Christmas Morning...

Merry Christmas!

Family,

Merry Christmas! What an exciting time of the year. Actually, it just feels extremely weird that it's already Christmas. I can't believe that I'll be chatting all of you on the 25th. It's strange that it's already been a year since I was being dragged around with my jaw on the floor trying to adjust to Vancouver after being in Burns Lake for 6 months! One of the good things about being in Vernon as opposed to Vancouver is that this year, it's a "white" Christmas. Christmas just doesn't jive with moss and grass and flowers and lots of rain. (Plus, it's a balmy +3 degrees outside, so we get the best of both worlds in the Okanagan. It really isn't that much colder here than Cache Valley)

The past week has been a great one. Since Elder Baker was gone, and Elder Fitzner didn't arrive until Friday. And with transfers and Christmas calls and the monthly meeting with the Stake President, and a bunch of not-that-exciting administrative stuff, combined with working with the teaching pools of two different areas, it was just a really busy week. And when you're a missionary, being as busy as possible is a good thing. Because I was the only zone leader left holding up the fort, there were a whole bunch of decisions that were made kind of... one sided. For example, they put some sister missionaries in our ward (Our area was super small. And now is super smaller. They probably just put in another set here instead of a place with more wiggle room because the work is going well in the Vernon 1st Ward. But still! 4 sets of missionaries in Vernon! The work is hastening!) It kind of felt like cheating to pick which areas to keep in our area and which parts to give to the new sister missionaries, but we gave them a good chunk of Vernon and the promised land of Armstrong, so they should be all right.

Among other things, we had the biggest polygamy throwdown since Wilford Woodruff and Warren Jeff's great-great-grandpa. We've been working for a few weeks with April, our polygamist investigator, and we finally just had to lay out everything about polygamy and how she would need to find out if Thomas S. Monson was a prophet of God and commit to leave that lifestyle behind if she wanted to be baptized. It went very well, and her concern now is mostly that she doesn't want to get divorced if her husband wants to stay on the path that he's currently traveling down. Just in talking with April, it's helped me realize that we're very blessed to have a prophet on the earth today to give us guidance from our loving Heavenly Father. What a confusing world it would be if we were left to try and pick and choose and guess at what our purpose in life was meant to be. We have a path directly back to our Heavenly Father laid out for us, and we've been given the agency to choose to follow it for ourselves and see the blessings that follow in our lives. I can't think of better Christmas presents! 

Toni, the eternal investigator who we just love to death, is totally going to get baptized when she gets back from Christmas break. We've been working with her ever since I came to Vernon. It's almost been like a funnel with her. We've slowly been working through her concerns, and she's just made so many awesome changes in her life.

Family, I want each of you to know how grateful each one of you! Thanks for all the support that you've given me over the past months. And I'm grateful for this beautiful Christmas season when we can reflect on the Savior and ultimate gift that he's given each of us. I hope that you all have the merriest of Merry Christmases!

Well, talk to you soon! I'm going to try to send off that Christmas package home sometime today. The Canada Post probably takes 6 months off for the Holiday season, so I might not be able to send it until next preparation day. But... Merry Christmas!

Elder Blotter

Elder Blotter's Testimony read in Sacrament Meeting, December 22nd, 2013

ELDER JOSH BLOTTER-

          I know that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the World. I know that He knows each of us. I know that He is our Advocate, Redeemer, Brother and Friend. I know that when we act in love, we serve him, and when we sacrifice, He sees it, and He blesses us so much more than whatever we gave up. He is our example, and when we follow with an eye single, we are filled with light and happiness.

     Our Heavenly Father is a perfect, loving God. A God of Mercy and a God of Justice. For him to be able to create this beautiful plan of Redemption and become more like Him, there would have to be one willing to literally go through the darkest of dark, experience the most bitter of pain, bleed from every pore, and pay the ultimate price for us. And he did that, so that we can have the opportunity to return to live with our Father. He suffered for each of us. He knew every rebellious mistake that we would make, and he still chose to extend the ultimate gift, the greatest gift of all time, because he has a perfect love for us.

           It is because of Him that we can change. I know that the only way, literally the only path that leads to happiness and light and love, is through the atonement of Jesus Christ.  "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth of the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord and becoming as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father".

            The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is just that. I know that. And I know that as a missionary, I am doing his work, and what He would do. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen!

Merry Christmas to us.

                         Presents from Elder Blotter in Canada!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2012

We LOVE Canada!

Re: Van City...

YES!!  That will be perfect. I am also pretty sure that will be 11:00 our time. We will talk to you then!!!   You white handbook missionary, you.  :)  Love, Mom

Van City...

Okay! So. I'm going to send this before writing an email, hoping to get a confirmation that this time will work for the fam. So, how President Tilleman told us it is going to work is we give you our cell phone numbers and tell you a set time to call us. I'm not sure why we're doing it that way, but it should work out fine! So... would it work for you to call at 10:00 AM (In Canada/Mountain West/whatever time zone I am in time)? That would be most convenient for us because it would be right after studies, and we wouldn't have to ride the transit home in the day to make the calls. I would google search and convert it into whatever time that would be for you guys, but I'm not allowed to use google, so that won't work. I'm guessing that would be like 11:00 or something for your time, but I'm not sure. The White Handbook says that calls should be "short (preferably no longer than 30 or 40 minutes)" and we're a white handbook following mission. So... no skyping. Ha ha. President Tilleman says that if calls go much longer than an hour, then you're no longer keeping them "short". Elder Smith's family will call him at 11:30 AM our time.

Anyways, our number is 1-604-644-2108. Hope to hear from you soon!

Elder Blotter