Happy 2012! The year will begin with a bang as we travel to Anchorage for a baptism--and maybe TWO! The one we're traveling for is March Runner, an attorney and elder in the Blackfoot tribe. She's influential and lives in teh Bush area of Alaska (areas inaccessible by roads), which we serve. We have taught her by telephone for the past four months and she has given us a run for our money. For instance, last evening we taught about the covenants Heavenly Father makes with us when we are baptized. We read a scripture and asked her about how that made her feel to be promised to come forth in the first resurrection. She said, "First of all, Jesus Christ's resurrection was the first resurrection." Our hearts almost burst with joy. She's now teaching us more than we're teaching her. March will be baptized in Anchorage on Sunday the 15th.
The second baptism we HOPE we can attend is Virginia's. She now lives in Kenai and if she can hang in there with her smoking-addiction-recovery, we'll drive to Kenai on Saturday the 14th for her baptism, then zoom back to Anchorage (depending on roads) so we can take March Runner to her first in-person Sacrament meeting on Sunday morning prior to her baptism that afternoon. She's been attending by telephone all these months.
Here are some photos we thought you'd enjoy.
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| Hunter and Jana at Hunter's Bear award |
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| Richard and I haul our drinking water from an artesian well |
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| Filling our bottles. Hauling water makes drinking it a pleasure. |
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| We hike in about a mile with our sled about every week or ten days. |
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| Sitka can really snow. We shoveled from 8 am to 1 pm, with only a break for our District Meeting on the phone. |
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| After the District Meeting we came out to find we had to shovel again. |
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| Our breakfast table: cereal, planner, scriptures, Richard's daily book, Stand a Little Taller, note books and bifocals. |
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Happy New Year to each of you!
Love,
Richard and Linda, Mom and Dad, Papa and Nana
