The Church is true in Vernon

Family,

Well, it's been another great week in Vernon! It's weird when I start writing emails now, I don't even really know what to write about because I've forgotten what happened last week and what happened this week because everything kind of blurs together. I have to pull out my planner and remember what week was this week. But, it's been great! There have been a lot of miracles over the past week! And it's beautiful here in the fall. It's finally back to the season where we can rake people's leaves for service and things like that, and it's not brutally cold yet. Fall is a great time to be a missionary.

Our teaching pool is doing great. Steven has stayed completely clean from alcohol and smoking. It blows me away how well he has done. He would smoke a ton and then drink 9 cans of beer every night-- he knew that not because he was capable of counting, but because there would always be 6 cans left in a case when he sobered up the next day. He's completely clean now, and he's going to be baptized on the 3rd. He rents out a room of a house, along with one other tenant, and we found out that the lady that he rents from is a former investigator, who is actually very promising and has committed to come to his baptism. The other tenant, Tim, is another alcoholic who we've seen sober probably one time. He always barges into the room that we're teaching Steven in and talks about how he's looking for his cat, which has always been bad interruptions, but Steven told us that he told him that he always tries to come in to the lessons because he wants to learn because he's seen the influence that it has had on Steven. So, we tried to let him stay at the lesson we had with Steven yesterday, but he was drunk. So he would ask a really sincere question with tears in his eyes, and then we would answer it... and then he'd stand up and start acting like a dinosaur. So we committed him to be sober for our lesson today. Alcohol is so gross. We'll see how that goes. But still, lots of miracles coming from that one building.

We're teaching a lot of other interesting people, too.  We had a few people come to church with us. We got one of our investigators, Sean, to leave his "Nerd Cave"/basement where he does nothing but play video games to come to church. Sometimes you're tempted to stop teaching people because "they're not going to keep commitments, I mean come on, he just kept talking about why he believes in Norse gods last time," but they surprise you. Regardless of what somebody's background is, the gospel "is for them". He had to go in the foyer in the middle of Sacrament meeting because he can't handle crowds, but he still put in the effort to come.

Other than that, it's just been a busy week of finding and teaching. We see miracles every day. It really is crazy how at the end of the day you can look back and just see how everything kind of fit together to make it a great day. Like, we were flipping through some potentials, and kept on calling one named Ashley and finally were able to meet with the family, and it turned out that she was the spouse of Gary, a former investigator who didn't get baptized because she didn't want him to. But now she's kind of had a change of heart, and we were just able to contact them at just the right time to start teaching them. Another time we got sidetracked talking to one guy for too long, but we decided to knock just one more door before leaving the complex, and found this awesome lady, Tracy, who had an LDS grandma and was really excited that we weren't Jehovah's Witnesses. She kept on telling us "you really knocked on the right door here". Enough of those experiences just add up and at the end of your week it's just really amazing to see all the stuff that happened.

Oh yeah! For like the first time in my life I had to go to a doctor other than Dr. Blotter for a day-to-day kind of thing. A member gave us a canned ham, and I was trying to open it, but the opening mechanism on the can broke, and I was trying to pull it open with my hand, and it totally sliced my fingers open. It was my first experience with Canadian health care too. I... survived.

Well, life is great. At night by our beds Elder Baker and I are always like "Are we here already?" And Elder Baker is great. Um. Well mother, if you need more facebook stalking ammo, his name is Brad Baker, he's from Raymond Alberta. He says to look up "bradbaker121" and watch the Backstreet Boys videos on youtube. He says he says he's the "handsome one".

Well, it was great to write all of ya. I'll send some more pictures of Vernon. Hopefully you all have a great week! ...Mosiah 28:3!

Elder Blotter