No Burnaby Ward, "Corn Roasts" as an activity are not an "American thing", nor a "Mormon thing". I'm not sure where you got the idea to call boiling a few hundred cobs of corn a "Corn Roast", but it was neither from America nor from the Church.

 

After 14 months of walking, this shoe is done. 

Family,

Well, just like that it's been another week already! Time is one of the most irritating things. When you're tracting Wedeene Street for the 5th time in Kitimat, there seems to be an unending supply of time, but when it takes half an hour to an hour to get anywhere and you're spending another hour of the day doing 12 Week, the extra hour of companion study for greenies, you just do not have as much time as you would like to. But the work in Burnaby is good! It kind of feels like a gigantic playground. There's streets and Skytrain stations and parks to contact in, there's endless doors to knock. P-days are the worst, because you pretty much have sitting on a bus and waiting to be checked out in super long lines at Metrotown to look forward to. Finding and teaching is much better. The ward here has a lot of awesome members. This week as a way to try and get people to come and check out the chapel, the ward had a "Corn Roast" where they boiled a lot of corn and had a potluck. All the missionaries took a few sacks of corn home and a few pounds of butter. Can't complain at all. Life is good.

This week has been a good one. I had the chance to meet most of the investigators in the teaching pool. Well. So far, a lot of time in Burnaby has spent cleaning up. Physically, and missionary work-ily. (The bathroom no longer smells. That's good.) But the teaching pool was filled with people like... "Oh, I'm a Baptist missionary from Texas, who is being sponsored to live here in Vancouver for a few years so that I can learn how to live in multicultural areas. Then, I'll be sponsored to live in Mexico for a year or two to learn Spanish, and then traveling to do missionary work in South America, and until then, I just want to squabble with Mormons in coffee shops". That type. Great people and all, just not humble seekers of truth. (But then again, I probably shouldn't criticize too fiercely, because it seems like he does have things figured out a bit more cozily than certain missionaries in South America that I know.) But in general, we pretty much just have 2 people that we're working with, Mark, a 10 year old Filipino boy who we've set a date for later this September, and Alan, who we're just working very closely with to get him living the Word of Wisdom so that he can unite with his family and be baptized by mid-October. So, that leaves a lot of time to find people to teach!

...So that's pretty much what our days consist of. We wake up, do the missionary schedule rigamarole, study, eat and then leave for the day until we get back at 9 because we don't really have time to go home. So you'd think that being on your feet all day would result in weight loss, right? Wrong. Just as there were pride cycles in the Book of Mormon, Elder Blotter's weight cycles based on if he is in the North or in the Lower Mainland. In the North, I've always lived by a track and could go running if my companions didn't want to, and food is scarce. Here, there's just too much left over food from ward activities and things. So, I had lost all of the MTC and deep-fried Mars bars weight in Kitimat, but I predict that it will be back after a few weeks. Alas, I'll run it off next summer or something.

We saw quite a few miracles this week, however! A few things have happened this week that have made me reflect on the evidences in my life that there is a loving Heavenly Father. Usually, they are just a bunch of small things that are orchestrated to make things work out just right. At one point, we were up in the North part of Burnaby for an appointment with a a member (so, it's already unusual that we were in the Sister's area, the only reason we go there is for an appointment with a member, since there are multiple companionships for the same wards here) and when we went to catch a bus going back to our area, the buses weren't on schedule (unusual. Well, not that unusual, but still) so the next bus wasn't for a long time. So, we called the zone leaders for permission to just take the Skytrain into the east part of Vancouver to transfer at Commercial-Broadway onto the line that goes right through our area. And so then we were off through Van East, which isn't even our area, which was unusual. After a few minutes on the Skytrain, this woman walked up to us and introduced herself as a member of the church, and told us that just a few minutes before she had been praying and praying and asking for a some sort of a sign to some question she had, and with tears in her eyes, she said that we had gotten on the train just moments after she had prayed. Very cool to see how God can put you right where you need to be when you need to be there. Secondly, on Fast Sunday, we were about to catch a bus in the evening so we could head home to eat. We were waiting for our bus, we sat down on the bench to make some phone calls while we were waiting. And... for whatever reason, the bus chose to just drive past us, without picking us up. Which mean probably over an hour of walking to make it home. Such a waste of time. Gah! I remember just praying that someone would pull over and offer us a ride. And sure enough, just a few minutes later, a car pulls over and a member already giving the Korean-speaking elders a ride pulled over and gave us a ride as well. What a miraculous answer that was. God is good, and he does answer prayers!

And well, I hope that you all have a really good week this week. Thanks for all of the support. It's good to hear how everyone is doing back home. The church is true!

Elder Blotter