July 5, 2021: Snow on the 4th of July

 Alaska has these trees that are full of cotton... which I didn't know existed until this week. The air was thick with cotton blowing around in every direction everyday this week. It was INSANE. I could barely keep my eyes open when we went outside. Felt like I was living in a cotton ball tornado. 

The 4th of July was a day of fasting and rest, as the sabbath should be! We were invited to have dinner with this young family in the ward, The Ellingsons. On the way to dinner appointments, we usually try to guess what the family will be feeding us. We guessed BBQ due to it being the 4th of July. Instead we had waffles with ice-cream and blueberries! A beautiful treat of a meal. After, we discussed how we wish we had an iron to make Theresa Fisher's famous "Choffles"! After we had our lesson, the dad says, "Well Sisters, you need our double waffle maker more than we do". He packages up this beautiful, brand new double cooker of a waffle maker, a 8 pound bag of waffle mix, 2 pounds of butter, homemade syrup, and 24 homemade cookies and places it into our car. WHAT THE!! People are too generous here. I think we need to stop complimenting things that people have because people just keep giving!

We went on a hike to Little O'Malley with our friend Gloria. It was SO windy that we almost blew off the peak! We had a little lesson with her on the walk up about God and how he shows his love to us. We saw a full rainbow on the way up! She asked us questions about the churches stance on LGBTQ's. We did our best to explain that we belong to Jesus Christ's perfect church with imperfect people. We love and care for all of Gods children for wherever they are at in life. We believe in marriage between a man and a woman because of the examples shown in scriptures. It was very interesting to hear her standpoint and how that was the only thing keeping her from looking more into our church. I love Jesus' Christ's Church for the healthy lifestyle it has helped me make for myself and my family. I love the church because it has helped me bring the spirit into my life all day, everyday. I love the Church because it is a gospel centered community centered on Jesus Christ, anchored in restored truth, living prophets and apostles, and The Book of Mormon. I truly love Jesus Christ's church.

Thank you for all of the birthday wishes!! My day was filled with sunshine(which I prayed for pretty hard the night before;). I had a spikeball picnic outside the church with Trenety, Emmy, Alexis, Lauren, and some other missionaries. I used my "Bday party", as an excuse to give Emmy a tour of our chapel;) I had my favorite cake which was a watermelon cut in half. We ran at the Service high school track, Meg Maisey made me a fruit pizza, the youth sang to me happy birthday, and we visited Katherine Dabell(92, Years old). Sister Holman made me Stromboli that all the elders devoured before we could save it... She also tried to get me with a birthday dinner surprise. Which turned out sad because the woman surprising me, "Rita, the German lady", never showed up after we waited for our whole dinner hour for her. It was kind of a mess but all was good because the sun was shining and that made me joyful:)

We were invited to a Tongan baby shower where we offered to bring food to but after realized we didn't need to because TONGANS EAT GOOD. All the Tongans would always disperse if we came to talk with them and so I got the spikeball net out of our car and taught all the Tongan children how to play. After 5 minutes, we had a crowd of little Tongan kids wanting to play &talk with us. Some even asked gospel related questions about missionary work! Super cool:)

Choose JOY,

Sister Elly Rex

Pics!

-Pday hike to Rabbit Lake

-BDAY!

-Temples &Target dresses

-Daisy field on Clark's Rd.

-Molley Lights kick butt class 

-Little O'Malley + Gma Rex's gift 

-Best Alaskan Raindeer quesadilla

-Lunch w/Chilean girl, our primary class, the Forest's at the ward party, Native beading, photoshoot with Allison.