Glacier Fields

The first picture is my favorite picture of Denali, you can see the glacier fields.The pictures are the Midnight Sun game taken at 11:15 p.m., Looking at the Sun set about 12:30 at the end of the game. It looks darker but it is really rather light. Watch the ground squirrel , he is watching the people and then when people would walk by he would duck. It was so fun to watch.

Weather Report
High + 72 Low + 48
Daylight: Sunrise 3:00 Sunset 12:47
For a total this week of 21 hours and 48 minutes of sunlight.

We just short of 22 hours of daylight and the sad thing is that it is starting to get darker now that we have had our "Mid Night Sun" celebration.

The fun thing about being in Fairbanks is that they have a big celebration on the longest day of the year. We were busy doing missionary work so we didn't make it up town and I am sorry but we did go to the ball game with the bishop and his wife that night. The game starts at 10:30 p.m. At 12:00 midnight they stop the game to sing the Alaska State Song and then the game resumes for 9 innings. If it is tied, which it was on Wednesday night they would play until sun set, which was at 12:48 p.m. They play all the game without artificial lights and it is so fun to see. It was just light enough the whole game. Our team, the Gold Panners won the last inning, the last one up to bat hit a double causing a run in and we won by one point. That was very exciting but the most excitement for me was the sun just about ready to set and it was beautiful. We would have stayed up another hour and watched the sun rise except we had a Zone conference the next day and needed to be at church, all in our places, at 8:30 a.m. We had a visiting general authority, Elder Ron Halverson.

The Zone conference was wonderful and what a treat to have a general authority. He taught us about the 76 section of the D&C and explained the importance of our mission and introducing people to the gospel. The 1st ward Relief Society prepared a lunch of fruit and Halibut Chowder like I have never eaten before!

Weather report: The sad part is the smoke from the fires, you may have heard about. Some people in Nenana lost their homes and the Parks Highway to Anchorage is closed about every other day. Today is a funny day as they are all talking about the floods in Eastern Alaska which will affect the Chena River and us today, the fires just 50 miles South of Fairbanks, which has smoke blowing in our faces every other day, and we had snow last night on the Richardson Highway going to Anchorage. Now that is some weather!

I have included 3 pictures of our trip to Denali, no time or room for the other animals as I am getting kicked out of the library.

We love and miss you all and hope you are having a wonderful summer, I guess, it is difficult to imagine because it still feels like spring here. It is so beautiful.

Don't Try To Walk To Nome

Croakers Chronicles
To all our little and big Croakers

It is awfully quiet on the Frog Pond. I guess we haven't heard from the little Croakers because they are so busy in their summer programs. Everyone please write us and tell us what you are doing. We only know the following:

• Austin and Ciera Johnson went with their McDermott cousins, Keaton, Gavin, Reagan, Collin, and Breanna to a summer camp at the Alpine Family Camp and had so much fun. Thanks to Uncle Lane for giving us a DVD with all the pictures on it. We are talking about having one of our Frog Camps there when we get home.
• The Erickson's have a batting cage in their back yard so that is keeping them all very busy.
• Jaiden is in summer reading and swimming. Swimming is a good thing to do because I hear that it is a lot hotter there than it is here.
• Grey, Kate, and Love are all moved into their new house and have tiny baby chickens. Won't they have fun raising them.
• Happy Birthday to Hunter, he just turned 13 on June 3rd and is going fishing with his grandpa Booth this summer.
• Happy Birthday to Jordon, he will turn 8 on June 26th and this is a big birthday for him because he will be baptized probably, the next weekend. Everyone go to his baptism and give him a big hug from Grandpa and Grandma Robbins. We are sad to miss such special times.
  

The Gho family (remember the Eskimo cousins of Grandpa Robbins) told us a funny story the other day about sand bars in the water. The story is about a family that the Johnson Aunts and Uncles knew when they lived in Bethel, Alaska. Br. Gho explained that a sandbar will grow very fast if something gets in the water to make the water drop sand it is carrying all around it.
Sometimes this will happen when you are going down a river you have traveled a lot. One day the Jacks (a family from Bethel that we knew when we lived there) were traveling down river in their boat when a son asked, "Dad why are those seagulls walking on the water?" At that very moment the dad drove the boat right up on a sandbar and got stuck. Do you get it? The seagulls were walking on the sandbar and just a couple of days ago they had traveled up river in very deep water in that very spot.

Another Alaska story is about a man from our ward who for some very strange reason decided that he was going to walk to Nome (Uncle Lane and Aunt Dani used to live in Nome when they were very little). Now if you look on the map you will see Nome way over on the left side of the map by the Bering Sea and Fairbanks is in the middle of the state hundreds of miles from Nome. You will also notice that there are no roads to Nome from Fairbanks and there are a lot of bears from here to there. Well, Br. Achenbach put everything he owned in a big red wagon and started walking. He was very upset when he didn't even get out of town because he was tired of pulling his wagon up a hill. Well, we don't think Br. Achenbach is crazy but maybe he is because there are a lot of hills before getting to Nome and he possibly could become dinner for a bear before he got there.

We visited a family to make them a family history packet and we were amazed at their names. One little girl was Destiny Dasia Sky TeeMarie and her sister was Paradise Aysha Lily Rain. How would you like 4 names like that to remember. You wouldn't get them mixed up with Mary Jones in genealogy now would you?

A family in the 3rd ward had a wonderful idea for a family camp out. The Nicholls have 5 children, one being a brand new baby but they wanted to go on a camp out so they loaded everything in the truck and drove around looking for the best camp site. Guess what the very best place was right in their back yard. They got out of the truck, unloaded everything, set up the tents and cooked their dinner over a fire. Their pets were the wild animals. They couldn't go inside unless they used one of three tickets they were given so they saved them to go inside to use the bathroom. They had a wonderful time and didn't even mind when it rained on them at 4:00 a.m.

Sometimes you don't have to go very far from home to have the most fun of all. We drove around looking for an address one day because it was called Frog Pond Circle. Sure enough we found it to be a big circular drive with a little pond right in the middle. There were three beautiful homes with nice big yards around it. I thought, "If I buy a house in Alaska I want to live here so we can have Frog Camp right here on Frog Pond Circle."

We are loving our mission and feeling very close to Jesus as we pray and ask him to help us find names for people so they can go to the temple. He does help us and we have some wonderful stories to tell. We also have fun with the Elders. We had to inspect their apartments this week so we gave them some awards tonight. We have one elder leaving to go home to Kansas so we told the story about Dorothy and Toto. We put some colored glasses on him, made him shut his eyes, hold out his hands, and say three times, "There's no place like home, There's no place like home, there's no place like home." We then put a stuffed Alaska puppy, who we named Toto in his hands and Sister Robbins said she was going to be the first girl to kiss him when he was released.

1. Photo Grandpa took of Elder Moberly trying to get away from Grandma
2. Photo of Grandpa and all the elders outside the church this afternoon.
3. Photo taken a couple of weeks ago at the Large Animal Farm at the university They had a birthday party for the 3 baby Musk ox and invited the whole town to come. We had birthday cake and everything. It was a lot of fun! We took a couple of young boys who were just baptized with their parents about 6 months ago.
   

We love and miss you all so much and you will always be our favorite little Froggers, Grandpa and Grandma, the Old Froggers

P.S. We sure wish we could hear from our other missionaries, "What are you doing Elder Woodbury and Elder Allen?"

Grandpa Is Converted

Weather Report
Temperature: High + 74 Low + 47
Daylight: Sunrise 3:15 a.m. Sunset 12:26 a.m.
For a total today of 21 hours and 15 minutes of sunlight.

The funny thing is that last Sunday, 5 days ago the high was 44 and the low was a record 29 Degrees and it snowed. Today was uncomfortably warm. There is a fire in Nenana and the smoke is blowing up here. We could hardly breath yesterday. It is really sad because people say that for the past two years it has been so smoky from fires that it just ruins the summers. You survive the cold only to have fires - it just isn't fair!

We had just the best week ever. Last Sunday the Bishop in second ward thanked us in Sacrament meeting for all the new members who were going to the temple to do baptisms. Two new members bore their testimonies. It was very emotional for me because one of my stresses for this mission was not having the baptisms like the Elders and Sisters do. Well, it was payback time for all the packets we have done and I don't even think any more of not having baptisms because we had 65.

We do the research for the packets, finish them up and hand them back. We don't see them again except to help the people do "Temple Ready". Except for one name last week. Br. Rodriguez was one who was so excited to go to the temple, I think I told you that he stopped us in the street to tell us "he was going to the temple". Because he had no dates or places we were unable to find anyone for him to take except his parents. I couldn't sleep at night thinking that as excited as he is he needed more names to take to the temple. You get in Mexico and research is really difficult to do.

Another thing was that every time I would open my Legacy program to work on another packet it would open up to Br. Rodriguez. It is supposed to open to the last person worked on and we hadn't worked on him for a couple of months. I finally got it, someone was trying to tell me something so last week while Elder Robbins was searching for someone else I just pulled out Br. Rodriguez file and plugged it in the computer guessing on his grandfathers birthday and there it was! I could not believe my eyes. I was able to get his grandparents and 7 children. We gave him the information on Sunday and he ran around the church telling everyone, "I have my grandparents, I have my grandparents." Then he told us tonight that this made him think of an aunt who he hadn't talked to in years so he called her and she gave him so many names he couldn't write fast enough. And by the way would we help him do temple ready for them. Oh, my gosh, the blessings are unreal.

We taught a district meeting this week and we taught them "Lessons of Life". Some of you know that program. How to take an experience that you just had, find out what you learned from it and then find a scripture that goes with it. Well, my dear Elder Robbins hasn't been too impressed with our lesson, "Lessons of Life" so he decided to sit down and try it Wednesday morning before we left. He wrote down the wonderful things that have happened with the people going to the temple and then found the scripture, Alma 30:34. It reads, "And now if we do not receive anything for our labors in the church, what doth it profit us to labor in the church save it were to declare the truth that we may have rejoicing in the joy of our brethren."
That did it, he is converted he says and is now memorizing that as our mission scripture. "Oh, life is Wonderful!"

We did apartment checks for the Elders and Sisters today and as they met at the end of a tracting session we gave them some awards. They were so funny and especially Elder Moberly who is going home to Kansas in two days. For him we told the story about Dorothy and Toto. We put some colored glasses on him, made him shut his eyes, hold out his hands, and say three times, "There's no place like home, There's no place like home, there's no place like home." We then put a stuffed Alaska puppy, who we named Toto in his hands and Sister Robbins said she was going to be the first girl to kiss him when he was released. Elder Robbins got a picture of a very red faced elder. I got a picture of a handsome Elder Robbins with all the young Elders outside in the parking lot. It makes my heart skip a beat to look at them.

There is way too much to tell. We went to Denali and next week I will have to include pictures of that trip. What a beautiful fun filled day we had!
I will include my favorite picture of the glacier beds and will send the animals next week.

Love and miss you all but wouldn't trade anything for this experience.
Lenore

Croakers Chronicles

To all our little and big Croakers

It is awfully quiet on the Frog Pond. I guess we haven't heard from the little Croakers because they are so busy in their summer programs. Everyone please write us and tell us what you are doing. We only know the following:

• Austin and Ciera Johnson went with their McDermott cousins, Keaton, Gavin, Reagan, Collin, and Breanna to a summer camp at the Alpine Family Camp and had so much fun. Thanks to Uncle Lane for giving us a DVD with all the pictures on it. We are talking about having one of our Frog Camps there when we get home.
• The Erickson's have a batting cage in their back yard so that is keeping them all very busy.
• Jaiden is in summer reading and swimming. Swimming is a good thing to do because I hear that it is a lot hotter there than it is here.
• Grey, Kate, and Love are all moved into their new house and have tiny baby chickens. Won't they have fun raising them.
• Happy Birthday to Hunter, he just turned 13 on June 3rd and is going fishing with his grandpa Booth this summer.
• Happy Birthday to Jordon, he will turn 8 on June 26th and this is a big birthday for him because he will be baptized probably, the next weekend. Everyone go to his baptism and give him a big hug from Grandpa and Grandma Robbins. We are sad to miss such special times.

The Gho family (remember the Eskimo cousins of Grandpa Robbins) told us a funny story the other day about sand bars in the water. The story is about a family that the Johnson Aunts and Uncles knew when they lived in Bethel, Alaska. Br. Gho explained that a sandbar will grow very fast if something gets in the water to make the water drop sand it is carrying all around it.
Sometimes this will happen when you are going down a river you have traveled a lot. One day the Jacks (a family from Bethel that we knew when we lived there) were traveling down river in their boat when a son asked, "Dad why are those seagulls walking on the water?" At that very moment the dad drove the boat right up on a sandbar and got stuck. Do you get it? The seagulls were walking on the sandbar and just a couple of days ago they had traveled up river in very deep water in that very spot.

Another Alaska story is about a man from our ward who for some very strange reason decided that he was going to walk to Nome (Uncle Lane and Aunt Dani used to live in Nome when they were very little). Now if you look on the map you will see Nome way over on the left side of the map by the Bering Sea and Fairbanks is in the middle of the state hundreds of miles from Nome. You will also notice that there are no roads to Nome from Fairbanks and there are a lot of bears from here to there. Well, Br. Achenbach put everything he owned in a big red wagon and started walking. He was very upset when he didn't even get out of town because he was tired of pulling his wagon up a hill. Well, we don't think Br. Achenbach is crazy but maybe he is because there are a lot of hills before getting to Nome and he possibly could become dinner for a bear before he got there.

We visited a family to make them a family history packet and we were amazed at their names. One little girl was Destiny Dasia Sky TeeMarie and her sister was Paradise Aysha Lily Rain. How would you like 4 names like that to remember. You wouldn't get them mixed up with Mary Jones in genealogy now would you?

A family in the 3rd ward had a wonderful idea for a family camp out. The Nicholls have 5 children, one being a brand new baby but they wanted to go on a camp out so they loaded everything in the truck and drove around looking for the best camp site. Guess what the very best place was right in their back yard. They got out of the truck, unloaded everything, set up the tents and cooked their dinner over a fire. Their pets were the wild animals. They couldn't go inside unless they used one of three tickets they were given so they saved them to go inside to use the bathroom. They had a wonderful time and didn't even mind when it rained on them at 4:00 a.m.

Sometimes you don't have to go very far from home to have the most fun of all.
We drove around looking for an address one day because it was called Frog Pond Circle. Sure enough we found it to be a big circular drive with a little pond right in the middle. There were three beautiful homes with nice big yards around it. I thought, "If I buy a house in Alaska I want to live here so we can have Frog Camp right here on Frog Pond Circle."

We are loving our mission and feeling very close to Jesus as we pray and ask him to help us find names for people so they can go to the temple. He does help us and we have some wonderful stories to tell. We also have fun with the Elders. We had to inspect their apartments this week so we gave them some awards tonight. We have one elder leaving to go home to Kansas so we told the story about Dorothy and Toto. We put some colored glasses on him, made him shut his eyes, hold out his hands, and say three times, "There's no place like home, There's no place like home, there's no place like home."

We then put a stuffed Alaska puppy, who we named Toto in his hands and Sister Robbins said she was going to be the first girl to kiss him when he was released.

Picture #1 is one that Grandpa took of Elder Moberly trying to get away from Grandma.

Picture #2 is of Grandpa and all the elders outside the church this afternoon.

Picture #3 was taken a couple of weeks ago at the Large Animal Farm at the university They had a birthday party for the 3 baby Musk ox and invited the whole town to come. We had birthday cake and everything. It was a lot of fun! We took a couple of young boys who were just baptized with their parents about 6 months ago.

We love and miss you all so much and you will always be our favorite little Froggers, Grandpa and Grandma, the Old Froggers

P.S. We sure wish we could hear from our other missionaries, "What are you doing Elder Woodbury and Elder Allen?"

Lessons of Life

Elders and Elder Robbins, Elder Moberly getting his kiss,

Weather Report

Temperature: High + 74 Low + 47

Daylight: Sunrise 3:15 a.m. Sunset 12:26 a.m.

For a total today of 21 hours and 15 minutes of sunlight.

The funny thing is that last Sunday, 5 days ago the high was 44 and the low was a record 29 Degrees and it snowed. Today was uncomfortably warm. There is a fire in Nenana and the smoke is blowing up here. We could hardly breath yesterday. It is really sad because people say that for the past two years it has been so smoky from fires that it just ruins the summers. You survive the cold only to have fires - it just isn't fair!

We had just the best week ever. Last Sunday the Bishop in second ward thanked us in Sacrament meeting for all the new members who were going to the temple to do baptisms. Two new members bore their testimonies. It was very emotional for me because one of my stresses for this mission was not having the baptisms like the Elders and Sisters do. Well, it was payback time for all the packets we have done and I don't even think any more of not having baptisms because we had 65.

We do the research for the packets, finish them up and hand them back. We don't see them again except to help the people do "Temple Ready". Except for one name last week. Br. Rodriguez was one who was so excited to go to the temple, I think I told you that he stopped us in the street to tell us "he was going to the temple". Because he had no dates or places we were unable to find anyone for him to take except his parents. I couldn't sleep at night thinking that as excited as he is he needed more names to take to the temple. You get in Mexico and research is really difficult to do.

Another thing was that every time I would open my Legacy program to work on another packet it would open up to Br. Rodriguez. It is supposed to open to the last person worked on and we hadn't worked on him for a couple of months. I finally got it, someone was trying to tell me something so last week while Elder Robbins was searching for someone else I just pulled out Br. Rodriguez file and plugged it in the computer guessing on his grandfathers birthday and there it was! I could not believe my eyes. I was able to get his grandparents and 7 children. We gave him the information on Sunday and he ran around the church telling everyone, "I have my grandparents, I have my grandparents." Then he told us tonight that this made him think of an aunt who he hadn't talked to in years so he called her and she gave him so many names he couldn't write fast enough. And by the way would we help him do temple ready for them. Oh, my gosh, the blessings are unreal.

We taught a district meeting this week and we taught them "Lessons of Life". Some of you know that program. How to take an experience that you just had, find out what you learned from it and then find a scripture that goes with it. Well, my dear Elder Robbins hasn't been too impressed with our lesson, "Lessons of Life" so he decided to sit down and try it Wednesday morning before we left. He wrote down the wonderful things that have happened with the people going to the temple and then found the scripture, Alma 30:34. It reads, "And now if we do not receive anything for our labors in the church, what doth it profit us to labor in the church save it were to declare the truth that we may have rejoicing in the joy of our brethren."
That did it, he is converted he says and is now memorizing that as our mission scripture. "Oh, life is Wonderful!"

We did apartment checks for the Elders and Sisters today and as they met at the end of a tracting session we gave them some awards. They were so funny and especially Elder Moberly who is going home to Kansas in two days. For him we told the story about Dorothy and Toto. We put some colored glasses on him, made him shut his eyes, hold out his hands, and say three times, "There's no place like home, There's no place like home, there's no place like home." We then put a stuffed Alaska puppy, who we named Toto in his hands and Sister Robbins said she was going to be the first girl to kiss him when he was released. Elder Robbins got a picture of a very red faced elder. I got a picture of a handsome Elder Robbins with all the young Elders outside in the parking lot. It makes my heart skip a beat to look at them.

There is way too much to tell. We went to Denali and next week I will have to include pictures of that trip. What a beautiful fun filled day we had!

I will include my favorite picture of the glacier beds and will send the animals next week.
Love and miss you all but wouldn't trade anything for this experience.

Denali

I'm attaching a few pictures from Denali, I think you will like them. The grizzly is hard to see in his picture, it's the one with a person's head in the picture as the bear was on the other side of the bus and I could not get a clear shot of him, but once you see him he stands out quite well. We also saw a wolf but he was moving to fast to get a shot of him. We all of the large animals that are in the park except for a Lynx but they are very hard to find and move so fast that they are seldom seen.

Love to all, G.Burt