Well, hello!
Sounds like it was a pretty
good Christmas in Cache Valley, and pretty good skiing at the Beav! It
was good to see the pictures of everybody and everything. I hope that
Jed has continued to perfect his harmonica skills. He was already pretty
good by the time that I talked with him.
It has been a great week in
Vancouver! Whew. The days go by so fast down here. It has been a crazy! I
swear, over the past week I have had more food from Phillipines than
most missionaries actually serving there. There are so many people on
the streets of so many different cultures and races and who knows what
else. It has been awesome. It's quite a bit warmer here, too, which is
nice! To get to the library from Burns Lake, we would jump in the truck
and drive for like 30 seconds across town to the library. Here, we walk
from our home to the Nanaimo skytrain station, ride that to
Commercial-Broadway, catch a bus for a couple blocks, and walk to one of
the only libraries here that is open on Monday. It's pretty intense
here! Stuff is always happening. For example, in the past half hour or
so we got a mormon.org
referral (that comes in the form of a text on our phone) that somebody
wants us to stop by and give them a Dutch Book of Mormon. Hopefully we
will be able to communicate with them somehow. Just a minute ago, while
we were waiting for a computer, this black teenager and this old white
guy had an argument over some dumb thing about using of a public
computer that sounds like it is now going to result in a civil law suit.
Anyways, the work in Vancouver
is awesome! In an average day, we usually just take public transit
somewhere to visit a member or a less active, and then knock some of the
doors around their home and street contact in the area that they
live. We have had a ton of dinner appointments over the past few days,
because of the Holiday season, and so we've been eating way too much. We
talk to hundreds of people. When we get back into our apartment, we
have lots of other missionaries from other parts of Vancouver or that
speak other languages or from areas in BC that have investigators move
to Vancouver call us and give us potential investigators or referrals.
It's a really busy just trying to get in contact with some of the people
that are around. We have a lot of really solid people that we are
teaching. One guy, Conrad, just approached us when we were sitting on
the bus because he had heard some bad things about our church and he
wanted to hear "our side of things", and now he's a really solid
investigator. One of our baptismal dates, Cheryll, just kind of decided
by herself that she wants to "be Mormon" after reading a book by Marie
Osmond or someone like that. There are some people that have
committed to be baptized just after we or some other missionaries talked
to them on the street for a little while. There is this OCD recent
convert named Lee who met missionaries because he was in the emergency
room because he thought the end of a Q tip was in his ear, and he
randomly asked one of the missionaries (who were there because one of
them had an allergic reaction) who they were, and he got baptized a few
weeks later. But he is obsessed with the church. Literally obsessed.
He's unemployed right now, and all he wants to do is come with
missionaries to appointments and tract and all that sort of stuff, which
is awesome, because we need to have males with us to come to
appointments. We carry pass along cards in Korean and Vietnamese and
Mandarin. It's definitely different than Burns Lake here, but I am
loving it.
My companion, Elder Smith, had
previously served with Elder Epperson. Ha ha... actually, it's pretty
funny. I spent 3 months hearing horror stories about Elder Smith. They
did not get along at all. So, when I heard that I was going to serve
with him, I just sort of committed to myself that I was going to love
him and get along with him no matter what. And... so it's going to be a
great transfer. Elder Smith is awesome. I will definitely be able to
learn a lot from the transfer. When transfer calls came, it was pretty
crazy.
This new area will be awesome,
too. The East side is supposed to be the "sketchy" side, but it hasn't
seemed too bad! There are lots of places to go and see on Preparation
day. We're going to Chinatown today because we weren't able to last
week. There are a lot of areas where we aren't allowed to be after 7:00
PM. Apparently there was a gang fight and a burnt corpse outside of the
missionary's apartment in the morning a while ago, (we've moved since
then), but that's probably just a missionary rumor. Ha ha. There are a
lot of awesome restaurants that I want to try here. This East Indian
style Chinese food place has caught my eye.
Well. Serving here so far has
really made me appreciate how blessed we are as members of the church.
There are literally millions of people here that don't have access to
saving ordinances. We are so blessed! What a privilege it is to share
the gospel with these people. I can truly see the Lord preparing people
here, as well. So many people approach us and ask us questions. So many
people want to hear our message. This truly is the Lord's work, and it
is incredible blessing to be working in the vineyard!
Well. I'm out of time on this library computer. Love you all. Have a great week!
Elder Blotter
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