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