Miracles have not ceased! (Moroni 7:36-37)

Family,

 

I just don't even know how you start an email recounting a week like the past week! I guess like this: "Jed! Congratulations on being baptized! That is so exciting! Good for you! I wish that I could have been there to see it, but you absolutely made the right decision. We can't even begin to understand how big of a deal baptism is, but you'll be blessed for your whole life. Here's what the Savior has got to tell you about it:

 

21 And [since Jed] will hear my voice [he] shall be my sheep; and him shall ye receive into the church, and him will I also receive.

22 For behold, this is my church; whosoever is baptized shall be baptized unto repentance. And whomsoever ye receive shall believe in my name; and [Jed] will I freely forgive.

23 For it is I that taketh upon me the sins of the world; for it is I that hath created them; and it is I that granteth unto [Jed] that believeth unto the end a place at my right hand.
24 For behold, in my name [is Jed now] called; and [because he knows me, Jed] shall come forth, and shall have a place eternally at my right hand.
(Mosiah 26)

Secondly, Toni got baptized this week! It was such a miracle. We set the date on Friday, and she got baptized 2 days later. We were talking on Thursday about how Elder Baker and Elder Lindemann (another missionary who has served in Vernon previously) were going to be in the Vernon area for exchanges, and so they'd be at church this Sunday. And we thought, why doesn't Toni just get baptized this weekend? Everything would just be perfect! Toni has been taught since sometime in August, and I've been working with her ever since coming to Vernon 4 or 5 months ago. And we've probably planned in her baptismal service 5 or 6 times in the previous months. And she was SO READY to be baptized. But she travels a lot, was sick a lot, and had different obstacles to her baptism, so it had just never happened. She was going to be out of town this weekend, but she ended up not going on her trip so we went in to go and teach her with the goal of setting a baptismal date.  We started by talking about how she's gotten answers to her prayers, how she knows the Book of Mormon is true, how she's gotten her connection with God back, and how she knows that she needs to be baptized. And then we invited her to be baptized on Sunday and the spirit was so strong. It was amazing. At first she was kind of incredulous, but then she started to think about it, and just said "I guess I don't have any reason not to be baptized. Yeah. I'll be baptized. What do I need to do?"  It was amazing. We just pulled together a baptismal service, there were a few more bumps in the road (it almost got delayed for another month so that her friend in Alberta could be there, etc) We just kept going, and the result was one of the most powerful baptismal services that I've ever attended. Since Elder Baker was around, he was able to baptize her. When she came up out of the water, she just said "wow". 

And... now it's transfer calls later today, and I am very sincerely hoping that I don't get transferred, because I want to be able to confirm Toni next week, on top of all the other miracle people that we're teaching here in Vernon. But... we'll see!

In between church and the baptismal service, Elder Baker and I had the chance to go on a brief exchange for a few hours. It was awesome. We had an appointment with one of our investigator's future daughter-in-law, (complicated situation) who's future husband is a less active member who just loves the church and is working on coming back. Anyways, she's now pregnant, which has forced her to stay away from partying and the rest of her previous lifestyle, and so she's been able to get some perspective and she's totally ready to be taught. There are just so many miracles. But anyways, it was just great to work with Elder Baker again. We're just two peas in a pod. So that was miracle #2.

Lastly, we've just been seeing so many miracles with the people that we are teaching! Vicki, who I've previously mentioned, is just getting closer and closer to quitting smoking. She's been facing a lot of social pressures from people at the church she previously attended, and is just staying strong. She's meeting with us consistently and just doing great. At one point, she was on the streets of Vancouver (which is why a member family raise her kids) and she has just turned her life around and is just doing great. The Krugers are doing great, too. Sister Kruger now has a job, and so that family has some sort of income. They just need to quit smoking, too! Tobacco. It's just the worst. Canada has horror-movie status warning pictures and messages on the boxes of their cigarettes, and they're taxing the daylights out of them, but people here are still just smoking machines sometimes. It's the worst. You can definitely see that following the guidance of prophets is the right thing to do. Tis better far to avoid all those issues.

Elder Fitzner and I have a deal going that if he can eat 7 McTanks (which is what we call when you put McDonald's entire dollar menu ($1.40 here...) chicken sandwich in between the patties of their dollar menu double cheeseburger) then I have to pay for all of them. BC missionaries don't have the same weight loss concerns as in Korea. We still eat seaweed, but usually it's in the form of all you can eat sushi, and the rolls are deep fried.

Well, sure love you all! Thanks for all of the support. Hope that it's just a great week for one and all.

Elder Blotter

Elder Lindemann, Elder Baker, Toni, Elder Fitzner and Elder Blotter

Report from Vernon

Family,

Well, what a week of miracles it's been up in Vernon! We've loved it. The past week has taken us up into Armstrong, Salmon Arm, and Sicamous, down to Kamloops for some baptismal interviews, and into the waters of baptism. It's been great. Apparently there was an article about President Burt (the future mission president of the Canada Vancouver Mission, not that he'll ever be my mission president. Still, exciting times.) in the Herald Journal. Elder Kitchen (who is from Providence, I think and previously one of Dad's patients) just showed me his picture. Still, we've been blessed!

Well, first off, April dropped an "F" off of her religious title, and is now just plain "LDS"! Her baptismal service was beautiful and well attended by the ward. April was just a miracle right from the beginning. It was a very interesting teaching situation from the beginning. She didn't have a Book of Mormon nor had she ever read it, but she still had such a strong testimony that it was the word of God. It definitely took a lot of faith for her to meet with us and to talk with us, particularly because she had absolutely no support from her evangelical extended family or polygamous friends and husband. But she kept on meeting with us, and she committed to live a lifestyle that will require her to go against the grain of her current social situations. But good for her! It will be such a blessing in her life to be a member of the church. The ward has been reaching out to her as well, giving her rides when she needs them, and things like that. It's so important to reach out to new members, because it's kind of a foreign world in the church sometimes, but the ward here is doing great.

We really love serving in the Vernon 1st Ward. The members are great. It really isn't that frequent in this mission that you end up teaching somebody that the members have invited you to meet with, but it's happened quite a few times here in Vernon. When the youth in the ward have a friend that's curious, they share the gospel with them. They don't make it some awkward, forced thing, they just talk to them and invite them to learn more. It's really cool. We were invited to meet "somebody who wanted to learn more" at a less active member's (Sis Alexander) home by one of the active members (Bro Coleman) earlier this week. We found out later that Sister Alexander runs a group home for special needs individuals, but we didn't know that at the time. But when we got to the address where we were told there was a lesson waiting, there were tons of special needs people walking around, and we were very confused and thought we were totally in the wrong place. We heard voices calling us to the lesson, and when we got there, there were 2 less active members(who live/work in the group home), their home teachers, and a man who  wanted to learn more. So, at first we were terribly confused as to what was going on, but in the end, we realized that their home teachers were on the ball, and because they were doing their home teaching, they found somebody that we could share the gospel with.

We saw a lot of miracles this week with our teaching pool, too! Mother, if you'd like the names of some of the people we're working with... here we are. Toni, the most awesome longtime investigator in the world, is working on a date for February 11th. She just needs to talk some things over with a guy she's in a long distance relationship with. We met with the Mathesons, a family that we just love to death but haven't met with because we handed them off to the sisters when they put sister missionaries in the ward. But they were never able to meet with them, so we finally just did, and Sister Matheson agreed to take the missionary lessons! Praise God daily. We've just been very blessed to be able to find people to teach. We've been working closely with the Kruger family, and they're still coming to church and working on living the word of Wisdom so that they can be baptized/rebaptized.

We went on exchanges to Salmon Arm and Sicamous this week! The parts of the Okanagan that we're in you can tell are very vacation-oriented. Sicamous is apparently the Houseboat capital of Canada. Everything is frozen over and in winter mode, but it's definitely a beautiful region, and there are lots of people here for winter sports. (Dad will be able to report back about the skiing!) We still found some humble people to share the gospel with though, so we won't complain.

Um... Mom wanted an Elder Fitzner story... Elder Fitzner spent hundreds of dollars on hockey cards when we were first companions looking for rare cards with pieces of jersey in them. He'd buy $40 bucks worth, not find what he was looking for, and then... go back and do it again! And then he decided they were distracting, so he gave them all to an investigator. He did get some very rare ones that apparently make it worth it as an investment if you're really into it.

Welll! The church is true. We're blessed up here in Vernon. I'll attach some pictures from the baptism!

Elder Blotter

Shout out from Vernon!

Family,

What a beautiful week it's been and what a great blessing it was to hear all of your lovely voices. Just from the pictures I can tell that there was a pretty good haul at the Blotter home! I have no idea why Santa gave Jed anything with 2 wheels and a motor, but it looks like it will be a lot of fun. Christmas week was great! We had the chance to do some finding in a time that people had (relatively) softer hearts and more time to listen, and we had the chance to work with all of our awesome investigators here in Vernon. It's weird that you only get 2 Christmases as a missionary!

The work in Vernon is going extremely well. We've been realizing how blessed we have been after we've looked at our area boundaries. It's a really blessed place to be. Our area is actually a pretty tiny thing in the world right now (We found out that Vernon has 35,000 people, 70,000 if you include outlying areas, of the which we have none in our area except a little town called Oyama, and there really isn't anything in Oyama) and there are currently 4 sets of missionaries in Vernon. We live more up in the foothills of the little valley we live in, and when you look out the window of our apartment, absolutely none of the buildings in view are in our area, it's just the stuff kind of tucked away in a corner. But, we have a lot of people to teach, and a lot of people just so close to baptism.

Yesterday, for example, we were pretty much living with the Kruger family. Not really, actually, but we've been working with them for a few weeks now, and they are just doing so great. Sister Kruger was excommunicated when she was younger, and Brother Kruger isn't a member. They have 3 kids, and they're all awesome little goobers. Anyways, they've been working on quitting smoking, and they committed to quit smoking on January 1st, but Sister Kruger decided that their quit date was going to be yesterday instead, and so we dropped by a few times to share scriptures and interrupt almost-smoking breaks. The Kruger family is great. Over the course of us being there, either one of their kids will have a diaper/pull-up failure on the furniture next to us, or their crazy dog will jump on us and turn us into dog fur carpets or something along those lines, but they're pretty much our favorite family to go and visit.

And the rest of our teaching pool are doing well, too! Toni is still out of town for the Christmas season. She's down in Victoria. But she's going to be baptized. Sooonnnn. April is doing well, but was also out of town. We did see some Christmas miracles though! Everybody's favorite thing to say on the day after Christmas was that they were in the middle of eating dinner, regardless of what time it was. So we started asking if we could come in and eat with them. And you know what? We had some takers. We ended up having some pretty cool lessons and finding some neat people to teach. Also, we got our fair share of turkey. 2 birds with one stone.

Okay... Mother... here is an Elder Fitzner stories. I asked him how he would describe himself in one sentence and he said "beachwalker, songwriter, poet". In Weekly Planning this week, I opened a 100g bag of chocolate covered almonds and put them on our desks. Elder Fitzner proceed to dump the entire thing in his mouth. And... they couldn't fit in his mouth. But he still tried. They apparently lodged in his throat and he started to choke, and I am laughing and don't know what's going on. He stands up, walks to the middle of the room, and pukes. Ha ha... But seriously, he's a good missionary and we've seen a lot of miracles.

Well, the church is true! The Atonement of Jesus Christ is real. Being a missionary is more on the front lines and we get to see it's influence help people change every day. There's no better way to spend your time than as a missionary. It's amazing. Thanks so much for all of your support! Talk to you next week!

Elder Blotter

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

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