Griswald Family Christmas Tree

Hello there!

Sounds like you all had an awesome Thanksgiving! Thanks for sending me the pictures mom, looks like you went all out as usual! So since Lizzy is practically allergic to everything, could she even eat any of that stuff? You have no idea how bummed I am that I missed setting up the Christmas decorations... that's my favorite part of the whole year! But that's alright Elder Nielson and I loaded up on Christmas decorations so we're going all out. I got this killer deal on some ornaments that i'm sending down to you in the mail so hopefully they make it to you alive!

This week was pretty good! It was the first week of the transfers so we had a ton of meetings we had to sit in front of the church and watch over PVC (Kinda like skype). It gets pretty hard to pay attention but it's not too bad. For Thanksgiving we went over to the Helgesens and it was so good! They had a turkey, ham, prime rib, and then all of the other works! We found a ping pong table in the shed so we went back at night and had the traditional Brown family ping pong tournament! Not to bad for a Thanksgiving in Bethel right? I just think of that picture of Kate sitting over a fire stirring her pot of soup and feel bad... poor girl! 

So funny story of the week... We were doing service painting some Mold killer on the walls. When we were finished I went over to the sink and started washing all of the paint out of the paint brushes and rollers. I kinda noticed that the paint wasn't really coming off very well but was just sticking to my hands. Then someone came over and looked at me all weird and said "you know thats oil based paint right? That stuffs not coming off your hands.." So I scrubbed and scrubbed but none of it was coming off! We had a lesson in 30 minutes so I had to just forget about it and run and get ready. Luckily there were some cleaning gloves in the cleaning cart in the church that I put on so the paint didn't go everywhere! Needless to say I spent the rest of that day and most of the next day going around visiting and teaching people with blue gloves on my hands until I could get a hold of some paint thinner! haha!

As for Robert.. He moved out of Bethel and went to Anchorage. We have a lot of problems like that because no one who comes to Bethel really stays for very long.. so it can kind of get a little frustrating! We had a lesson with the Brinks last night on the Plan of Salvation. The spirit was so strong and you could tell that Sister Brink and her two kids could feel it. At the end of the lesson we invited them to be baptized. All of them looked at Brother Brink but he told us that he could not leave his church. That all of his family was in the church and that he would not desert them neither would he let any of his family. It was a real bummer. The Natives ties with their ancestors is a really big deal and all of them are afraid to offend them by leaving the church so thats why its so hard to work with the natives. But if you get one of them... man you'd get the whole city.

So right now we're going to go cut down our Griswald Family Christmas tree a ways up river and then tie it on the top of the car and bring it back. Man I miss that movie... hopefully we won't forget the axe :)

Have an amazing week!

-Elder Brown

P.s. I've been sending everyone i've written a letter to my wrong address... whoops! So if you haven't gotten a letter from me in a while then its probably cause I never got it..

My RIGHT address is

3250 Strawberry Road

Anchorage, Ak 99502