Our friend Greg Bishop, Northwest area director & Elder Spens

                                          Elder Ulu'ave         Adam Olguin      Elder Gledhill

Fall is in the air here in Alaska with colors arriving in the vegetation.

 

                                               Zone conference at the Institute

                                                More fall colors in the Birch trees leaves.

Here we are back at the Institute.

             After removing the old wall covering and moldings this is the new look of the institute building.        
             We have noticed that the pictures stand out much better with the white painted walls.

     The flowers are truly amazing here in Fairbanks. This huge dahlia is a result of the long period of sunshine here in the north. Even though the summers are cool the number of daylight hours is a great compensator for plant growth. It is as green here even in the interior of Alaska as any place on earth. It just requires varieties of vegetation that are winter hardy to 50 or 60 below zero.  It truly has been a wonderful place to be in the summer. It is just endless green. The local residents tel us that winter snows can start any time after the first of September so we shall see.
     On Tuesday, our area director, Greg Bishop came to visit for the day.  We had one day to show him the sights here in Fairbanks and introduce him to a student, a seminary teacher, and Pres. Payton who is in over the seminaries and the institute as a member of our stake presidency.  After a tour of our building, we were able to visit the UAF Large Animal Research Station and see the musk oxen and caribou and reindeer there.  We went to visit the Morris Thompson Center, but the displays were closed for repairs.  However, we enjoyed a very interesting film about living alone in the wilds of Alaska.  We took a quick trip to see the oil pipeline and enjoyed a wonderful meal with the Paytons.   It was a busy day, but we learned many things and truly enjoyed our time with Bro. Bishop. 
     We are now totally back into the redecorated institute building. It is good to be back and not have to work out of our apartment. It is a great blessing for the YSA to have the facility of the institute building. It was built 14 years ago and was in need of new carpet and some new paint and hopefully it will last for the next 14 years of use.
     Adam's baptism was on Wednesday.  It is wonderful to see the changes in the lives of those who accept the gospel of Jesus Christ and are willing to follow His example and be baptized into His restored church.
     We are starting to see the YSA who are working here for the summer leave. Some are going back to school in the lower 48 and some are just going back home. Our branch will definitely be smaller within the next couple of weeks, and we have no idea how many new students will show up for the fall semester at institute classes. We are conducting an official registration, however we we will not know officially until the first week or two of class how many will be attending. Early morning seminary started this week as well and JoAnn has been busy with the distribution of the curriculum materials to our 14 units. We have also had request from two additional families in the outlying areas to provide home seminary to their students. With stake approval they can do this then we provide the materials and training for the new teachers.
     We had a stake priesthood meeting where the theme was the subject of joy.  It was emphasized that our greatest joy in this life comes from our family, obedience to the gospel and service to the Lord. I remember our new mission president, Pres. Beesley, in our first interview with him asking us if we were happy.  We are certainly finding joy and happiness in the service of the Lord here in the Alaska mission and especially with our assignment at the institute and with the early morning seminary program here. We also find great joy in working with the YSA in many capacities. 

We send our love to all of you.  
Jim and JoAnn

                                              Elder Smith       Tim Surap            Elder Gledhill

                                        Elder Gledhill, Scott West, Andy Pusateri, Elder Smith

                                                A giant cabbage at the fair with a blue ribbon

                                          Melanie Johnson Payton dancing with her radio "star"

                                                   Robin Johnson with her orthodontist "star"

                                          Adam Dewey with his elementary school teacher "star"

                          Sunset in Fairbanks after a rainy drive home from teaching in Delta Junction

Missionary work is going strong in our Branch here.  Tim Surap and Andy Pusateri were both baptized this week.  Tim was baptized on Monday and Andy on Saturday.  I was asked to play the piano for both baptismal services.  This week we have another baptism scheduled on Wednesday.  What a blessing to see these men learn and make commitments to follow the Savior.

We had our last Institute classes for the summer this week as well.  I think we will really miss our drive to Delta Junction.  Some of our dear friends there are not returning to school in Fairbanks this fall, and we will miss them all.  Spencer Tappen just received his mission call to Campinas, Brazil.  He was so excited! 

The new carpet has been laid and we are returning to the Institute.  It's not my favorite color--a combination of blue, mauve, green, brown, and gray.  At least it won't show the dirt very much.  On Friday we took the computer, etc. back to the Institute.  We were able to get most of the pictures hung on the walls.  They take on a new look against white painted walls.  Hopefully it won't take us long to get organized once again. 

This week was the Fair in Fairbanks.  We decided to go to watch the branch members "Dancing with the Fairbanks Stars."  We were well represented with four of the seven dancers being members of the church.  Melanie was a member of the branch before she got married.  Her sister Robin and Adam Dewey are also from the branch and one seminary student Kyle Ashcraft also danced.  It was lots of fun watching them dance.  They all performed very well.  Adam has received his mission call to Brazil as well.  He will be leaving just after Christmas.  The produce at the fair made us realize that we didn't start early enough.  Giant cabbages are the "talk of the town" so to speak.  Our produce has been very meager.  Even though there is so much sunlight, it has been a very cool and rainy summer with lots of clouds.  Gardening in Alaska is an adventure.  The sun is now setting just after 10 pm.  Nights are beginning to get longer and the trees are beginning to look like they want to turn colors. 

Several of the young people here for the summer are leaving this week to return to school.  It has been a great experience getting to know them.  Perhaps some of them will return next year.  Elder Smith is returning home this Tuesday to Highland, Utah, after a wonderful mission.  We had Elder Smith and Elder Gledhill over for dinner this week for a farewell meal together.  It was fun to make lasagne with moose meat! It did taste good. 

We started a temple preparation class during Sunday School for two couples and Adam Dewey.  It's such a blessing to help them prepare to receive the great blessings of the temple.  (As a service project this week I have been altering Rachel's wedding dress.  It's tricky to buy a dress on the internet.  We had to cut 8" off the bottom and do some adjusting in the shoulders.  I felt blessed to figure out how to make it fit without taking it all apart.)

Our blessings here in Alaska are amazing.  We love being a small part of the Lord's work. The testimonies of the young missionaries and the young people continue to strengthen ours as well.  We encourage our family to share their testimonies with each other and their friends.  The Lord has greatly blessed us all. 

Love,
JoAnn and Jim

          This is 'fire weed' it grows all over Alaska and adds waves of purple color to the roadside views.

                                    Wildfires are common in in the vast interior forests of Alaska.
                                    They are allowed to burn unless they threaten property.
                                    This one is in the Tanana valley looking out from a hill in Fairbanks.

                  Every Thursday after institute class the YSA linger for food prepared by Sister Spens.

                                 This is our first tomato of the season grown in a small green house                                                                   in our land lords back yard.

                        There are a great variety of mushrooms that grow in the forest here in Alaska.
                        They are all very colorful if not eatable.

     We continue to have our 'office' in our apartment while we wait for the new carpet to be installed in the institute building. The good news is that it should be installed this coming week and then we can move back in to the institute building. We had an inservice meeting for the early morning seminary teachers this last Friday that included a good meal. We did not have many of our teachers attend because some were still out of town or possibly due to the distances between branches and wards in our stake. President Payton of the stake presidency attended and gave council to the teachers.
     We are winding down our summer semester of institute classes as we plan to start up both early morning seminary and the fall semester of institute classes. We have no idea how many YSA will be here after all of the ones who are working here for the summer leave and the new students attending UAF arrive for the fall semester. There is just constant turnover. There was a young man baptized a week ago and three more young men will be baptized in the next two weeks. Some of them attend our institute classes and all are attending the branch services on Sunday. It is great to see the growth of the church due to the missionary activity here in the YSA branch.
     As noted above you will see our first ripe tomato (a single sweet million cherry variety) on the plate waiting to be eaten. Coincidentally the day we picked and ate our first tomato was also the day that there was the first frost warnings for the Tanana valley. Summers in Alaska are a little wet and cool. There is little farming in Alaska and the few commercial farms grow cool weather crops or grain crops. Most people that have gardens here in Fairbanks use containers within greenhouses.
     We continue to teach classes, feed and fellowship the YSA and work closely with the investigator and recent converts as well as try to expand the blessings of institute classes to more YSA in the stake. We love being missionaries and working in the great Alaska mission.

Have a wonderful week!
Jim and JoAnn

Andrea and Trevor at the Mission home in Anchorage.

    Grandpa, Tanner, & Grandma at Exit Glacier in 1951 the glacier would have  been where we are standing

 

With the Lanham kids - Owen, Tanner, and Morgan at Denali.

 

A beautiful quilt of Mt. McKinley and 

the wildlife at Denali this is the Eilson visitor center 66 miles into the park

 

     This three-legged grisly or brown  bear came right up to our bus.  A strange sight indeed.

                      Mama musk oxen and their babies at the Large Animal Research Station at UAF.

                                    Andrea and her bunch at the Knotty Shop on the way to Delta.

                            A mama moose and her two babies on the Wrigley barley farm in Delta.

                                  Enjoying time on our last day together for a while at Pioneer Park.
 
This past week has been especially fun for us.  We started a week ago Friday to drive to Anchorage.  Pres. Beesley had offered to let us use the mission home to stay in.  However, when we arrived on Friday night, President and Sister Beesley were still at home.  Their plans had changed somewhat, and we were able to spend the evening with them and several other missionaries.  Saturday we were able to attend the temple in Anchorage.  We are always excited when we have the opportunity to attend the temple. Sunday morning we got up early for our drive to Seward to pick up Andrea and Trevor and the boys from their cruise.  We were just in time to attend Sacrament Meeting in Seward.  It was great for us to meet Elder and Sister Poulsen another senior couple who are serving in Seward.   We had only met them through a phone conference.

As we traveled back to Anchorage, we were able to stop at the Exit Glacier.  Alaska is an amazing place filled with beautiful scenery and wonderful people.  We were sorry that we had to take Trevor to the airport on Sunday to return to work, but we were glad to see him again for a while.  At least Trevor got to see a moose and calf up close as one crossed the freeway next to our suburban on the way to the airport in Anchorage.

The rest of the week was filled with fun Alaskan adventures.  We had a list of things to do and were able to see and do almost all of them.  It was a perfect time to have visitors since work was still going on in the institute.  Andrea and her family went with us to Delta for class although they spent most of the time at the Wrigley farm having wonderful farm adventures.  Late in the evening the moose came out in their fields with their little ones.  We were able to see around 12 moose that night.  Thursday, Andrea pretended to be a YSA and  attended institute class and I took the boys to ride the train and play miniature golf at Pioneer Park.  The boys were very glad that there were enough cinnamon rolls left for breakfast the next day.  It was hard to see them go, but we were so glad they had the chance to come "see us in action" and share time with them.  Families are such an important part of our lives.  We feel blessed beyond measure for the wonderful people who are part of our dear family including extended family!

Saturday brought great joy to us as missionaries as a wonderful young man was baptized.  Tyler White has been coming to the Branch for a few weeks and has been taught by the young Elders.   We know that he will grow and learn as he gains a greater understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ and of His plan of happiness for each of us.

Tuesday evening was a memorial service for Sister Marilyn Whitehead.  She has been helping at the branch for several years and was a stalwart in my Teachings of the Living Prophets class.  She only learned that she had cancer about three weeks before she passed away.  How quickly life can change.  We will miss her but know that we will see her again.

All our love,
JoAnn & Jim

We picked up the Lanham family (Andrea and Trevor and their boys) in Seward just in time to go to church at the branch there.  We are having so much fun showing them around Alaska.  We'll catch up on the blog next week.

Love to all,
JoAnn and Jim

 This is a panoramic view of the city of Fairbanks from above the hill on which we live. As you can see the forest is thick and blocks the view of much of the city except for the larger business and industrial areas in the distance. If it were a clear day you would be able to see the Alaska range 125 miles in the distance across the Tanana valley.

 We continue to notice the wildflowers that grow here in Alaska including the Monk's Hood variety seen here.

 This is a clump of what appears to be wild delphinium growing along side of the road.

We have also noticed a profusion of mushrooms in the forests here. This is a pretty red variety pushing itself up through the leaves. We have no idea as to whether they are poisonous or not and we do not plan to find out either. The are just an interesting part of the spectacular Alaskan environment

     We have now been excluded from the institute for two weeks and our office and work area is now in our apartment. We moved our desktop computer and a table from the institute into our living room to create another office area. We will be in this situation for another three weeks or so until the building is painted and re-carpeted. It makes us appreciate so much the facility here in Fairbanks and the blessing it is to the YSA as well. It will be nice to be back into our home away from home institute building. We will post pictures of the new updated look when it is finished.
     We are about midway in our summer schedule with two main institute classes, one on Thursday at the stake center and one on Wednesday down at Delta Junction. We are teaching the Pearl of Great Price at both locations which is a wonderful book of scripture that is a pleasure to teach. We have a faithful group of YSA who continue to attend class. Our classes are made up of returned missionaries, college students and recent converts as well as the occasional visiting investigator. We still have remote areas of our stake some of which are literally in the 'bush' of Alaska and so they are only accessible by aircraft. Occasionally we will have a YSA visit from one of those areas. We are working on plans with the stake to try and provide institute services to those areas via the Internet broadcast of classes. This will require some new technology that our director in Seattle has approved although it has currently no budget. It is a work in progress.
     We had a surprise visit today in our block of meetings from Pres. and Sister Beesley. They decided to drive up her to Fairbanks from Anchorage to just visit the missionaries and do a few interviews. We had a chance to be interviewed briefly  after meetings and meet with Sister Beesley.  The Beesleys are working hard to keep the missionary work going in Alaska. They are truly great people and will be a real asset to the mission. We love the work here especially with our association with the YSA and for the opportunity to teach them. We have come to know many of them and many of their struggles, however they are faithful to the church, and we know the Lord will bless them.

Jim and JoAnn

                                 Joshua Verhagen, a friend, Katie Oates, Shelby Solomon in Nenana.

After class in Delta Junction.

We saw this moose on the way home from Delta.

A beautiful point on the Tanana River on the way home from Delta.

                                            Getting ready for work on the Institute building.

                     What a mushroom.  We found so many varieties on our walk in the forest by our house.

It's been a wonderful week full of new an interesting things.  On the 4th of July we went to Healy to interview Cortnee Adams for baptism.  On the way there, we stopped in Nenana to see some of their small-town celebration.  It was a rainy day, but the weather cleared for most of their activities.  We have had a lot of rain for the past three weeks and the rivers are running almost to capacity.  While we were there we visited their cultural center and museum.  Joe Verhagen (one of our students on Thursday) invited us to come celebrate with them.  The Verhagen family is a stalwart family in the branch there.  Joshua is growing his beard and hair because he and his sister Mary are going to Utah in August to be in the new film the church is producing about the New Testament.  We are pretty excited for them.

It was a wonderful experience to interview Cortnee for baptism.  Jim thought that he had not given a baptismal interview since his mission in the Eastern States.  Cortnee is a lovely young lady who has been investigating the church for some time.  She is excited and anxious to become a member of the church. 

Wednesday was another trip to Delta.  The weather was much nicer on the way home and it gave us a chance to take some beautiful pictures of the scenic drive.  I think the moose was there just for us.  We usually see three or four moose on our trip to Delta.  After class, we enjoy visiting with the young people there with some treats that I make earlier in the day. We are grateful that the sun is still up when we arrive home late that night.

Thursday we had our last class at the Institute for a while.  After class the kids helped by taking down all the pictures and getting them ready to be stored, removing all the switch plates, bulletin boards, and whiteboards, and weeding the flowers in front of the building.  It was a great help.  We rewarded them with cinnamon rolls and milk afterwards.  On Friday we returned to the Institute to finish cleaning out our offices.  We now have an office at home with the Institute computer, etc. so that we can carry on. 

Sunday we had meetings in the Institute building.  I'm afraid the walls looked like we were in a war zone with all the carpet wall coverings removed.  However, the workman lived up to their promise to leave the building cleaned up enough that we could hold our meetings there.  We will be having Institute class in the Stake building until the redecorating is completed.   I love the spirit we have in our meetings.  These young people are happy to be there and love to share their testimonies of Jesus Christ with each other.  What a blessing.

With love,
JoAnn & Jim