2 Nephi 21:11 -Gathering the remnants from the "isles of the sea"

Famjam,

Well, just like that it's been another week! And yes, despite eating raw claw, I am still alive. We were told after eating them that on the Northern part of the island eating shellfish is temporarily off-limits because of "red tide", a bacteria that comes and goes, but when it comes, and you eat shellfish, you get paralyzed and sick. So far I can still move all my toes, so we're good! Honestly, the raw clams themselves weren't too bad, it was the greenish goop inside the stomach of the clam that made it a little less than desirable. The clam already ate it once... it doesn't need to be eaten a second time. :)

But yes! We had the chance to go clam digging with the chief, Sid! It was great. He has a massive 3500 diesel truck and we just drove for a while along places that you wouldn't think that vehicles could go along the beach and in between boulders and through forest and through rivers and found a pretty prime clam digging spot. After we had a good amount of clams, we went around delivering them to people. We were taught how to shuck clams, but we still made a deal with one of the recent converts here that we'd give her half of the ones left over if she would shuck them all. We're going to experiment making some clam chowder later. But the people on the islands here are just great. We have great discussions with Sid and Cindy. And whenever we go over for a lesson or even just to drop something off, we can't leave without them feeding us something. They're very generous.

Oh yeah! I also got my Haida name this week. I don't have my planner on me, and that's where I wrote it, and so I don't remember how it's actually spelled, but it's pronounced "eethahlingeye K'awjee Culth-gull", which means Fierce-eyed Gorgeous one. Actually it means "Yellow Haired Boy". But... you know. And in this culture, it's very offensive to pronounce a Haida name incorrectly. If you pronounce somebody's name wrong, you just give them $20. At a recent feast, apparently somebody from a different clan pronounced a chief of a different clans name incorrectly, and it was so silent you could hear a pin drop. So the matriarchs of the clan went around collecting money, and they gave the chief whose name was mispronounced $3000. So... you just don't try to say people's Haida names.

The work is going well, though! Haida Gwaii isn't a big place, and so we've talked to a some people a few times by now, but there are still a few rocks unturned and a few trees we haven't looked behind. The people on the reserves here are very willing to speak with us, and we do find a lot of new people to teach every week, and there are some very faithful investigators that just make the world go around. In smaller places you come to better appreciate how much the Lord does soften people's hearts, you can see people who weren't into talking the first time change their minds.

We've seen a lot of miracles as well! Eric is still doing well and excited about his baptism on April 6th (...or around there! Whenever President Tilleman can make it up.) There are a lot of miracle people on the island.

When we pulled into Masset and got cell service on Sunday, we got a voicemail from a recent convert in whose home we were planning on holding church letting us know that she would not be able to have church at her place because she needed to be at a feast that her clan was holding to celebrate one of the families adopting some children. So... that left us without any building to hold church in. We kind of were stuck! We literally started calling less actives and investigators to see if we could hold church in their homes. (They don't need a ride to church... church needs a ride to them...) We decided to swing by the community hall that we usually hold church in that has been closed for 3 weeks for renovations, and they hadn't started anything yet, and so we were able to just hold it there, so that much was good. We held church there with the misssionaries, one recent convert, one investigator, one member. Quality not quantity.

Well, it sounds like everything at home is going well! Thanks for all of the emails and the support! Love you all.

Jed:

Congrats for building a speedy school bus. It looks like a good vehicle. Hopefully you didn't learn TOO much at the MMA thing that you went to. And look at your hair! Is that how you do it now?

Elder Blotter

Family

Well, it's been another crazy week on Haida Gwaii, and I just have no time to write about all of the awesome things that I would like to! But... here we go!

First off... Haida Gwaii is filled with great people. We've seen so many miracles on the islands here. We've been blessed with a lot of great people to teach. And the work here is just... different than anywhere else. The community hall that we meet in up in Masset is under renovations, and so this week we met inside of a recent convert's home. It was a very powerful experience to be able to have a sacrament meeting all squished around a dinner table. One of our investigators, Sarah, is so faithful that she came to church and seemed to enjoy it even if where we were meeting or the number of people there didn't seem impressive (...or if in the background you could hear a TV blaring from one of her roommates in another room). It was a very cool experience.

We were also able this week just to meet with a lot of part-member families that we've wanted to meet with the entire time that we've been here and just haven't had the chance to meet with. Sometimes the miracles come in just having people there at just the right time for you to be able to meet with them. One day last week, we received a referral from one of the members and were instructed to go to the "blue house with the trampoline". We went to a house that fit the description, and the person didn't live there, but we did find somebody who was very interested and usually isn't home, but was there at just the right time. We later found out that 2 houses fit the description, but we were in the right place at the right time. That's just one little example, but just hundreds of things like that add up that all testify that we're not the ones in control, and it's not our work. It's awesome.

The members in small branches like up here are just awesome, too. The senior couple up here, the Masons, are just great. We'll ride with them up to Masset, and have district meetings with them. They help us out a ton in coming to lessons. They remind me of my grandparents that have also gone on missions! I don't know what we'd do without the Masons, and I can only imagine that the missionaries from the family are just as necessary in the Lord's work.

We had a few culinary adventures on the Gwaii this week, as well. The communities in general aren't very wealthy, and so the people eat a lot of seafood because it's very easy to get on Haida Gwaii. We've been fed some interesting things so far. This week was Val Malesku's birthday, and for her birthday we were cleaning the window's in she and Pete's

house. After we cleaned their house, they told us they were going to feed us. And for dinner, they taught us how to roll our own sushi. (They say that it's their goal to teach us things to make us as attractive as possible to the opposite gender by the time that we leave. I don't know if girls in Utah really are into sushi, but there haven't been missionaries on Haida Gwaii for that long, and Mook already has a collection of wedding announcements, so maybe they're on to something.) So this preparation day we got our own sushi rolling bamboo mat and we're going to make some sushi. The people here eat sea urchin eggs, I forget what it's called, but it's really... not good looking. We were fed a bunch of raw scallops. From the picture that Elder Mason said that he emailed to you guys, you can probably see that we're not starving, however. There's a little cafe up in Masset that makes burgers that have 2 grilled cheese sandwiches for the bun. Yeah... probably not the healthiest thing to eat.

Well, the church is true, even on the islands up here. We're in a secluded place, but we're blessed with people to find and teach. The church is true! We're very blessed.

Well, sure love you all. Thanks so much for the emails and the support! Hope that you have a great week!

Elder Blotter

Aloha

Mommm....

Enjoy Hawaii! The package didn't make it, so I asked the office to mail it up.

And... I don't think I'll be able to find my wallet! Lewiston State bank has got to be just sick of me, but do you think they could send up another card?

Thanks so much for all you do! You're the best mom in the world!

Love,

Elder Blotter

Another good report from Haida Gwaii

Family,

Well, what a great week it's been! Definitely a highlight week of the mission so far. We just carried on the work in Haida Gwaii, then flew down on Friday for the conference with Elder Christofferson, and then less than 24 hours later we were back and going on the islands. President Tilleman says that after the conference with Elder Christofferson, he asked him how he would describe his experience with the mission, and he said "I feel, just too sacred for me to put into words". And it was! It was such a powerful experience.

The last week went great! We found a lot of people to talk to, taught lessons, and got people to church. All the missionary meat n' potatoes. There are a lot of less active members here that have been less actives more or less all their lives because they moved here when young and there's no church here, or because they joined the church when they were a part of the placement program. There are some world famous Haida artists that I heard about/saw murals they'd painted in Vancouver that are on our ward list up here. Probably the world's most active inactive member (We visit with her, her husband, and her sister, Wendy, all the time. They're great) Val Malesku, is a member. I don't know if you can learn too much about her or her art online, but she's a pretty big deal. To serve them sometimes we help her work on projects or jewelry or whatever else that she's working on, and she'll ask us questions while we're working on stuff. We spent our dinnertime yesterday eating rice crispies and I became a master at burnishing earrings. Life skills you learn on your mission. Jewelry burnishing. Whenever we ask her to come to church or anything along those lines, she gives us a business card with her name and contact information on it, and it just says "Not Gonna Happen, Don't Even Go There". They're funny.

The weather in Haida Gwaii is pretty bipolar, and even though Queen Charlotte is about 10 minutes from Skidegate, it was blizzarding in Skidegate and there were clear skies in Charlotte, and it always seems that in our planning sessions we somehow manage to make plans that put us in the middle of the blizzard. So we'll coat up, grab a scarf and everything, drive out and work, then when we come back for lunch it's sunny. But it's so beautiful here! The snow covering the trees looks majestic, and so it's hard to complain about it.

But anyways, the experience with Elder Christofferson was amazing. We had a meeting at 5:00 in the mission office on Friday to take a mission picture and have some time to be trained by President Tilleman, but our flight didn't land until 5:15. (We walked in just as everybody was walking away from the stage where they took the mission picture, literally just seconds too late to be involved. They're going to photoshop us in. I told the guy I wouldn't complain about not being in the picture, as long as they photoshopped me slightly more muscular and taller.) As a mission we fasted that day, just to prepare to meet with an apostle the next day, and it was such a powerful experience.

That night we stayed with the Surrey 3rd elders, who just so happen to be Elder Atwood and Elder Holtby. Yep, they're companions. And they're pretty much doing how you'd expect them to be doing. :)

The next morning, we were asked to be in our seats by 8, and the meeting was supposed to start at 9, but we woke up at 5 to get there as early as possible, and we probably got there at an average time. We were so excited. Even before the meeting started, the spirit was so strong. I think I half expected some crazy new missionary techniques or some out of the box ideas to be revealed to the mission, but the things that were emphasized were just principles from the doctrine of Christ and principles from Preach my Gospel. Some things are probably too sacred to share, but he left some very cool blessings on the mission, and he bore a very powerful testimony of Jesus Christ "as somebody who knows that He lives". Among other things, he testified that Jesus Christ actively guides and directs the Church. "He doesn't just check in every once in a while." It was very powerful.

He also said some really cool things about our mission. He says it's an example of a mission where the work has hastened, and he had some very cool things to say about President Tilleman. He told us that "they don't have a better mission president" than President Tilleman, and he exhorted us to learn as much from watching him as we could with the time that he has left on his mission. We're blessed in the Canada Vancouver mission, that's for sure.

Well, in closing, I'd like to bear a brief testimony, from someone who recently heard it from the mouth of a special witness, that Jesus Christ lives. He's our Savior! As it's stylized here in Canada, He is our Saviour. What a blessing it is to know that and to have His influence in our lives. I hope that you all have a great week this week.

Elder Blotter