We're just devastated up in Vernon.

Family!

 

Elder Baker is getting transferred! Isn't that the worst?! We only had 2 short transfers together, and he's gone. Transfer calls come on Monday, but his came on Saturday because I'm 99.9% sure that he is going to be an Assistant. (We should have just been less obedient so that he could stick around... just kidding. But still. :)) Right now, I'm sitting an emailing with a missionary from the Vernon 2nd Ward, and our next companions will come later on Friday. So that's the transfer news. We were just not happy about that at all. And we probably have 1,000,000 cookies in our apartment because everybody that we visited for Elder Baker to say goodbye to seemed to have a plate of cookies on hand. And crazy! It's Christmas time again already. And we're just going to keep findingteachingbaptizing. Mission life. It's the best.

 

For me and Elder Baker's last supper, we went to a sushi place that we've driven past a million times on the way to our apartment, but never eaten at because it has a sign that says "No swimsuits allowed. Thanks, management." Because of that... we've always figured that... eating there might be a mistake. But then, we decided that we would just have to, just because we always drive by it. Long story short, the waitress didn't speak English very well, and she mistook our order for a much larger one that would have cost about $50. Even with BC prices, that's a lot of sushi. Over the course of negotiating what amount we would pay (they ended up only charging us $30) the waitress noticed our name tags, and she has a friend in Japan that is a member. We were able to talk to her about the gospel as well! We'll hopefully start teaching her soon. We're sushi'd out, but it was worth it.

 

This week was a good week, but a busy one. We were on exchanges in different places for most of the week. Our first exchange was in Kamloops, and the second was in Salmon Arm, and in both of those exchanges I served with missionaries that I had previously worked with either in Vancouver or Kitimat. It's fun to see how missionaries grow and change and improve over time. Elder Baker says that I look totally different than I do in the pictures from before I was leaving, (It's probably just because my face is... slightly more... round. Ha ha) but it's interesting to reflect on the changes that I have made over the past 18 months. And fortunately there's still plenty of time to grow. I'm really excited for the next 6 months!

 

This week, we also had an awesome zone meeting. We talked about Jacob and Esau in Genesis 25 and not selling your mission "birthrights" for the "natural man". Meetings like that are kind of intense, because you go into them thinking, "Hm. Our whole zone is here, and expecting 2 hours of spiritual feasting and enlightened guidance... what are we talking about again?" But... it works out, and you usually don't even have time to talk about everything that you planned to talk about. I don't know if that equals "spiritual feasting and enlightened guidance", but our zone is awesome, and they put up with us.

 

This week we were very blessed. It was P-day, then we were out of our area for exchanges and zone meeting until Wednesday evening, then Thursday is Weekly Planning day, and we left after the planning session for an exchange until the ward Christmas party on Friday evening. And then Elder Baker to pack and everything, so we really just weren't in our area a lot.  But the Lord knew that we were doing everything that we could for the week, so we were still very blessed in our efforts. On Wednesday, we had to schedule a lot of lessons so that we could still be helping our investigators progress, but when we did have time to go out and find, the first person that came to the door was interested, and his roommate was a foster child who was raised in an LDS home and really loved it there, and so we're teaching that family. When we went to an appointment on Friday, the investigator had to cancel, but as we were walking back to our car, we talked to this lady who was walking somewhere with her daughter, and invited her to the ward Christmas party, and we ended up teaching her, too. Missionary work really isn't "our" work, we are just very blessed with miracles every day that help the work move forward.

 

Well, the church is true! Merry Christmas, everyone! And happy birthday, Mother Dearest! I have a Christmas package that I am going to send down with a bunch of Canadian candy and other miscellaneous stuff. I haven't been able to send it because I was temporarily separated from my wallet, but I fortunately had a joyful reunion with it and so I have the funds to send it home now. It won't make it by Christmas, but... It's the thought that counts! Love you all!

 

Elder Blotter

The Spirit of God....is Burnin' in Vernon.

Family,

Well, just like that it's been another week. Man, it's weird how quickly time goes by. It's been a great week! Time is certainly not going slowly. There were a lot of spiritual outpourings this week. We were down in Richmond for mission council earlier this week, and it was an amazing experience. For the year 2014, the mission set a goal for 2014 convert baptisms, which is probably 5 times the number of baptisms that we'll have this year. The work is hastening! The faith of the missionaries in the council was just awesome. In the Canada Vancouver mission, we've started to find more new investigators in a one year period than there are members in the province.

This weekend, Kelly got baptized! (Toni's is now for December 15th) It was a beautiful baptismal service. Kelly really was a miracle. The highlight of the service was her testimony at the end. She stood up and bore a brief testimony of the Book of Mormon and the spiritual power that she can find in the pages, and then she talked about how her entire life she has been searching for the truth, and has explored tons of different churches, but "3 weeks ago the missionaries knocked on my door, came back the next day, and I've known that I have found the truth ever since". She's such an awesome convert. It really has been a blessing to have taught her.

Okay. I wish I had all the time in the world to write down all of the crazy spiritual experiences that we have every week. One of them... so, President Tilleman promised us that if we do everything that we can every day, we will be able to find at least one new investigator every day. One day we went all day without finding anyone in between our teaching appointments, and we just kept on thinking of that promise and we were questioning if we had done "everything" that we could have that day. We ended up finding our new investigator that day at 8:56 as I was backing up Elder Baker (fun missionary safety rule) so we could pull out of our parking spot and drive to the apartment for the evening. This guy walked by the vehicle, and so I stopped him, and Elder Baker got out of the vehicle and we ended up teaching him a lesson right on the spot there.

Last night, we had our FLDS investigator to the Christmas Devotional. She loved it. It's amazing to realize that we have a living prophet on the earth today, who can give us messages directly from Heavenly Father. What a blessing that would be for the whole world, if they would just listen to the message that we share. It's made me reflect on the blessings that the gospel brings to those who actually apply it in their lives. Every day we're on the streets and getting glimpses into people's homes. And guess what? People need the gospel! In conference, Elder Ballard committed the whole church to "reach out to just one" with love as a gift to the Saviour. I hope that everybody remembers to do so! It won't go unnoticed by those watching from Heaven.

Well, Merry Christmas, everybody! Happy birthday next week, Mother! I guess next P-day will be the 16th so there will be another email then, but still! Sorry, this email might be short! We have a baptismal interview that we have to conduct that we need to get to! Love you all lots!

Elder Blotter

PS- 

One of the pictures is us and Kelly. 

In the other one, Steven Rasmussen (who is doing great over in Ontario and still going strong since his baptism,) is in between me and Elder Baker. Drunk Tim (still a work in progress) is on the end.

What's Happen'n in Vernon.

Family,

What a great week it's been in the Canada Vancouver mission! The church is just way too true up in Vernon. And this is totally the best place to be in the winter. It's been above freezing pretty much all the time here. It's snowed a few times, but nothing has stuck yet. It's got nothing on Burns Lake, and it's not rainy at all like Vancouver is. 

It's weird to think that it was Thanksgiving down in the States this week. Elder Baker is Canadian, and even after 19 years of being an American I never really got around to figuring out what day Thanksgiving is supposed to be on (last Thursday or 4th Thursday or something like that?), so we didn't even think about it except for maybe day of. So, no turkey this Thanksgiving! I think the last time that I had a dinner appointment was Canadian Thanksgiving, and that's probably one of the maybe 2 I've had in Burnaby and Vernon. We don't really eat in members homes. From 5 to 7 is "prime proselyting time" and we don't eat meals in that time frame, because that's when everybody is home. 7-9 is consecrated member time and we're asked to visit 2 members a night, but we're supposed to look for "teaching opportunities, not eating opportunities". It's kind of weird to think about, but we literally find 10 times the number of new investigators than the mission did 3 or 4 years ago and we teach 6 times as many lessons with a member present. Our mission president is inspired. 

Well, this week has brought in some changes. Steven Rasmussen has left for a month to go visit his family in Ontario. We told him he's going to find a wife in the YSA over there. We're still working with his roommate, Chris. It's been really cool to work with him, because Chris is this 19 year old kid who has been in prison for drug use (he used to say stuff like "I like rap when it's real. I like 50 Cent and all, but he's never been shot in the jaw." ...but then he found out that we don't think saying stuff like that is cool. So he stopped.) who never would be interested in meeting with missionaries if we knocked on his door, but he's seen the effect that it's had on Steven, and he stuck around for a few lessons, and so now he's totally willing to meet with us and experiment with praying and building a relationship with God. His first few prayers have been awesome, because of how sincere he is about it. He'll keep on wanting to start over or ask questions in the middle of the prayer just because he wants them to be perfect. We set a baptismal date with him for the end of December.

We're also working with a lot of miracle people! The Lord really does prepare people and put them in our path. A part-member family moved into the ward from one of those obscure BC villages in the middle of nowhere, and they're really humble and want to change. They're the kind of family that has a "Family Home Evening" board with pegs on it, but instead of hanging names or stuff on it, they use it as a storage device to hang aprons and bags and stuff like that on it. So they're pretty cool. They have a bunch of little kids that make teaching really hard, but they're cute, so it's good. Our mission president has promised us that if we do everything that we can, we should be finding one new investigator every day. Man. That is so true. One day we had gone all day without finding our new investigator for that day, and it was about 8:55, and I was standing behind the car backing Elder Baker before we went home for the night, when this guy walked past the car. So we stop him, and start teaching him right outside of the complex that we in and he became a new investigator. The church is true!

Kelly and Toni are both going to be baptized this weekend! Kelly has just loved everything that we've taught her. When we taught her the Plan of Salvation, she just described it as being "perfect". When you find somebody that's elect, you just think back, "what if we had gone to a different area that day? What if we had knocked on her door when she wasn't home?" Things just work out. Heavenly Father just kind of orchestrates everything the way that it needs to happen. We found out that they are probably putting sisters in our ward next transfer, and the vast majority of our progressing investigators are female, and so it's good motivation to baptize them all before we hand all of our female investigators off to the sisters that will be put in.

One thing that we've been focusing on is how we should be talking with everyone all the time as we go throughout our day, even if it's on P-day and we're shopping, or whatever else. After traveling back from exchanges recently, went to eat at this all-you-can-eat sushi place, and where we were sitting, we were sitting right next to this couple that was eating. So we starting talking to them, and tell them a little bit about what they do and just had a little gospel conversation with them. Turns out that the man had roots in Raymond, which is where Elder Baker is from. And when we got up to pay, they said that they had paid for our food! Maybe that was our Thanksgiving miracle.

Anyways, the church is true! We're about to drive to Kelowna to get on a bus and head down to Richmond for mission council, which will be a spiritual feast. But hey. We'll talk to you all next week. Thanks for the emails!

Elder Blotter

As well as being true, the church is also cold in Vernon.

Family!

 

Well, it's been another whirlwind week in Vernon. It's actually 4 degrees outside, which is really warm (dealing in Celsius here), but we were on exchanges in Kamloops earlier this week, and it was windy and -15, and there's lots of snow there, and it was cold. The elders there went on an unauthorized exchange, and somebody trying to merge into their lane and wasn't looking where they were going, and crashed into their car. It's been in the shop for 2 months, so they've been having to use bikes in the snow and the cold. So... yeah. We won't complain.

 

Anyways! We're seeing a lot of miracles in Vernon. The teaching pool is just amazing. Except... there are some people that really, really, really, need to be baptized. There are 4 people, Toni, Kelly, Vicki, and Melissa. They all really, really, really, really, need to be baptized. Well, everybody does, but they do in particular. Everyone that we've been working with has made so much progress. When we first met with Toni, she had no Christian background, and she is just an unbaptized Mormon now. We've been working with Toni for a really long time, and just recently she has committed to be baptized on December 7th, the same day that Kelly is preparing for. As far as the work in Canada goes, that's a day of pentecost. Melissa already calls herself Mormon. She's from a part-member family that we've been working with. And Vicki! Oh my goodness. Vicki. we've been working with for forever, but she just hasn't been able to kick an addiction to smoking. Still. We're praying and working for a "white" Christmas.

 

Okay. So... Elder Baker and I have realized that I have this supernatural power of jinxing things. It started when a few weeks ago, I would say things like "I feel like I haven't ever worked with somebody who was struggling with [insert concern here]" and without fail, within a week we would find out that one of our investigators would have that concern. I would say something like "You know what? We just haven't faced any opposition from people at doors this week at all" and then we'd hit some. So finally, we realize that I am saying the wrong sort of things. So, I start by saying "You know, I just have never taught somebody who just has no concerns with any commandments and then just gets baptized 3 weeks later" and boom. We find Kelly, who has had no issues with any commandments and has come to church twice and loves it. She's totally ready to go and has loved church for the past 2 weeks. Anyways. I wish I could remember all the crazy things that I jinxed. Anyways. Before church yesterday, I said "I wish that somebody would just walk off the street and sit down next to us at church today like Patrick did." Boom. Sacrament Meeting. We're sitting at the back because we were making sure that Vicki, Kelly, Melissa, and Toni, and Steven were all accounted for resulted in us only having time to plop down at the back of the chapel. Sure enough, half way through the service, this massive man walked in halfway through the service and just knelt down next to our bench. We scooted over and gestured for him to come and sit down next to us, and he smelled like cigarettes and coffee. Man. Turns out he was a less active who was baptized in Vancouver a few years ago, and he is currently living from a truck camper in a small town near Vernon. We're working with him now. Still. Miracles have not ceased.

 

Our zone had an amazing week as well. Our mission has been improving a lot over the past few years. The work has been hastening. A long time ago, the standards of excellence for the mission were set for 3 member-present lessons and 2 new investigators. That was it. This week, we started a zone challenge of having each area teach 3 member present lessons, find 3 new investigators, and set one baptismal date in 3 days. And we followed up with each area as the week went on. The power of setting goals with faith and doing everything that you can to accomplish them is crazy. When as a zone we broke it down day by day and did absolutely everything that we could each day, the zone did amazing. Man. I love missionary work.

 

Sorry this email is a short one! And... family, I hope that you all have a great week! Happy Birthday, Dad and Ness! (I most certainly did not forget, Sister Dear.)

 

Much love,

 

Elder Blotter

Vernon

Family,

 

Oh man. Where to even begin this email? I know. This is what Elder Atwood sent me this week. (He only just barely got transferred out of Kitimat) Our apartment in Kitimat was just awesome.

 

Elder Blotter,

Remember that guy that would always throw up during personal study?? Well, as it turns out it wasn't Shawn (the native guy who we thought it was) it was the bro that lived bellow us. Well, recently our apartment complex started smelling really nasty (like for 3 days) and we called and told Mira Dugga (dang JW..) and let her know that there was something that was most likely dead in the complex and she laughed it off as nothing. Well, yesterday night the RCMP was there because the guy that lived below us was dead. Can you believe that?? There was legitly a dead guy living (or not) in our complex. He had been dead for about a week. We had officer Kelly in our apartment asking if we knew the guy. Needless to say, we didn't. That's the crazy story. We were living with a dead guy, breathing the same air that he wasn't.

Gods' Speed Elder.

Elder Atwood

 

Anyways, not on that note, this week was literally one of the best weeks of my mission! Last weekly planning, Elder Baker and I looked at the goals that we had set, and we decided that they were good goals, but we decided that those would not be our goals if this was the last week of our missions. So we went through our plans, and decided to treat the entire week like it was the last week of our missions. For example, there's no way on the last week of your mission you'd spend until 6:00 not doing missionary work, so we ended our P day a few hours early. You wouldn't sit around your apartment eating (John 4:34), you wouldn't walk from door to door, etc. So we made a lot of little tiny sacrifices here and there, but we were given major blessings from Heavenly Father. We did find more new investigators and teach more lessons than either of us had previously, but we just saw miracles upon miracles this week. I couldn't even try to write all of them down with the time that we have. Our planners just filled up with lessons to teach and whenever we went finding we found people to teach. It was a great week.

 

So, some of the cool experiences from the week!

 

First, I had the amazing opportunity to ordain Steven a Priest. I had never conferred the Priesthood to anybody before, but it was a very sacred experience. We've got Steven all ready to go on a temple trip so he'll be able to help some of his ancestors receive saving ordinances this weekend. To see how much he has changed from not that much longer than 5 or 6 weeks ago when he was a heavy alcoholic and a heavy smoker is just amazing. One of our new investigators that we found this week, Kelly, came to church for the first time this week, and we hadn't had the chance to teach her about the Word of Wisdom yet, but Steven in the Gospel Principles lesson just started talking about it in one of his comments, and it touched Kelly so much that after she came up to us and whispered "No Coffee!?" We were kind of worried about what her response would be, but after we briefly explained the Word of Wisdom she said that she would stop drinking it. It was a miracle.

 

We taught an FLDS lady this week! Literally, a convert to the FLDS church of a few years. The member that we took with us was just fascinated and couldn't stop asking questions. She was an evangelical Born Again, and her husband used to be Catholic, and they did some research and somehow decided that being FLDS was right for them. Fortunately,they're on team Winston Blackmore instead of team Warren Jeffs, but the husband is currently "courting" an FLDS lady from Kamloops who is 40. The wife is excited about it because it will balance out their ages (he's 50 and she's 30). I'll just stop describing the situation lest I sound judgmental (the husband won't meet with us because he thinks that all "mainstream" Mormons are judgemental). Anyways, teaching her was fascinating because she only has a rudimentary understanding of everything. She had heard of the Book of Mormon, but she had never read it. She had heard of Doctrine and Covenants, but didn't really know what it was. Since she believes that Joseph Smith is a prophet, she sincerely wants to learn more about him, and so she wants to come to church and meet with us to learn about what's going on. So that will be really cool.

 

Oh yeah! I turned 21 this week. That was weird. In keeping with tradition, we ate a bazillion plates of food at "The Curry Pot", an East Indian buffet that isn't quite as good as the Indian Oven. I still haven't found Indian food that is as good as the Indian Oven, except for possibly at the Sikh temple. I might be biased. For a heavenly birthday present, we found like 5 people to teach that day and we set a baptismal date with this lady named Jodi Snow. She has severe memory loss because she got hit by a truck after pushing her 3 year old son out of the way, so we're hoping that she still remembers that she has a baptismal date, but she's a very special lady with a lot of real intent. We were jogging down a street and in between houses there was this driveway, and we decided to jog down it and there was a whole complex back there behind all the houses, and every other door had somebody inside that was interested in hearing about the gospel.

 

Well, every day we witness the Lord hastening His work! And we're doing everything that we can to hasten it. We're not going to let the mouthes of prophets fail by not doing everything that we can to help more of Heavenly Father's children have every opportunity to hear and accept the gospel. I wish that each one of you could come on a "mini-mission" like Adam did up in Vernon and see how true the Church is. We knocked on somebody's door, and they were super rude, and then we forgot that we had already knocked on that door, and they opened up again, and so... we asked them if they had changed their minds. And they totally invited us back later this week. Turns out, people do want to hear the gospel, we just need to show some faith and try to share it.

 

Well! Love you all! Hope that you have a great week!

 

Elder Blotter

Happy Remembrance Day!

Hello family!

It's Canada's more-emphasized version of Veteran's Day today! Well, I don't know about more-emphasized, but it's a big deal up in Canada. Shopping took a while because of "moments of silence" where they came over the loudspeakers and told everybody to quiet down. It was neat. Everybody, even missionaries, wears these fake poppies pinned to their clothes for a few weeks before Remembrance Day. It's pretty intense. For the first and probably only time (I missed the first Canada Day in the MTC, and most of the Kitimat branch wasn't Canadian so we didn't sing it then either) of my life, I sang O Canada in a Sacrament Meeting. Tears were certainly shed.

Well, this week has been a spiritual feast, as far as weeks go. This week was mission conference and mission council, and so our whole zone made the 6 hour bus ride down to the lower mainland to hear from President Tilleman and Elder Paul V. Johnson of the 70. We received so much guidance. It was kind of like getting a drink from a fire hose. I loved it. A lot of missionaries were expecting some form of technology to be introduced at this mission conference, but no iPads for the Canada Vancouver mission yet. We were taught how to continue to hasten the work, though: by talking with everyone! By working with members! "Hastening the work" means working harder and following the counsel of our priesthood leaders, not getting iPads.

One of the most amazing trainings that I've received yet on my mission was in mission council with Elder Johnson. His training pretty much was just one inspired question: "What have you learned about leadership from President and Sister Tilleman?" And that question was all that it took. We just filled the rest of the time. President Tilleman literally had tears in his eyes and as he shook my hand as he was going around the room, he said "that was the hardest thing I have had to do in my life". Humble giant. I know that everybody says that their mission is the best mission in the world. But really. We think our mission is the best mission in the world. :) We were reflecting on the influence that our mission president has had on our lives, and President Tilleman really is a fantastic mission president. He really shows that the best leaders are the best followers. He just makes you want to follow the prophet.

We've seen a lot of very awesome miracles over the past week! We had a lot of experiences over the past week that really emphasized how "every moment counts" on your mission. We found several new investigators over the past week from choosing to go and work hard instead of sitting around. Yesterday, we were going to pick up a member for a lesson, and we had about 10 minutes early. We could have made calls or something. The calls probably would have been a good use of time. But, we ran outside and on the 2nd door we knocked on, we were able to teach a (admittedly quick) first lesson. We found several new investigators in that period where it's about 15 or 20 minutes until curfew, it's been dark for hours, it's cold, rainy, and people seem more irritated when you knock on their doors. It really is when you put in a little extra effort that you see miracles. Over the past transfer, we've constantly been trying to find ways to hasten the work, and I've been working harder than I ever have previously on my mission. We just run everywhere and are always going and going. Learning how to push out the natural man that wants us to stay in our warm and dry car.

Oh man. I love the work in Vernon. Latisha, Steven's landlord who is a former investigator, just called us to tattle on Tim and Chris, Steven's other roommates who are also investigators. She feels like they are just not giving her enough respect, and so she expects us to straighten them out. She is a funny lady. I love the people that you get to meet on your mission. I sometimes think as I'm sitting in people's houses, "there is no other conceivable reason on earth that I would be sitting in this persons house right now".

Anyways! Family, I sure do love you all. Thanks for the happy birthday wishes. It's crazy that I am turning 21. 21 feels like twice as weird as 20. 21 sounds... older. Weird weird! Anyways, sorry, email time is a little short this week! Hope that everyone has a good week, though!

Elder Blotter

Snow...

Mother Dearest,

Oh! And I got the birthday package. Thanks so much! The tie was really nice! It must not take as long to send packages to Vernon.

Elder Baker says that it was the Backstreet Boys singing.

Love,

Elder Blotter

Life is A1 in the Okanagan

Family,

Well, this week has just been a highlight week of the mission, and therefore of life. We just got off exchanges with Elder Epperson, who President Tilleman (randomly) decided to make one of his assistants mid-transfer.  It's been good to work with him again. He's going home in December already! That is totally crazy. Steven got baptized yesterday! He was so ready. It was also Stake Conference this week, and we've just seen a lot of miracles over the past week.

First off though, it snowed in Cache Valley?? It hasn't even snowed in Vernon yet. We were on exchanges in Merritt, and it was snowing there and the roads were just terrible on the way back, but we are still snow-free. And we're in Canada. I love Vernon. It's like a less dry version of Cache Valley with scenic lakes and lots of tasty produce. Just with fewer Mormons and no temple. I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too.

So! At the Saturday evening session of Stake Conference, because President Tilleman couldn't attend, Elder Baker and I were asked to pick one of us to speak in his place. We "cast lots" as they say, and Elder Baker was the speaker. Elder Blotter was just cruising along, thinking he was in the clear, when the following day at Stake Conference, when President Tilleman was speaking, in front of the entire Stake, he says "I understand that yesterday Elder Baker had the opportunity to speak for me. I just keep on think that that is just not fair for only one person in that companionship to have the opportunity to speak."

Oh. No.

Yeah. My stomach dropped somewhere in between the only surviving pair of Hush Puppies that I came out with. Fortunately, in the end, I was only called upon to recite the 1st Vision (no pressure, you just have to be on-the-spot perfect, because what missionary doesn't have the 1st Vision memorized, right?) and to bear brief testimony about it. But still. My mind was totally blank as I was walking up to the podium and I don't remember what I did say, so hopefully I got it all right.

Anyways, after that, it was Steven's baptismal service. What a beautiful service! The spirit was so strong. I'm sure our investigators that were there felt that. Elder Baker hadn't had the chance to perform the ordinance of baptism before, but he did great. Or at least, I'm confident that he did great. Steven brought Tim, who... wasn't sober. And so Elder Epperson and I missed the ordinance because we were separating Tim from this poor girl from the YSA ward he was harassing. Bishop escorted him home during the service. What a nightmare. But, he brought another 19 year old friend, Chris, and after the service, we gave him a church tour and set a baptismal date with him for November 30th. Miracles have not ceased! When Steven was bearing his testimony, he talked about how he was asked recently about what his hobbies are, and he had no idea what to say because he's had to completely redefine his life since committing to live the Saviour's commandments. He's literally a new person, because he can not and does not want to do the things that he used to do to waste his life away. What an exciting time for Steven! For him, baptism is completely an opportunity to "walk in the newness of life" (Romans 6:4). He's literally had so much faith, and it's been a blessing to have the chance to work with him. He is the kind of person that you are on your mission to find.

Other than that, life's been good! It was Halloween this week, and that makes it the 2nd to last time on my mission that I'll have to stay inside for an evening. We didn't get any trick or treaters this year, but the JW's found us (thanks to Bishop Whibley, who told them that he has a basement suite as a joke) and have been sticking pamphlets in our door.  We had a planning session, but finished, and in the end, we played real life fruit ninja with a knife and all the apples that this Sikh couple across the street gave us that we couldn't eat fast enough before they started to go bad.

Well, it's been a good week! It was good to hear from all of you. The work in the Vernon zone is going well. We're finding, teaching, baptizing. The church is true. We don't even appreciate what we have! We have a prophet on the earth, giving us direction and guidance from God. How awesome is that? 

Elder Blotter

The Church is true in Vernon

Family,

Well, it's been another great week in Vernon! It's weird when I start writing emails now, I don't even really know what to write about because I've forgotten what happened last week and what happened this week because everything kind of blurs together. I have to pull out my planner and remember what week was this week. But, it's been great! There have been a lot of miracles over the past week! And it's beautiful here in the fall. It's finally back to the season where we can rake people's leaves for service and things like that, and it's not brutally cold yet. Fall is a great time to be a missionary.

Our teaching pool is doing great. Steven has stayed completely clean from alcohol and smoking. It blows me away how well he has done. He would smoke a ton and then drink 9 cans of beer every night-- he knew that not because he was capable of counting, but because there would always be 6 cans left in a case when he sobered up the next day. He's completely clean now, and he's going to be baptized on the 3rd. He rents out a room of a house, along with one other tenant, and we found out that the lady that he rents from is a former investigator, who is actually very promising and has committed to come to his baptism. The other tenant, Tim, is another alcoholic who we've seen sober probably one time. He always barges into the room that we're teaching Steven in and talks about how he's looking for his cat, which has always been bad interruptions, but Steven told us that he told him that he always tries to come in to the lessons because he wants to learn because he's seen the influence that it has had on Steven. So, we tried to let him stay at the lesson we had with Steven yesterday, but he was drunk. So he would ask a really sincere question with tears in his eyes, and then we would answer it... and then he'd stand up and start acting like a dinosaur. So we committed him to be sober for our lesson today. Alcohol is so gross. We'll see how that goes. But still, lots of miracles coming from that one building.

We're teaching a lot of other interesting people, too.  We had a few people come to church with us. We got one of our investigators, Sean, to leave his "Nerd Cave"/basement where he does nothing but play video games to come to church. Sometimes you're tempted to stop teaching people because "they're not going to keep commitments, I mean come on, he just kept talking about why he believes in Norse gods last time," but they surprise you. Regardless of what somebody's background is, the gospel "is for them". He had to go in the foyer in the middle of Sacrament meeting because he can't handle crowds, but he still put in the effort to come.

Other than that, it's just been a busy week of finding and teaching. We see miracles every day. It really is crazy how at the end of the day you can look back and just see how everything kind of fit together to make it a great day. Like, we were flipping through some potentials, and kept on calling one named Ashley and finally were able to meet with the family, and it turned out that she was the spouse of Gary, a former investigator who didn't get baptized because she didn't want him to. But now she's kind of had a change of heart, and we were just able to contact them at just the right time to start teaching them. Another time we got sidetracked talking to one guy for too long, but we decided to knock just one more door before leaving the complex, and found this awesome lady, Tracy, who had an LDS grandma and was really excited that we weren't Jehovah's Witnesses. She kept on telling us "you really knocked on the right door here". Enough of those experiences just add up and at the end of your week it's just really amazing to see all the stuff that happened.

Oh yeah! For like the first time in my life I had to go to a doctor other than Dr. Blotter for a day-to-day kind of thing. A member gave us a canned ham, and I was trying to open it, but the opening mechanism on the can broke, and I was trying to pull it open with my hand, and it totally sliced my fingers open. It was my first experience with Canadian health care too. I... survived.

Well, life is great. At night by our beds Elder Baker and I are always like "Are we here already?" And Elder Baker is great. Um. Well mother, if you need more facebook stalking ammo, his name is Brad Baker, he's from Raymond Alberta. He says to look up "bradbaker121" and watch the Backstreet Boys videos on youtube. He says he says he's the "handsome one".

Well, it was great to write all of ya. I'll send some more pictures of Vernon. Hopefully you all have a great week! ...Mosiah 28:3!

Elder Blotter

Life's Great in the Okanagan

Family!

Well hi. Hope it's been a good week! It definitely has up in these parts. It's full fall up here, and it's starting to get pretty chilly. I still feel blessed to be able to have dodged the rainy season in the lower mainland, though. It feels a lot more like Utah around here. In fact, Vernon actually does look a lot like the Bear Lake valley, actually. Mountains and lakes. Most of Vernon is like a big maze because it's mostly not a grid, and it's built mostly on the sides of mountains in a valley. For our workout in the morning, we just run up and down this massive set of stairs that just goes up and down a hill that connects 2 streets. Vernon is a beautiful place, though. A fall wonderland.

 From the pictures that you sent home. It looks like the family is doing well! I could see the video that dad sent of Ness and Jacey's duet. Good work, Jacey Lou! You're going to be a piano star. (You too, Ness. You too.)

Anyways! The work in Vernon has been going great. I love being a missionary. Every day here feels kind of like an adventure. I wish I had the time to just share all of the miracles that we have every day! I'll just talk about how last night went, for an example. President Tilleman promised the mission that every companionship could have a baptism in October if we all did everything that we could, and we've had a few baptismal dates for October, but for unfortunate reasons, a lot of them have had to be rolled back into November, and so we've been struggling to get out investigators into the waters of baptism this October. Over the past few weeks, we've had awesome lessons with Steven (the investigator who knew and believed the Plan of Salvation before we taught it). A few nights ago, he threw us his cigarettes and committed to never smoke again, but he's still been struggling with drinking. Last night, showed us his bedroom, which was just filled with empty cans of beer, just cases and cases worth. So, right then and there, we started cleaning his room with him. It was like being able to physically watch the atonement work. We totally smelled like booze, but after we went into the kitchen and just prayed with him that he would be able to completely stop and be able to be baptized by the end of October. All of this made us really late for our next appointment, and the member that we rode to the lesson with had to leave the appointment early, and so we get out of the lesson smelling like alcohol and carrying a half empty container of coffee, the last of his supply, and realize that we have no way of getting to our next appointment. So we just start running to our next appointment, climbing over fences and things, handing off this bag of coffee stuff as we go. We get to the appointment, and the investigator, Toni, that we were meeting with, was just sitting there having some bonding time with the bishop and his wife, and she had actually been reading and praying, and was doing great. Man. You just go home happy. 

Ha ha. After the gospel principles lesson on tithing this Sunday, he heard that tithing funds support missionary work, and so he wanted to just directly give us his tithing money. People like him are the people that you're looking for.

In any case, the work is going great here in Vernon. We're finding lots of people to teach. I'm really beginning to have a greater appreciation of the relationship between faith and success in missionary work. With faith, you can find somebody new to teach every hour that you spend finding. Elder Baker is really good at looking past the humdrum of missionary work and doing everything that you can when talking to every single person, and so it's been cool to learn that from him. And working with all of the missionaries in the zone has been great. We get to hold phone conferences with district leaders to talk about how we can help the zone grow, and we get to go on exchanges with struggling missionaries. We're going to be going down to Kamloops after preparation day today to work with a set of missionaries down there.

Well, love you all! Sorry that I don't have more time to write! The church is true. If there's time, we're going to grab our cameras and send home a few pictures.

Elder Blotter

Elder Blotter and Elder Baker in the car....

Maybe a little chocolate pudding?

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving!

Family,

Oh man. What a great week it's been. I love Vernon. We just went to this "Bee World" place that had honeybee nests or whatever you call them in between sheets of glass that connected to the outside world by little pipes, and they had a table where you could try like 20 different honeys made from different plant sources from like orange bloom to buckwheat. Then we went to this famous Davison's orchard, to get some apples and apple cider. And then, because we decided that we're only going to be in the Oke once in the fall, we paid some exorbitant amount for an apple pie. But we're excited for it. Once you leave the lower mainland, BC has a lot of farmland, and we're right in the middle of it, but it's beautiful country. It's Thanksgiving today, too! The first of probably two thanksgivings, because any excuse to eat Turkey, people will take, so we'll have an American Thanksgiving too.

The work over the past week has been great. We were on exchanges with other missionaries for the first half of the week. We were in Clearwater, a little BC town that recently reopened to missionaries. It felt a whole lot like Burns Lake, and there was a brand new missionary serving there. It brought me back to the good old days. I love the fall. It's weird, but I think it is my favorite time of the year. We also did some work in Kamloops with some other missionaries, and had a Zone Conference. It was a busy week, but it was great, and we had the chance to find some new investigators. We were able to set a baptismal date with one of the "eternal investigators" there. Miracles have not ceased.

Oh, and Mom, At the zone conference, President Tilleman told me that there was a recent convert in Prince George who has non-member family. He's preparing to serve a mission, and his family is just absolutely livid that they could only talk to him twice a year for 2 years, and so President Tilleman went to personally meet the family himself. He says that they were getting more and more heated, but he told them the story about how we had permission to meet together, and chose not to, and that was one of the things that finally called them down. President Tilleman thinks that that's why the situation happened. So, Mother, there you go. There was a reason, and it helped a young guy in Prince George.

Well, the work in Vernon is going great. We've been reflecting on a lot of different ways that we can "hasten the work", and after hearing a story about it, we decided that we were going to start running from house to house to talk to more people. The first time we committed to do it, we got out of our car and started running to a lesson across a parking lot. There was a man slowly making his way across the parking lot with a walker, and so we jogged over and started talking to him. Long story short, he's this delightful old man named David who is going to be baptized later in November. His brain runs a few seconds slow, and so we'll teach about something like priesthood authority being restored, and a few seconds later his face just lights up with this huge, sincere smile. We have a few more baptismal dates for the end of October, and then a few for early November, and so we have been really blessed here in Vernon. People really are just placed in our path. We were "ministering" on a street the other day, and we knocked on the door of somebody who was having a birthday party. Someone came out and started talking to us, and enough people were curious that at one point we just had 7 people on the porch listening to us.

Well, it's been a bit of a learning curve over the past week. We get humbled all the time by the things that we forget to do or the stuff we don't handle... ideally. But we're learning a lot.

Well, love ya, family! Talk to you next week.

Elder Blotter

PS- Mom, you are the only person including the whole Vernon ward that has actually asked us who is in our teaching pool. Way to follow the prophet. The names of our baptismal dates are Rose, Toni, Steven, David, and Vicki. If you could pray for them, that would be great.

Report from Vernon

Well, hello, family! 

Oh goodness. The last week has been one of the most awesome weeks of my mission. It has been super busy, and time has just been disappearing it's gone by so fast. I love Vernon! It is a little bit different than the Hong Couver area, that's for sure. I haven't seen mostly grass-covered mountains since... the MTC, but up here it pretty much just feels like a colder and a little less dry version of Utah. And I love the people here. This is great. Since last emailing, there's been a lot of spiritual feasting. Wasn't conference awesome? There were a lot of great talks. A lot of revelation received. Transfer meeting and mission council were both awesome, and I feel like I have learned a lot about the principle of faith. When you have faith, you really can do everything.

My new companion, Elder Baker, is awesome. Totally awesome. He's from a little town in Alberta. (Mother, if you're planning on facebook stalking, his first name is Brad) We have just seen a lot of miracles over the past few days. So, our mission has reached a point over the past 3 months where we've had about 40 of our brothers and sisters join the church. Awesome. 3 years ago it was like... 12. This month, the goal is for every companionship to baptize (and then an extra 20 or so. Ha ha) and to reach a goal of 145 baptisms. Which is awesome, but it's going to take a lot of faith, work and miracles. I don't have a tremendous amount of time to write, so I am just going to type really fast because I have a lot that I wish I could write. 

So, after setting that goal in mission council, we were super excited. So, after mission council, we're staying with the zone leaders in Surrey, and we have a few hours to go out and work before the day is over. So the elders drop us off someplace completely random, and one of the Surrey elders, Elder Kennedy, who is a 6' 10'' full-ride-to-BYU-in-basketball-or-football-he-still-needs-to-pick kind of guy. He's been out for just 6 months or so and is a zone leader (President Tilleman doesn't really do "traditional" leadership assignments. We got Spanish speaking sisters for the first time, and there aren't any spanish-speaking sisters to train them. So... they're just training each other. They're in Canada, so they won't starve, but... good luck teaching lessons and speaking at church and stuff.) Anyways, he leans out the car window as they are driving away and just says "I promise you in the name of Jesus Christ that if you do all that you can this evening you will find 5 new investigators and set 1 baptismal date". So, we just went at it. 6th door that we knock on, a voice yells "Come in!" So we do, walk up a set of stairs, and find these two guys sitting there watching TV. Initially, they kind of want us to just leave, but we just sort of sit down and start talking with them, and in the end we set 2 baptismal dates with them. Boom. We walk outside, there's a guy walking home. We teach him the first lesson on the street. Boom. We realize that it's dark rainy, and we don't have a phone, so we walk back where they dropped us off, and they are nowhere to be found. We get a Serbian man to call them, and we leave a voicemail telling them to come back, and just hope for the best. We then start talking to this 17 year old black guy who met missionaries before, and read the Book of Mormon for 4 days straight after meeting them, and then didn't know what to do so just kept moving on with his life. Suddenly, the Surrey elders, who had gone home to do something lame like weekly plan came back to pick us up, and we set a baptismal date with him and taught him on the street. Then, we drive back to the street that the Surrey elders were on, and we both just start knocking on doors. And the Surrey elders found someone. 5 new investigators, and 4 baptismal dates. Miracles.

Anyways, we travel back to Vernon, and ever since then, we've just still been seeing miracles. It's been great. We don't tract. We just teach people that aren't investigators yet. And if you have enough faith, people will listen to you. Man. It's so good. We have a plan to baptize weekly, starting this weekend. But we'll see. It just seems like the Lord is placing people in our path. We taught a member's neighbor yesterday because the member just did their part of asking their sick neighbor if they would like a blessing. (That is so easy to do. Member missionary work is not hard to do.) We taught someone who was weeding outside of an apartment complex where we were going to contact an investigator who didn't have a phone. We stopped somebody who was jogging last night and he was a receptive less active guy. Heavenly Father is so good! There are so many miracles everywhere! We're teaching this guy named Steven who in a lesson, when asked what the meaning of life was, said "You guys might think this is weird... but I think we lived with God as spirits before we came here, and we're here to get bodies or something." Ha ha. Really. God is so good.

But, there have been some interesting challenges as well. I thought that calling for the results for the week would just include writing down numbers. But sometimes district leaders report that nobody in their district found a new investigator, or that they had areas that didn't teach any lessons, etc. You have to discern if it was a rough week and they need to be built up, or if they were lazy and need a bit of chastening, and you have to help them see what they need to do to help their districts improve. In the end, how somebody serves a mission is entirely up to them, and, because the Priesthood only works on principles of persuasion and meekness and love and righteousness and all those other good things in D&C 121, you can't really tell anybody what to do, and the only way somebody is going to listen to you is if they feel your love for them and they respect you. And there's challenges like for one of our investigators to get baptized by his date, he's going to have to quit cold turkey on smoking, and for him to do that, it's going to take a ton of following up. But we're out of our area for the first part of the week to go on exchanges with a two different areas that are struggling. And there's a zone conference this week, and we have to give a training on planning to two zones and President Tilleman. Whew. Pressure's on. But it will be good.

Oh man. I typed fast. I successfully got it all done. Another miracle! Well. Love you all. Hope you have a good week!

Elder Blotter

PS- I usually forget to add this. My address here is 4015 15th Ave, Vernon, BC V1T 8H1.