78 degrees, clear, and sunny. denali natl park

I don’t really know what’s gone on with me the past few weeks—well, since I got up to Alaska. I really can’t figure it out, but for some reason, I’ve started taking my spirituality so much more seriously. I think it may have had something to do with the fact that I have the opportunity to do missionary work up here. For the first time since my mission, I am in a predominantly non-member area and I can actually get involved in the work.

We had a baptism the other day where a 27 year-old guy named matt was baptized. He is so incredibly humble and really desires to follow the Lord. He asked me to speak at the baptism about the Spirit. I had an absolutely incredible experience while speaking, which totally just pounded into my head about not only the reality of the Holy Ghost, but also the importance of Him in our lives.

I’m out on the highway now, being trained on a tour that goes down to Copper, which is about halfway between Fairbanks and Valdez. We’ll have a couple days down in copper, do a day in valdez, and then a day back in Fairbanks. I think it’ll be pretty cool. I’m actually pretty happy to get out of Fairbanks—the company for which I am driving just merged with another company and the merger has caused quite a bit of disorganization and there are some pretty crazy things going on there driving-wise that will be good to escape. I think I’ll be on this tour about every other week, so I’ll spend about a third of my remaining time out on the road doing that. While I’m out on the road, I don’t have reception because I have Sprint as my carrier, which sucks (I can’t wait for my contract to end in August). So the best way to get a hold of me during that time will be on here, via email, or facebook. Basically I won’t have the use of my phone till Monday.

Ok. That’s all. Off to read the skips and then my emails from my mission—I just found the whole lot of them and am really excited to go back and remember everything.

so many "so's!"

holy cow, i just realized that i started all of the paragraphs, with one exception, in my last post with the word "so." i am SO sorry. very poor writing.

60 and sunny

hey folks.

so i am starting to notice that people REALLY watch us. i was talking to a fellow driver yesterday and he started talking about his views of Mormon kids. he worked in skagway last year and started talking about his view of them. people don't watch other religion's people, i don't feel, but they do watch us. we are under SO much scrutiny because we claim to be different. we have so much to live up to. and really, if we're purporting to be different, we had better BE different.

so many opportunities to share the gospel up here! i obviously can't talk about it on the coach, but with other drivers and in non-work settings, i'm all over it. it's fun to be able to get involved in missionary work in the branch. i am now an activities committee co-chair, so i've started working with the missionaries on integration and stuff. as a missionary, i always thought it took so much effort to integrate investigators and all that, and frankly, for a missionary it really is quite overwhelming, with a lot of investigators. but if members just take initiative with that, they can really do some awesome damage in the missionary work (and by "damage," i mean help).

so singing is TOTALLY the way to go for tips. oh man, people soak it up. it's really fun to figure out what works for you and your personality, in light of the type of group you have. it's almost like a game for me. it's really pretty fun to see what they're like and what they like.

so i may be heading out on the highway tomorrow, meaning that i would be taking 4 or 5 day-long trips, which would totally be cool. however, the bad thing is that if i were to get trained on this trip, any time i did it, i would be out of town on sundays. there is a branch down there, so hopefully i'd be able to go there. i requested that if they put me on that tour, i be in town at least every other week.

so, no girls up here thus far. i know a lot of you are wondering about my alaska flings, but i haven't had any, and thus far, nothing is in order for one. just no one with whom i mesh, you know? one of my driver friends told me to lower my standards, but i know that if i did that, and then got into a relationship, i wouldn't at all feel fulfilled in that, and that would suck.

i spoke in church on sunday on "study diligently," from President Monson's Priesthood session talk. it was a really fun talk to prepare. i didn't feel like my delivery was as good as it usually is. i think that was because i was offering so much advice or counsel that i didn't want to come off preachy, so i may have backed off a little more than i should have. oh well.

that's all for now. later.

low 50's and overcast

some recent pictures from flight seeing and our anchorage temple trip.



view of the white mountains from the plane



more of the whites



yup, more of the whites


sunset on the yukon river


sunset from the highway on the way back from anchorage to fbx.


'nother sunset shot


friend robin and i in seward. nope, not dating her, nor intending to.

anchorage--->seward



seward bay



more of seward bay

80 degrees, clear, and sunny

well hi friends! i've got a few minutes while i'm waiting for my guests to get back from their riverboat ride on the chena river here in town, so i'm in the drivers' lounge, sleeping, writing emails, and now i'm blogging.

updates:

1. went to anchorage this past weekend for the singles branch temple trip. nice town; i really liked it. it actually reminded me quite a bit of sandy, but with a lot better topography and WAY radder (yeah, i'm not sure if "radder" is actually a word, but we'll take the linguist approach to it and say it is) mountains. the mountains here are SO cool. they're just straight up, jagged, rocky, snowy, and awesome. i mean utah mountains are cool, but alaska mountains rock my world. anyway, we went to the temple where i helped with the baptistry and then did a session with roommate greg (who is a stud, fyi). i learned something i should have learned a LONG time ago while there and it has changed my thinking quite a bit about things. i was really grateful for that.

we went shopping in downtown anchorage and i accidentally bought two really wonderful pieces of clothing at banana because they were RIDICULOUSLY on sale. i was happy with that though.

then we went to sacrament meeting down there, followed by driving down to seward so the friends i went with could visit a friend down there. it's about a 2 hour drive down to seward and i think it might be the most beautiful drive i've ever taken. it follows the coastline all the way down, and then seward is located in a huge bay, with mountains surrounding the bay. absolutely gorgeous. pictures forthcoming (i'm not writing this on my comp, so i don't have my pics with me).

2. my roommate scored us a free flight seeing tour up to fort yukon, a native village up here. the flight was amazing. the aforementioned forthcoming pictures will tell all (the way i started that sentence sounds ridiculous).

3. i've started driving real guests. yesterday was my first real tour day and i felt like it went really pretty well. i was really pleased with it. of COURSE, i need to change some things around, but overall, i think i'll be pretty good at it. i've discovered that singing is a great way to kill time when i have nothing to say. they seem to love that, so i do that on just about all my routes. i've actually found that i can get pretty good tips on routes nobody gets anything on just by singing, so i definitely capitalize on that one.

4. had a really cool experience yesterday:

there are typically 2-3 drivers doing the exact same tour schedule all day long, so we of course hang out while our groups are taking tours--we spend quite a bit of time together. yesterday, i was with two former long-time truck drivers, who have mouths worse than sailors. nice guys, but their speech patterns are not particularly conducive to the Spirit. anyway, we had to do some airport shuttle runs in the afternoon while we were waiting for our guests on the riverboat (similar to what i am doing now, only they didn't have anything for me to do right now, so that's why i can blog, etc), and we had about 45 minutes of down time, while we waited for the next flight we were shuttling to come in. so i went to my coach by myself and grabbed my scriptures. the very INSTANT i opened them, i felt their shear power in my life. an amazing testimony of purity and cleanliness of the words contained in the Book of Mormon overcame me. i thought it was especially poignant that i didn't even have to read anything to feel its power. i'm lucky to be reading the account of Christ's visit to the Americas right now and it's just fabulous. can't wait for my session later today. i know that book is true.

and that's about all for right now.

oh, i learned something the other day: sometimes i think some people just don't want to be happy because of their attitude or something of the sort. but nearly EVERYONE wants to be happy. they are doing the very best they know how to. i'm not really sure what the practical application of this is, but it's good for understanding people and how they work.

ok! later, my dear friends!

50 degrees and overcast. scattered showers

so, more on my adventures in AK. actually, all of my posts this summer will be about that, so i might as well stop using that phrase.

the drive up was long as all get out. we hit snow really hard in montana, where apparently they got a 14" storm total for that one. pretty crazy. we stopped once, a little south of edmonton, and then pretty much drove straight through for the next two days. it was a nice, pretty drive once we got into the yukon territory. the alaska highway got uber bumpy for the last 200 or so miles before the border, but once we hit the border, the it was smooth sailing. or driving.

some cool churchy experiences since i've been up here:

1. we were being trained on a one of our tours and some other people from a different part of the company were being trained on the same tour at the same time. i saw a girl and instantaneously, i just knew she was LDS. she didn't say anything or interact with anyone; i just knew she was a member because of the light she radiated. i think i had just gotten so used to seeing everyone back at byu with that light, so it was completely commonplace for me to be around people like that.

i got to thinking about how people can always just spot LDS people by their....whateverness and of course wondered if people ever saw that in me--if i was one of those who you could just pick out of the crowd as being LDS.

then the other day on another training trip with some other drivers, i was talking to one of the drivers about things to do in Fbx and i mentioned the bar scene wasn't really my scene. to that she replied, "well, sorry if i'm being presumptuous, but there are PLENTY of mormons around fbx." of course, i said "how'd you know i was mormon?" to which she replied "oh, everything about just screams "mormon." i asked her what specifically about me "screamed 'mormon,'" but she couldn't pinpoint it.

i was really happy about that conversation; it was really quite reassuring and comforting to have that confirmation. it's just been so long since i've been in a non-predominantly-lds environment that i don't know what it's like to be a minoroity anymore.

anyway, that led into the third cool experience:

i've been praying for opportunities to share the gospel a lot, now that i'm not in the bubble, so of course after my previously-explained conversation they started asking greg (my roommate, who is a really cool, mellow, funny guy) and me a bunch of questions about how the Church was connected to the world of Christianity. i decided the best way to explain it would be to explain the restoration to them, which i did, basically teaching them a mini first. it's been a LONG time since i've sat down and really taught someone about the gospel, so it was really a thrilling experience for me. i felt the Spirit really strongly as i did so, especially when i taught about the First Vision. it was a real testimony to me of the restoration. it really pounded into my head that the restoration is our main message to the world, besides of course that Jesus is the Christ.

I was really grateful Heavenly Father answered my prayer about that and that i could teach a little about the gospel. i don't think the two girls we were talking to felt the Spirit as much as i did (or maybe they just didn't recognize it), but it was a great experience for me nonetheless. i know this whole thing just sounds trivial, but it actually meant a lot to me.

i shaved my beard. it was itchy.

BEARDED



GOATEED
















SICK.















STALKER-STACHE















BACK TO NORMAL!

oh, so i don't necessarily plan on using my blog as a lot of people use theirs: sometimes it will be to update people; other times to simply braindump (hence the url); other times it will be kind of as a journal. i'm sure i'll find more uses for it besides those. sorry if i'm not as traditional as you might want me to be.

ALASKA

so i've decided that i actually want to be better about blogging. i think my motivation will be that i'm in a different place for the summer and people might actually want to know what i'm doing with my life, the places i am and see, etc.

anyway, yeah, i'm in alaska for the summer! i'm driving buses as a tour guide in fairbanks. actually, the season hasn't technically started yet, since we're still doing training, etc., but things are rolling in that direction (note the pun.).

i was out driving today by myself for the first time and i came to the conclusion that i think i will really like this job, especially as i really put my own personality into it, you know? i'll mostly be driving around older people, so i'll in effect, be like their grandson. i'm thinking i'll learn some nice old songs and sing them to the old ladies and milk them for all the tips i can get off them. yup, i'm that schmoozy, and shameless at that.

i was really apprehensive about coming up here, but when i went to the branch on sunday, i found the branch to be pretty sociable and strong -- i was actually really impressed with all three hours of church on sunday. the testimony meeting we had was super good and both sunday school classes had really thought-provoking discussions, which was a nice change for me. the branch presidency seemed really eager to use us in the branch, so i'm actually hoping to get a fairly demanding calling--i was Priesthood chorister in my last ward, so i feel like i've been a little under-used for a while. i would really love to be a ward missionary or a teacher of some sort.

i'm really excited to be in a predominantly member-free environment. for once, i feel like i can actually be a legit member missionary, especially since i'm not always on campus or rehearsing for/performing a show.

so, alaska is super pretty. i need to get some pictures up here so y'all can see them. the trees are just now budding and the leaves should be out in full within a week, according to everyone here. i just love how many trees there are here--after living in utah for two years straight, i am SO ready for some good, green trees.

oh, and i'm growing a beard. well, i guess i have a beard, technically. i think i'm going to see how long it'll get. kinda goofy, but i'm not at byu, so i have full reign over what i want to do with my facial hair.

which reminds me of a rant:

i hate that a lot of people somehow judge worthiness or good-standing in the Church on how clean-shaven you are. WHAT?! no. that's RIDICULOUS. i don't even know how to argue this point. i mean, how does the amount of hair growing on my face reflect my obedience to the gospel? and when did church members become so opposed to this? TONS of the prophets and apostles of the restoration had beards. Jesus had (has) a beard, for crying outloud.

and why the devil does byu allow mustaches? mustaches look DIRTY. ew. gross.

so, there's my rant for the night. lest you think i am going apostate because of my criticism of church members, i actually haven't felt as spiritually invigorated as i do now for quite some time. I am having some great scripture studies and feel like i am progressing really well.

so that's all for now. i'll post again when it's late and i'm not tired and have nothing to do.

peace out, folks.