Flying South for the Winter, Part II: Return of the Basement Suites, Skytrains, and Oodles of People.

Family,

Well, I'm back to Van East! Well. Van East East. Burnaby South, if we want to call it what we're supposed to call it. I have been transferred to the area adjacent to Van East. Boundary Rd is in my area again. Since I've left, they've had to squish in massive amounts of Sisters in a lot of different areas, so now Burnaby is cut in half and elders are in the Southern half, but that's the stomping ground now. And goodness. I. Love. Vancouver. I forgot how much I loved Vancouver because of how much I love Northern BC, but Vancouver is a great place to be. It feels like the perfect temperature outside always. The bishop is from Japan, the opening prayer to Sacrament Meeting was in Mandarin, the ward mission leader is from Uganda, etc. etc. etc. Going running in the morning, you run past Filipino bakeries and it smells good. There's people all over the place. Frozen pizzas don't cost 9 or 10 bucks. You don't have to eat frozen pizzas, because food is cheap. ...Apples taste really good. We live in the basement of an East Indian family's house.  The list goes on. Anyways...

So my new companion is Elder Francis, who I am follow-up training. He's been out for 6 weeks. (I think I'm just going to be training for the rest of my mission, or something) He was originally called into the Spanish work, but has been serving in the English work because there's not enough Spanish areas for the number of missionaries that we have right now. His dad is a diplomat for the Canadian government, and so... he was born in Colombia (his mom is Colombian and his dad is your typical pasty white Canadian. Not that pasty white Utahns can point fingers), and has since lived in Argentina, Guatemala, Toronto, England, Hong Kong, Romania, The Philippines, and... Utah, because he went to BYU for a year. His family is currently living in Kenya. So... there you go. He speaks English and Spanish, decent French, and a little bit of Mandarin. He's a pretty cool elder, to say the least.

And the work in Burnaby is very cool! This Sunday, a wonderful little 10 year old girl named Faythe Mileta was baptized. The missionaries here have been working with that family for a while. Brother Mileta is also investigating, but he just has not been able to quit smoking. His wife, who is a member, obviously wants him to quit, but is kind of an enabler and doesn't want him to get too worked up or stressed about quitting smoking. In the first lesson that we had with him, we reset a date with him for October 13th and made a plan for him to quit smoking. Right now, he's smoking "maybe a little over" a pack a day. But he can do it! Elder Aidukaitus (perhaps... I misspelled that) of the Seventy was visiting our mission, and he went out of his way to specifically visit them, and after he pulled us aside and told us to make sure we baptized him. General Authorities. They're the best. Apparently, at the beginning of August, Elder Francis and Elder Kennedy (who is 7 foot 6 or something insane like that and has full rides in either basketball or football to BYU... I have some literally big shoes to fill) set a goal to have 10 baptisms, but all of those people have kind of been dwindling aside from the Miletas.

The ward here seems very cool as well. We have everything from this prim and proper British lady who, if you impress, will spend thousands of dollars on you in the form of new suits, shoes, food, etc. (she's included past missionaries in her will, apparently) But she picks favorites, and some missionaries just get the cold shoulder. There's this Iranian guy, Sammy, whose dad owns the largest construction company in Iran. Sammy had a rare disease that only 6 people in the world had, and his dad funded millions in research until they found a cure. Anyways, he's blind and a little disabled, lives by himself here (and somehow became a Mormon), and since he's blind he has no idea what time it is. And he calls all the missionaries in the area 5-10 times a day, which most of the time we can't answer (which if we don't, he sings the "I'm so lonely" song). And since he has no idea what time it is, that 5-10 times a day need not be restrained to the hours of 6:30 AM to 10:30 PM. We've been woken up a few times already. Good people though, that's for sure.

We've met a few people that seem very promising, but we have a lot of digging in to do to pick the work up in Burnaby, and there are a few challenges. When I came into the area, the area book hadn't been updated for a while, and the teaching records were all just kind of jumbled together in no particular order at the front of the binder. The area isn't... organized at all. We need to break the area down into smaller areas, organize the area book, and get a big map of the area and plot out where all the less actives, part member families, members, etc. etc. live so that we can plan better. And we can't afford to sit around in the apartment doing that, so... we'll probably do that for the rest of the P-day and then in the mornings and evenings until it's done. And transit here... well. In Vancouver, transit was incredibly overwhelming at first, but eventually you just figure out that more or less you Skytrain as East/West as you need, and you learn the buses that take you as North/South as you need. The buses are more sporadic and the city is in less of a grid than in Vancouver, so it's going to be a little dicey and takes about an hour to get anywhere, but hey. We'll get there. Right now we're emailing at the "Justice Institute of British Columbia" and it took us an hour just to get here. It'll take at least an hour to get back, and then we've got all the other P-day errands to run... Fun stuff. Better than having to drive in Vancouver. Anyways.

Well, there are certainly a lot of challenges up ahead, but I'm excited for them! The challenges here are a little daunting, but preferable to the challenge of knocking the same door for the 7th-8th time. Shout out to Elder Atwood, who is staying and training in Kitimat and will be there for at least 6 months!

Well, dad sent a little video attached to one of the emails of Jacey doing a backflip. That's a super cool trick! But what in the world! Jacey, you already look a lot older and you've still got quite a bit of time to grow! And Jed, look at you in your football pads. You're old enough for that? What in the world! Ha ha. Well. I hope that you all have a great week!

Elder Blotter

Mother, I forgot my camera, but I'll try to send some pictures next week.