Well hello!
It's been another great week in Vancouver! We've seen
a lot of interesting things happen and talked to a lot of interesting
people. And been rained on. A lot. It's been awesome! This city is so
big! The more time I spend here, the more I am struck by how many
foreigners are in Vancouver. I would guess that only about half of the
city here can speak English. Actually, it might be more than that, but
it's easier for the little Chinese ladies walking home from the grocery
store with dried chicken feet in their grocery sacks to say "I'm busy No
Engliss" than to talk to us, ha ha.
It's good to hear that everything is going well at home! I bet the
kids are great little skiers by now. I'm sure that the tots don't hurt
anything, either. Sounds like some of the joys of missionary work are
being experienced at home as well! It makes a missionary proud. :) I
know that the Lord recognizes all of the efforts that we take to share
the gospel with others, and I know that the blessings that come make it
more than worth it. I am also glad to hear that Greenie is still around.
I walked past a green maxima about as old as greenie is and it put a
little smile on my face.
Today has been an interesting P-day! We got a call last night that
there was this guy who needed some "service" in the morning, and so we
canceled our plans, and then this random member from Saskatchewan picked
us up outside our house. His wife lives in Utah somewhere, and while he
is waiting for his green card so he can move there, he is planning on
working as a stonemason in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. So... all of his
belongings and his pet dog are in the bed of his truck, and all he has
is a (slightly incorrect) address where he could pick up a truck bed
camper in Vancouver that he had bought. So we help this guy find where
it is, unload his truck, figure out how we can lift and secure the
camper on his truck, and then load all of his belongings into the camper
and then call some missionaries to find out the address of the ferry to
Nanaimo, which he didn't have either. All of that was much easier said
than done. He had no idea what he was doing,
so it was good that we were able to help him. All in all it was a
success, except the wheelbarrow we tried to tie to the top of his camper
fell off somewhere in the streets of Vancouver. Hopefully not through a
windshield. :) We didn't finish until about 3:00, and we had all of our
P-day duties still on the "To Do" list, and so we called the zone
leaders and they went on exchanges with us so we could get everything
done. And fortunately, we still had some time to email home! This email
might not be too long, though!
The work here is awesome. All of our potential investigators among
the First Nations people in Burns Lake all seem to have the same... four
names (Rhonda, Mildred, Charlie, and Wilford, if you were curious), but
here, you get 'Ramakrishnans" and "Love Deeps" and things like that. We
have a couple baptisms lined up for later this month that we are really
excited for. Cheryll, who will be baptized in the next couple weeks,
was feeling under the weather, so she couldn't come to church this
Sunday, so that's too bad, but she'll still be able to make her date
later this January. She's working on having her husband start meeting
with us. We're teaching this 80 year old Jehovah's Witness guy named
Frank, and I'm pretty excited about that. Jehovah's Witnesses believe
some pretty weird things, so we have some interesting lessons with him.
There's this street that I love walking down because it's by a bus stop
where people coming from the University of British
Columbia get off to walk home, and you can have some pretty awesome
gospel conversations there. There are a lot of people who were raised
Muslim or 7th Day or who knows what else that were religious, but are
taking Biology courses at school and are having a hard time believing in
God. Those are the people that you can have an awesome conversation
promising them that if they read the Book of Mormon, they'll be able to
know that God is there. Otherwise, we just have a blast talking to the
millions of people that are everywhere. This place is kind of (worse
than) Gomorrah, but if you sing 1 Corinthians 10:13 in your head, you
can still have clean thoughts. Me and Elder Smith are getting along
great! If you try hard enough, you can get along with anybody. That is
for sure.
Well, I hope that everyone gets to Disneyland is one piece and that
it's a bunch of fun! Life is well in Vancouver. It is a blessing to be
able to serve the Lord here with Elder Smith. I love the gospel and I
know that it is true. I love the Book of Mormon and I know that it is
the word of God. I love being able to spend all of my time sharing that
knowledge with everybody around me! I don't know why the Lord has
blessed me with the knowledge and the opportunities that I have been
given, but I am eternally grateful to Him for the chance to be here.
Keep the work in Vancouver (...and everywhere) in your prayers! Have a great week!
Elder Blotter
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