Juneau to buy another computer, will probably still pick one up when we have to go in December. It costs us about $400 each time we go just for the ferry and motel, so try not to go anymore often than we have to. We also postponed our temple trip to Anchorage so we won't buy our snow tires yet, so didn't really have a good reason to go. We have to go in December for a zone conference, so will stay an extra day and do that stuff then.

Is there any way to make a backup of this program drive and save my programs so I can transfer them onto a different computer when I get one? I know the backup program only backs up data files. But I would like to transfer my stuff onto my new computer if it's possible to do. I know Troy used to have a program called "Ghost" that did it, but I don't have a copy of it anymore. I think I left it in Idaho. Don't know if it would work on W-7 anyway, it was for XP when I got my computer that's still in Idaho. I did make a new backup of all my data, decided I didn't want to lose it if this goes down again. I also kept the hard drive I took out with the basic Vista on it that I used to make this work then, just in case. I also transferred all my data off this drive, but so far it seems to be doing OK. (for the last 3 days, anyway!)

Has been quite a week so far. Bro. Cox that I'm fixing the tractor for went to Seattle for surgery, was having trouble breathing. Problem with his tracheotomy. Found he was two quarts low, so they gave him a blood transfusion. Checked his wife while there, found she has skin cancer so she's going in for surgery tomorrow. Then Angela Wilde, one of our young less-actives, got blood clots in her legs yesterday and was life-flighted to Juneau yesterday morning. When she got there they told her that her father from here in Haines had died of a heart attack. Of course she can't come home because of her condition. The father used to be a member, but didn't like the church, joined another one and had his name removed from the records. We're going over today to see if there is anything we can do for the family. The mom also had her name removed, so don't know how she'll react. Should be interesting. Then Sis. Gilman that was to church but didn't look good was life-flighted to Anchorage yesterday afternoon with kidney failure. She may have to go into extended care there so she can get dialysis three times a week. An intersting day.

On top of all that, the branch president, President Lehman is leaving next monday to go to Seattle. His wife hasn't been feeling well, they think she has a brain tumor. They will probably be gone 6-8 weeks, so I get to run the branch while he is gone. So glad we're here! Definitely feel needed! We did have a fun Halloween party at the church Friday night, carved pumpkins, frosted and decorated cookies. We had twenty-two come, three familes who are less-active, a non-member. I think they had fun, but none came to church yesterday. Probably a good thing. I spoke about missionary work.

Well, guess I'd better go get ready for the day. Hope you are having a good week! At least WE don't have any snow yet!

Love ya. Dad.

Deep thoughts

2011-10-30T07:01:00.000-07:00

Journal Oct 30, 2011

I have recently decided I need to write about some things that have touched me or that are just interesting in our mission here in Haines.

First I would like to write about the area here. I believe this is one of the most healing, beautiful areas I have ever been in. I have seen a lot of beautiful places in both the states and in China. Perhaps because I am living here, I am finding Haines healing to my soul. I believe the Lord send me here for me, as well as, for whoever else we are supposed to touch. We came in late summer and the mountains so impressed me. They are high, rocky and pointed. The tops contain white glaciers even in the summer. Waterfalls cascade down the sides of the mountains thousands of feet. Shrubbery and trees grow on the sides of the mountains and appear to be coming out of the rock itself. The power of the slow, tenacious growth of roots, combined with the trickling of rain in the crevices of the rocks cause huge boulders to break lose resulting in landslides. The majesty and the magnitude of the mountains make one constantly aware of the smallness of man. The mountains come steeply down to the edge of the water. There is very little beach and what there is, is rocky. The mountains are magnificent, powerful, and remind me that the power of nature is beyond human control.

The water that runs off the glaciers carries with it glacier silt. This is fine grey-blue silt that fills the rivers and changes their courses. Where the streams enter the ocean, a change of color can be seen seeping into currents. The silt is soft and acts like quick sand in many areas. Rivers here have powerful currents, 3-10 miles an hour. At times, fishermen sink in the sands or get washed down the river from these strong currents. Glaciers do not look like what I expected. They appear as snow trapped between canyon walls with waterfalls rushing from underneath them. The glaciers are huge. There is a blue reflection on the glaciers in some lights. These glaciers recede up the mountain as they melt. In sunlight, they are beautiful.

This is an area referred to as a Boreal forest. The trees grow densely together perhaps fifty to seventy feet tall. The soil is spongy from decayed foliage and pine needles. In areas where there has been a lot of moisture it becomes dangerous; because, it acts like quicksand. In these areas, it is called muskeg and must be crossed carefully. Trees often fall as the ground seems to be continually shifting, either from the wet soil or the steepness of the mountains on which they grow.

Animals are larger here. Moose make Idaho moose seem small. Foxes are twice the size of our fox. Eagles are larger. House cats are even larger by a third again. Maybe the harsh climate makes them more durable and creates a need to be hardier. Texas may brag because of the bigness of the land, but it has nothing compared to Alaska.

In the fall, there are no words to describe the beauty of the leaves. They are almost fluorescent in their brilliant yellows, oranges, and reds. I might mention that the colors in the flowers here are also exceptionally bright. I don’t know if it is the clean air, or the harshness of the climate that makes them so large and intensely colored. It is like they must have this great burst of color and size to validate their short existence. I can hardly grasp enough of the fall beauties. I want to sit outside and absorb them into my very being, reach out my hands and hold the sacred silence. I want to seal them in my heart to nourish me during the long winter to come. I could spend hours soaking in this beauty.

As the leaves fall, there is a grey, murky beauty that comes. One can now see out into the forest, fallen trees, and marshy areas. There is harshness to the environment, but also a promise of tenacious strength that transfers to the animals and people in this area. People here accept the harsh climates, the difficulty of transportation, the limited medical facilities, and survive. They are not whiners. They go on doing what has to be done. Accepting whatever comes. The winters are long and dark, but they know spring comes with sunshine, warmth, and beauty. The harsh winters give people greater appreciation for the short time when the elements cease their relentless buffetings.

I have yet to experience the winds. I guess the winds that blow from the north are cold and merciless. The winds from the channel bring wet snows of up to three feet at a time. Some winters there is up to twenty feet of snow. While the temperatures are more mild here compared to Whitehorse, it still drops to the low teens and down to minus 20. Some years it gets down to -40. Because the wind blows all winter, the wind chill and the moisture make a wet-cold that seeps into your bones and stays. The rain causes black ice to form on top of the frozen ground which makes driving hazardous. I am sure the area takes on a different kind of beauty in the winter which I will write about later.

Update to Uncle Bob

2011-10-13T07:02:00.000-07:00

Hi family,

Just thought I'd send you a copy of a letter I sent to Uncle Bob--a few new things that I didn't put I last week's letter to everyone. We love you! Dad.

Dear Uncle Bob and Aunt Liz,

It is really good to hear from you again. I'm afraid I didn't do very well answering your last letter, but it was good to hear about your 4-wheeler rides, though it is a shame you didn't get a chance to go more often. Scary about flipping it in the washout. I'm so glad you weren't hurt, and that your machine was OK so you could ride it out. I know what you mean when you said it was hard to get it back up. I think things have just gotten a lot heavier than they used to be when I was younger. And having fun sure takes a lot more work!

It's fun to hear about the kids. How are Kaylene and Mark liking Corpus Christi? They must like it if they're buying a house down there. It's probably more humid than Pahrump was, but I'll bet it isn't any hotter! It sounds like it was really fun to see so many of the kids all at once. Isn't it funny how they fall back into their "pecking order" roles when they get together? We really chuckle about that when our kids get together, even though they are grown with families of their own! I guess they never stop being kids any more than we stop being parents. I catch myself telling Ed what to do, even though he has kids getting ready to graduate from high school! He just grins and is really patient. How did we get this old???

It sounds like a wonderful weekend up at the cabin. It would be so much more justifiable to share it with the whole family with set times and weeks to use it. So many of them sit empty so much of the time, then everybody wants to use it at the same time. Shawna's trip to Australia sounds fun. Is she going to visit any of the areas you were in? I'd be surprised, as it's a BIG country!

We are hoping to go fishing again this week. The Silvers are running, and they must be doing OK, as there are hundreds of eagles along the river, and the bears are coming out again. So are the Canadians! The people here get upset when hundreds of people from the Yukon come here and fish. Our Branch President muttered, "So many danged Canadians you can hardly find a place along the bank to throw out your line without getting tangled up with some Canuk!" I had to chuckle. Two months ago we were one! The Silver Salmon (also called Coho) are REALLY good eating, so we'd like to get two or three for our freezer. It costs us $20/day each for a license (out of state, of course), but if we can catch a few it would be worth it. Silvers in the store cost us $15/lb even here! If we caught three or four 15 pounders it would be cheap fish!

The weather here is fall, the leaves are beautiful, and we're getting a lot of rain. I guess when it does get cold it will dump three or four feet of snow in a storm. That I'm not looking forward to! At least we don't have to shovel the rain!~

We have been working Wednesday mornings in the Family History Center here, I've been cleaning up the hard-drives on the computers so they aren't as slow, also got rid of a bunch of stuff that didn't work anymore. I'm trying to get some more computers, as we only have four, and we've been having five or six people coming. We've taken our laptops over to help fill in the gaps. I set up a wireless network so they can connect easily, and that helps. We are going to open the center on Thursday evenings to see if we can accommodate more people. Tonight is our first night open so we'll see how it goes. We also have it open on Sundays from 2-4, and we get a few from the branch, though a lot of them go home and take naps. I don't blame them.

I went to the high school on Monday to meet the shop teachers. They have one guy that teaches welding, woods, sheet-metal and small engines. Reminds me a lot of the little shop I taught at that first year up in Westwood. They have another guy that only teaches afternoons in the woodshop. He was starting a community night class for woodworking this week and asked if I'd like to come as a volunteer assistant. I told him, "Sure!" We had our first class last night, and only five of the people came. There will be eight next week. Of course I can't wear my missionary badge at the school, but I thought it was pretty neat when Mr. Hayes introduced me to the class. He said, "This is Mr. Powell. He is here in Haines for the next year or so as a missionary for the Mormon Church. He is going to be helping us here for the class, but I'm sure he'd like to talk to you about your church." I hadn't said a thing to him except when we met we told him we were missionaries here and would like to get to know the people. It was really fun teaching woodworking again. I helped a lady make a drawer for her camper, and start on some doors for her entertainment center. Mr. Hayes watched us for a few minutes, then helped other people start their projects. I guess he was satisfied that I wasn't going to cut off any fingers soon. We think it's going to give us an opportunity to get to know people on a more casual basis than just walking around in a suit trying to get them to come visit them.

Troy and Emma just bought a different house; it's out in the country, an older house that they are doing a ton of work to. It's on a couple of acres, and they are excited to have room for the kids to play. They have been in "communities" the last two houses, and the homeowners associations have micro-managed everything they do. They will be glad to be away from that. They are doing major remodeling on the house, adding a family room and bedroom where the garage is, putting in a third bathroom, moving the kitchen and utility room, stuff like that. I kind of wish I was there to go help them, but in some ways I'm kind of glad I'm not. It's going to be really nice when it's finished. He called and asked how I would suggest running the new plumbing under the cement slab floor. Told him he'd better rent a slab saw and have a lot of patience. One of the lines needs to go about 20' through a 4" slab. Good luck! Makes me tired to think about it. The fun thing is that they are going to move in and work on it while they are in it. They want to get their other house up for sale before the market dies for the winter. Right now they are making two house payments and it's pretty hard with the expenses of trying to remodel at the same time. They have saved some money up, so I think they'll be OK for a little while, but I think they put most of their savings as a down payment when they bought it.

Well, ReNee thinks it's time to go do our laundry, so I guess I'd better close for now. We love hearing from you, and hope your health is good. We've come to really appreciate the importance of good health here in this branch where we're the next to the youngest! I'm also amazed at how well some of the people do that are way older than us!

We love you! Tell the kids hello for us.

Dondavid and ReNee

New Letter

2011-10-09T07:04:00.000-07:00

October 9, 2011

Dear All,

Here it is October already, and I haven’t written for so long! Sometimes it seems like there isn’t a lot going on, and sometimes it seems we’re so busy we don’t have time. I guess it just boils down to getting up the energy to sit down and organize everything to get it written down. Thank you all so much for your letters, and please remember that even though we don’t write often, we still think of you and hope you are doing well.

Fall is here, the leaves are all changing color and falling off the trees. Our high today is supposed to be 48. It isn't a question of "whether" it will rain, just "how long." It does make for beautiful fall colors, and we have really enjoyed the drives up “the highway” when we visit people who live up toward the border. It is beautiful, and the colors are almost fluorescent. The rain wets the leaves, then the sun comes out and they just sparkle. There is such a variety of color, photography can hardly catch the essence of it. At least we don't measure our rainfall in feet like they do in Ketchikan. Ketchikan is in our zone and stake, so we get to talk to the missionaries from there at conferences.

We had stake conference in Juneau a couple of weeks ago. It is good to get to see the other missionaries. . We took the ferry over last weekend to attend Stake Conference, was there three days. The ferry is nice, but takes about 4 1/2 hours for the trip each way. We took our car so we could shop, they have a Costco and a Wal-mart there, so we stocked up on some things we can't get here. Stuff is still expensive there, but at least we can get it. We also ate at McDonalds and Subway, so it was quite a treat! We don't have any fast-food places here, and hamburgers in the restaurant are $10/ea. Gas is cheaper here than in Whitehorse, only $4.59/gal, about $1 cheaper. We are enjoying that.

On Sept. 20^th we went to Juneau again for a zone conference. We flew over to that one, it only takes 20 min. to fly because it isn’t really that far away, but it takes a long time by boat because it only goes about 8 knots. Anyway, Elder Robert Walker of the Presidency of the 70 was there, and it was really good to visit with him and his wife. It turns out his wife, Vicki VanWagnen Walker, was one of Mom’s friends when she was in high school in Provo. Vicki is Bev’s age, but she recognized mom and they had a great time chatting about Provo and friends they had in common. Elder Walker is over the church temple committee, and it was fun to get to hear about how the attitude towards the church changes as more temples are built around the world. He talked about the new temple in Rome, and how the church met with the Catholic Church before announcing it, and how the Catholic Church has been supportive of the temple from the very beginning. It seems that the Cardinal of the Catholic Inter-faith relations board is originally from France, and the member of the Area Presidency that was assigned to meet with him was also from France, so they thought he could communicate with him better. Turned out that when they met and began to visit, they were from both from the same village in France, and had gone to the same schools together. They had a great visit, and the Cardinal made the recommendation to the Pope that the church be given every kind of assistance that they needed to obtain the permits to build. Sure reaffirms our knowledge that the Lord really is in charge! Pres. Walker also explained that the temple is NOT “within sight” of the Vatican, but is on one of the outlying “ring roads.”

We still aren't teaching anybody here yet, but we are getting to know more people and at least can let them know we're members of the church. Mostly we are just helping out in the branch. We had 21 to church today, which is a pretty good Sunday, but having Pres. Lehman’s son and his family definitely helped. There are only 4 priesthood holders, including me, so we take turns blessing and passing the Sacrament. We do have a nice closeness with the members of the branch, though, and they seem to be really happy we are here. I hooked up a wireless internet system in the chapel last week, spent a couple of hours last night getting the Branch President's ancient laptop to be able to hook up to it. We finally did, but I spent a lot of time on the phone with Ed figuring out what to do. What a valuable help he has been! At the zone conference we were given to believe that we'll be here in Haines for at least another year, maybe till the rest of our mission. That will be fine with us. We really like the small-town feel and love the members here.

We spent a Saturday doing a community service project picking up litter along the beaches. It was fun getting to know some more people in the community, and they appreciated the help. It was our branch project to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the welfare program. We had nine members of the branch that participated, which is a really good turnout for things. They appreciated our help, because only about 30 people turned out in all. We picked up a lot of trash that comes in on the tides, plus a lot of cans people leave when they have parties on the beach. There aren't any nice sandy beaches here, but people build fires and drink beer there anyway. The next issue of the local paper had a picture of two members of our branch rolling a tire up to the pick-up point.

The Monday before conference we had a branch project here at the chapel (Family Home Evening) doing brush trimming and grounds cleanup. We cut a lot of the scrub alder that grows up like weeds here. It is much like willows, and grows to make the church grounds look scruffy and overgrown. At first we tried using a brush shredder, but it was taking so long and was so heavy we finally just built a big bonfire and burned it. It gave us a great excuse for a wiener roast, so we got hot-dogs and the trimmings and finished up eating and singing around the fire. It was fun because the people are older so they know a lot of the songs I do, and we had fun singing. The grounds look a lot better, and we had a great turnout. We had quite a few of the less-active members that don’t usually come on Sundays.

We loved watching general conference last weekend. The satellite dish hadn’t worked for some time, so I spent a couple of days working on it, and between working in the rain and spending a lot of time with tech support in Salt Lake, we were able to get it working. The nearest Stake specialist is up in Anchorage, and they said there was no way we could get someone here to fix it before conference. We were so glad to be able to watch it. We had tried to watch the Relief Society broadcast on the internet the week before, but the connection here is so slow that it wouldn’t stream, and it kept stopping and dropping the signal. We only got to listen to a little bit of Elder Packer’s talk. With the satellite broadcast, we were able to watch all five sessions together, and they came in great! We were able to have dinner together after both Saturday’s and Sunday’s sessions. Because of the difference in time zones, we watched all sessions two hours before they were broadcast! We got to watch them at 8 & 12, with the Priesthood Session at 4 on Saturday! Who says living in Alaska doesn’t have its perks! J I felt especially good when we went to Whitehorse on Thursday and found out that they didn’t get to watch any of it because their dish was not working, and they had to listen to it on the radio! And they have a lots bigger branch than we have! Their ward technical person is pretty protective and won’t let others work with it, but he doesn’t take the time to fix it himself.

We went over to Whitehorse so ReNee could go to the chiropractor. She has been having some problems with the muscles in her neck and back again, and the lady over there really helps her out. It is about a 4 ½ hour drive from here, but the weather was nice (though rainy), and the drive was beautiful. We saw a couple of coyotes and chased a moose down the highway a ways, but didn’t see any bears this time around. I think they are all down at the rivers eating salmon! We are in the middle of the Silvers and Kings run, and the eagles are really starting to move in. We see dozens of them along the rivers eating dead spawners. There are a lot of young fledglings, Bald Eagles don’t get their distinctive white heads and tails until they are four years old or older.

It was really fun to go to Whitehorse again, it felt just like going home. We spent two nights at the home of Tim and Beth Ng and caught up on a lot of great visiting. They are doing awesome in the church, and Sam and Matt, the kids, are still meeting with the missionaries. We are hoping that their mom lets them join soon. They are attending church and mutual, and are enjoying the friendships they have made. We also had two wonderful visits with Tom and Patty Hirsch that we got to know really well while we were there. We also stopped by and visited Mike and Rachel Hrebian. Mike was less-active and Rachel isn’t a member. They began attending again and we taught Rachel the discussions. She hasn’t joined yet, but is attending with Mike regularly, and Mike was just put into the Elder’s Quorum presidency. We are pretty excited! We told Rachel that when she decides to get baptized, we’ll come over again!

We returned to Haines Saturday morning, and helped fill the baptismal font so President Lehman’s grandson from Anchorage could get baptized. Jesse recently turned eight, and wanted to be baptized here so his grandparents could participate. He was baptized by his father, and grandpa confirmed him in Sacrament Meeting this morning. It took a long time to fill the font, as the water heater isn’t very big, so we’d put in two or three inches of water, wait an hour for the water heater to recover, put in a couple more, etc. We finally ran out of time, so we heated big pots of water on the stove and poured them in with cold water until we finally got enough to cover him. It’s a good thing he wasn’t very big! I don’t think the font has been used for a few years, as there was a thick layer of dirt, dust, rust and dead spiders in the bottom. It took awhile to clean it, and Pres. Lehman brought the deck-scrubber from his boat to clean it. It looks really good now, and we will try to make sure it gets used again before we leave! Jesse and his family returned to Anchorage this afternoon because Mark has to work tomorrow. It’s about a 14 hour drive from here. In fact driving across Alaska reminds me a lot of driving across Texas—it’s a long way between towns! We passed one car and met four on-coming cars yesterday in the 300 miles to Whitehorse. And it is a holiday weekend! Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in Canada!
It was really good to visit with Brent on the phone last week. We called him to see how he is doing after his accident with the chainsaw and the tree, and he sounds like he is doing amazingly well. He has been working, part-time at first, then full time with a back brace, but meeting his patients and operating his business. Kiley has done a great job keeping us posted on their blog, which is at: http://palsrwe.blogspot.com/. When we see the pictures, we realize just how blessed we are!

We have pretty much gotten used to the bears around here. We now say, “There’s another bear,” whereas not too long ago ReNee would scream, “THERE’S A BEAR! STOP!” and would dive for her camera while I’d frantically search for a safe place to pull off and stop and hope the bear didn’t run off before we got a picture of them. I’m sure many of the bears were walking away chuckling, thinking, “Boy, these ‘tourists’ are sure dumb!” We still can’t leave anything out that might attract the bears because it is a misdemeanor to do so, and we don’t want them that close anyway. There are reports of them wandering around town all the time in the newspaper, and the police have to “shoo” them back out into the woods. (usually back across the street!) I guess in a few months when it gets really cold most of them will be full of salmon and find a good place to curl up in hibernation for the winter. Sounds better all the time! Around here a lot of people hunt bears for food, but they don’t like to eat them in the fall because they all taste like fish! I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, “Eat Alaskan Pork—Shoot a bear!” Most of the bears we have around here are blacks and Alaskan Brown Bear. The only difference between an Alaskan Brown Bear and a Grizzly is that the Browns live on the coast and are bigger because there is so much food to eat. (Spawning Salmon). One of our less-actives got one a year or so ago that would have had a hard time getting its head into a 55-gallon oil drum. It is mounted and at one of the sporting goods shops here in town, and it is huge!

We took this picture out of our kitchen window when this one came to visit while we were having lunch a few weeks ago. It became quite a nuisance because it started breaking into people’s houses, and had returned several times even after they had moved it away. It got so it wouldn’t eat natural food, but preferred foraging people’s garages, houses and chicken pens. The last straw was when a woman woke up in the middle of the night to the noise of it breaking into her house while just she and her daughter were home. They left through the bedroom window as the bear destroyed their kitchen, so the police shot it and gave it to the Native Americans. Just another page of normal life in Alaska! And Warren was complaining about bats in the garage at home?

We went down to the Chilcoot inlet a couple of weeks ago and fished for the Pink Salmon when they were running. They are also called “humpbacks” because of the large hump the males grow when they spawn. It was really fun, and I caught about 25 or 30 in the two hours we fished. We only kept three because we have limited space in our freezer, but they are about gone now, so we’re going to try for some silvers this week. We can only keep two each, but they are bigger, and the meat is better. We want to wait till they are running good, as a non-resident license costs $20/ea for a one-day permit. So we want to be pretty sure to get our money’s worth. Silvers usually run 15-25 lbs each, and salmon is selling in the stores here for about $15/lb, so if we catch one it will more than pay for itself; besides it will be FUN! There are definitely some perks to being a Senior Missionary!

We have enjoyed working with some of the members here. Last week we went out to work on Bro. Cox’s tractor, I put a new fuel shut-off valve in it. The valve had broken off so he couldn’t shut off the fuel when he changed filters, so I changed the valve out with a full fuel tank. Only lost about ½ gallon of diesel, but it was kind of messy. He thought we’d have to drain the whole tank, but that would have lost a lot more fuel than we did, so he was pretty excited. He also has a little John Deere dozer with a broken track adjuster, we need to take it off and order another one, but I need to see if he wants to spend the money on it. The parts are over $500, but it isn’t worth much the way it is. I just don’t know if he’ll use it enough to want to put that much into it. He has a hard time getting around, but it really is good to move snow with, and they have a fairly long driveway to plow when we get a heavy snow. Brother Cox has a tracheotomy so he has to put his thumb over the hole in his throat to talk, and he only has 40% of his lungs left, but he is awesome and has such a sweet, humble spirit. They are so good to us, and so appreciate any help we can do for them. He is the one I was talking about when I told about his looking out of his kitchen window above the sink that is about 7’ above the ground, and looking eye-to-eye with a bear that was looking in the window. Said it startled him a little. He was in the navy and fought in the Korean, Viet-Nam and first Gulf war. He really has some interesting stories to tell!

ReNee and the Relief Society Presidency is setting up a Relief Society culture night for next week on the 17^th, we’ve asked a couple of ladies from the Philippines to come teach the sisters about Philippine culture and food. They seem quite excited about it. One of them is married to a less-active brother, and we had a great visit with him. We decided that since the ladies were going to be having a party and food without us, we should all go have a party without them, so we’re going to go up to 33 Mile and have hamburgers together. We’re going to invite the non-member husband of the other lady and some of the other less-actives and have a “guy” party. Everybody got quite excited about it, so we’re going to see if we can set it up and get as many as we can out for it.

Well, I guess I’d better get going for now. We really appreciate hearing from you, and hope everything is going well in your lives. May the Lord bless you all, and may your families and loved ones be well. We love you all!

Love, Dondavid and ReNee

Journal Stuff

2011-08-29T14:39:00.000-07:00

Dearest Family,

Hi! It’s been awhile since I wrote, but I thought I’d just update you on what’s been going on here in Haines. We are finally getting settled in and are able to go visiting and doing things to try to further the missionary work here. Haines has been heavily tracted for years, so there is some resistance to that type of contacting. We have been trying to do service for members and others, which should help us get to know people and let them know we are normal people and are not going to try to force them into something they don’t know they want. It takes longer this way, but I think it will help in the long run.

We pretty much have our cabin set up the way we want it, and it is really quite comfortable once you get used to living in a smaller space. We are grateful that we aren’t living in a little camp trailer like they do at some of the historic sites. That would be really cozy! At least here we have a table and chairs, upholstered chairs to read and study in, and a full-size bed that we don’t have to climb into. It is a little tight around the sides, but we can live with that just fine. We also have a tub and shower that are full-size with plenty of hot water, and we are grateful for that.


Chapel	Cabin	Chapel & Cabin

This past week we visited several of the members of the branch. Most of those that attend church are older than we are, there are two families younger than us. It gives us good opportunities to do service, this week we fixed the chimney on one sister’s heating stove. She had just had it installed last fall, but they put the chimney in upside down, so when it rained or if creosote ran down, it leaked down the outside of the chimney and made smoke and ugly streaks. It should be a lot better for her now. The stoves here are usually fairly efficient, but they sure aren’t as handy as the ones we made. They don’t have automatic dampers, and burn a lot more wood that we did. Wood here is plentiful, but because of government regulations it still costs about $165/cord. Another problem here is there is not natural gas available around here, so it’s either propane or heating oil that has to be shipped in. As a result, most people are paying between $400-600/mo to heat their homes in the winter. That doesn’t include electricity, which runs about $.40/kwh compared to $.15/kwh in Idaho. Last winter in Whitehorse the people we were with were paying up to $1200/mo just for utilities! Of course in the summer that drops considerably.

We also went out to Bro. & Sis. Cox’s where I helped him change the filters on his back-hoe. He has a John Deere that is really nice, but he is 85 and can’t see or hear very well, but still runs that back-hoe. I changed the fuel, air and transmission filters for him and he was pretty impressed that it didn’t take all day and none of them leaked when we got it back together. He struggles to speak as he has a hole in his throat that he has to cover up with his thumb to speak. I guess he smoked heavily for years before he joined the church, and has had most of both lungs removed. He fought in WWII, the Korean war, and Viet Nam, and is fascinating to talk to. He was also a crab fisherman for many years, and has an awesome crab boat in his shop, but hasn’t used it for a few years because of his health. I’d imagine his son will eventually inherit it. They have bears through their place all the time. He showed me the footprint of one that had been in their garage a couple of days ago and stepped on a piece of cardboard. You couldn’t have covered the track with a dinner plate. I guess a week or so ago he was at the kitchen sink and looked up and there was a bear looking at him through the window above the sink. The window is seven feet off the ground and they were looking eye-to-eye. He said it just looked at him a while, then dropped back on all fours and ambled away. He showed me where they have a regular trail across their yard, but says they don’t bother him much. Of course they’re pretty careful about burning anything that will burn, washing their cans and bottles out well before they put them in the trash, and put their compost pile a long way from the house.

We went over to the Chilcoot inlet to watch them fish the other day. The Coho and pink salmon are both running now, and the fisherman were pulling in some big fish. We thought about going fishing, but decided to wait until the Cokanee and kings run next month. It costs $20/day for a license, or $150 for a season license, and we decided when we go we need to be able to catch enough to make it worth the cost. We’ll catch some and put them in our freezer. I hoped fish would be cheaper here, but it isn’t unless you catch it yourself. Of course I can see why. Commercial fisherman are charged $60,000 for a season license. You have to catch a lot of fish just to break even! Again, aren’t we glad we have government regulations! That doesn’t include costs of purchase and maintenance of boat, equipment or fuel. Commercial boats run in the neighborhood of $150,000+. Reminds me of the farmers in Rexburg and the cost of their equipment. It was really fun to watch the fishing. We did see three grizzlies swimming the river, and a bunch of tourists snapping pictures of them. (Including us!) Some of them had salmon that must have weighed 20 or 30 pounds. I think we’d be fine if we had just one of those! I guess when the Cokanee run up the Chilkat inlet, the Eagles come by the hundreds. Haines is supposed to have the largest bald eagle population in the world, and I can believe it. The other day I saw three circling just above the church and it was pretty impressive. They winter here, and it’s not unusual for them to have 4000-5000 in the area for the winter. It will be interesting to see.

Haines is on the peninsula between the Chilkat and the Chilcoot inlets so we have ocean on both sides of us. We are also nearly at the base of both the Rainbow and the Davis Glaciers. We drove over and looked at them the other day, and they are really impressive. We are across the inlet from them, but they are both huge, and there is a big waterfall that comes off the Rainbow glacier into the inlet. I guess there is so much runoff that it makes the sea freshwater for a couple of miles out into the ocean. It is also very silty, so it makes the water look dirty, but doesn’t seem to bother the fish much.

We went to the library last Friday evening for a presentation on the history and customs of the Tlingit Indians of the area. It was fascinating to see the influence of other tribes and traders on the tribes of this area. There is definite Asian influence because of the Bearing land bridge, as well as major influence from tribes as far South as California, Arizona and Mexico, and Eastern tribes as far away as New York and Nova Scotia. They really got around! It was put on by the University of Alaska Anthropology department and we really enjoyed it. They also had some of the local artists exhibit some of their work. It is similar to that of the Yukon, but there is definitely a difference.

Our weather has been really been cool, nights about 42F, days about 60 for the most part. It has been really rainy; they say that this is the beginning of fall. There are quite a few leaves that are starting to change, a few yellows and oranges, some brilliant red maples up the highway. I think in another month it is going to be absolutely beautiful here. I’m not excited about the coming winter, though they say it isn’t as cold here as in Whitehorse. They said it is not at all unusual to get 3-4’ of snow in a snowstorm, and that the pass back to Canada is closed most of the winter. Guess who will get to clean the walks at the church! I can hardly wait! Even though it doesn’t get down to -40 or
-50 very often, it usually runs about -15 to -20 most of the winter. After being in Whitehorse, I think we can live with that!

We are hoping to get our cell phone this week, I never could order it online because they don’t ship to post office boxes, so I had to order it and have it sent to Rexburg, then Warren is going to send it on up. I decided not to get an iPhone, although that’s what I wanted, but the monthly access cost here is $100+/mo and we can’t afford that. I don’t think I’d use the data plan enough to merit it anyway. We just got the most basic service which is 450 minutes/mo and text messaging, for only $60/mo. We also had to sign up for a two year contract, which is the only one AT&T offers, but they are the only carrier that has service in this area. We do have nights and weekends free so we might have to call you then! We do still have our land-line in our apartment. We can’t call long-distance out, but can receive calls from you anytime! It has been great to talk to Ed, Warren, Teresa and Amber a few times. Our number here is (907)766-2379. Our cell number is going to be (208)709-0377.

Saturday we did a major cleanup around the church. We picked up lots of brush and scrap lumber that was laying around from where they rebuilt a walkway that had rotted out. The people that did the work did a good job on the walkway, but just left all the garbage stacked in a pile. We had to carry it over to an open area where we could burn it, and it reminded me of the burn piles we had out in the back field. We had a pretty good fire for awhile, and after it burned down, we roasted hotdogs and made s’mores. It was a lot of fun and we got to visit with the branch president and his family. President Lehman is 77, but is really active, and we are enjoying each other. He’s my kind of guy, enjoys doing things, likes to fix things, and has a lot of experience. He used to work for the US Fisheries department as an ocean biologist doing fish tracking and studies, and even designed some fishing research vessels for the US Government. He has a 30’ sailboat that I went over and helped him pull a water jacket off the engine because he forgot to drain it, and it froze and broke. He is getting it welded, and when he gets it back we’ll put it back together and try it out. I told him if he knew someone with an acetylene torch I’d fix it for him, but he has a son that’s a welder, so he sent it up to him in Sitka, then he will drop it off in Juneau, and we’ll pick it up when we ferry over there in September for stake conference. I have been called as his counselor in the branch presidency. I am the only one, since we only have four priesthood holders in the branch that come. Bro. Berry is Branch clerk, executive secretary and High Counselor. Bro. Kanahani is Elders Quorum presidency, YM president, and SS teacher. Aren’t small branches awesome! Mom has been called as counselor in the Relief Society and RS teacher. We also maintain the church yard and do whatever else they need us to do. Yesterday we had 16 of us to meetings, one sister that hasn’t been out for awhile, so we’re going to go visit her this week if we can find out where she lives. They only use Post Office boxes here, so hardly anybody has addresses. They often say, “It’s out by mile 33 of the highway somewhere.” Or “it’s up Small Tracts Road loop, you go to the second ‘S’ curve and don’t follow the curve, but bear to the left and it’s about the third or fourth house on the right, I think.” Reminds me of Idaho when we got there and they said “You go out to the West for three or four miles to where the barn was that burned down a few years ago, and turn right and go to the road where the old Plano church used to be, then go to the driveway where you’ll see their blue pickup if they’re home. Of course it may be different now if the flood washed their house away.”

We love the work, and the country is beautiful this time of year. We did have a bear run through the parking lot Saturday after we finished burning the brush. I guess a two-year old cub got caught in an electric fence next door when it was trying to get into the chickens, and it was pretty agitated by the time it got out. They were afraid its mother might be upset, so the police came to the parking lot and sat for awhile to see if it was going to follow the cub. We didn’t see it, so it must have gone another way. We thought they came to check on our fire which was pretty much out by then, but they just told us about the bears. Keeps life interesting.

Well, I guess I’d better close for now. I hope you are all doing well, we love you!

Mom and Dad.

Life

2011-08-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

My first week in Haines Mon. Aug. 15, 2011

Hi Everyone,

Here is mom’s take on our recent transfer to Haines. We arrive about noon and the Schindlers are here cleaning. I am so grateful for Sister Schindler’s efforts to clean the 12 inch yellow stain from the toilet area, and the three coats of soap scum remover she used in the tub/shower. We can use the bathroom. They wanted to help us move in but we decided to go to lunch and we assured them we would be ok without their help. Mostly there just wasn’t room for 4 of us in the house. The Schindlers are large people, meaning tall and big.

They pointed out the bear scat (isn’t that a nice polite way to refer to the crap) that was a few days old by the side of the house. This made me feel really safe and happy. The bear stories are beginning to be more credible. We are told to be careful going out in the evenings because that is when the bears come out. Also, we should get some bells to wear so the bears can hear us coming. One lady told Sister Schindler that she would never cook in the cabin because it would attract the bears. President Lehman, the branch president, told me not to worry and go ahead and cook. Yeah, like he is in the cabin. I have cooked and we haven’t had any bears, but when he was taking us to the dump, he did say, “Oh yes the bears do come through there. We had to get rid of our garbage dumpster because the bears came and knocked it all over for the garbage.” So now they keep the garbage in the garage. Like I hope the bears aren’t really hungry because if they want to get in anywhere, they sure as heck can. I just hope they don’t think we, the people, are garbage. We have a lovely, back door to escape from which drops down a hill side where, of course, the bears will go. Well so much for bears, I will keep you posted, but in the event you don’t hear from us for awhile, maybe we have disappeared. Oh, by the way, people disappear here and are never found. One of the branch president’s here went fishing and just disappeared and was never found. I guess when they fish if they lose their balance in the 10 mile an hour river current, their waders will fill with water and off they go. At least they think that is what happens. If bears eat you, they eat even your bones so good luck finding the body. Anyway, we are here now and safe and happy. Oh one last bear tale we plan on going to observe tonight, is the men fish for salmon, and when they get the fish, the bears show up. So the men take off to their cars and the bears come in and eat the fish, then they leave and wait for the fishermen to catch them more fish. Smart bears huh!

Ok, so back to the moving in. Sorry for that long tirade. I was trying to empty some of our blue tubs of things I thought we would need immediately and Dad was getting help to move our queen size bed into our teeny bedroom. I thought we should leave it in the living room, but am glad he persuaded me to try the bedroom. It did fit. We have a whole 10-12 inches on each side of the bed. I can barely move my body through the space by the bathroom facing front, but dad has to turn sideways to fit through. If you have to hurry to the bathroom, it challenging condition. We took the closet doors off so we could fit two white plastic sets of drawers along the wall at the foot of the bed. The closet is 2 feet by 3 feet. The missionaries had put up random shelves all over the cabin, (excuse me, they call it the cottage). We took most down and made a bookcase on one wall in the living room. We redid all the light fixtures with fluorescent lights so it looks more uniform and is lighter. We do have carpet in the living room and bedroom so the floors are much warmer there than they were in Whitehorse. The little ladies informed me they had cleaned the bedroom and the living room, but hadn’t got to the kitchen and bath. Obviously! I cleaned dirt and mold out of the frig and behind it, moved the stove and did the same. Oh, the stove didn’t work, but they bought a new one for the church, so dad installed that and moved the old one over here. Then I attack the bathtub. This amounted to sanding the scum off with a green scratchy and took most of one day. It looks better but could use another round of scum remover in the tub.

Dad in the meantime, cleaned out the storage shed. Wow did they have a ton of old boxes the missionaries had packed up and intended to return and get, but didn’t. Some was 5 years old. So we got permission to get rid of them. It was fun to go through the stuff. We got some reading material for the winter, but most we hauled to the dump or gave to the thrift store. Clothes get moldy and smelly here because of the humidity.

Oh, humidity is doing wonderful things for my hair! It is getting curly. I don’t know what to do with curly hair—I hate curly hair on me. Especially, since I have a terrible hair cut from my friend in Whitehorse, who left it so short I can hardly get it around the curling iron to straighten it. I have burns all over.

Back to the shop. Dad built a work bench, installed lights, fixed the weed eater, mowed the lawn and moved every little shelf, hook, nail that I wanted moved—sometimes 2-3 times. He was wonderful, patient and long suffering. So both of us were dead and I had to cook every night but one. Food here is extremely expensive, and I think you need to shop when the ship comes in because if you wait too long everything good is gone. Like avocados are $2.00 a piece, apples $4 a lb. I think we may give up veggies and fruit and take vitamins.

First nations here are more Indian like we know, while in Whitehorse, there was a stronger Asian quality. They eat more American, less rice here. I find I miss the rice. We went to dinner one night at President Lehman’s house and I felt I was eating at my Aunt Daphne’s ranch. We had “scalloped tomatoes” which were actually really good, and I haven’t eaten those since I was a kid. She apologized for not making biscuits, which was an everyday custom in my mom’s day. They cook veggies here and in Whitehorse in an interesting way. They use the pressure cooker a lot. They just put in whole, long carrots and serve them that way. In Whitehorse, they made soup with chicken legs which are just in the soup, rather than picked off the bone. You get used to it and it makes me feel very removed, like I am from another world somehow. Many don’t have TV. People appear to read a lot here. The Lehman’s play games. We learned a new game called protect your assets that dad even seemed to enjoy. We will teach it to you when we get home.

Oh one of the nice things is we have lots of scalding hot water. Problem is it comes from over at the church and you have to wait about 5 minutes for it to warm up enough to do dishes, shower, or wash your face at night. But when it gets here it is really nice. (I wonder how long it will take to warm up when it gets winter?) Oh, it is fall here. The leaves are beginning to turn colors. It is looking more like late September. They do get snow here—20 feet and it is wet, not dry like Whitehorse and Rexburg. I hope dad doesn’t have a heart attack shoveling this winter because I am sure we will inherit that job. It is also rainy this week. They say they have had a drought, but it doesn’t look dry to me.

We spoke in church yesterday and there were 13 of us there. Three priesthood. I’m feeling young. One lady is 50 with a 10 year old son she adopted. Lucy is 87 and has a schooner license, broke her neck at 75 , but had it fixed and she is very alert and spiffy. I like her. She weighs everyday and if the scale goes over 130 is get it right off! I didn’t enjoy that conversation. There is a grandmother in her 80’s, a daughter in her 70’s, and a daughter-in-law in late 70’s, and a granddaughter probably 40’s. This family is the Wild’s and they are sharp. There is Lemme, who is taking temple preparation lessons from us and is 72 and looking for another man. Her husband died 2 years ago. She is interesting and a little strange. She is into connecting with the universe and nature. She is trying to build some kind of cistern so the water can circulate through her house. I don’t quite understand it and am a bit reluctant to go look because I don’t think dad should start helping there with that project. There is one lady in her 50’s, Patty Perkins who is sharp and teaches gospel doctrine. I don’t dare complain about any aches and pains because they are all so hardy and independent. There are lots of inactive, and part member people here. We were told to take things really slow here. I guess the people haven’t related well to have the missionaries move in and out every six weeks. We understand the Baptist minister dislikes Mormons and comes out in force once he knows you are here. We have been met with friendliness though we haven’t been out and around much.

Well that is about all for now. Besides you probably won’t read all of this anyway. Pray the bears don’t eat us.

Love ya tons,

Mom

Biblical Far Side

2011-08-12T06:40:00.000-07:00

Haines

2011-08-07T05:52:00.000-07:00

Dearest Family,

We made it OK from Whitehorse to Haines! We really enjoyed the drive, the fire weed was beautiful, as was the drive itself. By the time we reached Haines Junction the sun had come out, so we really enjoyed the breath-taking scenery of the mountains, lakes, forests and glaciers! We didn't see any wildlife other than a few hundred squirrels, but we were good with that, too! The cabin we are in is really small, but we are fine with it. We got all of our stuff moved into it yesterday afternoon, but still need to find places to put everything. It is really small, we put the queen bed they had into the bedroom, and I have six inches on my side to get into bed, and there is about a foot on Mom's side that we squeeze down to get to the bathroom. But hey, the bed is nice and comfortable. The "living" room has one chair about the size of one of our blue chairs in the living room, plus a folding chair like they have at the church. There is a table about 3' across in one corner with two wooden kitchen chairs. The kitchen is small, one set of drawers, two overhead cabinets, a really small fridge, a stove that the oven doesn't work on, and about enough counter space to set the toaster on over the knife & for drawer. They do have a different stove that I'm going to put in tomorrow that they have used in the church. It hasn't been used much, but is pretty old. Hey, it's a stove! There is a little space along one wall in the living room where we can put up a small computer table. I'll send you pictures when I get some taken. Mom doesn't want to take any until she has stuff put where she wants it.

We don't have any Internet over there, but the church is only about 50' away, so we can come over here and use the one in the Family History center any time we want. They gave us keys to everything, so we are good! There is also a small shed close to our cabin that is about 16' square, but it doesn't have too much junk in it, so I'm going to clean it out and put in a small bench that I can work on and put my tools on. I checked with the counselor in the branch presidency today and he said that should be OK. I do wish I had my pickup here, I think it would be very useful, but will make do with the van. I'm sure when we get to know people someone will have one that we can use for hauling trash and stuff. Looks like we will be responsible for keeping the building clean and mowing the lawns, but that will give me something to do part of the time.

We enjoyed church this morning, the branch is pretty small, we had a visiting family today, a sister and her five kids, and they comprised most of the primary they don't have. Also a young couple from Skagway that came here just for fun before they go back to the US. There were about thirty here including them, only Bro. Berry, Bro. Cox and myself priesthood wise. It was good to be able to bless the Sacrament today, the first time in a lot of years. Seemed kind of strange to bless both the bread and water, Bro. Cox passed it. He is 85 and in not very good health, but a very fine and humble spirit. He is a veteran of WWII, Korean, and Viet Nam wars. Everybody bore their testimonies, and it still left us 10 minutes short, but they closed the meeting anyway, and we had more time in Sunday School and Priesthood/Relief Society. Mom taught Relief Society and they only had three sisters there. There were two of us for Priesthood, plus two younger boys that aren't members, so we just talked and got to know each other. There is definitely work to do here!

We do have an address! There is no mail delivery here, so our address is: P.0. box 622, Haynes, AK. 99827. We share the phone with the one in the church foyer, and that number is 907-766-2379. When we get our computer set up, we can use our Magic Jack again, and talk for free! Our physical address is 415 Mud Bay Drive. I guess if something had to be sent UPS it would be addressed to that but I'm sure it would cost a mint to send it because it has to come by boat. It is good to be back in the US. We were really worried that they might stop us at the border and make us unpack all our stuff, but they were really nice, and didn't. We had the van packed to the gills again, only this time with a car-top carrier that had all our bedding in it, plus the spare tire tied on top. We are going to go try to get a cell phone tomorrow, will let you know what the number is when we get it. The only carrier that works here is AT&T, so guess we'll go with that. At least it ought to have better service than we had in Whitehorse!

Haynes is a beautiful town, about 2500 people here, fishing is the main industry. The town is located right on the bay, the forest is all around us, like living in Island Park! There are two rivers that come in and the salmon are already running. We went over to the Chilkoot River last night, and there were lots of fishermen. One Native (they don't like to be called Indians or 1st Nation here--will have to get used to that) was using a net and brougt in one about 10 lbs while we were watching. Several others had them on fishing poles. We'll have to get to know some with equipment so we can try it! Of course the bears like it too! I guess after we left they came out. One of the kids at church said he was there last night and they counted 17 bears on their way home. Everything has to be shipped in, so stuff costs more than Whitehorse, except gas. Gas here is only $4.85 a gallon, but we won't be driving nearly as much, so that will save some. Bananas are $1.50/lb, milk is $5.69/gal. Other stuff is about the same amount more, but hey, we can get it! If we need large stuff we will go to Juneau on the ferry, but it costs $100 and takes 4 1/2 hours each way so we probably won't do that often. It would be faster and cheaper to go to Whitehorse because we can drive there, but if we buy anything we have to pay duty on it to bring it from Canada, so probably won't do that either. We'll go to town again tomorrow and see what we can find here. We'd like to get another chair that's nice to sit on. We also want to get some nice fluorescent lights for the cabin, as it's really dark wood so it's pretty gloomy in there.

Mom's a little worried about the bears. We haven't seen one yet, but there is a lot of bear scat on the lawn all around our cabin and yard. They lock the garbage in the shed because if they don't the bears get into it. They used to have a dumpster here, but had to get rid of it because the bears kept pushing it off and destroying it trying to get inside. They said not to put anything smelly into the garbage, and haul it often. They also said not to cook anything smelly in the cabin, like fish or sausage or bacon, or the bears would probably come visit us. And the doors on the cabin aren't substantial! In fact some idiot made the whole back wall of the living room a set of patio doors that go out onto a tiny porch about 3' by 4' with stairs going down. Dumb! Wonder if they'd mind if I enclosed it, took out the doors, and doubled the size of our living room?

Well, I guess I'd better get back over to the cabin or Mom will wonder where I got lost to! It was hard to leave Whitehorse, It was about like leaving home again! But we will make some great friends here, too, I'm sure. We definitely have lots to do to keep us busy! Be sure to let us know how you are all doing!

Love, Dad and Mom.

Incentive

2011-08-02T06:55:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd forward a little incentive for your trip next summer. This picture was taken Friday night just outside of Haines. Josh threw his hook in and picked up the one on the left in about 10 seconds. Took him about 30 minutes to get it into the boat. Then Chad threw his hook in and got the one on the right. Got a hit within 30 seconds. Took him about 45 minutes to get it in. Then Mark, the guy in the middle hooked his. (Mark is 6' tall, and the fish tail is folded over on the ground.) Took him about an hour to get it in. They brought home fillets from four fish (all they are allowed to bring home to Canada), about 400 lbs of fillets, plus about 10 salmon, averaging 20 lbs apiece.

We went out and helped them sample it last night. Best halibut I ever ate. Sure makes a difference to get it fresh! We ate some baked in lemon seasoning, some in a loaf, and some diced and breaded. I thought I was going to burst! White, flaky tender meat, no bones, excellent flavor! Guess they brought home over $4000 worth of fish! Would sure go good in a freezer! They are giving a bunch of it to their friends, want to give us a couple of good sized packages, then they will go out again for the king salmon run the end of September or first of October when they are running. What a rough life!

Love ya. Dad.

Transfer

2011-07-31T16:06:00.000-07:00

Well, it's official. We are going to Haines. We will probably pack up all of our junk on Thursday and drive over on Friday. It's about a five hour drive from here, and that should get us in early enough that we can unpack the car and set up a bed for the night. There is a little cabin next to the church that we can use, about 500 sq. ft. which is smaller than where we are now, but it's on the church property, and there is a storage shed that we can store some of our stuff in that we're not using. The couple that have been there helping with the branch said the bedroom is big enough for a queen bed, but no room to walk around it. There is a kitchen-living area that pretty much takes up the rest of the place. Should be interesting! We'll send you pictures of it when we get over there. I don't know what the mailing address is yet, will also send that to you next weekend.

I guess the branch is pretty small, about 50 members with about 25 active in the branch. The branch president is 78 years old and not in the best of health, and the other priesthood member is a guy in his late 50s or early 60s that weighs 350 lbs and has bad knees. There is one boy in the branch that is 10, and he is the only youth, so we don't have a primary or mutual program. Most of the others are older sisters. We will be doing a lot of visiting and service, I'm sure. They have really been struggling with such limited priesthood leadership, we'll go do whatever we can to help out.

We had a good but sad last Sunday here today, although it was greatly boosted by having our mission president and his wife here along with the two assistants to the president. (AP's) He is going to be great to work with, a lot less numbers-emphasis, a lot more focus on retention and love. We're all for that! It will be a little different to work in an area where there aren't any other missionaries and few members of the church. We have enjoyed having the elders here to visit and play with. They will be bring another set of elders to Whitehorse after we leave. We were hoping for another senior couple, but they don't have any that haven't been recently assigned to other areas. There are plenty of opportunities for missionary work here in Whitehorse, it's the third largest city in the mission, but with the fewest missionaries. Part of the problem is that it's so far from Anchorage it's hard to keep in touch, and some of the missionaries here have taken advantage of that in the past. We hope it doesn't happen again.

We're glad that Beth was able to be baptized this week, and that Rachel also wants to be baptized in a couple of weeks. We won't be here for that, but she is definitely ready and will follow through. It will be hard to leave them, but will keep in touch. We already told them that when they are ready to get married in the temple we would come up for it. They said they would hold us to that!

Well, we're pretty hammered, so I guess we'll go to bed for now. I hope you are doing well.

2011-07-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

Dearest family,

Just want to let you know that we are still doing well, and that things are going well for us, and that we are thinking of you.

I just read this article about someone who attended the pageant from the United Kingdom, and thought about what a difference these pageants make to the people of the world. The link is: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jul/24/christians-mormons-pageant, I it comes up ok for you, but it is a very positive reaction from someone who is not LDS.

We had our very first baptism this week! Wazoo! Beth Ng, who we have been working with almost since we got here finally got baptized! Her husband is an EX-less-active member and they have two kids by his previous marriage. Matt is 12, Samantha is 11. Samantha also planned to be baptized when Beth did, but changed her mind when her mom gave her so much static. She still wants to be baptized, but decided to wait till the heat dies off a bit. I think Matt will join too, but he is kind of waiting to see if his dad is serious about staying active in the church. The dad's name is Tim, and he has come SO FAR! They have attended church with us regularly for the past four months, even though he works Graveyard and doesn't get home till 8:30 a.m. on Sunday mornings. He has given up his coffee and is working to advance to the Melchizedek Priesthood and be ordained an Elder. They have committed to be worthy to be sealed in the temple while we are still in Alaska, and we told them wherever we were serving, we'd be there for that!

We also have another wife of a part-member less active ready to join, her name is Rachel, and we have taught her all of the discussions, and she was going to be baptized this Saturday, the 30th, but decided to wait two weeks because she is involved in planning a wedding for her girlfriend, helping her in-laws with their daughters wedding, and is hosting tons of family this week. She wants to wait till things slow down so the experience isn't "just another thing on a busy schedule." We told her that would be a wise idea! We are disappointed that we won't be here for it, but we want what is best for her. She and Mike have a year-old daughter, and Mike is a returned missionary that went inactive. He had some problems he had to work out, but he has committed to bring his family to church and be totally active, and has prepared himself to be worthy to baptize her! We told him we want to know when they get sealed, too! Rachel wasn't comfortable meeting with the young elders, but she has been a golden investigator for us. We have only been teaching her for three weeks, and she is in the middle of Alma in her Book of Mormon, and has read every pamphlet we have left with her discussions. I guess that's one of the true rewards from being senior missionaries!

Sadly our time in Whitehorse is drawing to an end. Our visas are only good in Canada for six months, and ours expire next Saturday, so we have to move to Alaska now. Hard to believe we've been here for six months! We have to be out of Canada for six months before we can come back, so we hope they will send us back toward the end of our mission so we can finish up here. If the next year and a half go as fast as this one, it will be no time at all!

I have been having opportunities to give lots of service this week. I helped Tim put two new entry doors into his house. The old ones were warped and leaking cold around them, so he bought new ones. We rebuilt the jams and installed new weather-stripping, painted them, then hung the new doors. We also put a garage door opener on his shop door. Wednesday morning a less-active we've been working with called, and he had borrowed a scissor-lift to put the siding on his new house, and the starter went out of it. Turned out the mounting plate had broken and the starter shifted and broke off the end of the starter and took all the teeth off the flywheel. Had to pull the transmission to get the stuff off to fix it, welded up the mounting plate, the new starter and ring gear came in last night, so will go put it all back together this morning. Also rebuilt the hydraulic rams on Tom's loader, welded up the loader bucket, and put a new set of brake shoes on his John Deere tractor. Surprising how things like this lead to awesome gospel discussions and interest in the church. Some of the members here in the past have done some pretty shady dealings, and in a small town the word spreads. Hopefully some will learn that some of us can do things for them without taking advantage of them.

Tomorrow afternoon our new mission president is coming over to Whitehorse to tour the area. We are really excited, as it has been several years since one has visited here. Our branch theme for the month of July has been missionary work, and we have all had the opportunity in sacrament meeting to speak on missionary work. We weren't expecting to cap it off with a visit and talks from the president! We are pretty excited. We expect when he comes he will tell us where and when our new assignment will be. It will be hard to leave here, because we have made such close friends with so many members of the branch, and it has become such a part of our lives. We have really enjoyed the life and culture of the Yukon! They have a rich and varied history, and people here are so friendly and accepting. It is amazing to see the diversity of cultures! We have people from India, the Philippines, many European nations, the Polynesian Islands, Africa, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, South America, and from all areas of Canada and the US. There are also many "1st Nation" tribes here, probably about 35% of the population. It's amazing how well everyone gets along.

It was so fun to hear every body's experiences with Teresa's family this summer, we really missed it! It sounds like you did some really fun stuff, and it made us miss family even more. We loved getting the pictures and looking at the blogs. Thank you so much for sharing them!

Well, I guess I'd better go get busy for the day, or I won't get the stuff done that needs to be done. I hope you are all doing well, and that you always remember that the things that count in life are the things that you can't count. The Gospel is true! What a blessing it is to be God's children having such a marvelous mortal experience! May God bless you all!

Love, Dondavid and ReNee.

Latest Journal

2011-07-27T07:11:00.000-07:00

Dearest Family,

I finally got my journal written for this month. (I know, it's supposed to be weekly!) The first page is only sent to you guys, the rest I sent to others who want to hear our adventures. I hope you are doing well, and know that we love you and surely miss you. We think of you often, brag about you all the time. We have shown our treasured family book you all gave us for Christmas to everyone, and they think our family is amazing. We already know that! We love hearing about your families and what the kids are doing. We love the blogs and pictures, and look at them often. I hope you have great summers, and that you have lots of fun together, and remember us. We wish we were there, but also feel that we are where we need to be at this time. We hope we are touching those we are supposed to be here for.

We love you all dearly.

Dearest family,

Well, this is a general letter I sent out to lots of people, but this part I am only sending out to my kids! Most of it you probably have already heard, but I thought I’d add a little for you guys. I loved hearing about Julie’s week at girls camp, Ed taking the boys fishing to Sand Creek. Fun to talk to so many of you on Father’s day.

Russ, I’m sad to say I’m happy you blew the trans module on your van. It was fun to get to talk to you this morning! I hope you get it fixed OK, and that you can find a module cheap. It was fun to talk to you on Father’s day, too. We were at a soccer match on Saturday and we talked about how much we wished we were in Rigby watching Christian and Bleak play like we did last summer.

Troy, it was fun to talk to you on your birthday yesterday. Sounds like your house is going to be awesome. You might consider building out on the side the garage is on since you’re going to make the garage into a bedroom anyway, just make the house longer instead of deeper. Then you could put the bathroom and other stuff in when you pour your new slab. It isn’t too hard to put up three more walls and extend the roof. You could even extend it 24’ and include another garage! Just a thought.

Brent, it was fun to talk to you. Your new webpage is awesome, and the pictures are great! I’m amazed that your business has built to two days a week this quickly, I’m sure it will continue to grow! I can hardly wait to get down there and see it when we get home. We love the pictures of the kids, hard to believe that Colby is walking and running all over the place. I’ll bet he and Kaedyn are really cute together. Kiley, it sounds like you are staying plenty busy with the kids and getting moved into your house.

Teresa, fun to talk to you this morning, sounds like you’re going to have a fun time in Idaho. We sure have loved the past two summers when we got to see you, we’re definitely going to miss your family this summer! Especially our fishing trip to Meadow Lake and the other fun stuff. I hope you have fun without us! Be sure to write and keep us posted, and send us lots of pictures!

Amber, mom sure loves talking to you. It sounds like you are enjoying your mornings at the gym, I’ll bet you’re really staying slim and beautiful. The awesome thing is how good it makes you feel. Thanks for the fun pictures of Elsie and Sam, they are surely growing fast! Tell Tyler happy birthday this week. I hope his mom is doing ok. We sure love him.

Shaun, it was fun chatting with you the other day. It sounds like you are doing well, wish I could have flown with you over Prairie last week. It’s fun to see all the helicopters here. When we were at the glacier in Juneau I took a picture of four at the same time, but you couldn’t make them out in the clouds very well. We must have seen 50 of them in the hour and a half we were there. I think a lot of them are the Robinson 44’s, once in awhile you see Grummans or Bells. Of course, I didn’t pass my chopper ID test yet, so need to study up on them more! J

Warren, so fun to talk to you several times. I hope you found out what’s wrong with your engine. Did the oil pump fix it? Or do you get to do a rebuild? Glad you got the VW going so you have something to drive besides your bike on the rainy days. Sounds like you surely have been getting a lot of experience doing mechanics. Gives you lots of experience for when you get to start designing stuff! Hope you are having fun working out at the INL.

Well, it seems the days and weeks just slip by and either there isn’t time between “things” to sit and write a good letter, or by the time we have time we’re just too tuckered to sit and try to give the illusion that we’re coherent! We have had a busy few weeks, although there isn’t really much new to talk about. Seems like sometimes we just get caught up in the thick of thin things!

We’ve been busy with the missionary work, especially have had some good opportunities to give service. We had a Senior Missionary Couple Telephone Conference last Tuesday that lasted for four hours. It was interesting to get to talk to the other senior couples, there are ten couples serving in the Alaska Anchorage Mission right now, three Member/leadership support (proselyting-like us), two office couples, two CES, one social services, one military relations, and one medical services. Only one couple has been out longer than us by a month, the rest are fairly new. It was nice to find out that we aren’t the only ones that had to figure out what we were supposed to be doing. The Laters that were on the Aleutian Islands for 4 months just got transferred to Anchorage. He said he spent most of his time over there wearing his “service” clothes, only wearing his missionary clothes on weekends or when teaching a lesson. That’s kind of the way we felt this last month. I helped a less-active build benches and shelves in his shop, changed the transmission in a branch member’s Ford ¾ ton diesel pickup, rebuilt the steering gear in another brother’s Chevy pickup, and (the toughest of all~) helped a brother fix his boat, then helped him try it out to make sure it worked OK! Twice! It did, and we got to see why the Yukon is one of the premier fishing places still left in the world! There are thousands of lakes here in the Yukon, and we fished for Arctic Grayling on one. They are about the size of trout, and you can’t keep any over 16” long. They are a beautiful fish, and good fighters. We kept one that was injured when we took the hook out (all fishing is barbless here, so you can release them, but sometimes they get it too deep and they die), so we kept it and brought it home to eat. They are delicious! So light and flakey, no fishy taste at all! You can only keep two each, but we just kept the one because we don’t have much space to keep them in our fridge.

Thursday we got to go out to a different lake and fish for Northern Pike. They are considered a nuisance fish here, so you can catch lots and keep whatever you want. I can see why they consider Alaska and the Yukon a sportsman’s paradise! The weather was a beautiful 74 degrees, the lake was as smooth as glass, there were hardly any bugs, and the fish were biting like crazy! I caught probably 40 or 50 in the few hours we were there, Renée and the others caught lots too! We only kept one to eat, which of course Renée caught. It was 10 lbs and 34” long. With the tackle we were using, that’s the largest we could get into the boat. Most of the ones I caught were about 5 lbs or so. I caught one that felt much larger, but when I got him within 30’ of the boat he got tired of playing with me, flipped his tail and took off, taking my lure and line right along with him. He snapped that line like it wasn’t even there. I guess they have a lot of fish in the 60-80 lb range in that lake, and now I believe it! I wish I’d had heavier gear! I caught one about the size of Renée’s, but the net was busy at the time, so when I tried to lift him out of the water, the line broke. It was only 8 lb test. It was a great evening with wonderful friends, and we got pictures of bald eagles and a Yukon sunset, taken at 12:15 a.m. (There are some perks senior couples get that the young missionaries don’t!) We ate part of the fish yesterday for lunch, invited a part-member family over. The fish was delicious. There is nothing like fresh pike! Large, white, flaky meat, tender. We still have half of it left to munch on for the next few days. They do have lots of sharp teeth, though!

A few weeks ago we drove up to Dawson with one of our couples we are working with. It was fun to see the area of the big Klondike Gold Rush. It is just a small tourist town now, probably about 1500 year-round residents, but at the turn of the 20^th century, it was about 70,000. There was more volume of gold taken from there than from any other individual gold strike in North America, and it was from the first ship arriving in San Francisco in 1897 that the phrase came from, “it was carrying a ton of gold!” More than 100,000 “stampeders” headed for Dawson, most of them up through Skagway and over either the Chilkoot or the White pass to trek the additional 500 miles to Dawson. The trek was brutal with temperatures -40F or below, and they had to physically pack 1000 lbs of supplies over the pass for each person, or the Mounties wouldn’t let them into Canada. Too many in the past had starved, and caused starvation in the small towns along the way. By the time most of the stampeders made it to Dawson, all of the claims were taken, and most of them ended up working to build the Yukon-White Pass Railroad, or worked in the mines for the companies that owned them. By 1900 the rush was over, and most everyone left for Nome, the next gold rush. Many of the mines in Dawson are still operating, and they took out huge quantities of lead and zinc as well. We went up to several of the mines and saw some of the abandoned equipment, dredges, etc. I even got to pan for gold on Bonanza Creek, just 100’ downstream from where the original strike was. They must have been pretty thorough, though. I didn’t even find one flake! (Of course, it might have helped if I’d had a gold pan instead of a plastic salad bowl!)

We have loved the missionary work, we get acquainted with so many wonderful people. We have been teaching the Ng family since we got here, and they are still progressing. We have come to love them dearly, and do a lot of things with them. They are attending church regularly now, and we are hoping that Beth will want to be baptized before we get transferred next month. Canadian law only lets us stay for six months on our visas, so we have to be back in the US before August 6^th. It’s going to be hard to leave here. We have seen Tim and Beth and the kids grow so much, and they have learned to love the gospel. We have also been teaching Daniel again, but this time as a captive audience. He was put back in jail for parole violation, he was throwing water balloons at 9:10 p.m., and his probation curfew was 9:00 p.m. so now he gets to spend 8 months behind bars. We gave him a lesson last week on modern prophets, and left him a copy of Pres. Monson’s talk on the “three R’s of choice.” When we talked to him Friday, he said he had gotten the point! He’s in his late twenties, has three kids and a “wife” that are home without a dad and a wage-earner. Our choices affect many! He doesn’t have any major offences, just a string of stupid stunts like that, plus a few drunk and disorderly. The Gospel will certainly improve his family’s life when he gains his testimony!

We are also teaching a couple of young ladies from the Philippines. There are a LOT of Pilipino people here, we have three couples in the branch, and a lot of them work in the local businesses here. Anyway, Ester and Carmina have been coming to a Family Home Evening group we have been teaching at one of the member’s homes, and we asked them if we could teach them about the church. I don’t know how it will go, as they are both active Catholics, but they are very friendly and receptive, and we have enjoyed teaching them. Ester said after her Catechism, she taught it to others for awhile. In our lesson last night we talked about commandments, and in the course of the discussion we mentioned Abraham and Isaac, and how the sacrifice he was asked to make was to teach us of the coming sacrifice of the Son of God, as well as to test Abraham’s obedience. Ester said, “I have taught that story many times, but it never occurred to me that it was a symbol of the sacrifice of the Savior!” We told her that is one of the blessings of a restored gospel!

We went to Juneau last week for a zone conference; we were there for three days, two of which were intensive training, the other one (actually two halves) were in traveling. We have to drive to Skagway, catch a plane to Juneau, then drive to a motel. Juneau is the only state capital you can’t drive to! You have to either go by air or sea. There is one main road in Juneau that is 50 miles long that follows the coast. Of course, there are many roads around town, and they have thousands of cars, trucks, and busses, but it dawned on us that every one of them had to be brought in by ferry. Gas there is $4.38/gallon, but we thought that was a bargain after paying $5.50/gal for it here in Whitehorse. Guess it’s just a matter of perspective! Since everything has to be shipped in, milk is $5.50/gal, eggs 2.50, etc. Much like it is here in Whitehorse.

Anyway, the zone conference was fun, we learned a lot, got to meet 18 other missionaries in our zone plus see the Senior CES couple, the Shindlers, again who are serving in Juneau and Haines. They ferry back and forth. On the last evening of our training, Pres. Dance excused us and the Shindlers so we could go visit and see stuff. We went to see the famous Mendenhall glacier, saw some big-horn sheep through a spotting scope, and just drove around and saw Juneau. The weather was beautiful this time. When we were there in February, it was raining like crazy and we didn’t get to see a thing! Juneau is a beautiful city surrounded by mountains and pine forests, with the ocean along one full side.

I have decided that the weather here in Whitehorse in the summer makes up for winter! It is absolutely beautiful here! The days have been in the low to mid 70s, very little wind. We had some rain last week, but it is a light rain that brings out the flowers. This area is heavily wooded by pines and spruce, much like the Island Park area, with lots of birch, alder, aspen and willows filling in the open spots. The wild flowers are blooming everywhere. When we drove up to Dawson the roads were lined with wild sweet-peas, lupine, narrow-leaf arnica, fireweed, forget-me-nots, bluebells, daisies, geraniums, and many others I don’t recognize. Renée takes pictures of them lots. We’ve also seen lots of wildlife. On the way home from Skagway last week we saw 9 bears along the road. These were all black bears. On the way to Dawson we saw 7, two of them grizzlies. We also see a lot of coyotes, foxes, a few elk and deer, but so far no moose or caribou. The mosquitoes are pretty plentiful, and the big ones are really big, but the ones I don’t like are the tiny “no-see-‘ems” that bite like crazy and leave big bumps, but you don’t even see them. I guess the black flies are supposed to be out in the next week, and they bite chunks out of you. I can hardly wait!

We had a good day at church yesterday, although none of our investigators attended. There was a city league soccer tournament scheduled at church time, and I guess the lure of the world is still greater than the lure of eternity. Even the daughter of our high counselor missed to play. Kind of a dilemma when they barely have enough kids to field a team, and if one of them misses, the team has to forfeit the game. I guess they did win the game, though, only the second one they have won this season. Renée spoke in Sacrament Meeting, taught part of our temple prep class during Sunday School, then taught the Relief Society lesson. She was glad when the meetings were over. She spoke on “Responsibilities of Freedom,” since this Friday is Canada Day, and Monday is the 4^th of July. Of course they don’t celebrate the 4^th of July here, only Canada day. She did a really good job on all of them. We’re kind of sad that we have to go to Juneau again this week on Thursday to meet our new mission president. We come back late Friday, so we will miss Canada day all together because we’ll be in Alaska. Then we’ll miss the 4^th because we will be back in Canada. Oh, well. Guess we’ll wait till next year.

We get our new mission president this week. It was supposed to be Pres. Clark, but he was switched at the last minute with Pres. Beasley that was supposed to serve in Moscow, Russia. He is a retired high level Air Force test pilot, and I guess they were worried about security complications, so he and Pres. Clark traded places. I don’t know anything about him yet, but will be fun to meet him on Friday. I’m sure his personality will be totally different from Pres. and Sis. Dance. Will send pictures and more information next time I write.

Well, I guess I’d better be going for now. I hope all things are going well for all of you. We are enjoying our experience here and learning so much. I have learned how important it is to study the Gospel more, to read the Book of Mormon at least 15 minutes a day, and to ponder and pray about what I have read. I am learning how our Father in Heaven uses small, seemingly insignificant events that are in fact miracles to guide each of us in our daily lives. I have learned that little acts of service mean much more to others than I would have imagined. I have learned that even active members of the church need contact and love too. I have learned that we are our own greatest hindrances to our eternal happiness, and that God would bless us with much greater blessings if we could be worthy of them. I heard a quote that I thought was so true: “Lord, help me endure the blessings I asked for that you granted in order to teach me patience.” My testimony is definitely still growing, and I have a long way to go. May the Lord’s blessings be with you in all you do, and may we all strive to grow closer to our Heavenly Father.

Love, Elder & Sister Powell

June 27, 2011

2011-07-18T22:22:00.001-07:00

We have loved the missionary work, we get acquainted with so many wonderful people. We have been teaching the Ng family since we got here, and they are still progressing. We have come to love them dearly, and do a lot of things with them. They are attending church regularly now, and we are hoping that Beth will want to be baptized before we get transferred next month. Canadian law only lets us stay for six months on our visas, so we have to be back in the US before August 6^th. It’s going to be hard to leave here. We have seen Tim and Beth and the kids grow so much, and they have learned to love the gospel. We have also been teaching Daniel again, but this time as a captive audience. He was put back in jail for parole violation, he was throwing water balloons at 9:10 p.m., and his probation curfew was 9:00 p.m. so now he gets to spend 8 months behind bars. We gave him a lesson last week on modern prophets, and left him a copy of Pres. Monson’s talk on the “three R’s of choice.” When we talked to him Friday, he said he had gotten the point! He’s in his early twenties, has three kids and a “wife” that are home without a dad and a wage-earner. Our choices affect many! He doesn’t have any major offences, just a string of stupid stunts like that, plus a few drunk and disorderly. The Gospel will certainly improve his family’s life when he gains his testimony!

We had a good day at church yesterday, although none of our investigators attended. There was a city league soccer tournament scheduled at church time, and I guess the lure of the world is still greater than the lure of eternity. Even the daughter of our high counselor missed to play. Kind of a dilemma when they barely have enough kids to field a team, and if one of them misses, the team has to forfeit the game. I guess they did win the game, though, only the second one they have won this season. Sister Powell spoke in Sacrament Meeting, taught part of our temple prep class during Sunday School, then taught the Relief Society lesson. She was glad when the meetings were over. She spoke on “Responsibilities of Freedom,” since this Friday is Canada Day, and Monday is the 4^th of July. Of course they don’t celebrate the 4^th of July here, only Canada day. She did a really good job on all of them. We’re kind of sad that we have to go to Juneau again this week on Thursday to meet our new mission president. We come back late Friday, so we will miss Canada day all together because we’ll be in Alaska. Then we’ll miss the 4^th because we will be back in Canada. Oh, well. Guess we’ll wait till next year.

We get our new mission president this week. It was supposed to be Pres. Clark, but he was switched at the last minute with Pres. Beesley that was supposed to serve in Moscow, Russia. He is a retired high level Air Force test pilot, and I guess they were worried about security complications, so he and Pres. Clark traded places. I don’t know anything about him yet, but will be fun to meet him on Friday. I’m sure his personality will be totally different from Pres. and Sis. Dance. Will send pictures and more information next time I write.

Love, Elder & Sister Powell

A letter finally

2011-07-06T06:07:00.000-07:00

Dad and I have both been in a funk. I think I need a little vent here. So here goes. It is difficult to see any progress here and I am tired of being treated like a 19 year old elder. We report the same numbers to the branch mission leader on Wed, the district leader at district meeting Tuesday, and again when he calls Sunday, and to the branch president in a meeting Sunday morning, and the mission president once a month. I feel like I am ten and have to report my every move. I feel watched and like I have to almost ask to go to the restroom. A bit too much control. I am hoping the new Branch President is a little less structured for seniors than President Dance was. I am really ready to transfer and get a change. We should transfer the end of the month some time. Have no idea where we will go, but the change will be stimulating. It will also be nice to get regular mail, and decent phone service in the states. So that did feel good!

We kind of missed the 4^th Holiday in the states and Canada, July 1 in Canada. We were flown to Juneau again, second time in two weeks, to meet the new mission president. We like him. He seems down to earth but won’t let the elders get out of hand. It was very tiring though. The Hirsch’s put on a barbecue for us so we would feel like the 4^th. It was yummy.

We spent Monday being tourists and seeing all the touristy things in Whitehorse. Our friend Tim is bound and determined we are going to see them all before we get transferred. That was fun, but we were dead tired from going to Juneau to meet the new mission president, and it was a bit long for me. We saw an old paddle boat; it was huge and was on the Yukon River during the gold rush. Then we went to a a transportation museum that the men loved and read all the signs. Then we did lunch and the Beringa museum which was about the ice age and wooly mammoths. That was really interesting. They had a couple of movies we got to sit down and watch which helped my feet.

They have a yummy fish and chips place here you would love. The fish pieces are 12 inches long , made with fresh real halibut YUMMY! I ordered 3 pieces thinking they would be small, and had dinner the next day. We get to go to Skagway again Tuesday and see the Birds’, our friends in China, who are on a cruise. I am excited to see them.

Love ya, Mom ReNee

Letter

2011-05-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

Dearest Family, May 27, 2011

Well, it has been quite an eventful week or two. Last week we did quite a lot of service, we went over to Ng’s and I helped him reinforce a banister post that was loose, then we spent the next two days installing his stair rail and a railing along the top of the stairs between the entry way and the living room. It is where we had taken out part of a wall earlier in the spring because he wanted to make his living room look larger. We got it in, and it looks really good, but still took two days to do it. Then I helped him figure out how to take the tires off his motorcycle so he could get them fixed. The back one had the cords showing through, and the front one was bald. It is a Honda Can-am, so it has all of this plastic around the tires and the Honda shop here wanted $175 to change them out, and he already has the new tires. I showed him how to get the plastic off, and we got the wheels off. (Shaft drive). He was going to have the tires changed at a tire shop, which was fine with me, but another friend of is from the Philippines went and got them from the tire shop and changed them himself. He said he had been changing them since he was a little kid because EVERYBODY rides motorbikes over there. Still took him about two hours to do them, so I was really glad he did. Then I put them back on for him, and took the trunk release out so he could fix it. Turns out he couldn’t buy a new cable for that year of bike, so he is building a new one out of a bicycle brake cable. I decided I’d let him.

Anyway, on Friday we went out to Tom Hirsch’s and helped him clear some of his land so that he can park some of his equipment out of site of the house. The trees here grow really close together, mostly lodge pole pine, but with a few birch here and there. The pines are about 1 ½” in diameter, but about 10-15’ tall. They grow like weeds. Anyway, we pulled a bunch of them up with his tractor that I fixed the week before. You just wrap a chain around them and pull them up like weeds, then drag them over to burn them. We had a fun bonfire and a good visit along with it. Some of them we cut up with the chainsaw because they were too long to burn and we didn’t want the fire to spread. We’re going to go out today and help him block up a bunch of wood for this winter. He’s about my age, but is really stove up from motorcycle and snowmobile wrecks and working hard logging for a good part of his life, but he’s really an awesome guy and a real strength to the branch here. We’ve really gotten to be good friends. Besides, he has a shop with lots of tools that he lets me borrow when I need them. I do wish he had a hoist, though! J

Saturday I worked at Ng’s again for awhile, plus we have been teaching lessons almost every night, or visiting with less-actives and investigators. We did lose Daniel this week, we were supposed to have a lesson with him last Tuesday, but when we went over his wife said he had been picked up for throwing water-balloons and was out after curfew for the second time, so he was in jail, but could we take him up his Book of Mormon. We went up and gave a Book of Mormon to the jailer, but they wouldn’t let us in because we haven’t filled out the necessary paperwork yet. Will do that this week. Anyway, because this was the second time he had broken curfew it looks like he’ll be there for 6-10 months. We’re going to try to continue to visit him, but can’t count him as an investigator anymore. But maybe we can count him as a “captive audience?” L

Then on Monday (our regular P-day) I helped our landlord, Mark, work on some of his stuff. First I helped him change the lower control arm on his 4-wheeler because he didn’t know how to change out the bushings, and the ball-joint had broken. Then I fixed the starter on his Ford diesel pickup. Then I helped him weld the catalytic converter back to the exhaust pipe on his motorhome. That turned into a major job, it’s a ’98 Ford with a V-10, so we pulled it up on the curb so we could crawl under it. We used a borrowed 110v wire-feed welder, but it wasn’t hot enough to flow good, and he had some crappy flux-core wire. Plus it kept blowing the breaker. Finally we gave up and went out to Toms and borrowed his acetylene torch set. It’s a monster, about 400 lbs, but the three of us rolled it up ramps into the back of Mark’s pickup and tied it in. We used it to fix the exhaust, which took about three hours because the stupid flux-core wire left pockets of glass from the flux everywhere, so by the time you got it hot enough for the metal to flow the glass out, it would burn a hole in the pipe. Finally got it done. Then we took Tom’s torch back out to him. Tom wasn’t there, so we backed the pickup up to the shop to unload it. I forgot Mark had wrecked his motorcycle the night before and hurt his shoulder so no strength there. I was on top, Mark on the bottom. With is bad shoulder he couldn’t hold it back, and I did OK by myself until it got to the steep part of the ramp, then it took off with me still trying to hold it back. I didn’t want to let go because I didn’t want it to run over Mark! Anyway, it hit the bottom of the ramp and stopped, but I didn’t. It launched me and I face-planted on the concrete floor! Got a nice shiner, a sore wrist and some bruises out of it, but am doing OK now. Everybody asks me how I got my shiner, and I just tell them it is a result of miss-communication. Mom said “Duck!” and I said, “Where?”

We lost another of our investigator families this week. We had a great lesson with them at the Branch President’s house last Thursday, but Pres. Little put quite a bit of pressure on them to come to church on Sunday. Since they don’t drive he said someone would pick them up. They were kind of reluctant, but he wouldn’t give up. Then he called them and on Sunday morning and said someone would be over. They didn’t answer the phone so he left a message. We tried to call them several times this week, and they didn’t answer or call back. We went to see them last night, and Justin told us that they wanted to decide for themselves, and didn’t want us to come back for awhile. We told him that would be fine, invited him to continue to read his Book of Mormon, and asked if we could call him in a week or two. I also told him that I would tell the other people not to call him anymore. We parted on friendly terms, but sometimes fellowshipping can get a little over-zealous. We fell really sad, because they were doing so well. Justin has quit smoking and they have been really receptive, but it was at a pretty sensitive time and just too soon to push.

We are looking forward to going out to dinner tonight for our 42^nd wedding anniversary. The Ng’s are going to take us out to a Salmon and Barbeque House here in town that is supposed to be really good. We would never go there on our own, as it’s really expensive, but they want to take us for helping them with the house. It will be fun, and Mom is excited to have their famous fish n’ chips! I’m going to see if they have good ribs!

Warren, we’re so excited about your research fellowship with ISU with the internship at INL! That should be an awesome experience that will open many doors to you. And I’m dang jealous that you are going to be working on hybrid auto research! Thank you so much for calling to tell us about it! It will be so nice to be able to get your degree without having to go deep in debt! Mom loved her Mother’s day present from you and Rachel, she loves getting the multiple little presents, and the notes with them were delightful!

Ed and Julie, I hope you guys aren’t floating away! From the news it looks like the river is still rising, but at least it hasn’t reached the highest level yet, and the cooler weather might help it slow down a little. Ed, your motorcycle sounds awesome! Those Kawasaki’s are great bikes, and should give you better mileage than even your Camry. Might be a little chilly in the mornings, though! Did you get it running yet? Mark was riding his Honda the other day and hit a little patch of sandy gravel on a curve and dumped it. Messed his shoulder up, bruised his hip, and really cracked his helmet. Probably would have killed him if he hadn’t been wearing it. I helped him fix the handle-bars and throttle on his bike Monday, but I haven’t seen him riding it again yet. His wife isn’t very excited about him having it in the first place, and really ticked now that he’s had his first accident. He hasn’t ridden a lot, you can tell.

Well, Mom thinks it’s time to go get breakfast, so I guess I’ll close. We love you all, and we love to hear from you.

Love, Dad and Mom.

Journal

2011-05-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

May 15, 2011

Dear Family and Friends

It sometimes seems like time flies but I wonder what we have accomplished! The days and weeks go by so quickly, but it seems like sometimes I can’t remember what we do from one day to the next. I’ll try to fill you in on our days for the past couple of weeks.

Last week we house-sitted for one of the members of the branch. They went down to Edmonton to pick up a load of stuff for food storage and provident living. It’s a 5-day round trip, but it is the closest place to a Bishop’s Storehouse and cannery, so they asked us if we’d watch their house and care for their animals. They live south of town about 15 miles, out in the middle of not much but beautiful forests and hills. Of course there was still some snow on the ground, but most of it has melted finally, and the weather was quite nice, up into the 40’s during the day, low 20’s at night. The outside water is still turned off because of the permafrost in the ground, so we had to carry water from the house down to the barn. It was beautiful and calm, very peaceful this time of year. They said that the bears might have come out of hibernation, and they were worried for their animals, but I guess it was too early as we didn’t see any. We did see a coyote and a fox, but the bears aren’t out yet. I guess they come out of hibernation and feed on the grass along the roads, but there isn’t any grass yet. I’d expect we’ll see some this week, as it’s beginning to feel more like spring everyday. It’s supposed to get up into the mid 50s this week, might even break 60 by Thursday or Friday. Anyway, we fed the llamas and the pony twice a day, also made sure they had water. The rest of the time we did some work around the farm, and did our missionary work during the afternoons and evenings. I did fix the hydraulics on the loader on his tractor that he uses to clean the sheds out. Also shoveled out the pony shed which reminded me of cleaning the barn when I was a kid growing up in Standish. It was very quiet and peaceful, but we missed our “stuff” so came to our apartment quite often to get teaching materials and eat when we were in town. They got back on Saturday night and we returned to our “cozy” apartment.

This week we have been teaching and doing missionary stuff. We are teaching four families right now, two of them are progressing, the other two we’re probably just planting seeds. We are still teaching the Brackenberries who have been living together for 28 years, and we told them they would have to get married so they could get baptized. Jeff wants to get married, but Margaret can’t see any reason to change the way things are. She said she doesn’t want to make any long-term commitments. They are taking care of two of their grandchildren, and their daughter who is 21 lives with them but doesn’t do much to take care of the kids. During one of our lessons, she brought her 2-year old in and dumped her on grandma and said, “take her, I don’t want to deal with her.” So she did. The grandma (Margaret) is 1^st Nation (Indian), and I guess that’s normal. Makes me glad for the stability of families back home! They have attended church a few times, and are quite interested in learning about the church. Jeff knows the church is true, but doesn’t want to commit to living the principles until he knows he can get baptized. Guess we’ll see how it goes.

Daniel is another person we have been teaching. He is living with a woman several years his senior, and they have three kids but don’t want to get married in case it “doesn’t work out.” They are also 1^st Nation. Jessica sat in on the first lesson we taught them and seemed quite receptive, but then they missed a couple of weeks (no-shows), and she lost interest. We have taught him a couple more times, but never know if he’s going to keep the appointments. He has no religious background, we have had to start with teaching him who Jesus is and how religion can improve his life. He wants to learn, though, so we’ve shown him some of the videos on the life of Christ and the restoration. He has been to church a few times but has missed the last few.

We are teaching another young couple, Justin and Megan Moore. It’s kind of interesting how we met them. One of the ward members told us he had someone we needed to teach named Daniel. ReNee couldn’t remember the name, so one week at church she asked the member for Justin’s phone number. Duncan (the member) kind of looked at her funny, then gave her the number for Justin. ReNee called the number and said, “Duncan gave us your name and said you might be interested in hearing about the church. When can we come over?” A long silence, then, “Uh, I guess that would be OK.” ReNee said, “How about next Tuesday at 7:00?” “O.K.” Turns out Duncan was talking about Daniel, not Justin, and Mom just got the names mixed up with someone else in the branch. We went and taught Justin and he was quite receptive, then we went back the next week and taught Megan too. They have two little girls, one 4 and one 18 months. We have been meeting with them each week, and they are reading the Book of Mormon. They really want a change in their lives, Justin drinks a lot, and both of them smoked. We taught them the word of wisdom, and they are both working on living it. They have both quite smoking, and I think Justin is trying to quit drinking. They are both in their 20s, and we love working with them. They are so humble and feel the spirit when we teach. We are still trying to get them to church, we hoped today, but they weren’t home so may have gone to her sisters for the weekend.

Our favorites are the Ng’s. They are the family we stayed with when we first moved up here and our apartment wasn’t ready. We have grown to love them and have done a lot of things with them. She isn’t a member, and he has been less-active for about 5 years. They are both attending church with us and we are also teaching his two kids from a previous marriage. Matt and Samantha are 12 and 11 respectively. Tim is working on becoming worthy to baptize them, as he is a Priest. We have had many great discussions with them, and enjoy their company. We helped them with some remodeling on their house, also some repairs on their cars and helped insulate and sheet his shop. We have kept our close friendship after we moved into our new apartment.

Senior missionary work is much different than the young missionaries. Our time is much less structured, and for quite awhile we felt like we weren’t sure what we were supposed to do. We still don’t, but after talking to other senior couples it sounds like it’s more normal. We get up in the morning and exercise, clean our apartment, eat, then study for several hours. We do service for people, and usually teach two or three lessons in the evenings. Nearly everyone works, so we don’t get to visit much during the afternoons, but sometimes we do. We have been trying to visit all of the members of the branch, but it’s hard to find them home, and many of them aren’t very receptive. I have taught seminary a few mornings, and we clean the church on Friday mornings. I don’t know who’s supposed to do it, but it went several weeks without getting done, so I got a key from the branch president and have been doing it. When we went this week someone had done it already, but we vacuumed a few places they had missed, and cleaned all of the kids handprints off the glass of the front doors.

Tonight we had a fireside at the church, and watched “Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration,” a film that recently showed at the Legacy theater in Salt Lake. We had a good turnout and refreshments afterwards. There were a few non-members there, but none of our investigators made it. Tonight was also one of the NHL playoffs, and up here hockey is about the same as the Final Four in basketball in the US. We will try to follow up with the ones that came, though.

Well, I guess I’d better go for now. The weather today was beautiful, got up to 55F today, supposed to be even warmer tomorrow. Trees are starting to get leaf buds on them, some places the grass is showing through hints of green. I think it’s going to be really pretty here this summer. There are hundreds of lakes around, several large ones as big as Palisades within 15 min. of town. Several people have offered to take us fishing as soon as the ice is off the lakes. Will have to find out what an out-of-state license costs! I hear that a 5-lb fish is considered normal, and that they throw the little ones back. It will be fun trying.

Hope you are all doing well. We love you and miss you. The gospel is true in the Yukon! We are grateful for our good health, the opportunity to be here, and truly appreciate the support of our family and friends.

Love, Dad and Mom.

PS: Zach -- Congratulations on your graduation! We are proud of you! We love you! Do what you can do to prepare for your mission, and we’ll make up the difference. It is the one thing you can do in your life that will change your life for eternity, and bring eternity to the lives of everyone you touch! I am so grateful for my missionary experience when I was your age. The Lord will provide a way for His children to serve if they prepare themselves spiritually and have the desire to serve. Great blessings come to those that are allowed to help! We need the blessings! Plan on it!

Troy-- Great to visit with you on the phone. We’re excited to hear about your new house! It sounds like it will be awesome, and look forward to getting to help you work on it when we get home in 2013! You’ll love the extra space, and the kids will have a ball on 4 acres! Maybe we’ll come build a little cabin on one corner and spend our winters there!

Shaun – I can’t believe you sold your green van for that much! That’s AWESOME! What are you driving now? Did you find a motorcycle yet? I told Warren you were probably going to come get the pickup if you can afford gas for it. Gas here just went up again, it’s now $5.65/gallon. You just bite the bullet and keep driving! Glad you still love flying!

Julie – Awesome that you got a job in Menan! That’s still closer than IF, and it should have the small-school closeness and fewer of the large-district politics! (I hope!) That’s a beautiful area out there.

Warren – Hope you are able to get Sarah’s car going. Hope her broken hand is doing OK. Probably better not to try towing her bicycle with the 4-wheeler again! J Thanks so much for fixing the furnace!

Kiley – Thanks for the fun pictures of the kids! We really miss them, and it’s so fun to see how they are growing! Hope the new business is growing, it always takes awhile to get started up, but you guys are amazing!

Sarah—Awesome pictures of the prom dress! (And of course the beautiful blonde cheerleader in it!) How fun to have Amber and Kelli there to help you get ready. I hope you really had a fun date.

Teresa—Awesome to hear about your challenges in Arizona, but love your sense of humor! What a gift it is to be able to laugh about life’s trials! Hope your knee surgery is healing well, and that you’re recovering from your trip to Utah under the stress of Dave’s grandfather’s death. I’m sure they appreciated your ability to organize and manage things. They have really had their trials! Glad you got your kitchen cabinets in before you got your knee done!

Amber—Hope Elaine is doing OK. We really felt terrible to hear about it. They have really had their mountains to climb this year, too! What with both Kent and Elaine’s surgeries, then to find out about the tumor! How tenuous our health is, and how fast our lives can change! Be sure to give them our love and tell them they are in our prayers.

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

Dearest family,

Happy Easter!

I hope you have a fun day with your families, and that the kids got to go hunt Easter Eggs yesterday. I hope the weather was good for you, it was beautiful here. It got up to 47 degrees, the warmest day we’ve had so far. Several people were out raking the thatch on their lawns. It is really nice to be able to go out without our heavy coats on, usually just wear a sweater or light jacket.

We drove over to Skagway again yesterday, took baptismal clothing over for Brandy Mayo who was able to get baptized finally. She is pretty excited, as she has waited a whole year. It was really a nice service, her parents attended and it was good to meet them. She will be confirmed today during Sacrament meeting, but we didn’t have a place to stay the night, so we came on back over. Skagway is a town of only about 800 people during the off-season, but the big cruise ships start coming in the first of May (I think the first one is May 5^th), and the town will swell to about 5000 for the summer. It’s a fun tourist town, there are lots of fun shops and things to see from the gold rush era, and it’s one of the major stops on the cruise lines. Reminds me a lot of Virginia City, Nevada or the gold towns of California. Some of the little shops were starting to open, and we thought we’d have time to look at some yesterday, but we got hung up at the US border crossing for about an hour, so we didn’t have time. A lot of people were on the road for the holiday, and they only had one border guy there, so it took a long time to process the 15 or 20 cars in front of us. We made it about 15 minutes before the baptism, and we had all the baptismal clothes. Skagway is such a small branch they don’t have many of their own, and they are almost all in kids sizes. They only have about 25 people who attend in the winter, but between 75-100 each week during the tourist season. They have quite a few young people from BYU and BYU-I that come to work here in the summer, kind of like Warren did in Juneau, I guess.

The work is a little slower this week, we ended up only teaching about 5 lessons this week, but we had some great visits with some of the less-active and part-member families in our branch. They are really good people, but many of them have just let the things they want most get in the way of the things that matter most. It’s so easy to get into the mindset of the world. The family we are living with is putting on an Easter dinner for anyone in the branch that doesn’t have family plans, with ham and turkey and all the trimmings. Mom is helping her with it, as she hasn’t done a feed for that many people yet. It should be a fun thing, though we have no idea how many are going to show up. Mom cooked an extra ham just in case the ones they have don’t end up being enough.

Well, I guess I’d better get ready for church. We didn’t have our early correlation meeting today because it’s Easter, which is kind of nice because it gives us extra time this morning. Sacrament meeting isn’t until 10:00 a.m. but that’s only an hour away, so I’d better get ready.

We sure love all of you, and hope you have a great day. Remember that our hearts are with you, and that we love and miss you all! Be sure to give the grand kids our hugs and loves.

Love, Dad and Mom

Journal April

2011-04-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Family and Friends,

Here it is time to write again already. Last Saturday we drove over to Skagway to meet with a young 18 year-old lady that had the missionary lessons last year before they took the elders out for the winter. She wanted to join the church, but her parents told her she couldn’t join until she turned 18 because they weren’t sure it was the best thing for her. She turned 18 in February, and we have been trying to make contact with her. She is delightful, and excited to get baptized. She has already been accepted to BYU this fall. She and her debate partner are flying to Washington DC next month to participate in an international debate tournament, so you can tell she’s sharp! We have set her baptism for next Saturday, and she will be confirmed the next day, on Easter Sunday. They moved missionaries into Skagway this week, so they will be handling all of the arrangements, but we still need to go over because they don’t have any baptismal clothes, so we’ll take them ours. It’s about 2 ½ hours from here, and the drive is beautiful, much like driving over Jackson pass, only here it’s the White pass where most of the miners climbed in the winter of 1879 during the days of the Klondike Gold Rush. Of course it took them 2 ½ months to make the trip, and they had to carry 1000 lbs of supplies over on their backs just to be admitted into Canada! We’ll come back Saturday evening, as we will have investigators out to church Sunday and we need to be here to greet them.

We have been staying busy, wishing we had more time! We updated the branch list, and have been visiting less actives and part-member families. We have loved getting acquainted with them, and have had some delightful visits. We are going to try to visit everyone in the branch, then will try to be sensitive enough to the Spirit to know who we should try to work with first to help them get back to church. We have some returned missionaries that we’d like to get back, they are awesome people, mostly just kind of got out of the habit of coming for one reason or another. Some of them married outside of the church, and it’s hard to stay excited when there isn’t much support at home. We’ve also gotten to do some service for various people, both members and others. I helped one of the members put spark plugs and an oxygen sensor in his car last week, then this morning helped him get a stripped oil plug out so he could change his oil. This afternoon I helped a less-active troubleshoot and fix an electrical problem in his house. One of his switches was burned out, so his stairs light would only turn on from one switch, and then only if the other switch was in the other position. It wouldn’t work at all from the bottom switch. Was tricky to diagnose without a tester or meter, but we got it fixed and had a great visit while we worked on it. His wife isn’t a member, but we have been teaching her and the two kids, and it has been fun to get to know them. They are receptive, but want to progress slowly. We have been reading the Book of Mormon with them, as they have a hard time getting used to the “Old English.” We taught them about baptism and the Holy Ghost yesterday, and they were receptive. They had one of their friends sit in who is a Seventh Day Adventist, and he seemed really interested, but had missed the earlier discussions. We are going to see if he’d be interested in “catching up” next time we visit with him.

Day before yesterday we went with them out to Watson Lake to Swan Haven to see the migration of the trumpeter swans. There are thousands of them that move through here on their way north to the nesting grounds. We were really excited, and took our cameras so we could send pictures. Right! Turns out they are out in the middle of the lake where the ice has melted a channel through, and they look like little dots through spotting scopes they set up so you can see them. There were about 100 of them out there, though. There is about half a mile of slushy ice about a foot deep between them and us! Maybe in a couple of weeks if it warms up really fast enough of the ice will melt that they will move closer to the shore of the lake! Just when we think it’s going to warm up, it snows again. We got about 3” this morning, but it did warm up to 37, so most of it has melted off today. We did have a pretty stiff breeze that helped, but it made the wind chill about 15, so we didn’t stand around outside enjoying it much.

It’s been fun seeing the weather warm up, the ice on the Yukon River is breaking up with big slabs floating down the river. They are still about a foot thick, and often 20 or 30 feet across. When they float to where the river hasn’t melted they turn up on edge and make big ice dams. There aren’t enough to block the river, though, so we’re not in danger of any flooding. I guess some years they get Chinook winds that melt things really fast and then they get dams that bock the river and get floods. Not much danger of that this year, though.

We picked up another couple this week, will start teaching them next week. We had some other good lessons this week, we have three couples that we are teaching, but they have small children and are easily distracted, so the wives of all three families have stopped sitting in on the lessons. I think they are embarrassed that their kids interrupt us. We have tried to schedule later, but the kids still get up and interrupt. The husbands seem receptive; guess we’ll see what we can work out. We discussed it a Branch Council Sunday, and some of the members said they might invite them to their houses so they can help with the kids. We’ll see if they are receptive to that when we teach them this week.

Well, not a lot to write about this week. Our weeks are pretty “same,” we are enjoying the study time we get each morning. I finished reading the Book of Mormon again, amazing how much more there is to it when you study it and don’t just read it. I’m going to start again and make notes of scriptures I want to memorize to use in teaching. We use it so much more in our teaching than we did when I was a young missionary, and it’s so much more effective. We loved watching general conference two weeks ago, and I was really excited to hear Pres. Monson announce the temple in Winnipeg! I served four months there on my mission, and there were four wards in one stake at that time, and that included all of Manitoba! Of course, when I served in St. Paul, Minnesota for 8 months there were two branches, with two wards in Minneapolis. Now they have a temple too! Guess some of the seeds sprouted after all! I served in the North Central States mission, and now there are 5 missions that cover that area. When I went out there were 12,000 missionaries, 1.5 million members of the church, 36 general authorities, and 12 temples in the world. The president of the church was David O. McKay, the newest “junior” apostle was Boyd K. Packer, and I reported for 5 days to the old “Mission Home” at 50 N. Temple in Salt Lake City. Guess that tells you how old I am. Wonder what changes we’ll see in the next 48 years!

I hope you are all doing well, we love you and appreciate your prayers and thoughts in our behalf. We definitely feel your support and love. We love getting your letters and hearing what is going on in your lives.

Love, Mom & Dad (Elder & Sister Powell)

April 4 journal

2011-04-04T07:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Family and Friends,
How the time flies! We are enjoying being in our apartment, although Mom is still moving things around and getting everything more to her liking. We have been pretty busy with stuff, so haven’t had time to spend as much time “moving in” as we would like. I’m not sure what’s keeping us so busy, but it seems like we just get started and something comes up and we’re gone for several hours.
We started teaching two new families this last week, both young couples with two or three kids. As is normal here, they’re not married to each other, but have been living together for several years. Then they start having marital problems and look for solutions. We are happy to help! We taught one couple the first discussion last week, and are going to teach them the second one tonight. The other couple we have met with twice, and will teach them again tomorrow night. We’ll probably review the 1st discussion, since the “wife” wasn’t there the first night. She was really friendly last time, though. We invited them to general conference Sunday, but they didn’t come. One of our families that we have been working with for a few weeks did come to the Sunday morning session, stayed for the luncheon afterwards, then left before the second session. We’ll meet with them again on Wednesday, so will see how they liked it. They are the ones we challenged to get married and begin living the word of wisdom a couple of weeks ago. When we met with them on Saturday night after conference, they still weren’t ready to get married yet (They’ve only been together for 22 years), and haven’t quit smoking yet. But they’re still learning, and hopefully soon their hearts will be touched and they will be ready to make changes. We taught them about faith in Christ again this last week, and talked about how important it is for us to form a personal relationship with our Heavenly Father and our Savior. They seemed very receptive to it. The Gospel is really a giant step for someone with little religious background, but the potential is so great!
We started teaching a lady from Nigeria on Friday, she runs a day-care center here in town. She seems very receptive, but when we went to teach her she had a visitor from Germany that sat in on the lesson. He was older, about our age, but very negative. He stressed that he doesn’t believe in God, that there is no such person as Jesus Christ, and that all religion is a waste of time. We tried to tell him of our beliefs, but he said he didn’t want to hear it, and that religion is just a crutch, and that he didn’t want to hear our message. But he didn’t leave. We gave what message we could to Lillian and made an appointment to teach her again this weekend, but don’t know what kind of reception we’ll have. Guess we’ll see this Saturday.
We are going to Skagway on Thursday to meet with a girl named Brandy who had the missionary lessons last summer, but her parents wouldn’t let her get baptized until she turned 18, which was in February. She wants to get baptized, so we’re going to go over and review the discussions and the baptismal interview questions to see if she’s ready. If she is, we’ll set a baptismal date and initiate the interview process and set up a program. I visited with her on the phone last night, and she seems really sharp and excited that we called. I talked to her branch mission leader a couple of times, but they don’t seem to know what the process is, so we’ll meet with him Thursday too. It’s a three-hour drive to Skagway, but we’re ready for a road-trip. There is still quite a bit of snow, but the weather has warmed up into the high 30’s and lower 40s, so it’s starting to melt and we’re beginning to see some bare ground here and there. It is going to be just beautiful when the snow melts and all of the deciduous trees begin to leaf out and the wildflowers bloom. It’s staying light until after 9:00 p.m. now, so will drive back Thursday night.
It’s fun to be here in the spring (late winter?). The ice on the Yukon is beginning to break up and there are starting to be huge chunks of ice beginning to form ice dams on the river. Mom took some pictures this morning, but I don’t have them downloaded yet. Some of the ice is a foot thick, slabs 15’ across sticking up out of the water with whirlpools swirling around them. Last Friday on the way home from Seminary (I got to teach Friday and Monday while the regular teacher was out of town) we saw a bald eagle fishing from the ice at the edge of the river right here in town. It was as big as a large turkey! We watched it for awhile from just across the river and it didn’t seem to care. We mentioned it to someone after conference on Saturday and people said, “Yeah, we see them all the time.” Well, we thought it was cool! :-} It is really nice to be able to go outside without long-johns on and two pairs of socks. When we’re going to be out for awhile we still dress warmer, because it’s pretty windy most of the time and even though it’s in the 30s it doesn’t take long to cool off with the wind chill. We are liking the extra sunlight, though. It gets light about 6:00 a.m., and stays late longer every day. The day stays lighter for about 10 minutes more each day, and you can see the difference from the beginning of the week to the end of the week. I guess it has to do that if it’s going to stay light all night within another month or two.
I think the local townspeople are enjoying the warmer weather and extra light too. When we go to town there are lots of people out walking and moving about, and a lot more traffic on the streets. Whitehorse is a fairly large town of about 30,000 people, but feels like a small town until people get out and start moving about. There is a lot of dust in the air from all of the dirt they put on the icy roads all winter, and that doesn’t help my allergies much. We’ve had to wash our car every two or three days because it gets so dirty from the mud and the water running down the roads we can hardly tell what color it’s supposed to be! They have a car wash here like the ones we used to use years ago, where you put in a quarter for 5 minutes spray. Except here they charge a dollar for one minute. Usually takes about $4 just to wash off the main layer of mud and dirt. We’ll do the extra special zippy waxie wash when the water stops running across all of the roads and the dust has time to settle. We wouldn’t mind a good rainstorm to wash everything off, but guess that doesn’t come for awhile yet. Still comes down as snow when it storms, though it doesn’t stay as long as it used to.
It was really great to watch conference! We got to watch it all except for Pres. Eyring’s talk on Saturday morning. We had made arrangements to watch one of our contacts play in his little-league hockey tournament, and the Saturday morning game is the only one that wasn’t during a full session of conference. It’s the first time Mom has seen a real ice hockey game, and it was pretty exciting, even though our team lost 12 to 1. Hockey is really a fast-moving game, and it’s really rough and physical. They won their game on Saturday night, lost Sunday morning, and played again yesterday afternoon. I don’t know how they did in that one yet, but they were behind by one point in the second period. Last year in October we missed most of conference because we were on the road to Troys in Texas and couldn’t get it on the radio. We read it in the Ensign, but somehow it’s just not the same! I can hardly wait for next month’s Ensign to come, as I want to read each of the talks again after having heard them. There is so much wonderful information that I just couldn’t absorb it that fast! How blessed we are to be able to listen to modern-day prophets and apostles! Maybe it’s just that we’re more in tune by the nature of where we are and what we’re doing. If so, I hope to be more in tune for the rest of my life. We watched it at the church, since it’s not televised on any station here, but it was much easier to stay awake, and we had a “linger-longer” luncheon between sessions on both Saturday and Sunday, which gave us a great chance to visit and talk about the talks. After the priesthood session we guys had apple pie and ice cream. Since there were only about 10 who showed up, there was plenty to go around!
Well, I guess there isn’t much more to report, except that we are enjoying our experience. We are making a lot of great new friends, and it’s fun to be in a small branch with all of its struggles and challenges. We just studied section 121 of the Doctrine and Covenants where it says, “…These things shall give the experience, and shall be for thy good.” We’re getting lots of really good experience! It’s fun to be able to teach the gospel, but hard when people choose not to live it because it’s difficult, and we can see the joys and blessings in their lives that they are forfeiting because of those decisions. I’m sure our Father in Heaven feels the same way as he sees us make unwise decisions that rob us of the blessings associated with those laws upon which those blessings are predicated.
I hope you are all well, and that you had the opportunity to participate in conference. We love you, and miss you, and think of you often. We love to hear from you, and pray that you will feel the blessings of our Father in Heaven in your lives daily.
Love, Elder and Sister Powell (Mom and Dad).

Moving Experience!

2011-03-27T07:08:00.000-07:00

Dearest Family,

Well, we finally got moved! Our apartment is ALMOST done, so we began moving our stuff in Friday morning, finished it up Saturday morning. We have a TON of stuff, I don't know where it all came from, or where it's going to go when we ever get transferred to somewhere else. Mom has been sorting and putting stuff away. I have been working on the kitchen cabinets, the guy never did show up to finish them up for us, so I built shelves for the ones that were just open, stained the trim, etc. so there was some place to put our food and dishes and stuff. I need to go to Home Hardware and pick up a lazy-susan for the corner cabinet that didn't ever get done, and put that in tomorrow so mom can put her baking stuff away. We were hoping the landlord would get it for us yesterday so we didn't have to buy it, as it costs $60, but he didn't, so we'll get it. That should be the last major thing we have to get for awhile. Some of the cabinets don't have doors on them, but we can live with that. There is a guy that's supposed to be having the doors made, but don't think it will happen any time soon.

The apartment is quite a bit smaller than the one we were in, but at least we're not having to live around all of his mother's stuff. We just have our stuff. We did get hooked up to the Internet yesterday finally, we were a few days without it. This one is lots slower, but hey--it works! The one over at Ngs was blazing fast, really spoiled us. I guess we'll get used to it. We are sharing wireless with the family upstairs, and their kids are on it a lot, so that slows it down. But at least we don't have to buy Internet on a long-term contract since we can't be here for more than four more months, as our visa will expire.

I am going to try to borrow the magic jack phone from Tim tonight so we can call you up sometimes. We called Warren on it last week, and it worked pretty good. Nice thing is that it doesn't cost hardly anything to call, but downside is that if there is a bad Internet connection, the call quality isn't the greatest. I still haven't gotten a new mike for Skype yet, don't know how well it will work with a slow connection anyway. Our stuff is downloading at about 24 kb/sec so it takes forever to download a large file. And our signal isn't very good because we're down in the basement quite a ways from the server.

The weather here is finally moderating, today it is up to 44, the snow is beginning to melt, and the roads are wet and muddy. Our car was so dirty you could hardly tell what color it was supposed to be, so we found a car wash and squirted it off. They don't have any automatic washes here, so we went to a do-it-yourself one that you put in a dollar and it runs for about 2 minutes, then you put in another dollar. It took three dollars to get even the first major layer of dirt off. I decided it was good enough for now, since the roads are so wet it looks about the same in about 5 miles. Gas has stabilized at about $5.50/gal, which is nice, but they expect it to go up some more. We just have to bite the bullet and put in $75-80 each time, and try to not let it get clear empty. Other than that, the car has been running great. I'm glad we didn't bring the pickup, we wouldn't have been able to afford to drive!

Brent, it is so exciting to hear that you have been in your new office for two weeks! I'm sure things will pick up as word gets around, but will probably be kind of hard for awhile. It's hard to believe that Colby is walking already, how time flies! I'll bet Kaydin is enjoying gymnastics, it will do so much for her throughout her life. I'll bet Kiley is enjoying getting settled, getting everything moved into your new home and hopefully getting all of the boxes unpacked. I'll bet it was really hectic with building the clinic and everything.

Russ, I hope your job is doing OK now. It can really frustrating to have to work with a jerk for a boss. Just remember Murphy's Law: Most people are promoted to their highest level of incompetence, then remain there. Classic example. Unfortunately, the rest of us just have to learn how to roll with it and survive in spite of them. At least you have a good, stable job in an area of high demand, and you are making good money. You will have a lot more freedom when you get your finances under control in another year or two. It's hard now, but will be better then. Hope Zach's pickup is still running well, but imagine the price of gas has made it hard for him. Stay strong in the church, it's where the true blessings come from, you know.

Ed, I'm glad you're getting your Camry going. I did e-mail you back when you wrote me, hope you get this one OK. Maybe you're kids thought you had read it and deleted it. I'm glad you got the struts changed up at the college, I'd take it in and have the toe checked, by the time you notice any wear on the tires you have already lost thousands of miles. I suggested you have it checked at Call's Sinclair, or up at the college when they put in the back struts. They should align it for the back anyway, as changing the struts will probably change the rear camber and toe settings, which will wear out the back tires pretty fast. Hopefully you won't have to change any back bearings. What color is this Camry? I'm glad you were able to borrow a scanner from Checker, I've used mine several times here. Funny how fast you make friends when people find out you can diagnose their cars. I did a Saab yesterday that has a bad 02 sensor. It also had a crankcase breather code, and when I took the oil filler cap off it crumbled in my hand. Now he has to get a new one, but has to order it online and will take about three weeks to get it. I told him I hoped he really likes his Saab. He said it didn't matter, it takes a long time to get parts for any car in the Yukon. Hope our car doesn't break! I brought that green plastic tool box with what tools I could stuff in it, and have used every one of them, plus wished I had a few more. Fortunately, several of the members here are in construction, so we've borrowed compressors, nailers, chop-saws and everything else we've needed. The people are great about lending stuff, and we've made some great friends working together.

Teresa, your new cabinets sound awesome! That's a great deal on them! I know you've wanted them for a long time, figured we would just come down and help you put them in when we got home, but you'll probably have them all done by then.

Shaun, I loved your letter about your three jobs. I'm sure it's a struggle to do them all, just don't let them get in the way of your family. I'm sure the activities center thing is fun, but if it takes you away from the family it probably isn't worth what you're making. Of course, it sounds like you've already come to that conclusion. I'm glad Mike got his other business. Is he keeping both busy? I hope the weather there is getting better, as we see the weather reports it looks like you're getting a lot of wind and rain. I'd imagine it's kind of hard to fly in those conditions. We haven't gotten any weather here to speak of, except cold. Most of the snow and rain that was supposed to hit us went around, or we'd get a tiny skiff of powder that would blow off when you drove because the cars were so cold it couldn't stick. It was fun to hear about Summer's blessing and the family fun you all had. It made us homesick and we wished we could have been there too.

Warren, it was fun to get to visit with you the other night. It sounds like you guys are really doing well. I hope you hear from your universities soon, and that you get to do what you want. Thanks for taking care of the place so well. It is a comfort to us to know you are there to keep things working. The story about Sarah was hilarious. Hope you are getting her car fixed. She must have fixed it really good if you ended up having to get a different block for it. Must have thrown a rod through the block?

Amber, mom loved her talk with you last week. It sounds like you guys are doing well. I hope your deal with the house goes though. It would be nice to get one while the rates are low. This tiny apartment here, two rooms, costs us $900/mo. Rent is high here because the housing crunch hasn't hit here, they're still building like crazy. With the price of gold so high mines are expanding operations here. If things keep going like they are, they expect Whitehorse to expand to 200,000 people in the next ten years. Of course, that's what they said during the gold rush of 1900, but it didn't happen then either. I'll bet Sam is getting darling! Be sure to send us pictures! (But compress them, because of our slow connection!)

Troy, it's fun to get Olivia and Levi's blogs, hope you guys are doing well. It sounds like you've really done some fun things together. How is work going? Are you staying busy? Are you still working for the software developing company on the side? How is Emma's photography business going? It looks like Zoe is getting cuter every day! Give them all a hug from us. When we get our Skype, we'll try to talk to them all again. It will be fun.

Well, I guess I'd better be going. Our new address is 98 Alsek Rd, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada, Y18-3K6. Our cell number is 867-335-6142. We don't have a land-line, but hope to get one pretty soon. We'll also try to get our Skype hooked up pretty soon. It would be fun to hear from you. When our Magic Jack is working you can call us on an Idaho number at 208-258-9913. I'll try to get it working in the next day or so.
It's hard to believe that we have been here in Whitehorse for two months tomorrow. How fast time flies! I hope you are all feeling fine, I had another bout with bronchitis last weekend, but am feeling OK again now. Maybe I'll do better now that I'm not out in the bitter cold as much.
We love you all,
Dad and Mom.

March Journal

2011-03-09T06:28:00.000-08:00

March 9, 2011

Dear family and friends,

How time flies when you’re having fun! It seems as if we’re really busy here, but we don’t have a lot to show for it! It is still cold here, but we’re getting used to it, and it is moderating a bit. I guess that’s because we’re moving into spring! It only got down to -15F this morning, was -8 when we went to Wal-mart after our Seminary class, and now it’s all the way up to -1 on our car thermometer. That sounds pretty cold until you realize that we have been having overnight lows between -25 and -35F and daily highs of -10 to -5. I caught bronchitis last week, so spent a few days trying to recover, and am feeling better. I think it was a combination of the cold, plus the dust from the insulation on our apartment, dust from the sheet-rock, and the fact that almost everybody we have visited this past two weeks has been either getting sick, or getting over it. I got pretty chilled at the rendezvous last weekend, and that didn’t help either. It was -15 with a wind-chill of -30F, and my stupid new coat I bought in Rexburg that was supposed to be so warm had a defective zipper, so whenever I zipped it up, it promptly un-zipped from the other end. Anyway, the next day we went to a local store and I bought a new warm coat. It is really nice and MUCH warmer, especially since the zipper works. I would send my other coat back for warranty, but it costs a lot to mail stuff from here to there. Much more than China to the US. I sent two books back, one to Rexburg and one to Burley. It cost $65, and the books cost less than that originally. We decided that we won’t send anything anywhere unless we go to Alaska and mail it from there. Even a mailed letter to the US is $1.25. Thank the Lord for e-mail!

Our apartment work is progressing. We have worked several days on it last week and this week, and we are hoping that we can move sometime next week. We finished the sheet-rock, finished the taping and sanding. Got the ceilings textured, and got the whole thing painted inside. Monday we went over and installed the flooring, the owner had a guy come over and lay the carpet in the bedroom, for which I was really grateful. About all we have left now is to get the electrician to come back and finish the wiring. To meet code, it has to be done by a licensed electrician, which is fine with me. We also have to wait for another guy to come install the kitchen cabinets so we can finish the plumbing. The cabinets are take-outs from somewhere else, so they don’t fit, but the guy is a friend of the owners and is a cabinet maker. He is also a less-active member, so we went over and helped him for awhile the other night, and had a good visit. We are hoping we can visit him more, and see if we can get them back to church. He is really a fun, sharp guy, and would really be a help to the branch if we could bring them back. He is also trying to blend two different kinds of countertop, and doesn’t like that very much. Things are terribly expensive up here! They want over $1000 just for a cheap laminate countertop like you can buy there for $69 at Home Depot. Problem is, they don’t have any Home Depots here. The closest one is in Vancouver, B.C., which is three days drive South of here. It will be nice when it’s done though. We’ve gotten along great here in the apartment we are in, and have had some great visits with the people we are staying with. He is a less-active member, his wife is not a member. They are really good people, and we had them out to church last week. This week they were at a hockey tournament that the son was playing in down in Watson Lake, about 6 hours away, and it was over the weekend, so they couldn’t come to church. When they got back, we had a great visit, and Bro. Ng (pronounced “ing”) said he really enjoyed going to church, and missed it the week they were gone. He wants to come again this Sunday. He works night shift as a security officer at Yukon College, but gets off at 8:00 a.m., so can make church at 10. He’s kind of tired, but said he could do it, then go home and sleep afterward to be ready for work again. His wife, Beth, enjoyed attending, and we are going to start teaching her this weekend. We are pretty excited. For that reason, we will feel bad about moving to the other side of town, but we’ll be sure to come back and visit often!

The reason we are building the apartment and not just renting somewhere else is because there aren’t any apartments to rent. The housing crunch hasn’t hit here, so prices are still high, and there is still a major shortage of available housing. One of the members of our branch presidency just bought another duplex to use just as a rental. It has a three-bedroom apartment, and a two-bedroom apartment. The two-bedroom rents for $1200/mo and the three-bedroom one goes for $1500 to $1600/mo. Both are plus utilities. Heating here costs a lot because they either have to use heating oil (diesel) at $6.00/gallon, or propane at $5/gallon. A few people use wood because there is plenty here, but it is so expensive to get it out that most just use propane. They don’t have natural gas here, so that isn’t an option. If you heat with electricity, it usually runs $1200-$1500/mo during the winter. The houses are built really well here, with double-wall, double insulation construction, and either triple-glazed or double-double glazed windows, but when it says -20 to -50 below for months at a time, it still takes a lot to heat a home. I really like the mild climate of Rexburg!

While Ng’s were in Watson Lake, we got to “babysit” their dog. It is a little short-haired lap-dog of some kind that has really security issues. We haven’t been here long enough for it to really accept us, so while they were gone Sushi whined and moaned and yapped the whole time. It didn’t bother us as much during the day (most of it, we were gone), but she also kept us up all night! Next day was the same. That night ReNee slept on the sofa in the living room with a pillow beside the couch, and every time Sushi started to cry, she’d reach over and pat her and tell her it was all right. Well, the dog and I got a little more sleep, but ReNee didn’t! I think we were as happy as the dog was when the Ng’s got home about 10:30 Sunday night! At least Sushi will come down and visit us when we’re home now, and doesn’t whine nearly as much while Beth is in school and Tim is at work. Beth is finishing her degree at the college in elder-care, and will graduate in April. She’s pretty excited. She goes to school a week, then works at the Senior center a week on her practicum.

There are several of the families here in the branch that do day-care. They have two levels. One is called “home care” where they can have up to three children without major training or a license. Of course they can’t charge as much either. Then they have “day care” where they can have up to 15 kids in their home, but they have to have schooling and licenses to do that. They can make pretty good money doing that. They get $500/mo per kid, so if you take 10 kids, it turns into pretty good money. And the money is provided by the government, so you don’t have to worry about whether you are going to get paid or not. A lot of the wives are making as much or more than the husbands are. Of course, things cost more up here, too.

Some of our kids have written and complained at how fast gas is rising there. It costs $4.00/gallon now! That’s outrageous! When we got here, gas was $1.20/liter, which translates to $4.80/gallon. Of course, prices have been jumping here, too. When it jumps 5c, it’s per liter, which is really .20/gallon. It’s going up here every day or two, too. We’re up to $1.30/liter now. I try not to let my car get too low, especially in this cold weather, so when we gas up it usually only costs $73-75 to fill it. That’s not quite as hard to take as the $90 to $100 if it gets really low. But it sure beats walking in this weather! We live in a suburb called Granger that is about 5 miles from downtown, and 8 mi from the church, so we are putting quite a lot of miles on our car. We drive all over visiting, so we are gassing up about once or twice every week. I can see why they say this is a more expensive mission. Between that and the $1100/mo rent, it doesn’t leave lots. Groceries cost more here, milk is about $5/gallon, eggs $2.50, bananas .88/lb, bread $2.50 for the cheap stuff unless you buy day-old good stuff, which is about the same price. Tomatoes and oranges are about $2.50/lb, lettuce 3.49/head. Hamburgers at A & W or McDonalds are $8.99 for a big mac meal, soft drinks are 2.49 for a regular size, 3.49 for a large. You have to remember that Canadian and US dollars are equal now, and if you use US dollars they charge you 10% exchange fee. We have converted mostly to Canadian. A large Quizno’s sandwich runs 11.99, with an extra $2.99 if you want chips and a small drink. We don’t eat out nearly as much as we did in Rexburg! I liked the .6:1 ratio we enjoyed in China where our money went much farther!

The lady that teaches Seminary here has been gone for a week, so she asked me if I’d teach for her. It has been really fun. We meet at the church at 7:00 a.m., and they are studying the Doctrine and Covenants. We just taught sections 106-107 this week on the priesthood, and will teaching 108-109 tomorrow, which is the dedication of the Kirtland temple. We have had four students, but the girl left today to go to visit in Utah, so we’ll be down to three. One of the boys grandmother died yesterday, so he’ll be gone the rest of the week, so now two. And they usually get there about 7:20-7:30, have to be done by 8:00 for school, so it doesn’t leave a lot of time for gospel study! Of course we have to be there on time just in case someone comes on time, so we are getting a lot of good gospel study time in while we are waiting. It has given us a good chance to get to know the high school age kids, though. They are really fun, and since they are the only LDS kids in the high school, they are strong and know the gospel well. The two that came today are both too young to drive, so they have to wait till Bro. or Sis. Ramirez can bring them. They live fairly close together, and Chris’s mom isn’t very active.

Last weekend was the Sourdough Rendezvous, kind of a Mt. Man affair. It was bitter cold, but didn’t seem to make a lot of difference in attendance. It lasted three days, and we went to part of it on Friday like I mentioned above. It warmed up to -15 with a 25 mph wind, which took the wind-chill down to between -30 to -50. They had dog pulls, log-throwing competition, ice sculptures, junior and senior king and queen competitions, lots of stuff. One of the members who just joined the church from our branch participated in the “flour-packing” competition where they pile bags of flour on your back and see how far you can carry how much. He had 607 pounds on his back and carried it about 20’ when the wind caught him and blew him down. He took third place. The winners carried 730 lbs, one for 35’, the other for 20’ to take first and second. The people carrying aren’t all that big, but they’re sure tough! Russell, our member, is only about 5’8”, and probably weights about 200 lbs. He is full-blooded First Nation (Indian), and doesn’t look that strong, but he really is. He grew up in this area, and is a total outdoor survivalist. It’s not uncommon for him to spend most of a winter in the bush with nothing but his rifle and a knife. He builds and lives in brush and snow shelters, and lives off the caribou and moose that he shoots. Not much problem with spoilage at -50, and he loves the solitude. His wife also likes the outdoor, but with 5 kids she doesn’t like the outdoor camping quite as much. They are really a fun family, he and his wife got baptized the week we came to Whitehorse, the next week he was ordained a Priest, and the next weekend he baptized his 11-year old daughter. He has two more kids that are taking the lessons, we are hoping they get baptized pretty soon.

We are teaching a family named Brackenberry, a man and his common-law wife. We are only on the second discussion, will cover the gospel this Saturday when we meet with them. Will challenge them to get married, give up tobacco, coffee, and alcohol and see what comes of it. They have been to church with us three times, and seem quite receptive when we teach them. We have mentioned the word of wisdom when teaching them, and he says it will be a challenge, but he thinks they can do it. It’s been interesting. We are also teaching a young family, the Walls, that the husband is Mennonite and the wife is Catholic. Other missionaries have worked with them quite a bit, but they aren’t progressing very quickly. They like to take things very methodically, we’re hoping to strike a chord of interest somewhere. We had quite a long discussion last week on why Nephi is teaching in past tense about the baptism of the Savior in chapter 31 when the birth of the Savior is still 500 years in the future. It was an interesting discussion explaining why Nephi was quoting Isaiah, who was speaking of the latter days, and that Nephi was speaking to US, not to the people of his time, and he knew that by our standards, the birth of the Savior was 2000 years in the past. Next week we’re going to talk them about eternal marriage.

March 14, 2011

Oh, My! I got interrupted and here it is a week later! How time flies when you’re having fun! We have been working on the apartment, should be able to move into it this week. The electricians came and put in the rest of the outlets, switches, electric heaters, etc. on Thursday, the cabinet brother came and put in the rest of the bottom cabinets on Saturday. He even came to church yesterday! We were pretty excited. We still need the upper cabinets installed, but that won’t take very long. I need to also go over and finish putting in the mop boards now that the cabinets and heaters are in. It’s going to be really hard to leave the place we’ve been staying, as we’ve gotten to be really good friends with the Ngs. They come down quite often, and we’ve had great discussions about the church. Last evening they came down and brought a friend of theirs from the Philippines (that’s where Sis. Ng is from), and we talked to him about the church. He is Seventh-Day Adventist, but we told him we’d get him a Book of Mormon in Tagalog, and he said he’d read it.

Today is our prep day, but I’m helping Bro. Ng remodel his kitchen, so probably won’t get much prep done. He wanted to “open up some space,” so we cut the middle of the wall out between his kitchen and living room. He wants to put cabinets along where it was, and make an island/breakfast nook there. We had to move some wires, a heat duct, a vent pipe, and sheet rock part of the walls, but we’ve only been on it a couple of days, should finish it up in the next day or two. Takes a little while for the mud to dry, and we have to put three coats on. Then he is going to paint it. He doesn’t have the cabinets for it yet, will probably wait a little while before he buys them, they’re really expensive here.

We had some good lessons this week, taught the Brackenberrys again, challenged them to get married and quit smoking and drinking, we’ll see how receptive they are when we visit them this week. He’s fine with getting married, but his wife says she isn’t ready. They’ve only been together since 1982. He said he wants to get married for eternity, and I told him they had to get married for time before they can get baptized, then have to be active in the church for at least a year before they can go to the temple. Was a good discussion, but she wasn’t too receptive to it. We’ll see how that goes. We had another discussion with the Walls, they believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but think that God doesn’t care which church you go to, and that you don’t need the priesthood to act in His name if you are sincere. I think we will let them simmer for awhile. They said they’d finish reading the Book of Mormon, and we left them our number. The elders baptized two young boys on Saturday that came from India. We went with them to teach them on Wednesday night, and they are really sharp. One is 9, the other 11. Their mom wants to join too, but has some things to work out with her past marriage before she can. She attended the baptism and came to church yesterday.

We finally got a cell phone! We never could get one through the mission like we were supposed to, so we borrowed a phone from the people we’re going to be renting from, and will just pay them the bill when it comes each month. Only problem is if we call outside of Canada it is an “international call” so it costs a dollar a minute to talk. At least now we can call the members and other missionaries here in town. We’re going to try to get a land phone when we move, that should make it a lot easier to call family and friends in the US.

We love your letters and appreciate so much the news from home. We got pretty homesick when we heard about Summer’s blessing and the fun everybody had getting together for it. Thanks SO much for the awesome pictures Shaun! It’s fun to hear that Mike got his other shop, maybe it will help you pick up a little extra cash in all of your spare time! How is helicopter school going? Do you still have four students to teach? Are things picking up now spring is on its way? I’d imagine it’s a little hard to fly when it’s pouring rain. We’re pretty excited today! This is the first day since we’ve been here where it hasn’t gotten below zero at night! It’s +1 this morning! (Of course the wind chill is still -9, but who cares!) It’s supposed to get up to 7 today and snow, but hey! Spring is on it’s way! It is even supposed to get up to +25 by the middle of this week! They say the snow could all be gone by the end of April or the first of May. It will really be strange not to have to wear long-johns every day!

Ed, I’m so glad you’re having so much fun working on cars! I know you just can’t stand not to. I’d suggest getting your alignment done at Call’s Sinclair. The guy that does them went through our program. His name is Darren (I think he’s still the one that does them), and he does them the way they are supposed to be done. You might also check to see if Troy has his alignment class going. They could put the struts in and align it in just a day or two. It’s toward the end of the semester, so they should be pretty quick by now. Would take care of both the spring and alignment problem.
It’s awesome that your TSA students took first place in two categories! Those experiences are the ones that don’t show up on budgets or kudos, but the students will remember for the rest of their lives. You are awesome!

Better go. This is already way beyond reasonable. Hope you are all doing well. We are really enjoying our experience!

Love, Mom & Dad (Elder & Sis. Powell)

Happy Valentines Day!

2011-02-14T07:47:00.000-08:00

Feb. 14, 2011 - Happy Valentines Day!

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, it’s finally update time. We had a great trip to Washington to catch our ferry. We stopped in Boise and visited with Shaun and Kelli, got to hold our newest grandbaby, a beautiful little girl named Summer Dawn. She truly is a beauty! Then we went to Caldwell, had a great Mexican dinner that Tyler and Amber had fixed, visited with them and Shaun and Kelli. Truly a wonderful time with our families. We stayed at Ambers that night, then drove on up to Seattle on Thursday. We visited Ruben and Jamie Ortega, our great friends and neighbors who are Shaun’s age and close friends. We went to dinner with them, spent the night, then got up early to go to the temple in Bellview. We got lost, so didn’t end up finding the temple, (I don’t know why they don’t list them in any phone book!) finally ran low on time, so drove on up to Bellingham to catch the ferry. Our trip up on the ferry was good. It is a huge ferry, on the ground-level they have a big parking deck that they haul busses, semi’s, motor-homes, and cars and trucks. They can haul about 125 cars/pickups/etc, even had outfits hauling trailers with cars on the trailers. The next deck up is a cabin deck where we had our sleeping berth. Small, with a set of bunks, a sink and a toilet/shower. We didn’t spend a lot of time there except to sleep. They had two nice lounges you could sit to read, plus you could walk around the decks. They did have a little theater where they showed the same movies several times. Mostly kids movies. Despicable Me, How to Train your Dragon, etc. They did show one the second night that was kind of interesting, called “Social Network”, about the kid that invented “Facebook” and became the youngest billionaire so far. It was pretty good, and I’d never heard about it before. They have a cafeteria on board, but food was relatively expensive, so we shared some meals. We read three books apiece, but they turned all the lights off at 9:00 so couldn’t read after that. A lot of the younger people just slept in the chairs or on the deck. They also have a place for people to pitch tents on the top deck, but only one did because it was so cold and stormy. It rained and snowed most of the way up, except the last morning it was beautifully clear and sunny, though still cold. We stopped at several of the larger islands to pick up and drop off passengers and cars along the way, but weren’t there long enough to get off and look around. We also had to detour to Kake, AK, because one of the other ferries had a generator problem, so we had to take on their passengers and cars. Made us about three or four hours late getting into Juneau, then Skagway. It also made it so we drove over the pass into Whitehorse at night instead of during the day, but the weather was clear and the roads were plowed, so it wasn’t bad. It is a beautiful mountain drive, much like driving over Jackson Pass from Rexburg. We got to Whitehorse about 8:30 p.m., then we had our apartment experience. When we got here, we found that the apartment we were supposed to move into isn’t finished yet. They finished the electrical wiring Thursday, still need to rough in the plumbing, then we can start dry-walling. I offered to help, as most of the labor is voluntary, and we can get in sooner that way. We’ll probably start on that this week after they do the plumbing. Then we will have to paint, lay carpet, put in baseboard heaters, etc. Fortunately one of the less-active members in the branch has an apartment that his mother had been living in until she recently broke her leg, and is now in an assisted living center. Unfortunately, all of her stuff is still in the apartment, plus quite a bit of their stuff, so we are living in a doubly-furnished apartment living out of our suitcases, because there isn’t anywhere to put anything. But it sure beats paying for a motel because we don’t have a place to live! We really hope to be here only another week or two until our place is finished. There really isn’t any available housing here, and they certainly don’t have any building crunch. Houses are still extremely expensive, and it’s a sellers market.

Whitehorse is a beautiful town, situated right on the Yukon River, although it is pretty cold. Today’s high will be -11F, tonight supposed to be about-25 or so. It is supposed to be at least this cold all week, then may warm up to near zero next week as another snowstorm moves in. We have about 18” of snow on the level, but they keep the streets plowed really good. We wear our winter clothes everywhere, plug our car in at night, and just try not to be out in the cold too much. It’s still dang cold, though. I’m sure we’ll get used to it. People here say it should start warming up some next month, and the snow should all be gone by May. The town is about 25,000 people, the largest town in the Yukon Territory. Juneau is about 35,000, Anchorage by far the largest at 350,000. The entire population of Alaska is 750,000, and it definitely has a frontier feel. The people are pretty laid back, and are very friendly. I think we’ll really like it here.

We were here Tuesday, were able to begin unpacking some of our stuff, then Wednesday morning we drove back to Skagway (135 miles on mountain roads) to catch a plane to Juneau for our first zone conference, and to meet the mission president. On the way out we were in a little 6-seater Cessna. The weather was terrible, we were pushing snow with the front bumper of our car over White pass between Whitehorse and Skagway, the wind was blowing, we could barely see the road, and our prayers were answered when the snowplow came up from the other way. We drove on the wrong side of the road( the plowed side) the rest of the way to Skagway, and didn’t pass another car. At least the pass wasn’t closed! It was snowing and raining in Skagway. We were delayed at the airport (about the size of Rexburg’s airport) for nearly 6 hours waiting for the visibility to clear enough to fly, then we were buffeted by strong winds and low ceiling the whole way. It was like flying on a roller-coaster suspended from a bungee. We were flying almost at water level about 750 to 1000 feet. I made it OK until we got delayed at the Juneau airport, then lost it. We made it back from our conference in Juneau Saturday afternoon at about 1:30 p.m. The trip back from Juneau was much better than the trip out. On the way back, we got to fly on a 12 seater, and even though it was windy and raining with a low ceiling, and we flew at 700 feet, the flight was much smoother.

The conference in Juneau was great, we got to spend two days with all of the missionaries from the Juneau zone, which covers pretty much the Southwest part of the mission. There were 20 missionaries, including one set of sisters and one senior couple. (us) Our mission president, President Dance conducted it, and his wife, Sis. Dance, also taught us. The zone leaders and assistants to the president also helped. It is amazing to see the strength of these young elders! They are definitely our leaders of the future! We also got to meet our Stake President from Juneau, President Hammond, and Pres. Toupo, the second counselor in the mission presidency. It is really difficult logistics to get us all together, as some have to fly, some have to ride the ferry for two days, almost nobody can drive because Juneau is not accessible by car. Most of the conference was dedicated to studying our Preach My Gospel books, and practicing teaching. We really need it. We still are having a hard time trying to figure out what we are supposed to be doing, but everybody seems really glad to have us here. That in itself means a lot. We returned to Whitehorse about 2:00 pm on Saturday.

Saturday night we had the opportunity to attend a baptismal service for a family the missionaries have been teaching for awhile. It is a couple with six children, the youngest 4, the oldest 18. The parents were baptized, but none of the kids were. The 18 year old daughter attended the baptism, plus three of the younger kids. The 4-year old ran around the church and had a great time, but those attending the baptism were understanding and didn’t make a big deal out of it. It was a nice service, and one of the member families served kind of a pot-luck dinner afterward. It was nice to get to know people a little bit.

We had a good day at church yesterday. The chapel is a large, log building. It is very nice. The Andrea’s were confirmed, then we were asked to introduce ourselves and bear our testimonies. A member of the Stake Presidency from Juneau then spoke to us. There were about 50 people at church, quite a few of them children. There were also about five investigators there, but most of them left after sacrament meeting and the members were so friendly they wanted to talk, so we didn’t get to do much with the investigators except shake their hands. We have quite a few members here, but most of them are less-active, so I’d imagine a good part of our work will be with them.

We met with a member of the high council yesterday and went over the branch list, will meet with the Branch President and Relief Society president soon to see what we can do to help them. I think they want us to start a temple preparation class. We were invited to a family’s house for dinner after church. They are a great member family from Venezuela, and they served food from there. It was really good! Chicken soup and rice, plus hash browns and fried bananas. We didn’t stay too long, then went over to our appointment with the high counselor. Last night we came home and just crashed. We were pretty tired from our hectic week of travel and meetings! The elders here are awesome, very dedicated and motivated. They have very good support from the members. Elder Thompson has been here for almost six months, so he is being transferred next week because his visa expires. We will be sad to see him go. Elder Blackhurst is good, though, and will be good to break in whoever comes in. He has been here about six weeks, so knows the people and knows his way around. They drive a Chevy extended cab 4x4 pickup about like Uncle Bob’s new one. I’m sure glad we have our all-wheel drive van, though the pickup would have been good, too. I like the mileage of the van better, though, as gas is over $5.00/gallon here. When we went to Skagway we gassed up before coming back, and it was only $3.88/gallon, and we thought it was a real bargain! Who’da thunk? Groceries are about 50% higher than in Rexburg, too. I can see why this is considered a higher-cost assignment. I’m afraid to find out what our apartment rent will be when we get moved in. The elders are in a smaller basement apartment, and their rent is $900/month.

Today is our P-day, so we’re trying to get some of our stuff unpacked and buy some groceries and figure out what we’re going to be doing. We are going to meet with another family tonight for dinner, then will try to see if they have some friends we could teach. We are also washing clothes, vacuuming, cleaning, unpacking, etc. We need to run to town and get some oil and filter for the car. I can’t believe how fast the miles accumulate. I changed it just before we left Rexburg! I met a member at church yesterday that has a shop with a grease pit. He said I could come use it to change my oil out of the weather. Needless to say, we became friends REALLY FAST! His wife is Relief Society president, and we are going to their house for dinner on Thursday. We are really looking forward to getting to know them better.

We are happy to be here. It will definitely be a different experience than China, but we feel it is where we are supposed to be at this time in our life. We love your letters and e-mails. We don’t officially have internet yet, but the Ng’s (pronounced “ing”) that we are staying with have wireless and have graciously given us their password so we can log on to contact our loved ones. Bless them! They don’t have unlimited internet here, so it’s quite expensive, especially if you send large files. I’m trying to keep it smaller, and really compress the pictures. I hope you can get them OK.

Well, I guess I’d better go. ReNee is ready to go shopping! Not quite like China, though! I don’t think ANYTHING is cheap here! They do have a Wal-Mart here about the size of the one in Rexburg, and they have a Canadian Tire store that’s kind of like a Checker Auto Parts. They have a McDonalds and an A&W, but hamburger meals are $9.50 for the cheap ones, so I don’t think we’ll be having breakfast there very often. They don’t do refills here, so I guess we’re going to get weaned off Diet Pepsi whether we like it or not! Just pause a moment in compassion for ReNee when you go fill your mug! J

Love, Dondavid and ReNee

Hurray! We made it!

2011-02-10T19:12:00.001-08:00

Dearest Family,
We finally made it to Whitehorse! Our apartment won't be ready to move into for a couple of weeks or so, so we are temporarily living in the basement apartment of one of the less-active members here. They are super nice people, and we had a great time getting aquainted and settling in last night. Our ferry was detoured 3 hours because another one on the line broke down, so we had to go to Kake and pick up their passengers and cars. Anyway, we got to Skagway at 4:30 instead of 1:30, drove on up to Whitehorse. The weather was beautiful (but a little chilly at -10), the roads were great. Reminded me a lot of driving over Jackson pass in the winter.
We are getting ready to go to town with the missionaries to get groceries and found out where things are. Just wanted to let you know we made it! We will let you know more as we find out more. Sure love you and miss you already!

Love, Dad and Mom

MTC Experience

2011-01-30T23:15:00.000-08:00

Attached is my first journal entry for our new mission experience. I was going to post it on our Ma & Pa Pals blog, but can't figure out how to get into it again. We'll give it a shot next week, I guess.

Our mission address in Whitehorse will be:

Elder and Sister Powell
98 Alsek Rd.
Whitehorse YT, Canada
y18 3K6

Our mission home address is:

Elder and Sister Powell
Alaska Anchorage Mission
12350 Industry Way Ste 218
Anchorage, AK 99515
Ph: 907-345-7579

If you don't want to be on this list, let me know and I can take your name off.

Elder Dondavid and Sister ReNee Powell

MTC Experience

2011-01-30T06:50:00.000-08:00

January 30, 2011

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, the adventure begins! We left Rexburg at 5:30 a.m. so we could report to the Missionary Training Center on Monday morning, Jan. 24^th, at 10:00 a.m. After dropping our bags off at our dorm room, we went to the initial orientation meeting, picked up our packets at the bookstore, had lunch, then a welcome meeting with the MTC presidency and all of the other Senior Missionaries. There are 31 couples new this week, assignments all over the world and ranging from Member and Leadership Support (Prostelyting) (That’s us!), Church Educational Systems, Office and Family History, Military Relations, Church Service, Humanitarian, etc. We found one other couple going to our mission in Alaska to coordinate seminary and institute programs. They will be stationed in Juneau, and we’ll be riding on the same ferry with them most of the way. We also met a couple who had recently completed a mission in Alaska, and it was fun to find out a little bit about what we might be in for. They were stationed along the Aleutian Chain, opposite where we will start out in Whitehorse. But we don’t know where we will be assigned as the work progresses. Many of the couples are going foreign speaking, so will be there another week, but we were only there through Friday. We then reviewed all of our medical information, talked about safety concerns, and the general mechanics of missionary service.

We were then organized into districts that we will be studying and working with while we are here. There are four couples in each district, and ours included (R to L) the Neibuhrs that worked in the China Teacher’s Program with us while we were there, and we went on several tours with them (Small world!), the Hintons on their way to England, the Harrops on their way to Panama, and Sis. Rodriguez, our afternoon teacher. She is from Texas, and is really a ball of enthusiasm!

In the evening we were given free time to get settled in our apartments and prepare for our first presentations to be given tomorrow morning!

Tuesday morning we got up and went to breakfast at the MTC cafeteria. It is an amazing place where they feed all the missionaries in a very short time. It is a study in efficiency. You swipe your card as you go in, and you can have your choice of whatever you want to eat! They have three main serving areas that have individual entrees plus fruits, salads, desserts, etc. One night we had Alaskan Salmon with all the trimmings, another night Chicken Fried Steak with veggies, mashed potatoes & gravy. Or if you prefer, you can go to another area and they will make you wraps with whatever you want in them, plus salads, desserts, ice cream, etc. You can pile on as much as you want of anything you desire. Some of the Elders really did! We were VERY careful to eat wisely, as we didn’t want to come home any bigger than when we went! (It worked.)

Anyway, after eating, we went to meetings again, had another large assembly where we talked about the Message of the Restoration, then divided into our districts where we learned about preparing to teach. We did a lot of role-playing, and practiced trying to use concepts from the lessons in Preach My Gospel. I had no idea what an amazing book that is! It’s pretty intimidating to think about teaching people you don’t even know. I struggled a little with the role-playing, as I don’t like group interaction very much. However, I got used to it, and it turned out pretty well after all. We were assigned to prepare a 45 minute lesson to present to an “investigator” in a role-play situation. They have people who are usually recent converts to the church who come and pretend to be investigators and actually have you teach the lesson to them again. We had a girl from Texas who had joined the church in March and had come up to school in Provo. She had such a sweet spirit about her, and was so excited about her membership in the church. She was very patient with us! The experience was wonderful, as we could see what we need to prepare as we go forth to teach.

That evening after dinner we went to a general fireside for the missionaries at the MTC. We listened to a great talk by Elder David Evans of the 1^st Quorum of the Seventy. He talked about personal experiences and interactions his family has had with President Monson’s family. It was really good, and spiritual. I guess they lived in the same ward as President Monson for many years, and told stories of family experiences as they watched him progress from Bishop, Stake President, to General Authority, and finally Prophet and President of the church. It was really good, quite informal, and not the generally published kind of information. Another amazing thing about the fireside was sitting in an auditorium with thousands of other missionaries including young elders, sisters, and senior missionaries. You could definitely feel the sprit there, and the strength of the priesthood! The MTC choir was amazing.

Wednesday morning we prepared a lesson on the Book of Mormon, discussed the experiences we had the previous day, then taught each other how to use the Book of Mormon and invite people to make commitments to read and study it, and to pray and prepare for baptism. It becomes a little less intimidating as you learn to become more comfortable with the scriptures and the ways to present them. One of the things I have found most interesting is how much it strengthens our own testimonies as we teach others of the beauties of the Gospel, and realize how much we take for granted as we go about our daily lives! Maybe we needed this experience for that reason, if for none other.

Thursday we had a Bro. & Sis. Burns come in and talk about different ways of finding people to teach, and how we can share the gospel with them. They together talked about the logistics of keeping track of who are in your district, how to approach them, how to keep records of their progress, their responses, and how to map the areas you are working in to save time and avoid duplication. It is definitely something we need to develop and use! They also talked about working with new members, less active members, investigators, and EETNL. (Everyone else that needs love). Then we broke into districts again and prepared lessons to give to “investigators” on the plan of salvation. This afternoon we went to the Teaching Resource Center where we were assigned to “homes” (rooms) with “investigators” in them. We knocked on the doors, introduced ourselves, then taught a lesson on the Plan of Salvation. It was again a great experience. When we finished, we visited with the brother (Bro. Haun) we had taught (about our age) and he had recently returned from serving in Alaska, also. He was excited for us, and told us that his experience there was wonderful, and they were sorry it was over. We would have liked to have visited more, but the next group of missionaries was coming in to teach, so we had to leave. After dinner we returned to our apartment to study our lessons and prepare for the coming day.

Friday morning we had an EXCELLENT group presentation by a couple (Bro. & Sis. Hart) who had served several missions, They also talked about how to work more effectively with the local leaders of the church. The most important time in a new members or returning members life in the church is the first few months after they are baptized (or return). They are making such a dramatic change in their lives, it is often difficult for them. They have lost many friends who don’t understand why they have made such a change, plus they are trying to assimilate into an entirely new culture with its own terminology, language, way of life. Often they don’t understand why things are done the way they are, plus they are still learning new aspects that they didn’t fully understand when they were baptized. They need a good support group! Our job is to keep in constant touch with them, make sure they have their questions answered, explain new things to them, teach them all of the missionary discussions again. But most important, help them make friends and feel needed. Then we broke into our small districts again and we talked about working with less-active members, new members, and investigators in our areas.

This afternoon we had another group presentation by a Bro. & Sis. Rawlins who talked about working with local leaders, and how to coordinate our efforts with the ward, stake and mission leaders. We will only be there for a limited time, but if we work well with the local leaders, new people will have a strong support base even after we are gone. Wise counsel!

Part of our district class was presented by a Sis. Faust, who has severed three missions with another single sister. She talked about how to work with people in difficult areas. She told about being sent to an area with her companion that was considered the “armpit” of her mission. No one would talk to them, the people would avoid them even to the point of walking on the other side of the street when they saw them coming. So the sisters prayed as to how to get the people to accept them. She talked about the importance of doing whatever the Spirit directs. They were prompted to join Weight Watchers! So they did. It opened many doors to them, because the people began to see them as regular people. They ended up spending their entire mission there, and had resounding success in an area that had been considered “tracted out.” She also talked about sharing the work with the local members and how to get them involved. She also gave us an awesome motto:

“Obedience is the price. Work is the commitment. Faith is the Power. Spirit is the Key. Christ is the reason.”

We then worked together to consider how to solve some “case study” problems that were commonly encountered in missionary work, and talked about how to handle them. It was very good. It will be really interesting to see if we can incorporate them into our actual missionary experiences.

Finally, we met together again as a group to discuss our experience in the MTC. It was fun to hear the other couple’s impressions. We weren’t the only people who struggled some of the time! And many of them had to try to learn a foreign language along the way! Thank the Lord for small favors! It’s amazing how you can make friends with so many people in such a short time, and sad to realize that we’ll probably never be together again as a group in this life.

At 5:00 p.m. we turned in our keys, had one final MTC meal (pizza and salad), then checked out, gassed the car up, and headed home. Got back to Rexburg at about 10:30. Warren and Rachel were still up, and we got to share some of our experiences with them before we finally went to bed. The queen size bed at the MTC was pretty good, but there is nothing like sleeping in your own bed with your favorite pillow. Definitely going to miss that! But Warren and Rachel will enjoy them!

Saturday we got up and Russ came over to finish putting the engine in Zach’s pickup. ReNee had good LONG visits on the phone with Teresa and Amber. Ed came over a little later, and Russ, Ed, ReNee and I picked up Julie and we went to McDonalds for breakfast, then ReNee and Julie went to Idaho Falls shopping and we boys finished up the engine in the pickup. Had to put the steering gear back in, fix a water leak, exhaust leak, brake line leak, bleed the brakes, etc. Then we took it on a trailer down to Rigby because it wasn’t licensed or insured, dropped it off, used a borrowed scanner to diagnose an electrical problem in Russ’ van (It wouldn’t start, wasn’t getting power to the computer), fixed it, then took the trailer on to Idaho Falls to pick up the car Zach has been driving while his pickup is down. It had overheated and won’t start, so we trailered it back home and unloaded it in the back yard where I got the pickup stuck in the snow that’s about 18’’ deep back there. We unhooked the empty trailer, got the pickup turned around, then Ed and Russ muscled the trailer around, we hooked it back up to the pickup and pulled it up where it’s supposed to be parked. About then Scott Peterson dropped by with his wife and brother to visit for a few minutes, so Ed and Russ went home. I visited with Scott for awhile, he used to be one of my students at BYU-I, and I have kept pretty close to him. He is storing a ’57 Ford Ranch Wagon in my field for awhile, and we both have a long interest in restoring and driving vintage cars. He showed his brother my collection of ’55 Ford sedans, my ’55 convertible, my three ‘59 Edsels, my three ‘57-’58 Chevy pickups, the ’66 Mustang, and all the other junk I have around. It was fun to talk about them. He wanted to know if I wanted to buy a ’61 Ford shortbox stepside pickup, but I told him I’d have to wait for any more projects until after our mission. I don’t think I’ll miss working on cars for awhile, but I’m sure going to miss working with my boys!

Today is Sunday, we’re looking forward to visiting our ward one last time before we leave on Wednesday to drive to Bellingham, WA, to catch the ferry to Alaska. The ferry doesn’t sail until Friday, Feb 4^th, so we will get to be home for a few days to distill our stuff and decide what we really want to take with us. We are driving our ’07 Toyota Sienna van because it’s all-wheel drive, and they have a lot of snow in Whitehorse. Yet it should give us room to transport people we work with as we need to. We land in Skagway, then will unload off the ferry and drive up to Whitehorse. We have found after talking to our mission president that we will be spending the first few months of our mission in Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory of Canada. After that they’ll probably transfer us to somewhere in Alaska, as our Canadian visas are only good for 6 months. Guess we’ll see as time goes on! The mission president (Pres. Dance) said we could talk to the branch president to find out what he wants us to do, and we can meet Pres. and Sis. Dance the next time they come through. It’s about 700 miles from Anchorage. We are moving into an apartment that hasn’t had missionaries in it before, and is mostly unfurnished. We don’t know what will be there, but suspect it won’t be much. We’re taking a lot of kitchen setup stuff, plus office and living stuff. And of course enough clothes to last us for hopefully the whole 23 months. My part is easy—two suits, lots of white shirts, and two pair of shoes. Plus a few P-day clothes and a few tools. Plus some cold-weather clothes because it’s Alaska! Of course ReNee has a wider choice of what to wear, so that takes a little more room and time. Plus her cold-weather gear and her P-day stuff. And several pair of shoes. And her sewing machine, wheat mixer, etc. etc. Maybe we should take the pickup after all? J There is already a set of Elders in Whitehorse, and they may send in another pair after we get there. Whitehorse and the surrounding area include about 30,000 people.

Well, I’d better be getting ready for church. Fortunately, we are on the 1-4 schedule this year, at least for today. I have no idea what our schedule will be in Whitehorse. Guess we’ll know by this time next week! We’re pretty excited, though a little apprehensive, about this new adventure, but we’re really looking forward to this missionary experience. We hope that we can learn to become at least a little more profitable servants to our wonderful Heavenly Father who has blessed our family so richly. After church we’re going to have Ed and Russ’s families over for banana splits so we can see all our close grandkids once more before we leave. We’re really looking forward to it.

May God bless you all!

Elder and Sister Powell.

FW: Un-farewell

2010-12-22T19:22:00.000-08:00

Just in case you would like to know, we've been asked to speak in Church on Jan. 16th prior to our leaving on Jan. 24th to enter the mission home. They don't have farewells as such anymore, and we will be speaking on an assigned topic. There will also be another speaker who is leaving for the MTC on Jan. 26th, and she will be serving in Soporo, Japan. If you should like to come, our Sacrament starts at 1:00 p.m. that day. If you'd like to come early and visit, we'd love it! We'll have a luncheon afterwards here at the house. If you don't want to make it, that's fine, too. It's a crummy time of year and the weather so far hasn't been great!
Love, Dad. (Dondavid)

Mission Call

2010-11-30T16:29:00.000-08:00

We are excited to be called to serve in the Alaska Anchorage mission. We will be reporting the end of January. We will be serving a Membership and Leadership Report (MLS) mission. We are excited. We will post pictures and more information as it becomes available.

Crazy Messed Up Images :)

2009-06-22T12:00:00.001-07:00

Dearest All,

Well, it's time to take my computer down and pack it to leave. Before I go, I wanted to send this last e-mail from China to let you know that we are thinking of you. We're really excited to get on that plane in a few hours and head back to the good old USA, but mostly back to enjoy the love and association with all of you, the most important people in our lives. I hope you know how much we love you, and how much we have missed you these months we've been gone.

We feel that our experience here is really where we needed to be, but now we feel it is time to be done, at least for awhile. I hope all you dads have a great Father's Day. Warren, thanks so much for your Father's Day message. I will treasure it on the plane. It will be one of my longest Father's days ever! It will be Father's day for 36 hours today! We leave Beijing at 4:00 p.m. on Father's Day, fly and wait for 32+ hours, and still get to greet our family at 11:00 p.m. on the same Father's Day! Isn't modern technology amazing!

Well, I'll e-mail you again when we get our Internet hooked up at home. Maybe Ed will let us use his so we can let you all know we made it home safe and sound.

We sure love you all,

Dad and Mom.

Love, Dad!

RE: Warren's Visit - Amber

2009-04-22T07:35:00.000-07:00

Hello family! Sounds like China has been super exhausting for Warren. Hopefully his one day of down-sinking will help him gear up for the next round of fun!

Things seem to be getting back to normal, or as normal as they will be for a while, here. I feel like I might be getting the hang of things (knock on wood). Elsie is a really great baby. She only cries when she needs something. It's trying to figure out what she needs that is the frustrating part.

We think she is just about the most adorable thing in our little world, and still can't seem to stop staring and smiling at her. She was super fussy last night so we let her cry for a bit (5 minutes) and it about tore both mine & Tyler's heart out. When the 5 mintues was finally up both Tyler and I jumped up and ran into her. We are such suckers. I'm sure that will wear off soon enough, but we just feel too bad to let her cry for too long right now.

Now that I am feeling more recovered and she has gotten the "all clear" from the doctor at her 2 week visit I am more anxious to get out and about. I plan to do some housecleaning and shopping this week. Wish me luck!

We love you, and can't wait to see everyone that is able to be there over the 4th of July. We weren't planning on coming up, but since so many of the family will be there we decided we better.

Have a happy!
Amber, Tyler & Elsie.

Life

2009-04-21T07:39:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

We really enjoyed Warren and Tyler. We took them to the TV tower here, culture street, our favorite local food places and let them ride the electric bikes around. One night we had 3 cute girls from last year come to dinner and show them around campus. We had the boys come to our classes and let the students ask them questions. It took the whole time and the students enjoyed having someone their age to talk to . It threw the boys for just a moment when they were asked what their life plan was--and if they feel happiness in their life. Kids here have a life plan, and a list of requirements for their mate--top being a house, a job making lots of money, a car and then of course the perfect person. They asked about economy, Obama, the education system, good graduate schools, their reactions to China before and after being here, and of course dating and marriage. All told it was a good experience.

We tried to take the kids to the major sight-seeing areas as well as give them a flavor of the living here. We went to the Great Wall, a practicing Lama Temple, Culture Street, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden Palace, the Olympic Bird Nest, and a Hutong Village (this was a rebuilt one but was still pretty primitive and gave the feel of the smaller villages.) We also shopped in Beijing, ate Chinese food and dumplings. I felt like I had been on tour for a week. Oh and we went to the night market where they have little baby sea horses and scorpions on sticks--still live--You choose one and they deep fry it for you. Warren and Tyler ate some. I passed. We took pictures of it.

I haven't been sick all year and the day we headed off to sight see I came down with the worst cold I have had in 5 years. I just drug along. My ears plugged when we went up to the wall, and I still can't hear a thing. My eyes are red and run constantly so I can't read or see much. A real mess. On Sunday we came home early and skipped some stuff. I don't think the boys minded much because they were pretty tired to--though they could probably have done another day. We sent them off Monday and I spent the rest of the day in bed with a fever. I am still under the weather but teaching regardless.

I was able to send some things home with the boys which will help when we get ready to come home. I hope they made it through customs ok and the suit cases weren't too heavy. We only have five weeks until finals. I sure wish I had the same kids all year instead of for one semester. They make more progress. When I think of coming home I am torn between feeling trunky and just feeling tired thinking of everything we have to do. We are excited about the 4th of July. It sounds like everyone but Troy will be there. Brent and Kiley plan to come. Brent sold his house and they will be moving the week we come home. They will find a place to live in Oregon and then come over for the holiday. I am glad they sold their house so easily. I guess it was in really good shape with all the fixing up they have done. I am looking forward to hanging new pictures at home and planting flowers in the front. There is too much cement here and I am anxious to get outside. I have enjoyed waving at cabs though and just sitting back and letting them take me where I want to go. No worry about traffic. I will miss the students.

Well I think that is all for now. I hope you can enjoy some good weather and get outside. Have a Happy Day or Night!

Love,

Mom ReNee

Warren's Visit

2009-04-15T09:01:00.000-07:00

Dearest family,
I just want you to know how we're doing. We are having a great time with Warren and Tyler Klingler, and I think they're having fun, too. We have done quite a few things so far, but will probably do a bunch more this weekend in Beijing. So far we have gone to Beijing shopping, went to Ancient Culture Street, went to a fabric market where Warren bought material to have a suit tailor made before he leaves, went to dinner several times with friends and students, toured a Russian aircraft carrier, went to a solar energy manufacturing plant, drove by a huge plant that makes windmills, visited CyberMart, and have had them speak in our classes everyday. Whew! I think they're about as tired as we are! We hope to have a more down-sync day today, then after our classes tomorrow we will go to Beijing and visit Tienanmen Square, Forbidden City, the Great Wall, Chinese Acrobats, and the Lama temple, plus the dirt markets, the night markets, and whatever else they want to see. We'll come home Sunday afternoon and pack so they can leave on Monday morning to return to the US. Tyler says he things he's going to have to go home to recover from his vacation! Plus he has to start classes the next day, as he is missing his first day flying home.
I'm sure Warren will write more when he gets home. He has taken a bunch of pictures, but I have a few I'll attach that I've taken. We are really enjoying showing them off to all of our friends. I just wish more of you could have come over, too. But it's definitely not cheap!
If I don't write again until next week, you'll know that it's because I'm trying to revive! I sure love you all! Dad.

March Epistle

2009-03-29T04:02:00.000-07:00

Dear Family,

Uncle Bob wrote us an awesome letter and reminded me that it's been a LONG time since I've gotten my family letter sent around. I'm sorry! Busy isn't an excuse. It's funny how when you live someplace for awhile you begin to think your life isn't very interesting and it's become kind of mundane. Mostly you just don't take the time to sit down and write to those you love. I hope you know that we are thinking of you often, and that we love and miss you! We are loving our experience here, but find it takes longer to do things than it used to! I am attaching our letter, hope you enjoy it. Be sure to write us and keep us informed about how things are going over there. I can't believe how fast this year is going. Hard to believe that we'll be heading back to the states in three months! Where has this year gone?!

Love, Dondavid and ReNee.

March 29, 09 Letter.doc

Dear All,

I haven’t been very good at keeping up on what’s happening in China, have I! We have been really enjoying our time over here, enjoying the warm days of early spring (a day at a time) and the more common late days of winter. The snow and ice is all melted, the trees are beginning to leaf out, the fruit trees are partially in bloom, and the grass is even starting to turn green. Temperatures have been mostly in the 40’s and low 50’s, but we did get one day up to almost 80, followed two days later by 1” of snow! Reminds me of Rexburg! (Although I can’t remember 80 in March! We’ve had quite a bit of wind, only a couple of really strong that bring the sandstorms down from the Gobi Desert up by Beijing, mostly just cool breezes that make it uncomfortable to be outside much. So I’ll try to digress and catch you up to date.

February 23, 2009

Well, I decided I’d better get back to keeping a diary, or I’m going to lose a good part of this wonderful Chinese experience! It’s amazing how fast the time flies, and I’m more aware all the time at how unreliable my memory is becoming.

Feb. 13: Don, ReNee and I went down to the Macalline furniture store next to Metro and ordered some book cabinets and a desk and a drawer chest for the church. The book cases have glass doors, and are 3’ wide and 80” high. We ordered a case for the Relief Society room that is the same size, but has shelves on the top half, with three drawers in the bottom half. They want it to put their Relief Society supplies and vases in. The desk is for the Branch President’s office, and has a computer station on one side, and three drawers on the other side. The chest of drawers is for the Primary room. It has six large drawers, three on each half, that they can put their toys and primary supplies in. That chest is about 5’ wide, 36” tall, and about 18” deep. They are all an oak vinyl veneer over particle board, but are heavy duty. The shelves are all 1” thick. Delivery is scheduled for Fri. Feb. 20^th. We had to submit the request to the Beijing International District for approval, which we received last week. We had one of our students, Alex, go with us to interpret for us. We got them for 15% off, and the total was 10,535 Yuan.

Thurs. Feb. 19^th. Alex called and said they could deliver our furniture tonight, so at 4:00 p.m. we went over to the church with Birds and Lowders to get stuff ready. We spent about two hours cleaning, moving stuff, sorting, and getting ready for the furniture. It was supposed to be there between five and six, but when we called at six, they said they were running behind, and would deliver it by 7:00 p.m. They got there about 7:10, and Lowders had gone home, along with ReNee. They had sent a crew over to assemble it for us, and we were really glad, as it was a lot of work! The crew was very efficient and had obviously had a lot of experience, as they assembled all five pieces of furniture in about two hours. It would have taken us all day! The furniture looks really good, but we didn’t put anything away because it was so late.

Friday, Feb. 20^th. ReNee, Don and I went over to the church this morning at 10:00 and spent all morning putting all of the books and materials into the new cabinets. It will be really nice to have a place to put the stuff, instead of just having it stacked on tables and in window-sills like it has been for most of the past year. When we first moved into the building we are in, the owner had left a lot of his furniture and we were using that. In about October, he sold the building to a new owner, but he took all of his furniture that we had been using. All of our stuff ended up stacked wherever we could fine some place to put it. Afterwards, Don went to Metro with Bonnie, and ReNee and I went to lunch at TGI-Fridays and had a chicken salad.

Saturday, Feb. 21^st. This morning we went out to the Shi family house West of Tianjin. It is a large house similar to the Forbidden City in Beijing, only on a much smaller scale. It was the major’s house and the center of the government for Tianjin about 100 years ago. In 1951 Mao visited the major there, along with Chao En Lai, and made a big deal about how efficient the government was here and how pleased he was with the way things were going here. Two years later he “purged” the major (had him executed) because he was afraid of the popularity and potential for competition. Interesting. The house complex is now a museum, very well kept, and a lot of history. I had been there once last year, so I was able to tell the Lowders a little bit of the history of each part of the complex. We had a fun morning. In the afternoon we just came home, had lunch, then read. I finished the book, “Mao, the Untold Story.” It is a biography of Mao Tse-tong and his rise to power and rule of China. It was really interesting.

Sunday, Feb. 22. We had a good church meeting, but the new furnace they put in last month had a broken water line and was leaking water. I tried to shut it off, but couldn’t find the inlet. It wasn’t leaking TOO badly, so I just turned the furnace back on so we could have some heat in the building. I told the Chinese branch president about it, showed him where it was leaking, and he said he would call the owner to have him come fix it.
The Kim’s spoke today, Jen spoke in English, and her father spoke in Korean, with Jin (the older sister) translating for him. They gave really good talks about the importance of love, and of the love of our Savior for us. There was a little time left when they finished, so Pres. Bird asked Art Jones to come up and speak, as he was supposed to speak last week, but there wasn’t enough time because his family took more time than expected. The son and daughter-in-law were visiting from the US, and it was good to hear from them.
After church ReNee and I went over to Ron Derby’s house for FHE and dinner. Dolores fixed us Mexican food and it was a really good taste change. We enjoyed it. Scott and Chris Cunningham were also there. Scott suffered a stroke about a year ago, and is here in China getting acupuncture and Chinese therapy to help recover. He had made about as much progress as they thought he could make in the US. He is definitely improving.

Monday, Feb. 23^rd. Today was the first day of our new semester of classes. I don’t have any classes on Monday, but ReNee went to her first one. I walked over with her to make sure the media was working OK, helped her put the curtains on the windows, then left her to her class. Only four people showed up. We are hoping more people come next week, as four people aren’t enough for the class to carry. They said we should have about 30 in each class. I stayed home and worked on the computer getting ready for my classes that start tomorrow. This evening we went to the Cunninghams for FHE dinner, had tacos. Mexican two days in a row! But that’s enough for now. My system isn’t used to that much beans! Had a fun visit, but Jones and Lowders didn’t come because of class conflicts. When we came home it was snowing quite heavily. Fortunately it didn’t snow too long, and there isn’t much on the ground Tues. morning.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009. I had my first class this morning. Only had seven show up, six guys and a girl, but it’s enough to have class. I’m really hoping I have more show up next week, as it’s easier to teach a class of 20 than a class of 7. You get a lot more participation. After class I came home and worked on my computer. At about 10:30 ReNee came home. She had 30 students in her 8:00 class, but NOBODY showed up for her 10:00 class. Guess we’ll see if anybody shows up next week! After she got home, we went over to the Waiban’s office and asked Li Fong to arrange for motel rooms for Warren and Tyler Klingler, who are going to come visit us in April. Tyler served his mission in Taiwan, so speaks Mandarin. He’s pretty excited to come visit! After lunch we got our bi-weekly massage. It’s one of our luxuries over here! We both get massages every other Tuesday, for 120 yuan for both. That’s about $18 for both! What a deal! That’s for a 60-min. massage each. Heaven!

Wed. Feb. 25^th: We started classes this week. They are really lame. I don't know whether people are having a hard time getting back from the Spring Holliday, or if it's just the system, but our classes are really screwed up. They told us we should have about the same enrollments as last semester, but my first class yesterday I only had 7 students show up. My 8:00 class today (Wed) had 24, but my class at 10:00, one student showed up 15 minutes late. I sent him home, told him we'd try again next week. I asked for class rolls, and they said, "We don't have them yet. We should be able to get them to you in a couple of weeks." So we have no idea when or how many students we should have. They did send us our class schedules at 10:00 p.m. Sunday night to tell us what times and which room our classes are supposed to be taught in the next day, and urged us to be sure to be there on time because someone from the college was probably going to be there to observe us. Maybe they should have told the students when their classes were, too. Mom had 4 in her Monday class, yesterday she had 34 in her 8 a.m. class, but nobody showed up for her 10:00 class. Today she has about 20 in the class she is doing right now. Guess we'll see how the rest of the week goes. Don talked to Robert, our dept. chair yesterday, and he said a lot of the students are having transportation problems getting back from the holiday. He said he had to drive 12 hours to find a train station that had tickets available, left his car there for his wife to come get, and he stood up on the train for 5 1/2 hours to get back to Tianjin. Even with a good transportation system, I guess it still takes awhile to move 200 million people around from one place to another. That's over half the population of the entire US! I had one student that says he had to stand for 30 hours on the train to get home, and if you moved to go to the bathroom, you didn't have a place to stand when you came back. Robert said things should be more normal next week. Guess we'll see.

Thursday, Feb. 26: Went to my 8:00 a.m. class this morning, didn’t have anybody show up. Maybe some will next week. So I just came home and worked on cleaning up some files on the computer. ReNee ended up with one class that was pretty big, but her second class didn’t have many in it.

Friday, Feb. 27^th: Well, I finally got some students. My 8:00 a.m. class has 22 in it, my 10:00 a.m. has 28. It’s a lot easier to teach a class that size than one with just a few. Then I came home and spent all afternoon doing rolls and student picture sheets for all of them. We take each student’s picture in class, then edit them onto a Word document with their names organized into their families so we can learn their names and which family they are in more quickly. Most of them have already chosen an English first name, but we put them into families of 4-6 and they have to choose a family name. For most of them it is the first time they have had brothers or sisters, so they get pretty excited about them. They bond really fast, and if you try to move one to balance families, they won’t go because they are part of the family. It’s pretty touching, really. Then we do class activities to help them bond and get to know each other. Some of the families get so close that they go places and do things together during the week, like go out to dinner, or to a movie or stuff. They write about how special the experiences are in their journals.

Saturday, February 28, 2009 (high 45, low 32) Today we had a branch activity and a group of 25 of us went to Ron Derby’s solar energy plant to learn more about what it is he’s doing here in China. There are 88 of these large mirrors on the platform, which revolves tracking the sun, above the large heat storage vault. It was very interesting to see his plant and to see where he and Richard spend their working hours day in and day out.

Afterwards we went to a fantastic restaurant called “The Green Era” where we had a mouth-watering delicious meal. Steve Tam had taken us there before but I didn’t remember the food being so wonderful. The restaurant itself is a very special experience even if the food were not so special. It’s like being in a jungle and there are lakes full of fish, even a pond with seals that we watched being fed by some children. Richard was with us to help us navigate the Chinese menu and he took several of the group to help him order. They did a marvelous job and we had some of the best fried rice I’ve ever eaten in my life. There was also a fried onion bread that was to die for! We want to take our kids to that restaurant when they come to visit in April.

Mon. Mar. 2^nd.

Tonight we had Family home evening at the Cunningham’s apartment and when we walked out the door, we were absolutely astonished to see the ground covered with snow and to see light snow falling. It was such a beautiful sight, just like a winter wonderland, the kind of sight that makes for a positively perfect Christmas season. It’s beautiful even at the end of February and especially since we know it won’t last long because our weather is scheduled to be in the 50s by week’s end.

Mar. 19, 2009

Our classes have finally distilled down to where we think they will be. I have one on Tuesday that only has 12 students in it, makes it hard to get good discussions going when there's only that many there and they don't tend to talk much anyway. On Wednesday I ended up with one good class of 26 instead of two classes, nobody ever showed up for my second class, so I quit going to it, too. So far they haven't said anything. I wrote yesterday and asked for class rolls again, and they said they would try to get them to us in a couple of more weeks. Oh, well. My Thursday class only had 7 in it, so I told them to come Fridays instead. So now on Friday I have two big classes, one with 30, one with 40. But it makes for good discussions! Then I spend half the weekend reading journals. I was hoping that my Friday class wouldn't carry so I could have a longer weekend, but didn't work out that way.

The weather here has been beautiful the past two days. It was really windy on Sunday, we had a huge sandstorm that about turned out the lights, then the wind went away Monday and Tuesday and yesterday we had temps up into the 70's. Today it's back down to 55, but still sunny. Will be windy again this weekend. This is the "Sandstorm Season." The Northwest wind from Mongolia blows the sand from the Gobi Desert that is only 15 miles from Beijing down through here on its way to the ocean. It really gets everything dirty. They say they usually get 6-10 major sandstorms in March and April. Oh, yay. Every time we had them last year I got bronchitis because the sand carries dust-mites and crap with it from the desert. Hope it doesn't work that way this year. Anyway, today the leaves are budding leaves all over the place, all of the flowering trees are in blossom, the fruit trees are in bloom, and it's beginning to look like spring! Two days ago everything was still dead and the trees looked like sticks. Amazing! Hope it doesn't mean we get an early summer and die of the heat this spring! They turned the heat off in our building, so we know for sure it's spring, whether the calendar knows it or not!

Well, I guess I'd better get to my school work. I can't believe how fast this term is going, we're preparing week 5 lessons, seems like we barely started school. It's fun to be getting the student journals again, some of them are really funny, some are just touching. It is really special to get a glimpse into these students daily lives and souls. Very humbling to see their strengths and quality.

3/29/09 - We’re trying to decide what to do for Easter. We think we should do some kind of holiday lesson for them, but don’t know if we’re going to have the time. We have so much to cover, and the weeks go SO fast! We try to get them talking as much as we can. ReNee is baking 200 cookies today, six at a time in our little 12” toaster oven. The kids love anything that is home-made, and they really think it’s special if they get a treat from an American. She’s making sugar cookies sprinkled with sugar sparkles. The cookies they make in China taste more like sweetened bread, so they really like the change. We take them to our classes and carefully hand out one to each student, or they’d take a whole handful! If you could make a big pan full at a time, we wouldn’t mind, but it takes forever to make them in tiny batches.

We have some really great news today! Our Amber who has been waiting for years to get a baby had her first one today! We now have a beautiful new granddaughter! She was born 7 lbs 13 oz, and she has light brown hair. After her 20+ hour labor, Amber is right now wondering if it’s worth it! But when she snuggled that beautiful tender soft spirit up next to her neck and skin, I think she changed her mind! Teresa is there to help, flew in yesterday just as Amber was feeling the first pangs of labor. Timed that about right! Warren is there, too, and is excited about a new niece! I think they are going to name her Kacie Jean. (Spelling is probably wrong!) Of course it’s killing Mom to be here instead of there, but thank goodness for Skype! After Teresa leaves next week, Tyler’s mom is going to go spend a week to help with the new one. We’re really glad. New moms need a woman around! Us men just don’t do!

I guess they are having a hard time finding enough teachers to fill all of the positions here in China this year. I don’t know whether it’s because of the economy, or because China is tightening their age limit. They want people to be 65 or younger when they start teaching here. The limit used to be 70, but they had three teachers die last year (only one in the BYU program, and all under 65), but it made them a little gun-shy because of the possible diplomatic relations. It’s hard to get bodies shipped out of China back to the US, (though sometimes I wonder how can tell if the people are alive or dead!), so the one from BYU was cremated here and his ashes sent back home. In China cremation is the standard procedure, otherwise they wouldn’t have room for all the graves with this many people. I told mom that when I’m dead I don’t really care. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust takes on a whole new meaning. Once I’m done with this body, I won’t need it again until the resurrection, and when the time comes I’ll have to start from scratch anyway, I think. I doubt I’ll be one of those that get to “twinkle.”

Anyway, if any of you want an awesome teaching experience, this is certainly the place to get it!

Well, I guess I’d better get ready for classes. I hope you are all well, and that you are enjoying the blessings that we have been given. I thank God every day for my dear wife and my wonderful family, for my good health, and for the privilege of being here in China to work with His wonderful children. It has truly changed and enriched our lives. I’m attaching some of our students journals so you can get a flavor of their feelings. Be sure to drop us a line now and then, we sure love you.

Dondavid and ReNee.

Pollina – Missing My Daughter
My daughter is three years old, and it is time she goes to kindergarten. My daughter have left me to her grandma’s home ten days. In these days, I miss her every time (minute). At noon, I want to have a rest after finishing my papers when I am going to sleep, I hear my daughter’s voice. I open my eyes to look for her, but I see nobody. Perhaps it is a dream, and I am so depressed that my tears emerge from my eyes.
Because of missing daughter, I always talked her with my roommate. She is a mother of a 8-years-old son. Although my daughter is not with me, things she had done appears my memory all the time. My lovely daughter. I remember a story of my daughter which was about a frog. Her aunt taked her a frog from field. She was so glad. Her grandma and her aunt told her was little Duo Duo (Duo Duo is my daughter’s name). My daughter accepted it gladly. But she felt the frog was lonely and asked where the frog’s grandma and aunt were. From then on, she asked for frog’s grandma and aunt when her aunt went home from field. Daughter didn’t make mention of her mother, because there was no mother in her daily life. How sad! I hope your time comes soon that you can finish school and return to live with your daughter. You need each other!

Bob – My new English teacher, Professor Powell, gives me an English family name: King, in my first class this term. I totally like it. It symbolizes gold or king of an empire. And I name myself Bob, for my wife’s family name is “Bao”. So my English name is Bob King. I am very glad to have the name, and it is so kindly of Mr. Powell that he takes photos for my new family members in his class. In my other class I feel it’s difficult for my teacher to give such a lovely and interesting class. They won’t talk with us unless they finish their work. We feel so boring. The class is not us, it’s teachers, the platform is for dancing, the blackboard is for seeing. We just like go for an artistic showing. Also we never take part in the showing, we are the audience.
I have the feelings all the time until I meet Mr. Powell, a fat but kindly American teacher. I am his student in class Friday 8, and we talk like we are friends, like we are family, and it makes me so well. We are going to really enjoy this semester together! J

Linda – Love Rituals
People who love each other often have love rituals, like bringing gifts, reporting what they are doing, saying good night by message and so on. And some of the rituals are only meaningful to each other. To others, it is totally a waste of time.
Here is a story of my friend. When he had an opportunity to go abroad he asked his girlfriend what she would like. The girl said, nothing special, a t-shirt was enough. As time passed my friend went back with 37 t-shirts as well, because he bought one t-shirt from wherever he had been. Doesn’t that sound like a legend that only can happen in the movies? The fact is that everyone can be romantic and everyone can do extraordinary things to their lovers. We all have chance to obtain the happiness from love rituals as long as we insist.
My father used to travel a lot of r business. But he never brings any gifts since I had memory. Sometimes I think he is that kind of person who is a workaholic and the only thing he cares about is his job. Until one day I found an old and luxury silk dress at the bottom of a box. That is a gift that my dad was on a business trip at the first time and it costed a whole month’s salary. Considering people even cannot afford eating vegetables, my mom pissed off and forbade him to buy anything. And my dad never did. Their new ritual is that my dad had is bring back every penny he earned instead of gifts. Maybe that is more realistic and reasonable. However, I know my mom is still missing the romantic idiot for there was a gorgeous smile on her face when she told me this story. We must be careful what we ask for! Thank you for sharing!

Stone – The First English Class
Today is 27 February. I have the first English class since I came to Nankai University. The teacher is Professor Dondavid S. Powell, he is a tall and fat man. He is not only kind and lively, but also strict and serious. I have earn English for many years from 3 grade of primary school to now, many teachers have teached me, but they are Chinese. Usually they teach me English like Chinese, and teachers, students and I all say Chinese in class, so my English has been improved very slowly.
Today I meet foreign teacher first time, he gives me a different impression. First his teaching still is different to Chinese teacher, he walks around in the classroom freely, and speaks as good as a play. Second, he gives everyone a paper to write their name, class, home, e-mail and telephone, and make four or five people to a family, then take picture for them. It’s very funny! I like Powell, I like English class. I want my English be good tomorrow!

Brad – Today is Friday. I’m very excited because it’s the first class of Oral English. I know the teacher is a foreigner, and I’m afraid too, owing to the poor level of English of mine. When I came to the classroom, I saw a fat man sitting on the desk. I know he was our English teacher. He is old and looks very kind. He is Professor Dondavid Powell, an American friend. He asked us why we study English firstly. To me, I study English mostly because of the degree requirement. Of course, I like studying English, too. But I find I can’t make much progress. So I find I can’t make much progress. So I haven’t full confidence to study. I am not dare to speak English to others. I’m afraid they don’t understand me. Professor Powell encourages us to speak loudly. I now it is my biggest question. I must change the situation. I believe where there is a will there is a way. You are going to do fine! We will have fun.

Katherine from last semester – an e-mail.

Dear Professor Powell,
Thank you for your kindness and your help. It really means a lot to me.
I am so excited with your experience during Spring Holiday. Actually, in the holiday, I was busy with applying the Joint Program in America. Fortunately, I got the opportunity to study in University of Wisconsin-Madison. So I will go to America in September if all the thing go smoothly. I feel so happy to make my American dream come true. I will never forget you and your encouragement, and I believe my English is getting better every day.
Best wishes. Sincerely, Katherine

3/4/09 Thomas: Because my English score is not very high in the entry test, so I was arranged to second term to study. From other classmates I have known that the English class was very funny, they hear, talk and play, so I hope to join in.
Today I got up at 7:00. This was some early to me. I thought other classmates also think so, for we are used to study at night. When I came in the classroom, the teacher was standing at the platform. What surprised me was that he only dressed a shirt in a so cold winter.
This is the first class a foreign teacher teach me, so I feeled some strained at first. But the foreign teacher was very humor. So I resumed soon. I couldn’t know accurately what the teacher said, I have studied English twelve years, but I can only read the English text; hearing, speaking and writing ability are very weak, so this English course is very available to me. I can raise my hearing, speaking and writing ability, so I must study hard.

James: New semester, new experience. Today I have my first oral English lesson. To be honest, speaking in front of a group is often a terrifying experience for me, so that I was a little afraid today that the teacher would be too strict for me. However, beyond my expectation, my teacher Powell was very nice, kind, good-tempered and sweet man. He told me the best way to learn English is talking. And he wanted us to make a LOT of mistakes when we speak English. All his kindness made me feel better and not so nervous.
Today I also had my “family” in oral English course. Our family name was “Washington,” which is the name of the capital of the US, the name of the first president of the US. Our family members were Coeman, Steven, Madeline and me. Coeman was little fat but very funny. Steven was very tall. Madeline was a pretty, lovely and smart girl. Most of all, she was the only girl in our class. A “family” without a female is just a like a spring without flowers. The only beautiful flower was in our group, so our group was the most lucky family. Even Mr. Powell said to me that “you are so lucky.” I hope “lucky” will accompany our family every after.

3/22/09 Dr. White
Mr. Powell is my English teacher. He is a good and kind teacher. I like to listen to his English lesson. My heart is in depression from lab, but when I have taken part in my English lesson, my heart will be happy again. I like my teacher’s spoken English. It’s very clear and wonderful. It’s like a song. I love the content of English lesson. I think some opinions are right and important, especially, I like some idioms about life. I like the music of some selections and the way that my teacher teach. Above all, I think he is one of the best teachers I have seen. Ok. Time is later. I must go to bed. (Thank you. You are very kind.)

Sunny – Professor at Nankai University
This morning I gave my students two college Chinese lessons. The text is “Zhi Yin.” It is an article chosen from “Wen-xin-diao-Long,” which is a very important theory of literature criticism written by Liu Xia, a great theorist of Nan Dynasty.
When explaining the title of the text, I remembered some new thinkings about friendship I had got from your lesson. Then I told my students: “In Tuesday’s English lesson, my professor told me, ‘There are three kinds of friendship—for a season, for a reason, and for a life.’ The first and the second are all necessary. But the third is the most cherished one. We call it Zhi Yin. It means a friend keenly appreciates your talents. With only just one friend of this kind, our life will be enlightened.”
Mr. Dondavid, thanks for your excellent lessons. It gives me fresh thoughts and good feelings. There are so many beautiful sentences in your PPTs. (Thank you so much for your kind words. I am glad you can use some of them!)

Powell Family Adorable Blog Update

2009-03-24T19:12:00.000-07:00

Hello Hello Everyone,
Well I can hardly believe that the time has already come and gone and our adorable little baby girl
Kaedyn Brook turned the BIG "1" on January 25th. I finally found some time to post some adorable pictures from her one year photo shoot and from her Birthday party.. They are so adorable I just wanted to share the pictures with everyone.
Just click on the link below.
Hugs,
Kiley, Kaedyn & Brent

http://palsrwe.blogspot.com/

Re: Summer Plans

2009-03-09T23:08:00.000-07:00

The camprgound are quite expensive for camping. Around $40 plus a per person cost. There are other less developed camp sites, but they will require someone to go "save" them for us. meaning set up the tent/trailer and leave it or camp extra long.

**Julie

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 11:21 PM, Teresa Carr <teresa.carr@gmail.com> wrote:

Can someone send out the details for the Unofficial Powell Reunion? I know the dates, but I don't have the where, what, or why....

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 12:25 PM, Shaun and Kelli Powell <shaunandkelli@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi everyone,

Kelli and I were trying to coordiate some summer plans. We thought it would be fun to go to Lava Hot Springs and camp for the Fourth of July since they have the pool and a lot of fun Fourth activities. Lagoon could be fun too. The 4th is the weekend after the week mom and dad get home. That might give them some time to get over jet lag. If the 4th doesn't work, we could try the next weekend. We do have the Unofficial Powell Family Reunion in Oxford, ID (not sure where that is) on August 6,7, and 8th, but I know Teresa and Dave won't be here for that, but they will be up in July.

I don't know what everyone wants to try and do this year, but we're excited to see cousins and family. The more the marrier. Let's trying to get our calanders planned so it doesn't sneak up on us and we miss the chance to get together.

Love,

Shaun, Kelli, Addie, Rachel

RD: Hi

2009-03-06T06:42:00.000-08:00

Sounds fun! My sister just moved to Phoenix, and she is loving it. Just so you know our summer plans, I thought I would reply in kind:

Week of June 29 stay in Austin
Week of July 6 stay in Austin
Week of July 13 stay in Austin
Week of July 20 stay in Austin
Week of July 27 stay in Austin

I’m assuming, based on this tentative schedule, that you don’t really want any info about girls camp or reunions in order to coordinate. Next year, when the baby turns 2, I want to do a road trip up thatta way.

My dad is engaged, so I will likely be in Seattle for a few days this spring for the wedding, but other than that I don’t want to travel this summer. In fact, I don’t even want to do that, and am considering just a weekend trip of it. The last few times I’ve been there I’ve tried to stay as long as I could and make all the rounds to everyone’s houses, but I just don’t really care this time around.

So start pondering about next summer 2010! I either want to do the Grand Canyon/Rocky Mountain/Yellowstone trip again, or the church history thing up Ohio way. Maybe Florida J

EMMA POWELL
Digital Scrapbook graphics & classes

DSU Instructor

HI!

2009-03-05T06:43:00.001-08:00

Hi, Troy!

It was really neat to talk with you and Emma on Skype yesterday, at least for a little while. I felt really bad when your computer crashed and we lost our connection. Then you called back and I could see you and it crashed again, and I couldn't get back to you again. I don't know if the problem was with Skype or with your computer. By the time I could even get a signal on your computer it was really late your time, and I didn't want to call you in the middle of the night.

I'm really glad the people at the CPS realized that your family is fine and that you are surrounded by a bunch of idiots. It's sad when some people have so little to do they have to try to live other peoples lives for them! Isn't it ironic that a teacher who has one kid thinks she has the whole parenting thing figured out and knows everything! It reminds me of a story about a child psychologist who was a specialist in raising children. He published a book titled, "How to Raise Children." It was widely acclaimed by the psychological community. Then a few years later he got married and had a child. He re-wrote the book and changed the name to "Suggestions on Raising Children." Then he had two more children and rewrote his book and titled it, "Thoughts on Raising Children." Then he had two more children and stopped writing books.

I went to my class this morning that I didn't have any students in last week, and I have seven today. I asked them where they were last week, and they said, "Oh, this class didn't start for our majors until today." It would have been nice to know this last week when I went to class, set up all the stuff for my lesson, then didn't have anybody show. I asked them if there were going to be more students next week, and they said probably not. There aren't a lot of majors in Global History. It's tough to get a lot of class discussion with seven students. And two of them are just auditing the class. It will be interesting to see how long they keep coming! Oh, well. TIC. I still have a class on Wednesday that hasn't had any students show up for two weeks. Maybe their classes don't start until next week? I guess I'll go and see if anybody shows up, and if not, I'll quit going. I called our department about getting class rolls, and they said they should have them in a couple of more weeks or so.

This weekend is our District Conference in Beijing, so we are going over tomorrow afternoon after our classes. On Saturday we will go shopping at the markets in Beijing, then Saturday afternoon we have Priesthood Leadership meeting at 4:00-6, then will have an all-adult meeting 7-9. Sunday morning we have general Priesthood meeting at 8:30 for an hour, then at 10:00 we have a two hour conference meeting. It is kind of nice to mingle with some of the other saints here in China, though, and I've gotten to where I really enjoy some of the meetings. I must be getting old! I like the spiritual recharge the speakers bring. It's easier to do that when you don't have a bunch of kids that don't like to sit in meetings that much. I felt a little guilty when you said you guys went to the Kite festival instead of going to Stake Conference. I thought we hadn't been a very good example. But then I remembered why, and didn't feel so guilty. We did go to the Priesthood and Adult meetings on Saturday. And I think the family time we spent together was good too. I also remembered that most of the time we went on picnics was for General Conference, and we took a radio along and Mom and I listened to conference while you guys went and tried to catch fish in the stream, or just played a lot. I don't regret those days, and it was easier to stay awake during the talks.

We are planning to come see you this fall, probably when the weather begins to cool a little, maybe when the leaves turn pretty. If you want some help with your deck or something that will be fine. We'll finalize plans when the time gets closer. It will be strange to be there when the weather isn't 99 degrees with 99% humidity. Of course, we'd like to drop down and see Gladys, too, for one afternoon and/or evening.

Well, I have to get ready for going to Beijing tomorrow. I hope you are doing well, we sure love you all! Be sure to tell the kids how much we love them! I can't believe how fast they are growing! They are really awesome! (Of course!)

Love, Dad and Mom.

RE: Hi

2009-03-05T06:43:00.000-08:00

OK. I've been a total slacker and haven't been writing at all. We're doing great. The weather right now is fantastic and the entire reason I end up loving AZ. I've been eating my lunches outside on a blanket. I always start out fully dressed, but as I get warmer and warmer I start taking off layers. Luckily we don't have any 2nd story houses around us! Otherwise someone would get a real eyeful! :)
Dave has been interviewing around for jobs just to keep his ear out there. He has been offered a position with a company called AmSafe. They produce safety devices (seat belts, air bags, cargo nets, etc.) We're negotiating with them right now but will probably end up changing companies. The really exciting thing about this is that he will get the job title of Corporate Counsel. Once he gets that title on his resume there are a lot of job opportunities for him. So we are slowly working in the direction that we want to go.
Speaking of gardens....we just planted tomatoes and bell peppers here the other day. Turns out you can plant pretty much everything here, but you just start in Feb instead of June. It's so weird to get use to but oh so delicious!
Ivy finally decided to walk this week. Her favorite thing is to carry stuff from one room to another. She's so proud of her carrying abilities. She has started talking...kind of....she makes sounds for certain things. Mom and Dad of course but her next two favorite are blanket and binki. She doesn't really cry very much, just spends a lot of time yelling. My other kids yelled, but not like Ivy. She definitely has a strong personality. I dug out Eva's 3T clothes the other day. It's so weird to see the clothes that Eva was walking around in being crawled around in.
So I have my summer plans loosly sketched out:

June 26 leave for UT
Week of June 29 stay in Mt Pleasant
Week of July 6 stay in Rexburg
Week of July 13 stay in Rexburg
Week of July 20 stay in Boise
Week of July 27 stay in Mt Pleasant

If you guys wouldn't mind letting me know what plans you all have scheduled (girls camp, fam reunions, camping, vacations, etc.) I would appreciate it. That way I can solidify my plans in case anyone won't be around during the week I plan on coming.
I love you guys tons! Hope everything is going fantastic!!
Da Carrs

All the Girl Grandkids

2009-02-05T09:44:00.000-08:00

Hi Cuties,

So some of you don't have email addresses so I sent this to your parents. So in case you didn't hear about the elephants, they are awesome. They were by far my favorite part of our trip. I took my sandles off so I could feel their skin. It is dry, and round and doesn't feel like skin at all. It is also loose like Rufus's was. When you sit on them they move sideways, forward and back, and the skin slips around. It is really hard to stay on them. We fed them banana's and sugar cane. As we traveled they would reach up their trunks for the treat. There are two kinds of elephants: African elephants which are bigger and wild, and Asian elephants which are a bit smaller and can be trained. They begin training the baby elephants about 3 years and you can ride them at about 6 or 7 years.

I also saw a girl with a bright yellow snake. I am forwarding pictures for you.

If you want anything special from China, now is the time to tell me or your moms. I am excited to come home this summer and would love to bring you presents. Have a Happy Day!

Love ya,

Grandma Powell