Vernon

Family,

 

Oh man. Where to even begin this email? I know. This is what Elder Atwood sent me this week. (He only just barely got transferred out of Kitimat) Our apartment in Kitimat was just awesome.

 

Elder Blotter,

Remember that guy that would always throw up during personal study?? Well, as it turns out it wasn't Shawn (the native guy who we thought it was) it was the bro that lived bellow us. Well, recently our apartment complex started smelling really nasty (like for 3 days) and we called and told Mira Dugga (dang JW..) and let her know that there was something that was most likely dead in the complex and she laughed it off as nothing. Well, yesterday night the RCMP was there because the guy that lived below us was dead. Can you believe that?? There was legitly a dead guy living (or not) in our complex. He had been dead for about a week. We had officer Kelly in our apartment asking if we knew the guy. Needless to say, we didn't. That's the crazy story. We were living with a dead guy, breathing the same air that he wasn't.

Gods' Speed Elder.

Elder Atwood

 

Anyways, not on that note, this week was literally one of the best weeks of my mission! Last weekly planning, Elder Baker and I looked at the goals that we had set, and we decided that they were good goals, but we decided that those would not be our goals if this was the last week of our missions. So we went through our plans, and decided to treat the entire week like it was the last week of our missions. For example, there's no way on the last week of your mission you'd spend until 6:00 not doing missionary work, so we ended our P day a few hours early. You wouldn't sit around your apartment eating (John 4:34), you wouldn't walk from door to door, etc. So we made a lot of little tiny sacrifices here and there, but we were given major blessings from Heavenly Father. We did find more new investigators and teach more lessons than either of us had previously, but we just saw miracles upon miracles this week. I couldn't even try to write all of them down with the time that we have. Our planners just filled up with lessons to teach and whenever we went finding we found people to teach. It was a great week.

 

So, some of the cool experiences from the week!

 

First, I had the amazing opportunity to ordain Steven a Priest. I had never conferred the Priesthood to anybody before, but it was a very sacred experience. We've got Steven all ready to go on a temple trip so he'll be able to help some of his ancestors receive saving ordinances this weekend. To see how much he has changed from not that much longer than 5 or 6 weeks ago when he was a heavy alcoholic and a heavy smoker is just amazing. One of our new investigators that we found this week, Kelly, came to church for the first time this week, and we hadn't had the chance to teach her about the Word of Wisdom yet, but Steven in the Gospel Principles lesson just started talking about it in one of his comments, and it touched Kelly so much that after she came up to us and whispered "No Coffee!?" We were kind of worried about what her response would be, but after we briefly explained the Word of Wisdom she said that she would stop drinking it. It was a miracle.

 

We taught an FLDS lady this week! Literally, a convert to the FLDS church of a few years. The member that we took with us was just fascinated and couldn't stop asking questions. She was an evangelical Born Again, and her husband used to be Catholic, and they did some research and somehow decided that being FLDS was right for them. Fortunately,they're on team Winston Blackmore instead of team Warren Jeffs, but the husband is currently "courting" an FLDS lady from Kamloops who is 40. The wife is excited about it because it will balance out their ages (he's 50 and she's 30). I'll just stop describing the situation lest I sound judgmental (the husband won't meet with us because he thinks that all "mainstream" Mormons are judgemental). Anyways, teaching her was fascinating because she only has a rudimentary understanding of everything. She had heard of the Book of Mormon, but she had never read it. She had heard of Doctrine and Covenants, but didn't really know what it was. Since she believes that Joseph Smith is a prophet, she sincerely wants to learn more about him, and so she wants to come to church and meet with us to learn about what's going on. So that will be really cool.

 

Oh yeah! I turned 21 this week. That was weird. In keeping with tradition, we ate a bazillion plates of food at "The Curry Pot", an East Indian buffet that isn't quite as good as the Indian Oven. I still haven't found Indian food that is as good as the Indian Oven, except for possibly at the Sikh temple. I might be biased. For a heavenly birthday present, we found like 5 people to teach that day and we set a baptismal date with this lady named Jodi Snow. She has severe memory loss because she got hit by a truck after pushing her 3 year old son out of the way, so we're hoping that she still remembers that she has a baptismal date, but she's a very special lady with a lot of real intent. We were jogging down a street and in between houses there was this driveway, and we decided to jog down it and there was a whole complex back there behind all the houses, and every other door had somebody inside that was interested in hearing about the gospel.

 

Well, every day we witness the Lord hastening His work! And we're doing everything that we can to hasten it. We're not going to let the mouthes of prophets fail by not doing everything that we can to help more of Heavenly Father's children have every opportunity to hear and accept the gospel. I wish that each one of you could come on a "mini-mission" like Adam did up in Vernon and see how true the Church is. We knocked on somebody's door, and they were super rude, and then we forgot that we had already knocked on that door, and they opened up again, and so... we asked them if they had changed their minds. And they totally invited us back later this week. Turns out, people do want to hear the gospel, we just need to show some faith and try to share it.

 

Well! Love you all! Hope that you have a great week!

 

Elder Blotter