Life's Great in the Okanagan

Family!

Well hi. Hope it's been a good week! It definitely has up in these parts. It's full fall up here, and it's starting to get pretty chilly. I still feel blessed to be able to have dodged the rainy season in the lower mainland, though. It feels a lot more like Utah around here. In fact, Vernon actually does look a lot like the Bear Lake valley, actually. Mountains and lakes. Most of Vernon is like a big maze because it's mostly not a grid, and it's built mostly on the sides of mountains in a valley. For our workout in the morning, we just run up and down this massive set of stairs that just goes up and down a hill that connects 2 streets. Vernon is a beautiful place, though. A fall wonderland.

 From the pictures that you sent home. It looks like the family is doing well! I could see the video that dad sent of Ness and Jacey's duet. Good work, Jacey Lou! You're going to be a piano star. (You too, Ness. You too.)

Anyways! The work in Vernon has been going great. I love being a missionary. Every day here feels kind of like an adventure. I wish I had the time to just share all of the miracles that we have every day! I'll just talk about how last night went, for an example. President Tilleman promised the mission that every companionship could have a baptism in October if we all did everything that we could, and we've had a few baptismal dates for October, but for unfortunate reasons, a lot of them have had to be rolled back into November, and so we've been struggling to get out investigators into the waters of baptism this October. Over the past few weeks, we've had awesome lessons with Steven (the investigator who knew and believed the Plan of Salvation before we taught it). A few nights ago, he threw us his cigarettes and committed to never smoke again, but he's still been struggling with drinking. Last night, showed us his bedroom, which was just filled with empty cans of beer, just cases and cases worth. So, right then and there, we started cleaning his room with him. It was like being able to physically watch the atonement work. We totally smelled like booze, but after we went into the kitchen and just prayed with him that he would be able to completely stop and be able to be baptized by the end of October. All of this made us really late for our next appointment, and the member that we rode to the lesson with had to leave the appointment early, and so we get out of the lesson smelling like alcohol and carrying a half empty container of coffee, the last of his supply, and realize that we have no way of getting to our next appointment. So we just start running to our next appointment, climbing over fences and things, handing off this bag of coffee stuff as we go. We get to the appointment, and the investigator, Toni, that we were meeting with, was just sitting there having some bonding time with the bishop and his wife, and she had actually been reading and praying, and was doing great. Man. You just go home happy. 

Ha ha. After the gospel principles lesson on tithing this Sunday, he heard that tithing funds support missionary work, and so he wanted to just directly give us his tithing money. People like him are the people that you're looking for.

In any case, the work is going great here in Vernon. We're finding lots of people to teach. I'm really beginning to have a greater appreciation of the relationship between faith and success in missionary work. With faith, you can find somebody new to teach every hour that you spend finding. Elder Baker is really good at looking past the humdrum of missionary work and doing everything that you can when talking to every single person, and so it's been cool to learn that from him. And working with all of the missionaries in the zone has been great. We get to hold phone conferences with district leaders to talk about how we can help the zone grow, and we get to go on exchanges with struggling missionaries. We're going to be going down to Kamloops after preparation day today to work with a set of missionaries down there.

Well, love you all! Sorry that I don't have more time to write! The church is true. If there's time, we're going to grab our cameras and send home a few pictures.

Elder Blotter

Elder Blotter and Elder Baker in the car....

Maybe a little chocolate pudding?