3-13-11

Hey Mom,
We had a pretty good week. Our investigator Shelby Butler is on date to be baptized on March 26th. Did I tell you about her? She's 64 and just had back surgery and is pretty weak right now. But she believes that Joseph Smith was a prophet and she understands the need to be baptized by proper authority. The main thing is if she's physically able. She hasn't even been to church the past 2 Sundays because of her health. President and Sister Dance were at church, which was cool to see them. They said they just wanted to come to church up here, so they flew up at midnight. It's good they didn't go to our apartment because there's mini marshmallows all over the floor. We found 2 marshmallow blow guns with ammo in my desk that the last Elder had gotten in a package, so we had a war on Saturday night.
So, we go to the Ashcraft's when we wake up and start our laundry with 2 other missionaries while we study and Sister Ashcraft makes us breakfast. Quite a convenient system. Missionaries really get spoiled. Maybe it's just like that in the US. I didn't know Gary had been in Fairbanks. Do you know how long?
It's warming up a bit here. The roads are super icy. We had part of our bumber replaced where previous Elders had broken it, and of course the next day I slid into the back of a Toyota. Luckily it didn't do any damage, and even more luckily the guy in the Toyota just came back and said nothing's hurt, I'm happy if you're happy, and drove off.
The one thing that I was hoping to see while I was here was the northern lights and they came out for 2 nights last week. It has something to do with solar flares and how cold it is when you can see them. I got some decent pictures but it doesn't even compare to what it was like. They move pretty slow, but all the sudden they started dancing around like crazy, and I could see hints of red and blue in it. Here's a picture.
Anyway, I better go. Shelby's husband is the head of security on the base at Fort Wainwright and he said he could let us take a picture on the base so we're going to try and do that today. Do you or grandpa Wainwright know if we're related to General Wainwright who the fort was named after? That'd be cool to find out. Also tell Grandma thanks for the letter. Talk to you later.
Love,
Elder Bryce Wainwright

3-7-11

Hey Mom,
So far I like Fairbanks a lot. It's been sunny everyday, and has hardly been in the negative degrees. We have a cool ward and a lot of really nice houses in my area. We have one investigator Shelby, who is probably going to be baptised soon. She was going to get try and get baptized with her husband but I don't think he wants to. This last week was pretty slow, but I have good hopes for the ward, and we have a brand new ward mission leader here, who wants us to be tracting less and teaching more. I feel like I'm kind of a sloppy District Leader, like I forgot to call my district for the weekly report until 10:20pm last night. But I'm trying to get everything all figured out. Bruce was saying that he wished they gave more training to District Leaders when he was new, but they really don't tell you much. Elder Savaiinaea is a lot of fun. (pronounced So-va-ee-na-ya. I don't know if that helps.) He's been teaching me some Samoan words like soa(companion). He played rugby for his country, and his younger brother died from breaking his neck playing rugby. We are playing volleyball today so that'll be fun. We can see Mount McKinley from here in some places and hopefully I can still see the Northern Lights.
Glad you got to talk to Britnee and everyone went to Red Cliffs. The member who showed us Mount McKinley last night has been to Red Cliffs before.
The box was stuff I didn't need or have room for. I still have my carhardt which is plenty warm. I left my gloves in Ketchikan, so I just bought some new ones.
Have a great week. Love you.
Elder Bryce Wainwright

PS - It was Elder Savaiinaea's birthday last week and we didn't do much except I bought him Pizza Hut for lunch, so this morning a really cool family, the Ashcrafts, who do our laundry, made him breakfast today. Then we played air hockey.
-Here's a picture of my pen- it's made with an olive tree from Jeruselam.
-We did service at a worldwide ice sculpture competition

2-21-11

Hey Mom,
Thanks for the letters. They were nice. Janet is so awesome to write me so much too. I'm glad you told me how Scott is doing. That was encouraging to hear. I've been praying for him too.
Next Tuesday is transfers already, so it pretty much means my time here is done. You could still send those cd's though. Elder Williams would like to hear it. We had some cool stuff happen this week. We were just calling all the less active members we haven't met and one lady said she'd feed us the next day. We found out that she was a convert and just hadn't been to church hardly at all since she moved to Ketchikan. In fact, she asked us to get her membership record number so she could order more temple clothes. They invited us over tonight for dinner too and their going to let us spin our own wooden pens. And we're bringing the Burkman's over because Mike wants Bro. Burkman to teach him how he makes bows. Also, last night we had dinner with a nonmember couple who we tracted into this week. She, Maggie, said she knew some members, but wasn't interrested. We left her with our number in case she had any service that we could help out with. A couple hours later, their tv broke and the husband can't get around well so she called us up and fed us for it. We didn't think we'd get to teach them, but they kept asking us so many questions about our missions and said how much she respected members of the church that we ended up teaching the Restoration and Maggie committed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon and even said the closing prayer. So that was cool. We found out she's doing genealogy and has even done family home evening in the past. It dumped a coulpe of inches of snow last night so we shoveled their driveway this morning.
Those were some highlights. I always love meeting with and having dinner with Susan Nolte, our recent convert. She's a cool lady, and it's exciting to see how strong her testimony is. I don't worry about her not making it, like what you were saying about them governing themselves after you teach them truths. Hope you have a great week. Tell Gary he needs to get better now. Love you.
Elder Bryce Wainwright

PS- I like the scripture you quoted Moroni 7:33. That's one of my favorites.

2-14-11

Happy Valentines Day Too!
Hope you and Dad get to do something fun. Your stories about Gary and Sara make me laugh out loud. I can only imagine how chaotic it was. Did you manage to get a picture of the bubble bathroom? You probably weren't thinking of that at the time. All the kids seem to be getting so old.
Zone Conference was great, as always. We were trained mostly on focusing on the Restoration and using mormon.org. If you haven't checked out the updated mormon.org you need to. It's way cool and we have new pass along cards for it. We're even supposed to come to the library and check it out for an hour not on P-day. I do like flying, especially over Alaska, but this time it was dark on the way up and I slept all the way back because I got a fever in Juneau. I guess I hadn't quite kicked my cold, but it's finally gone. I think.
Anyway, I hope you have a great day. I love you both so much.
Elder Bryce Wainwright