Report from Vernon

Family,

Well, what a week of miracles it's been up in Vernon! We've loved it. The past week has taken us up into Armstrong, Salmon Arm, and Sicamous, down to Kamloops for some baptismal interviews, and into the waters of baptism. It's been great. Apparently there was an article about President Burt (the future mission president of the Canada Vancouver Mission, not that he'll ever be my mission president. Still, exciting times.) in the Herald Journal. Elder Kitchen (who is from Providence, I think and previously one of Dad's patients) just showed me his picture. Still, we've been blessed!

Well, first off, April dropped an "F" off of her religious title, and is now just plain "LDS"! Her baptismal service was beautiful and well attended by the ward. April was just a miracle right from the beginning. It was a very interesting teaching situation from the beginning. She didn't have a Book of Mormon nor had she ever read it, but she still had such a strong testimony that it was the word of God. It definitely took a lot of faith for her to meet with us and to talk with us, particularly because she had absolutely no support from her evangelical extended family or polygamous friends and husband. But she kept on meeting with us, and she committed to live a lifestyle that will require her to go against the grain of her current social situations. But good for her! It will be such a blessing in her life to be a member of the church. The ward has been reaching out to her as well, giving her rides when she needs them, and things like that. It's so important to reach out to new members, because it's kind of a foreign world in the church sometimes, but the ward here is doing great.

We really love serving in the Vernon 1st Ward. The members are great. It really isn't that frequent in this mission that you end up teaching somebody that the members have invited you to meet with, but it's happened quite a few times here in Vernon. When the youth in the ward have a friend that's curious, they share the gospel with them. They don't make it some awkward, forced thing, they just talk to them and invite them to learn more. It's really cool. We were invited to meet "somebody who wanted to learn more" at a less active member's (Sis Alexander) home by one of the active members (Bro Coleman) earlier this week. We found out later that Sister Alexander runs a group home for special needs individuals, but we didn't know that at the time. But when we got to the address where we were told there was a lesson waiting, there were tons of special needs people walking around, and we were very confused and thought we were totally in the wrong place. We heard voices calling us to the lesson, and when we got there, there were 2 less active members(who live/work in the group home), their home teachers, and a man who  wanted to learn more. So, at first we were terribly confused as to what was going on, but in the end, we realized that their home teachers were on the ball, and because they were doing their home teaching, they found somebody that we could share the gospel with.

We saw a lot of miracles this week with our teaching pool, too! Mother, if you'd like the names of some of the people we're working with... here we are. Toni, the most awesome longtime investigator in the world, is working on a date for February 11th. She just needs to talk some things over with a guy she's in a long distance relationship with. We met with the Mathesons, a family that we just love to death but haven't met with because we handed them off to the sisters when they put sister missionaries in the ward. But they were never able to meet with them, so we finally just did, and Sister Matheson agreed to take the missionary lessons! Praise God daily. We've just been very blessed to be able to find people to teach. We've been working closely with the Kruger family, and they're still coming to church and working on living the word of Wisdom so that they can be baptized/rebaptized.

We went on exchanges to Salmon Arm and Sicamous this week! The parts of the Okanagan that we're in you can tell are very vacation-oriented. Sicamous is apparently the Houseboat capital of Canada. Everything is frozen over and in winter mode, but it's definitely a beautiful region, and there are lots of people here for winter sports. (Dad will be able to report back about the skiing!) We still found some humble people to share the gospel with though, so we won't complain.

Um... Mom wanted an Elder Fitzner story... Elder Fitzner spent hundreds of dollars on hockey cards when we were first companions looking for rare cards with pieces of jersey in them. He'd buy $40 bucks worth, not find what he was looking for, and then... go back and do it again! And then he decided they were distracting, so he gave them all to an investigator. He did get some very rare ones that apparently make it worth it as an investment if you're really into it.

Welll! The church is true. We're blessed up here in Vernon. I'll attach some pictures from the baptism!

Elder Blotter