Cordova, Alaska

This is no April fool's joke. Sean received his first assignment today. He will be serving in Cordova, Alaska. Cordova is about 150 miles Southeast from Anchorage. It is a beautiful little fishing town located near the mouth of the Copper River and at the head of Orca Inlet on the east side of Prince William Sound. The population is approximately 2,500. Although it is only 150 miles away from Anchorage, it took Sean and his new Companion, Elder Jordan Giles, from Pleasant Grove, Utah, about 12 hours to travel there. They drove in a car from Anchorage to Valdez, about 6 hours, and then boarded a Ferry and travelled another 6 hours to Cordova. So between the flights on Wednesday from Salt Lake to Alaska and now this trip to Cordova, I imagine he is very "jet lagged."

These are some of the email conversations we received from Sean on April 5, & 6.

"Hello, well I am in the town of Cordova, Alaska. I had to drive 6 hrs from Anchorage to a town called Valdez. Then we took a ferry 6 more hours to Cordova. They just opened this area to the missionaries so we have to start from scratch and it has been really hard. My companion is named Elder Giles he is from Pleasant Grove. We are living at the LDS Church here. They made us a room but it is the nicest building in the town basically. It is a fishing town and it is a really cool place. I've taken some pictures of it. Well if you have any questions about it here you can ask..I will be able to use the email tomorrow, but I'm not sure for how long. It will be in the morning sometime and I will email you more info about everything. Also I have seen a black bear, 2 moose, tons of sea otters and on the ferry I saw 2 whales, so it has been pretty cool. Well I will hopefully talk to you tomorrow, love you."

"Hi again, Well we live in the church and the shower is in the baptismal font. They put a shower head on the thing. We haven't been proselyting yet because we have to go meet with all the members here to find people and teach.........I'm not sure how long I will be here, I'm guessing until August when Elder Giles goes home.....because they will close it again before winter and I don't think they will keep sending different missionaries to this small of a town. .........It is in the 30's, it's been snowing the entire time I have been here but it hasn't stuck to much until last night. There is about 2 feet on the ground. We watched conference at the church with the branch. No one here really has cable or satellite. There is 1 store here and it costs a ton of money for everything, but oh well. The members have been very nice and make sure that we get fed a ton, so we are never hungry. I haven't got my license yet, but I probably will soon...".

We found out the reason he was able to email us on Tuesday also. It is because the library is closed on Mondays so they have to use the bookstore, which charges money per email or time (I'm not sure). President Dance told them they were allowed to email on Tuesday at the library, just this one time, since it was his first contact with us, but in the future they would have to do it on Monday, which is their "P" day. So I guess he will be paying. But it is worth it, even if we have to send him extra money!