Hello!

Family,

Well, it's been a great week up here on Haida Gwaii. If I look to my left, I see a clear sky with the sun shining on calm ocean, with a bunch of ducks swimming closer to the beach, and some pine tree covered hills on an island across the channel. It's just gorgeous. We've started to have some really nice days up here! It usually will still rain off and on throughout the day, and it's still not all too warm up here, but for Northern BC, we'll take it! 

Easter was great! We were indeed invited to a dinner. For the past year or so in the mission, we've emphasized consecrated finding time- we're out finding when people are home, finding from 5 to 7 pm. We also only have dinner appointments when there's a less active member, recent convert, or a nonmember there. So dinner appointments are usually few and far between kind of intentionally. But, we're fed all the time on the islands here because there are lots of people that aren't members that want to feed us, and lots and lots are recent converts. We probably have like 50,000 calories of leftovers in our fridge. And hopefully those last, because the missionary funds card still has yet to be sent here, and Elder Rose is out, and so we can't get groceries until that arrives! Oh! But miracle! In the fight against the the paradoxical forces of gaining weight in an area where food is the most expensive and you have half the funds you usually do, we have obtained a treadmill that one of the members here, Wendy, isn't using! We've had it since Monday, and it's been prime. Awesome tender mercy.

The members here in general are just awesome. Wendy and Val are sisters, and they've been longtime members, but Wendy has only been active since the church has been back (kind of hard to be active when there's no church to be active in) and Val doesn't really remember being baptized and "isn't really into the whole church thing" (...yet). But they're both funny. Val is an artist, and so we help her sometimes work on different projects. They have aprons and pillows, etc. that have skulls and crossbones, and things like that because they were skaters and hippies and whatever else back in the day, but for when we come over they've made a bunch of fabric that has phrases like "Praise Jesus" on it and they safety pin the fabric over whatever it is that would otherwise be "offensive". They're funny. I can't remember if I've already told you about them or not. They invited a bunch of their friends over for Easter dinner, and we had the chance to meet them, so we were well taken care of.

The work has just been great! We were in a lesson with one of our new investigators, Alma Rose, and I was reflecting on the counsel the prophet in Preach My Gospel to invite people to be baptized on a specific day by the 2nd lesson, and it was our second lesson, and even though it wasn't clear how it was going to go, the prompting came really powerfully that we needed to invite her to be baptized. And you know, the lesson just kind of moved in that direction all on its own, and when she was invited to be baptized, she just said "yes" and has been working towards being baptized since! It was an awesome experience. Alma is awesome because 1) she has the name of a Book of Mormon prophet 2) she's facing a lot of opposition from some of her family on the other side of Canada and she just doesn't mind it at all. Very faithful.

Things have been going just great though. We've continued our quest of knocking every single door on the islands here, even those that aren't clustered in the little villages, and that has taken us through the boonies of Graham island, There's a town of a few hundred people, mostly loggers and the socially disinclined, called Port Clements halfway in between Skidegate and Masset. And around there, there are a bunch of roads that take you into the wilderness, but they have power lines that lead you to obscure little clusters of houses. We've found a lot of people to talk to, because as one couple told us, "you two are the first other people that we've seen at our house in.... (they look at each other...) months!" And they are very willing to talk to us because of that. So that's great! We'll keep on looking under ever rock. And then the rocks that are easy to get to, we'll look under a few times. And then a few times more. :)

Well, we're certainly blessed here on Haida Gwaii. And we love it. Transfer calls for my last transfer are this Monday, but since our p-day is on Tuesday, I'll know what's going on. We're both expecting to stay put.

It's good to hear that you all had a good Easter! We celebrate and reflect on the resurrection every week when we partake of the Sacrament, and hopefully more frequently than that, but it's awesome to have a holiday to celebrate it. He lives!

Love you all. And hope you have a great week!

Elder Blotter