Haida Gwaii

Family,

Well, just like that it's been another week! That's crazy. It's already May! Where did April go? Where did 2013 go, for that matter? It's been a great week, though. Lots of awesome experiences on the islands of Haida Gwaii.

The past... 3 days now have just been sunny and gorgeous! We're hoping that May just kind of stays that way, but people who have access to weather forecasts tell us that's not the case. But still. Faith and Hope are attributes we're supposed to be developing, so there you go. Yesterday we spent most of the day working in Tlell, a little community with a few ranches, lots of hippies, and then people that are called "wuhwoofers" after the "willing workers on organic farms" program, or in other words, people who just kind of threw the towel in on their old lives, and then migrated to Haida Gwaii to work for food on organic farms. In short, we had a lot of unique conversations about the gospel with types of people that you really can only find on Haida Gwaii. But it was just beautiful! The main road (There really is only one paved road on the island, other than roads that have houses on them, and there's only one streetlight by the ferry landing. But hey! They've got one!) overlooks the ocean and forest and rocky beach, and then the  driveways take you through scenic little pastures with ponds and forest and stuff. Beautiful. Unfortunately, the nice weather has also brought out these awesome little black flies that make horseflies seem desirable. They're not as painful, but there's just a ton of them, and they just make it their life's objective to get in your hair and just kind of gnaw on your head. We finally had to bum some bug spray from someone, which worked great for me, but Elder Rose had an allergic reaction to it that caused his lips to swell up... yeah. Well, enough about those little bundles of joy.

Alma Rose is just doing great! We are very much looking forward to her baptism on Saturday. Brother Rasmussen, the only male member of the church on the southern half of the island excluding the missionaries and kids, is going to be baptizing her, and then her confirmation will be the following day, and she asked me to confirm her, which will just be awesome. (I can just tell you all about it later that evening, seeing how it will be Mother's Day). Alma Rose is just solid. The friend group on the island for young single people is just not one that's very supportive of her joining the church, and is one that kind of makes fun of the church and religion in general. She's just taking it all in stride, though, and just doing great. She has a lot of faith and we're excited for the weekend. President Tilleman will be flying up on Thursday for her baptismal interview, and for the length of his stay we'll be in charge of making sure that all of his time is filled with lessons with investigators and interviews and things like that with members, and so that will be pretty intense. That in and of itself will be really exciting, but also... we really hope that everything goes well. :)

We had a lot of very cool teaching opportunities this week. Bro. Rasmussen is a member of the RCMP in Queen Charlotte, (so whenever he's riding with us to a lesson, if we pass by a group of people playing softball, we might saying "oh, that looks fun" while he's saying "oh, those guys are at it again. I'd better swing by and confiscate the alcohol before it comes out", and stuff like that) Anyways, over the course of his day to day work he's had a few conversations with a young man who is on house arrest because he got tied into drug trafficking a while ago. He's totally repentant about it and is just serving out his time patiently,  but he's had a few conversations with Bro. Rasmussen about the church, and we just met with him for the first time. It's interesting because we're about the same age, and we've gone down some pretty different paths, but at this point, (since he probably does have a lot of time to think) he realizes that his life definitely feels like it's missing something. He has a lot of real intent, and in our first lesson the spirit was definitely very strong.

It was a cool experience all on it's own, and it also made me reflect as we were leaving that some way or another, Heavenly Father will work out so that the people that are ready to be taught, we will be able to teach. The young man lives in a separate apartment behind his parent's house right now, and there's just no way that we'd know about it, or have any way of contacting him, if it wasn't for the way that things worked out. This is God's work, and it moves forward!

Well, the church is true! Hope that you all have just the best week, and I'll talk to you on Sunday!

Elder Blotter