Family,
What
a great week it's been in the Canada Vancouver mission! The church is
just way too true up in Vernon. And this is totally the best place to be
in the winter. It's been above freezing pretty much all the time here.
It's snowed a few times, but nothing has stuck yet. It's got nothing on
Burns Lake, and it's not rainy at all like Vancouver is.
It's
weird to think that it was Thanksgiving down in the States this week.
Elder Baker is Canadian, and even after 19 years of being an American I
never really got around to figuring out what day Thanksgiving is
supposed to be on (last Thursday or 4th Thursday or something like
that?), so we didn't even think about it except for maybe day of. So, no
turkey this Thanksgiving! I think the last time that I had a dinner
appointment was Canadian Thanksgiving, and that's probably one of the
maybe 2 I've had in Burnaby and Vernon. We don't really eat in members
homes. From 5 to 7 is "prime proselyting time" and we don't eat meals in
that time frame, because that's when everybody is home. 7-9 is
consecrated member time and we're asked to visit 2 members a night, but
we're supposed to look for "teaching opportunities, not eating
opportunities". It's kind of weird to think about, but we literally find
10 times the number of new investigators than the mission did 3 or 4
years ago and we teach 6 times as many lessons with a member present.
Our mission president is inspired.
Well,
this week has brought in some changes. Steven Rasmussen has left for a
month to go visit his family in Ontario. We told him he's going to find a
wife in the YSA over there. We're still working with his roommate,
Chris. It's been really cool to work with him, because Chris is this 19
year old kid who has been in prison for drug use (he used to say stuff
like "I like rap when it's real. I like 50 Cent and all, but he's never
been shot in the jaw." ...but then he found out that we don't think
saying stuff like that is cool. So he stopped.) who never would be
interested in meeting with missionaries if we knocked on his door, but
he's seen the effect that it's had on Steven, and he stuck around for a
few lessons, and so now he's totally willing to meet with us and
experiment with praying and building a relationship with God. His first
few prayers have been awesome, because of how sincere he is about it.
He'll keep on wanting to start over or ask questions in the middle of
the prayer just because he wants them to be perfect. We set a baptismal
date with him for the end of December.
We're
also working with a lot of miracle people! The Lord really does prepare
people and put them in our path. A part-member family moved into the
ward from one of those obscure BC villages in the middle of nowhere, and
they're really humble and want to change. They're the kind of family
that has a "Family Home Evening" board with pegs on it, but instead of
hanging names or stuff on it, they use it as a storage device to hang
aprons and bags and stuff like that on it. So they're pretty cool. They
have a bunch of little kids that make teaching really hard, but they're
cute, so it's good. Our mission president has promised us that if we do
everything that we can, we should be finding one new investigator every
day. Man. That is so true. One day we had gone all day without finding
our new investigator for that day, and it was about 8:55, and I was
standing behind the car backing Elder Baker before we went home for the
night, when this guy walked past the car. So we stop him, and start
teaching him right outside of the complex that we in and he became a new
investigator. The church is true!
Kelly
and Toni are both going to be baptized this weekend! Kelly has just
loved everything that we've taught her. When we taught her the Plan of
Salvation, she just described it as being "perfect". When you find
somebody that's elect, you just think back, "what if we had gone to a
different area that day? What if we had knocked on her door when she
wasn't home?" Things just work out. Heavenly Father just kind of
orchestrates everything the way that it needs to happen. We found out
that they are probably putting sisters in our ward next transfer, and
the vast majority of our progressing investigators are female, and so
it's good motivation to baptize them all before we hand all of our
female investigators off to the sisters that will be put in.
One
thing that we've been focusing on is how we should be talking with
everyone all the time as we go throughout our day, even if it's on P-day
and we're shopping, or whatever else. After traveling back from
exchanges recently, went to eat at this all-you-can-eat sushi place, and
where we were sitting, we were sitting right next to this couple that
was eating. So we starting talking to them, and tell them a little bit
about what they do and just had a little gospel conversation with them.
Turns out that the man had roots in Raymond, which is where Elder Baker
is from. And when we got up to pay, they said that they had paid for our
food! Maybe that was our Thanksgiving miracle.
Anyways,
the church is true! We're about to drive to Kelowna to get on a bus and
head down to Richmond for mission council, which will be a spiritual
feast. But hey. We'll talk to you all next week. Thanks for the emails!
Elder Blotter
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