Happy Thanksgiving

Dear Family & Friends,

Thanksgiving came early this year -- or so it seems.

We had a great weekend working with the Anchorage Food Bank to provide Thanksgiving dinner supplies to 1000 families. It was a workout moving cases and cases of canned goods, pallets of apples from Yakima, and pallets of potatoes from Skagit Valley. There were countless boxes of stuffing mix, boxes of freshly baked rolls, tubs of butter with the Deseret Brand, and pallets and pallets of turkeys stored outside on the church sidewalk since it was -2°F. They even supplied foil roasting pans. The food bank had three large panel trucks moving supplies.  It was an interfaith effort where various community groups, religious organizations, Girl Scout groups, and others donated and assisted. We assembled it all in the church cultural hall on Saturday and then distributed it on Monday over a total of about eight hours. 

This is an annual event and was very well organized. Some of the volunteers showed up and had no place to park. They had all recipients come in one door, and go to a side room with 10 or more volunteers registering individuals/families on computers. Another volunteer acted as a shopping helper to help them progress through the food area to fill up a box with food. There were lots of smiles. The crowd ranged from singles and families to the elderly. I worked with one man from the community who was just wonderful. His cheerful "Happy Thanksgiving" greeting to everyone who came was worth its weight in gold. My job was to restock the distribution tables from other supplies. It kept me busy. Apparently, there were five locations in Anchorage doing the same thing. Towards evening we learned that some of the other locations had run out of food because they were drive-thru, so we started getting the overflow. Although that made a significant dent in the supply we still had more. The food bank hauls what remains back to their new facility and uses it mostly for Christmas. The interfaith interaction was great. The young missionaries (Elders and Sisters) from the Anchorage Alaska Mission handled most of the turkey distribution working outside in the cold for hours. They helped patrons with their boxes and frozen turkeys out to their cars. 

That's 10:05AM.

We didn't see any moose for the first month and a half that we were here. This past week and a half we have seen them almost every day! They are like deer back home - the locals don't get too excited about them anymore. One moose came right up to the Stake building during the Thanksgiving Blessing on Monday evening and was licking the salt off the sidewalk outside the Stake President's office:)

Kitty was invited to the Nutcracker Ballet at the Atwood Concert Hall with three other senior Sister missionaries on Wednesday evening. The scenery, costumes, and choreography were all stunning. The live orchestra made it magical. The Eugene Ballet made it look effortless. They even had packaged cookies, soft drinks, and water for everyone during intermission. It was a very enjoyable evening with wonderful company. I dropped her off and picked her up in downtown Anchorage. She was however shocked by the communal restroom and decided to use the Women's only on the floor below. The elevator was very slow and it was a very scenic walk there and back.

We invited the other "homeless" Sr. Missionaries (those with no family in the area) over for Thanksgiving dinner since we have the biggest "apartment" in the group. Each made contributions. We supplied the turkey. We had 16 present. Hearing all their stories is fascinating. Most of the couples have served more than one mission -- Indonesia, Nauvoo, Salt Lake, Germany, etc. and have a wealth of wisdom and experience. There is definitely a feeling of all of us being in this together. All have different assignments -- Institute & seminary, military relations, member/leader support, mission office staff, and then us, temple construction. Each has had to carve their own niche -- there were no blueprints on where to start or what to do. Ours is probably the most defined but the member/leader support side at the beginning of our mission here has been a challenge. This is a well-developed church area so most areas of need have some local coverage. Our role has morphed into service opportunities -- many of which Kitty finds on "Just Serve." She manages to turn those into group events.

We went for a little P-Day stroll (in the snow and ice) with Elder and Sister Cox on Saturday. They work with the YSA group teaching and finding. They are heavily involved with the Samoan community. They are from Malta, ID. Kincaid Park where we walked is at a Cold War-era military base still filled with bunkers, magazines, launch platforms, and control buildings. It has been converted to multiple soccer fields in the summer and world-class quality cross-country ski areas in the winter.

We spent some time with the Elders Bean & Davis Friday night. They don't worry much about the environmental conditions, but they deal with some pretty rough weather. We talked about all the people we knew in the area (non-members) and the work they were doing with them. They hadn't had the chance to hear/see President Holland's talk at President Ballard's funeral so we watched that and talked. It was a sweet spiritual time. We highly recommend watching the entire funeral, it was so spiritually uplifting!

It is now daylight by about 10AM and getting dark at 4:30PM. This is one place where you can watch the sunrise and sunset at the same time. It pops above the horizon just a bit (about 8 degrees at 1PM now going for about 5 degrees 12/21) and then follows it for the day before dipping below. Kitty commented on the beautiful sunset (there are many) but then we wondered jokingly if it was the sunrise. Funny but when the sun is up it seems like it is always shining directly in your eyes -- probably a good thing.

Majestic sunrise around 10 a.m. on A-1.

View of Turnagain Arm from De Armoun Road overpass.

Beautiful afternoon sunset.

We have had some intense computer learning sessions lately -- making progress but it is slow going. Our intent is to be fully ready when the construction starts toward the end of February. We intend to put together some mini-lessons we can give on temples, families, family history, the Book of Mormon, etc. We are pulling some videos from the church website for the same purpose. We also need to put together some concise information talks for community groups. And if we are really on top of our game we will have some pre-prepared Sacrament and Youth talks ready to go. We are also assembling quotes for our weekly devotionals with the workers. Some of the Bishops have contacted us about the available artwork in the building that will be torn down. To assist we have been going through buildings and taking picture inventories of all the pictures. Hopefully, we end up with 4-5 pictures for our Visitors/Welcome Center that will invoke some discussion-leading questions when people show up. In the meantime, we are working on spreading as much goodwill as possible ...

There have been updates on President Smith's bear attack. We made it a separate blog. We saw him at church today and he looked good! The Bear Attack is located under the Blog Archive November 2023 on the right. Check it out. Have a great week. Our God is a God of miracles. We feel privileged to hear about and witness them. #ThinkCelestial

All Our Love,

Elder & Sister Badger