March 21, 2011

Tuesday and Wednesday of last week we taught our two favorite people a first discussion and then found four new people to teach. Also last week Bishop Morgan (part of the FM group) came out to fix our Branch’s satellite. It hasn’t worked since our arrival and we’ve kept it at the top of our weekly letters to our mission president, hoping to get it calibrated before April’s general conference. On Thursday we sent the following message to our mission president:

   Thanks, President! The satellite is working and we look forward to

   viewing conference with the members. Bishop Morgan (Anchorage FM group) is

   in the shadowed left side of the photo. Three large priesthood brethren

   helped maneuver the satellite dish to the new connection. All is beautiful

   in Dutch Harbor!

To which President Dance replied: Very Exciting...and just in time for General Conference. How perfect!

Friday was a banner day for finding and teaching people. This island is what the locals call “a working island” and no one makes excuses for missing meetings because working is the number one priority. The more hours you work, the more overtime you’re paid, and that’s the goal. So it was a small miracle that we were able to find and share a message with 14 people. At one juncture we were going to turn left and we felt we should turn right even though we had nothing to turn right for. Because of that turn a chain-reaction of small events followed, allowing us to meet with almost everyone on our list, and a couple of people that we’ve added to our list since.

On Saturday the winds returned. We’ve enjoyed several weeks of outstanding weather – sunshine and 45 to 50 degrees. Saturday’s storm began small and built to 69 mph by the time we left for our service project at the high school at 5 p.m. We finished up around 8 p.m. and the winds were in their glory – over 100 mph (the high school has an illuminated gauge). As we were driving homeward we noticed the branch president’s car behind us. Our satellite dish was gone. Here’s our email to our mission president:

   Winds exceeded 100 mph today. As you can see by the attached picture, our
   satellite dish is all over the neighborhood and up yonder mountain. It blew
   away when we were at an appointment and the neighbors called President
   Clark, who was behind us when we were driving home.

Here’s his reply: Oh dear, the picture tells a thousand painful words. Now we don't just have a dish that is not stabilized and callebrated...we don't even have a dish.

The danger to islanders isn’t the wind; it’s what the wind carries. Richard and the branch president worked to tie down the remaining parts of the dish. Our police officer member spent Saturday night trying to hold a roof onto a family’s home but eventually lost the battle and the family had to find rooms at the hotel. A couple containers blew over (a container is like one of those long boxes on the back of a semi) and we could see boards and metal roof pieces flying up the mountain.

The winds impacted church attendance Sunday – 27 faithful souls came.

We’ve been sending up prayers for our Japanese brothers and sisters. If we didn’t have such a strong testimony about the power of prayer we would say we are not doing enough. If we do it right, appealing to the God of our entire universe, who created all things and controls the elements, is the single most powerful thing we can do. We humbly ask His protective blessings to be upon each of you.

We love you so much.

Richard and Linda, Mom and Dad, Papa and Nanny

March 14, 2011 - Bush Branch, YW, FHE and Library Project

We just returned from helping a branch family hold their second family home evening. It’s been a great day, with people jumping into our path that we needed to see. Big blessings!

Bless the people in Japan who suffer from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. We hope and pray you and your loved ones are all right. We especially pray for The Ralph and Yoko Page family who live near the reactor.

Earthquakes are common here in the Aleutian, but before Friday’s quake we didn’t have an emergency kit. Saturday we put everything into a suitcase that we’d need if we had to head for high ground. If we ever need to actually depend on it for 72 full hours we’ll likely discover essentials missing but it gives us peace to know we won’t have to try to gather things together in an emergency – just grab the suitcase and water jug, jump into the truck, and head uphill.

We’ve spent more time telling you about the Dutch Harbor Branch than our Bush Branch, in which we also serve as full-time missionaries. Here are a couple of glimpses into our Bush Branch …

At 8 a.m. Sunday we called into the telecom center, punched in our access code and joined the PEC meeting. “Who just joined us,” asks the President Swenson. “Ok, we can go ahead and have our PEC. We need to send each of you notices of the stake training on the 24th.” Several minutes are spent gathering essential contact information, i.e., “Should we use the FrozenRachel or TeacherMum email?”
Then home teaching is discussed in terms of how many snow machine miles were involved with getting to members. Apparently one was 100 miles round trip from the nearest road, and when they arrived at the lodge of the part-member household (husband and a couple of the kids are not members), they found a picture of Christ above the bar and the Articles of Faith posted in the small restaurant. The home teachers sat in the restaurant and the wife/mother brought them snacks. Other visitors arrived via snow machine and also sat nearby and asked the wife/mother about the Articles of Faith, to which she responded. The conversation continued, with the visitors mentioning different people they knew that were LDS. As the reports were given we marveled at how quietly some people live the gospel.

We have four media referrals in the Bush Branch in places like Toksook and Sleetmute. Our biggest challenge is communication. We only have the telephone, which is often unclear.

Dutch Harbor branch had its first YW activity. The Primary had a Faith in God activity and I helped a couple of the girls make prayer pillows. I combined the lesson with their “heavenly royal heritage” and had a princess “tea” party and told them that, with their prayer pillows, their princess knees need never touch the floor. They made pom-poms and decorated the pillow’s corners. The following week they took their prayer pillows on a sleep-over to a non-member’s party, talked about their princess knees, and consequently we’ve been answering some questions.

We have also had opportunities to discuss our mission with city officials, which was heart-warming. Unalaska has no prejudices as far as we can determine and we enjoy the open-minded attitudes.

We thought we’d place some religious books and DVD’s in the library, which was well-received by the city and library, but they needed our media information registered for their system. We asked our mission president how we could get our materials registered for the library’s system, he passed our question along, and we soon discovered that the church has an entire department dedicated to placing materials in libraries. Beautiful!

Richard was "Props Manager" for the city's Cat in the Hat play on Dr. Seuss's birthday. Keep in mind that this is an island with limited resources, but with plenty of creativity he pulled off miracles. See photos below...

Hours of confetti-making

Green eggs and ham for everyone...

And tons of fun!

We love you. Stay safe.

Richard and Linda. Mom and Dad. Pop and Nanny.

February 23, 2011

If you didn’t read the last entry, you should do so now or this next follow-up comment won’t mean as much to you. A couple days after our return to Dutch Harbor we visited the DMV and had a laugh with the manager, Vicki, about the weight depicted on my driver’s license, causing our luggage to be left on the dock. She reissued my license and was still chuckling as we departed. Two days later we received a call from Andrew in Texas. He had called the DMV to get the name of clergy who could help him with a family emergency and Vicki thought of us and gave him our number. Andrew’s daughter was a merchant marine aboard a huge ship unloading in Dutch Harbor and he had to give her a message about her dying grandmother and he wanted clergy to be on hand. He gave us her name and we said we’d find her, not really knowing how to do that. We called the Branch Primary President who has connections at the dock and within 30 minutes we were climbing the steep steps to the deck of the Comet. The kind captain let Karen and us use his quarters and satellite phone to call Karen’s father and we had sweet experiences of sharing prayer and solace. The ship departed early the next morning.


Last Friday (February 18) the Dutch Harbor Branch President called to see if we could pick up someone at the airport because our car could hold more (we have a Chevy S-10 pickup with a back seat). The flight was cancelled and the Anchorage Stake couple (the Lambertsons) flew in the next morning. Saturday was a packed day as opportunities to serve had continued to come our way, and we hadn’t known we would have help. We were scheduled to do reading/craft time at the Unalaska Library. Twenty-four children came – a record. They usually have between 3 and 7 and we had prepared for 12, so we had to scramble to increase the craft items. Brother Lambertson taught the children to make footprints with ink-stamped hands and Sister Lambertson helped measure, trace and cut out little feet. We read Dr. Seuss’s “The Foot Book,” and I had a book for twelve children to make of their feet. Richard and Cora magically generated the extra books while a few of the mothers played the hop-scotch-type game we had made. We tied red bows around each child’s big toe and the hop-scotch-type game, which were a series of footprints, had the left big toe colored red. After the story we helped the children walk across rolled out freezer paper with painted feet. It was a mess, but fun. We couldn’t have done it without the Lambertsons. Cora asked me who they were and I told her they flew in to help. They are an impressive, hard-working couple and we enjoyed their company.

The pot luck Saturday night was well-attended and on Sunday morning we had a record number at Sacrament meeting: 37, thanks to the Lambertsons for adding two.

We’re working with 19 households. Here are our current investigators (please pray for them and put their names in the temple): Patti Ellis (has a baptismal date), Ken Reeves, The Faailoga family of 5, Novalee (who cannot progress until her father gives his permission for her to be baptized), and Jan Newkirk. We have hopes that eight other families that we casually teach will reach the level of investigators. There are other families in the Branch with whom we meet. We love them with our whole hearts and each of their footsteps, however small, brings us elation.  We feel we're fans in the bleachers hoping, praying and cheering.   

Our down time is spent studying and discussing how we can be better teachers and servants to those we cherish.

We love you dearly.  Mom and Dad/Pop and Nan/Richard and Linda

February 14, 2011

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Anchorage Zone Conference, Feb 2011

Richard and I had a fast trip to Anchorage this past week aboard a twin-engine prop. The airport closed the day of our departure due to weather. When that happens we instantly became standby passengers, and the lines were long the next morning. Two potential investigators (airline managers) helped assure that we were on the first flight out, and we cannot forget their generosity and sweet faces.

While in Anchorage we were able to see my little brother, David, and niece, Abby, and attend zone conference, then back to our island. It’s so interesting to fly into Dutch. The plane descends into fast-moving clouds and lots of white mountains, sort of curves around them, bumping a lot, and when it fights the wind to touch down it’s a dice throw to see if we’ll have to go back up and try again, but the pilot needs to hurry with that decision because the Aleutian Ocean is at the end of the runway. The fun actually begins at check-in where they weigh your bags then weigh you, unless you show your driver’s license, which reveals your weight. The small aircraft has weight-distribution considerations. So, not wanting to announce my weight, I showed my new Alaska driver’s license. The glitch was, I didn’t know my license had a typo in that little weight box. Whereas I’m 5’8” tall, they typed in that I weighed 508 pounds. We think that’s the reason they left everyone’s bags behind. There’s zero security. You just check in and then walk out in the snow, climb the steps onto the plane, and they give you a set of complimentary earplugs. None of the challenges of flying here mattered because when we saw our island we felt the warmth of coming home.

Our Anchorage zone conference was a big boost. We met with President and Sister Dance and all the young elders and sisters of two zones. It isn’t possible to describe the saturating spiritual feelings, but one of the things we learned is that the church is launching a new media program on Mormon.org. There are lots of faces and you can click on any of them to get their story. You can submit your own story as well. We are to meet with the members and go over the link, but since we’re low-speed internet here we won’t be able to do a lot with the site. You can, however. Have fun with it.

We’re busy with four investigators and several activations. Yesterday Fua and Joshua Faailoga (Samoan) came to church with their three children. Our faithful Patti was here, as always, but Ken didn’t make it. There were also two newly-activated families. Dutch Harbor Branch is starting a Cub and Boy Scout program, and the parents are excited. We have about 12 boys, age 8 and above. Our newly-activated families help us “find,” and their energetic spirits keep our time maximized. We have to keep careful notes of each lesson we teach in order to help with progression correctly. The value of our area book (where we keep track of everything) cannot be over-estimated. We’re seeing a lot of happy faces, which we love. The big surprise is that the temple isn’t a priority. We took it for granted that they would immediately want to prepare, but they haven’t experienced the culture of a temple-centered ward. We have permission to teach temple prep classes but no one can schedule additional lessons (we can’t teach during church). Granted, they work as many hours a week as possible since they’re paid time-and-a-half for anything over 40 hours, but our views are much different and our expectations are great. Patience is good.

Some of the reasons we're here:

Our sweet Patti



The Williams family has now held two family home evenings and loves the program.




The Jones family has four boys.  This is baby Hunter, the youngest.



Hailey and her mom just started back to church and we don't know how we ever managed without them. 



Mayor Shirley Marquardt is a friend and great support to missionaries



Chet is active now, shown here with investigator, Ken Reeves (right)

Both Peder and Reese (Primary children) were champion spellers in the school spelling bee

Becky is now active

Lin Ellsworth decorates cakes, is on the board of the Methodist church and the library, and is learning about her family history.





There was a convert baptism in the Bush Branch.  The new member was taught over the telephone and traveled to Nome for his baptism.  He lives two hours away (by snow machine) from his home teacher.

Given our heavy teaching schedule we’d like to cut back on community involvement. We serve lunch at the retirement facility, read stories to the children and help them do crafts at the library, and are helping with a project for Alaska’s special Olympians. Additionally, we will vigorously use a pot-luck here at the church Saturday as an inviting tool. We love service. We love to teach. We love each of you. We love.

Richard and Linda/Mom and Dad/Papa and Nanny

January 20, 2011

We’re teaching often. On good days there are too many to teach and we barely get to appointments. Between times we try to serve and support the community in various ways.

Right now we are working with several people at different levels of progress. “J” is a survivor of a 20-year Nazi-style religious compound. She is understandably guarded so we teach in baby-steps, the first principle being that she is a daughter of a loving Heavenly Father.

Sometimes we see the light, happiness and relief in the eyes of those we teach and realize that they are better off than when we found them, and that’s our payday. Joseph Smith said to teach correct principles and let the people govern themselves. So we teach and teach and teach and invite and invite and invite and pray and pray and pray. We love this calling. It’s what we have worked our entire lives to do. Being here at this time is the right place for us even in severe weather.

We’ve found a pocket of people whose experiences and stories we are collecting. They are of Aleut descent and lived through WWII, or are the children of people who lived at that time, and have stories about the Japanese bombings of this island as well as the US-led evacuation of Unalaska. The evacuation wasn’t handled well and there are resentments toward our military forces. Harriet wants Japan to replace the hospital they bombed. We’re attaching her photo that we took yesterday as well as her photo with her sister at the time she was evacuated. They dressed up for the occasion, not realizing where they were going.

Harriet with her older sister, 1944, day of evacuation

Harriet today

This week we are beginning to teach the temple preparation lessons to a few of our branch members. There will not be a Sunday class because of varying schedules so we will be teaching individually.

Our little grandson, Hunter, will be baptized March 5. It’s a heartache to miss it but we know our family receives blessings from our service.

We love you.
Richard and Linda



Our back yard



Cloud formations are fabulous here.

Meringue in the sky.  Taken yesterday on the way to an appointment.

We took the following photo of the Northwestern for those of you who watch  "The Deadliest Catch" on the Discovery Channel.  The locals ignore the movie-star crab fishermen, although they are included in prayers.  The boat harbors are buzzing with crab boats, fishermen and helicopter cameras.



Richard serving lunch at the senior center. 



January 7, 2011

Most important BIRTHDAY PEOPLE: JANA and HUNTER. Especially Hunter, who turns eight and gets baptized, a huge event in his young life. Some dear friends will be there supporting him for us. We’re grateful for our loved ones and appreciate that things roll along pretty well without us.

Bekah (4) took this on Jana's cellphone

If we could point to one day that we’d like to live over again it would be yesterday. The sun was out for the first time since we arrived and the island was glorious. No wind. We were out in the community all day and we took a good amount of mingling throughout the community. We served lunch at the senior center and then last evening we received a baptism commitment from Patti. She’s a teacher and wants to be baptized in the Bering Sea. With that in mind we set the commitment date for June when the waters are warm enough to allow immersion without requiring resuscitation afterwards. Besides, there’s a little work to do yet. When we left Patti’s about 7 p.m. we could still see the horizon, evidence that the days are getting longer.

We’re teaching a lot but have a nagging feeling that we’re not quite in the right place yet. We keep praying and trying and trying and praying so maybe we’ll figure it out. Meantime, we invite, invite, invite and try to be where we’re supposed to be, and then just wait to see what we’re supposed to do.

Our Primary president, Rande Leggett, runs a huge crane. She's been loading and unloading vessels for twenty years. To see her up there in that tiny booth making that huge thing walk across the beach is pretty impressive. She’s kind and easy-going and always planning good things for the children. We’re including her photo and a photo of her crane.

Rande Leggett, Primary President of Dutch Harbor Branch

Rande's crane

This is Rande in the little cab where she uses lots of gears and buttons to drive this baby

The attendance at church has steadily declined since our arrival, which we’re trying not to take personally. Last Sunday we had enough commitments to fill the chapel, but the electricity went out at 6:30 a.m. and didn’t go back on until a few minutes before church started at 10. It’s still black-dark at 10 a.m. here – it looks like midnight outside and the bitter cold makes lengthy outages worrisome as inside temperatures drop. We knew only the most rooted would come. We had 21. One was our investigator, Patti.

If you have a chance to watch “The Deadliest Catch,” you’ll see some shots of our island. The boats from that show are tied up in the harbor and the crews are getting ready to go after crab. The children sing prayers to protect the fishermen and we feel the spirit of hope in the air. We’ve been stopped by a few members who are in Unalaska for the fishing season. We want them to be safe and wish we could do more than just give them our card.

We love you. Stay well.

Last posting for 2010...

Thanks to Kevin Ganschow's advice for our egg/alcohol experiment we impressed the sox off our 10-year-old investigator and her parents.  "Pop" -- the egg went right into that glass bottle, whole and undamaged.  Whew! 

Beginning yesterday there’s no wind; just a little rain. The tops of the mountains are so white they look like giant mounds of sifted powdered sugar. The water is like ink, still and black, reflecting finite details of shorelines and boats. Even with close study it’s difficult to see where the edges meet. The eagles aren’t flying but are perched on every available surface, 50 to 100 in a bunch. If only Don Busath were here with his camera.

Meet our Primary children. The snow plow piled a “mountain” on the side of our church building so the kids came over and had some fun.

The view of our volcano from our front steps.

Example of the Spirit of Unalaska: Brother Wood was hired as the State Trooper last year and moved here with his family: wife Holly (yes, that would be Holly Wood) and five kids. Brother Wood needed beds for his kids but didn’t say anything. On Christmas day Brother Palmer and his son brought the Wood family a set of bunk beds and two dressers that he had constructed in his garage.

Newest Friend: Carolyn owns the gift shop. She’s a natural beauty – wears zero makeup and uses her fingers and the wind to comb her hair. Everything in her pristine, tiny shop is hand-picked by her and it smells so good just to go inside. We love to hear her describe each item she’s chosen for her inventory and how she found it. She frames and cuts mats in one small corner of her shop, and her work is impeccable. She’s a highly-trained museum archivist and launched her business after her divorce a few years ago. Her son is 17 and they were going sledding together today. Carolyn is easy to talk with.

Small world: Yesterday Richard met Swan in the barber shop. She’s Vietnamese Buddhist and, as it turns out, is BJ’s wife. We’ve been hunting for BJ at his jobsite since arriving. He works at the dump so we’ve done a lot of eagle-dodging. Imagine that all those seagulls are eagles next time you go to the dump.

Thinking of our loved ones far away, we bid a fond adieu to 2010 and optimistically welcome the new year wherein we'll get a brand new grandchild about midway through.  We love you.  Stay warm and may you be blessed with good health and tons of joy.   

Merry Christmas!

Good news! Our boxes came and we have boots and coats.

What a neat Christmas we're having. No hustle, bustle or hassle—Just the sweet spirit of a new baby that graced our world so many years ago. We sort of chuckle at the dizziness and busy-ness of those who have no time, remembering how distracted we were in the “land of the gentiles.” If you can help yourself to slow down and just feel the loving kindness beaming down from heaven, we promise it’s worth it. It's there…just waiting.

Here's a picture of our tree.

Richard found it. We put it on our laptop today and we took a few minutes to sit around it talking about our many gifts, including you. Our little Christmas is oversimplified, for sure. Our only stresses are trying to get our “Joy to the World” DVD shipment in so we can finish delivering to all our prospective investigators. We’re on our last DVD, trying to figure out whether to give it to a prospective investigator or to use it ourselves as we teach this week (we have 6 appointments). Since we gave one to the library we thought we could check it out but it isn’t available. This is a good stress.

About the library:  It's open long hours and won a prize of being the 4th best in the nation.  Very popular here.  I love the librarian. Her name is Cory and she has a hooked arm. She likes to write and gave the community a challenge: They are to write a story of at least 250 words, Dr. Seuss style (Like Green Eggs and Ham), and they can only use the 50 words on her list, and they have to use every word. I wrote a story about the Plan of Salvation using words like Aleutian and vole. I’m hoping I’m the only entry so I can win.

The skies are dark, the snow is blowing and the fields are white. This morning we were going to make a quick run to the post office before our District meeting began (via polycom-telephone since the rest of our district is in Anchorage) but when we turned on the porch light and saw how hard the new snow was blowing our courage failed. It might sound better to say our intelligence prevailed. Anyway, we didn't get to the post office until after our district meeting. Meet our district elders:

Elder Harris, Elder Yang, Elder Loomis, and Elder Cameron

They asked how they could help and we’re teaching a little family with a 10-year-old daughter, so we asked them for teaching gimmicks. They told us to boil an egg and get a bottle. Draw a face on the unpeeled boiled egg and tell the child she’s the egg. Then crack the egg and peel off the shell (repentance) to reveal the goodness within. Then baptize (dip the egg in water – Richard’s part), pour a little alcohol into the bottle, cap it and shake it, then light the bottle and tell the child that it’s the kingdom. Stick the egg on top of the bottle and it will be drawn in. Our egg got half sucked in. We tried it again and again until our church building smells like a meth lab, but the poor eggs just shattered halfway into the sucking in process. We just can’t put this child through such a demo. We report on this to our district next Tuesday. The mishes had such high hopes for us.

Here’s Rich with our broken egg in the bottle, the bottle of alcohol and lighter. It’s your turn.




Next day: We met with the Mobley family last evening. The little 10-year-old was impressed with Richard’s salt-and-pepper demonstration. Brother and sister Mobley are great people. We felt warm inside as we bent into the storm to find our snow-covered truck. Yes, it’s worth it. We look forward to that sweet, quiet thrill throughout our beautiful white Christmas week.
Merry Christmas! We love you!

Richard and Linda Later

p.s. May-day:  Need teaching demo ideas for next Tuesday. laternlater@gmail.com