YEAH!!!!!

Mother Dearest! Daaaaddd... Faammmillyy....

Well! I definitely did make it here safely! I'll give you the low down on where I am and everything. And... I live in a house right now. But... first things first, ha ha.

My first companion is Elder Neher, which you pronounce like the hair removal product. He's a great Elder, which is a good thing. If he could be any animal, he says he would be a hippopotamus. He's kind of quirky, but I guess so am I, so that's okay. He's from Ontario, Canada, but is going to BYU-I to become a mechanical engineer. He... really likes ties and has quite a few shelves of them. I can tell you more about him later, I guess.

Before I forget, my mailing Address:

Box 1017
Burns Lake, BC, Canada
VOJ1EO

My first area is called Burn's Lake, one of the farthest in terms of travel times from the mission home. It is out in the boonies and makes Cache Valley seem massively populated. To get there, we took a two hour flight in a propellor-powered plane (we flew over absolutely gorgeous mountains and lakes and endless trees. It was awesome) from the Vancouver airport to a town called Terrace, which has... maybe 18,000 people in it. Then it was a 3-or-so hour drive to Smithers, which has... maybe 3,000 people in it. And then it was another 2 or 3 hour drive to Burn's Lake, which apparently has 2,000 people in it and the surrounding areas. The area seems to mostly be dependent on logging, milling, tree-planting, and mining. Right now, everybody is commenting on how hazy it is here, and they say it's from smoke from the fires down in the States. So... the haziness makes me think it might be the same air from home. Sigh... People are also complaining about how warm it is up here. It feels perfectly cool outside. I think I'm blessed to be here now, cause I would guess that winters here are miserably cold!

Well, in the first couple minutes after meeting my first companion, I was given a cell phone. I thought I was going to be able to get away without using one for 2 years, but I guess not! The first contact I had with a real investigator was via text message. Kinda lame... but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do. We also have a car, and apparently 94% of the mission has a car. Also... we have a two story house with a deck, three or so bedrooms, and two bathrooms. Not even joking. Apparently, the missionaries in the area used to stay in a member's house while they were on a mission, and then they got back, and there aren't any acceptable apartments for missionaries in such a tiny area, and so we're renting a house for now. And it has two floors. Which is way too much for two missionaries to use... so we have a room for clothes, a room to study in, a living room, our bedroom, a kitchen... and so on. We don't really go downstairs except to do laundry. And, although it's super awesome to have our own house, it's actually kind of annoying, apparently, because we have to spend time on P-day doing yard work and stuff. But, no complaints from me. The missionaries in Terrace were living in the garage of a member, the missionaries in Smithers, who are only other companionship in my district, are living in a relatively small apartment. And I'm sure there are missionaries in Argentina living in a tree house they made themselves or something. So I'm blessed. Oh, Elder Pierson is one of the missionaries in Terrace. The day we passed through he was really excited because they had had some successful work that day. Good stuff.

 The work here... has unique challenges. Our area is bisected by this gigantic river-like body of water, Francois Lake. If you pronounce it correctly, you say Fran-swah. French pronunciations... what're you gonna do? If you find that lake on Google Earth, the church house is relatively close to it. Anyways, most of the members live on Southside, which you have to get to via a fifteen minute ferry ride. The ferry leaves every half hour or so, and you just drive on to it. It's kind of nifty. But anyways, most of the members live scattered out miles apart from each other on Southside, and the chapel and most investigators are on the North side in Burns Lake, so it's really difficult to get members to come to appointments with investigators.. Also... there are just no people here, so you can't really street contact. Apparently some times we still try to on the little clump of businesses along the road that goes through the town, but only when it's busy. It's also really spread out, and because we have a very limited amount of kilometers, tracting is hard. I've haven't done it too often, but it mostly consists of driving through heavily forested areas on dirt roads, with random roads that either lead to houses, or the middle of nowhere because they're roads that were once used for logging, but are abandoned now. Also, it's kind of terrifying, because every house you go to (literally) has five or six dogs that all run and try to maul you. And then when the people do come to the door, they seem like hermits and either smell like incense or marijuana, or have naked children running around, or don't speak English, or who knows what else. I actually really enjoy But, they're God's children and they need the chance to partake of the fruits of the gospel, so I guess that's what I'm there for! We haven't visited it yet, but apparently a large amount of the people in our area are Natives living on Canadian Indian reserves. Except here, they're called "First Nations". Anyways, apparently the way the system works is that their lifestyle is subsidized by the government to preserve their way of life and culture and stuff. As a result, they're usually home and don't mind meeting with missionaries. But also, they're apparently flaky and will frequently miss appointments and forget about commitments and stuff.

In a nutshell, what our work here consists of mostly is trying to build a foundation for future missionary work. We're really trying to get the members here excited and participating in missionary work. I think previous missionaries have sort of tired them out, and most of them seem really discouraged about missionary work. So now we're just trying to plan activities and gatherings that members can invite potential investigators to, so that we can trick them into helping. Ha ha. And they definitely help us out, so I hope I don't sound like I'm negative towards them. On Sunday, one member gave us a bunch of frozen moose steak and stuff from their garden to eat, and another member gives us a big jug of milk straight from their cow each week. It's weird because members will talk about how they know everybody in town because it's so small... and at the same time they can't think of any referrals for us to teach! I don't really blame them, though. There aren't too many people around. The branch members here mostly consist of a few large families and their children's families, so about half the branch has the same 3 last names. Small world here, for sure.

We have a really nice chapel building! I'm glad, because it means it's big enough to have a family history center with computers in it. Apparently the area used to have more members because there were ranchers from Idaho and Utah that moved up here, but eventually their offspring moved back to the states and they sort of died off.

In Burn's Lake, they just had a convert baptized who had been investigating for 2 or 3 years, which is cool! Hopefully it will invigorate the members here. Regardless, we're doing everything that we can! I have faith that the Lord does not give commandments, or otherwise ask us to do things, save he prepares a way for us to accomplish them! I'm doing quite well here! I have yet to starve or die of exposure, so it can't be too bad! I really am enjoying the amount of studying and gospel discussion, and it's awesome doing the Lord's work. It takes what feels like excessive amounts of planning to figure out how to do stuff, but I'm happy to be here, and I'm going to do my best. It's weird, because you leave the MTC feeling remotely prepared to be a missionary, and then you get in the field and you realized that you're nowhere near where you wish you were. But! I have 2 years to improve! So... I guess until next week!

Elder Blotter


To my ever supportive mother without whom I could not be functioning:
PS- My debit card failed to get any money out of an ATM. So... we should figure that out. I'll see if someone from a bank or something can get it to work. But... yeah. Kind of a problem, but I can make do on the money they give us for groceries and stuff if not.

PPS- I think I could maybe use another short-sleeve white shirt. A pen exploded on one when it was in my pocket. Kind of unfortunate, really... I'm trying to see if I wash it enough if the ink will go away. We'll see.

PPPS- Send this to Amelia and Grandparents because I don't think I'll have time to write this week. I'll try, but I had to spend forever in this government building trying to get a BC driver's license. So... we're time crunched.