Thanks for the umbrella.....I should have asked for boots. :)

Family,

Well, Mom and Dad, I hope you've enjoyed your romp in (quite literally) my stomping grounds over the past few days. I'm glad that you had the chance to witness a Vancouver 1st Ward testimony meeting, meet some of the cast in Vancouver. Isn't it great up here? Maybe you were able to figure out how everything keeps getting wet here. We just can't figure it out, because "it never rains in the Canada Vancouver Mission". Mother, I did get the package, and thanks for the umbrella. Unfortunately, I won't be needing it for very long! Transfer calls came, and I am going to be serving in Vernon, in a more-East region of BC that is referred to as the Okanagan. My whole mission the Oke has been a place that I have always known existed, but for the most part it was just a place of unknown location where if missionaries were called to serve in I had no idea where were they went I just didn't see them for a few months. Apparently, it feels like a colder version of Utah, and there will be plenty of snow. But at least no rain! Northern BC is much further, but since you fly, travel time isn't as bad; I have a 6 hour bus ride in my near future. So that's fun.

Speaking of fun, this week really is the definition of fun. Today was our temple trip day (see attached picture below) and so we got to go to the temple for (at least for me) the first time since April. The temple is the House of God. It was a very powerful experience. I am so glad that I am still going to be in the mission field to see a few of the converts I've had the chance to work with go through the temple. Anyways, that was today. Then on Thursday, there is transfer meeting, Friday is mission council, (which I've never had the opportunity to attend before but is a monthly meeting with the mission presidency and the zone leaders), and then Saturday and Sunday is general conference, the "Missionary Super Bowl". So really, let me tell ya. Life is rough. Really, really, rough. :)

This past week was quite a humbling learning experience, though! Seriously. So, get this. We had 11 confirmed, "solid", member present lessons fall through, and so we didn't teach a single member present lesson this week (the "standard of excellence" for the mission is 3). Lots of them cancelled with not enough advance notice to tell the members or no advance notice and the investigator just didn't show up. Other than those, not a single scheduled lesson actually took place. Not a single one. It felt like being buried in cement. To make matters worse, the weekend was supposed to be a very lesson-packed weekend for a "mini-mission", where a pre-missionary from another stake came and stuck with us for 2 days. We originally had 3 different splits set up where we figured he could pick which appointment he wanted to come with us, but... every single one fell through. Every single appointment. Yep. Every one. I was floored. We still managed to teach a few lessons, but they were all from finding situations where we were talking with someone on the street and found a quiet place to sit down and have a lesson, or the visits we had with less actives and recent converts. And, as Mother and Father dearest can attest, the weather wasn't the best over the weekend, and our poor mini-missionary didn't have an umbrella. We felt bad for him. (His last name was Portuguese, Teixeira, which you pronounce tuh-shay-duh. I feel bad for good ol' Sister Mann sometimes) He has adequate practice in dealing with multiple dropped appointments, though. So that's good. If he can handle 2 days of that, he can pull though 2 years in some balmy mission where you're teaching all the time.

Anyways, moral of the story. 1) Every teaching appointment that you have is a blessing from God. The people that you're teaching aren't because you're good at finding and planning or whatever else, because even sometimes when you're (frantically) doing everything you can, appointments will still won't happen. Heavenly Father is the one who is in control, and the work moves at His pace. 2) If you're doing everything that you can, that's enough. You can't run faster than you have the strength to. I feel like I've had to learn that my whole mission. In fact, I still haven't probably haven't learned that. We probably could have done more. C'est la vie.

The church is true. The temple is the house of God. Joseph Smith was a prophet. The Book of Mormon is a just a big message from God and the teachings contained inside bless lives. I don't have much more time to write because the temple trip took up most of our p-day, and we still need to get groceries and whatnot, and transit takes a while. But, talk to you next week, and from Vernon!

Love you all,

Elder Blotter

Elder Francis and Elder Blotter at the Vancouver Temple

The Church is True in Burnaby

Family!

Well, it's been a great week in Burnaby. Marc had a wonderful baptismal service yesterday. We had the chance to teach an 8 year old, Nico Esquivel, with kind of less active parents the missionary lessons over the past weeks, and so although he wasn't a convert baptism, they shared a baptismal service. It was just fantastic. The Spirit was very strong. We got to participate in both confirmations, and I had the chance to confirm Marc a member of the church. He's going to serve a mission. Ha ha. We're sure of it. Baptism days are just the best. We had been fasting that day, but we still probably ate twice the number of calories as a normal day because (the Esquivels are from Guatemala) both families brought a ton of food. It was also great because the recently assigned home teachers for Marc's family were there and setting up home teaching appointments and everything. The work of salvation. It's the best.

Other than that, the work is going great! We're still working with a few different part member families. We're teaching a few different people from Islamic backgrounds, come to think of it. And a lot more with non-Christian backgrounds. We're still teaching Shaikh, who is just kind of cemented in his beliefs, although not really practicing. We're also teaching Murat, a man from Turkey who is sincerely interested in what we believe. It's been interesting teaching them, because they believe in God, but they don't understand at first why we believe that we need a Savior. It has given us a lot of special opportunities to teach very simply about the necessity of an atonement. It has also given me a deeper appreciation of the knowledge that we have of the Plan of Salvation. It makes a lot of things that don't make sense otherwise make sense. We're teaching a Chinese guy named Jason. He's a student on the last year of an economics degree at some university around here. He was raised in China as a Buddhist, and so he's very curious about God and about prayer. He is always asking about how God has helped us and how God helps us. We taught him how to pray and we'll continue to work with him.

We're also still working with a part-member family, the Steiners. Sabrina, the mom, is struggling to believe in God because she's read a lot of atheist literature, and as a result, she's become one of the people who don't have the truth "because they know not where to find it". She's really spiritually unhealthy and you can see that it's been hard on her. She'll start crying sometimes when she just starts talking about how she feels. It's very easy to see how the adversary likes to work by weaseling doubt into somebody. A little bit of doubt can undo years of spiritual experiences. She struggles with the word of wisdom, and sin weakens her faith, and it also lifts a burden of guilt that she isn't doing what she is supposed to be doing. She's really honest with us though, so we're going to keep working with her, and when her faith is strong, we'll work with the family too.

There are a lot of miracles though! We're managing to find a lot of new people teach. Burnaby is a pretty big place, and there are people kind of sandwiched all over the place. We feel very blessed to be here. I'm still blown away by how multicultural it is here. French is on all the labels, but if they printed labels by population, there would be Chinese and Arabic and everything else.

Ha ha, and, if you must know, one of my essays was indeed used for Russ Beck's English 2010 class. Last year one of my friends from high school took the class and wrote to tell me that my essay on memes was required reading and he called it a "joyful romp". I don't recall writing any poems about roses, however... I think that there might be 2 Josh Blotters. I think I googled myself one time or something and I had a doppelganger that went to Woodscross high school or something. So that's my theory. :)

Well! Out of time! Love you all and we'll talk to you next week.

Elder Blotter

Elder Francis's first chance to baptize someone.

Marc and his family with Elder Francis and Elder Blotter.

Burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrnaby

Family,

Well, just like that it's been another week. Time is flying by, I have to say. Days go by really quickly when you're on transit, particularly when you have a lot of appointments. You go to one place, teach, then go to the next place, teach, miss a bus by 2 minutes, run, be half an hour late for a dinner appointment, that sort of thing, and before you know it you're planning your next day. And as you go throughout the day, it feels like we're perpetually making calls to schedule appointments and get members to come to said appointments. Which is sometimes like pulling teeth, but hey. They've got their hearts in the right place.

This week we managed to have a lot of success on the streets of Burnaby. Our area has 2 general areas that you can street contact. Metrotown, which is a massive mall, and parts of Edmonds, which is an area with some bigger apartment complexes and some busier streets. Those areas have missionaries in them all the time, and so we've been shaking it up by doing what we used to do in Vancouver, plotting out where all of the hundreds of less actives live and then picking a few in an area to drop by and then doing some contacting in the area that they live in. It's fun. One time we were walking to visit one, and a mini-van pulled up and offered us a ride. We got in and they asked where we were going. We told them the address, and they just pulled into the garage. Which was weird, until we found out that it was the less active we were going to drop by. Probably not the best to get into random vans, but the guy had a baby in a car-seat, so we figured it would be fine. Plus, we can help the ward clean up their member lists, because over half don't live where the list says they live. We would try to add the less actives that we find on our own to the ward lists, but for some reason, to move records, you need to have a date of birth. And we can't figure out how to suavely get that information.
Us:"Hi, we're missionaries from the Church of..."

Less-active cuts in: "I'm actually a member of your church already. My name is Steve Soandso, but I'm really not interested in talking with you guys right now."

Us: "...What's your birthday?"

Anyways, I digress. It's good because in contacting all of the less actives, we've found a few part member families. (You wouldn't think that Muslims and Mormons would be two to hit it off, but we've found two such families.) We're teaching this Muslim guy, Shaikh, who is married to a less active LDS lady, Patricia. Shaikh doesn't seem to be actively practicing, but he still holds the belief system. He's from Bangladesh, and he talked about the culture of his home and the religious practices that they had there. They have speakers throughout cities to call people to pray 5 times a day. The first one is at 5 am. And, however they managed to make it work out, they both still hold their religious beliefs and are happily married. We taught Sam (which is what Shaikh usually goes by) the first lesson yesterday. I've never considered not needing to wake up at 5 in the morning to pray a truth of the Restoration, but we'll take it. We're working with another part-member family, where the Mom, Sabrina, is the only member. She converted by herself 4 or 5 years ago, but is struggling with a belief in God and is reading a lot of evolution literature. She wanted to know if the church library had any books on "creation science or cosmology". We told her that the Book of Mormon had all the "creation science" she would need. In any case, we're going to be teaching her and her family the lessons and we're excited about that.

Other than that, the work is going well. Mark, our 10 year old investigator, has a date for the 22nd now. The only concern is that the bishop is worried that he won't have the support that he needs to stay active, since his mom is less active and his main support would come from the other members of his extended family that live in the same home as him. Difficult questions, sometimes. You don't want to baptize somebody who can't keep the commitment, but you also don't want to delay somebody's baptism unnecessarily. We're going to set up an appointment with the bishop this week to meet with Mark's mom and uncle, and we'll see how things settle.

Otherwise, life is good! I had some more Ethiopian food the other day. I tried bubble tea for the first time. It's this drink that you can get without actual tea in it. They pretty much just put big tapioca balls in flavored milk. Asians love it. Sister Harper is buying is expensive things that we don't really want. Like... a very pricey-looking bottle of "rice wine vinegar". She apparently is going to buy us a coffee grinder so that we can grind nuts for salads or something.

Well! I hope that you all have a great week!

Elder Blotter

Part 2

Pt. 2...

So! The mission says we can use a computer for 2 hours, but at this library, you can only have an hour and then they can give you an extra 15 minutes. If you ask.

Dad: Congratulations on the successful Lotoja campaign! That is very impressive. Next time we have to run from the apartment in New Westminster to Burnaby because we missed a bus to make it home by 9, I will be more motivated because of the example of my father.

Mom: Elder Francis doesn't remember the postal code, but you might be able to google it. The address will be something along the lines of 6170 Rumble St, Burnaby, BC, V-- ---.

Elder Blotter

Report from Burnaby

Well hello, family!

Just like that it's been another week here in Burnaby. It's been a good week up here! We've found some pretty interesting people to teach, and had our investigators come to church. Missionary work in the lower mainland is always pretty exciting. Yesterday, we had an appointment with a 7th Day Adventist family from South Sudan with a member from West Africa, immediately followed by a home teaching visit with two white as white can be Canadians, immediately followed by a brief exchange with one of the Mandarin speaking missionaries where we went and taught a half French/half Filipino couple who has a Mandarin-speaking exchange student. (We had an appointment with a Latino part member family we were bringing an East Indian member, Bro. Raj, but the appointment fell through. C'est la vie.) Man. It's the best. Lots of people everywhere. Missionaries not excluded. There are 2 sets of Chinese missionaries here, Korean missionaries, Spanish missionaries, us, and then two sets of sisters, one of them in the North and then one of them covering the YSA aged people, and then a senior couple. We'll just be out tracting or street contacting or getting a ride in a members car and we'll see other missionaries. It's crazy.

The work this week was good! We went on exchanges in New Westminster at the beginning of the week (all the cities here do sound very British-ish. Surrey, Langley, Coquitlam, Queensborough, etc) and got to teach some pretty cool people over there. Alan Mileta is still just struggling with the word of wisdom. His wife, who we think is trying to go for "nurturing and supportive" is still doing things like giving him a ride to buy cigarettes after Sacrament Meeting. He's down to 10 cigarettes a day. But... he smokes them half a cigarette at a time, so he's having the same number of smokes. I guess progress is progress. It's hard to see somebody who knows that the gospel is true, has a family who is waiting for him to be worthy enough to be sealed together, and just can't get rid of something as gross as smoking. In the words of President Kaberry, the Australian branch president from Kitimat, it's "untidy".

But, Mark is doing well! He came to church today, even though his cousins were over. Which, for a 10 year old kid with less active parents, that's a pretty big deal. Choosing to come to church over playing with cousins? Not to mention that he's reading the Book of Mormon? There you go Jacey. I'm teaching somebody that's just about your age. He should be making his baptismal date of September 22nd.

Well, we did see a lot of miracles this week! We've been seeing a lot of fruit come from just focusing on the basics. We focus on finding time when people are on the street and at home, from 5 to 7 pm, and doing a lot of work with part member families. Mission life is pretty simple. If you keep the commandments and apply the principles of Preach My Gospel, ye shall prosper in the land.

Oh, and I randomly have an Ohio State folder that I sometimes use to put stuff in. You usually find a family that you click with in your areas, and one of the families here, the Johnston family, saw that, and we found out that they were in Ohio for about two years of the same time that we were, from like 1999-2000ish. Except they were in the Student Ward. I think we went to the Riverside ward or something? Apparently there's another member that was in the Riverside ward in the Burnaby ward that would have maybe known us, but I'm not sure, because I haven't talked to them yet. Still, it's a small world.

Well, love you all! have a great week! I have a few seconds left before the time runs out. I might be able to get more, but I'm not sure. In any case! See ya love ya bye!

Elder Blotter

No Burnaby Ward, "Corn Roasts" as an activity are not an "American thing", nor a "Mormon thing". I'm not sure where you got the idea to call boiling a few hundred cobs of corn a "Corn Roast", but it was neither from America nor from the Church.

 

After 14 months of walking, this shoe is done. 

Family,

Well, just like that it's been another week already! Time is one of the most irritating things. When you're tracting Wedeene Street for the 5th time in Kitimat, there seems to be an unending supply of time, but when it takes half an hour to an hour to get anywhere and you're spending another hour of the day doing 12 Week, the extra hour of companion study for greenies, you just do not have as much time as you would like to. But the work in Burnaby is good! It kind of feels like a gigantic playground. There's streets and Skytrain stations and parks to contact in, there's endless doors to knock. P-days are the worst, because you pretty much have sitting on a bus and waiting to be checked out in super long lines at Metrotown to look forward to. Finding and teaching is much better. The ward here has a lot of awesome members. This week as a way to try and get people to come and check out the chapel, the ward had a "Corn Roast" where they boiled a lot of corn and had a potluck. All the missionaries took a few sacks of corn home and a few pounds of butter. Can't complain at all. Life is good.

This week has been a good one. I had the chance to meet most of the investigators in the teaching pool. Well. So far, a lot of time in Burnaby has spent cleaning up. Physically, and missionary work-ily. (The bathroom no longer smells. That's good.) But the teaching pool was filled with people like... "Oh, I'm a Baptist missionary from Texas, who is being sponsored to live here in Vancouver for a few years so that I can learn how to live in multicultural areas. Then, I'll be sponsored to live in Mexico for a year or two to learn Spanish, and then traveling to do missionary work in South America, and until then, I just want to squabble with Mormons in coffee shops". That type. Great people and all, just not humble seekers of truth. (But then again, I probably shouldn't criticize too fiercely, because it seems like he does have things figured out a bit more cozily than certain missionaries in South America that I know.) But in general, we pretty much just have 2 people that we're working with, Mark, a 10 year old Filipino boy who we've set a date for later this September, and Alan, who we're just working very closely with to get him living the Word of Wisdom so that he can unite with his family and be baptized by mid-October. So, that leaves a lot of time to find people to teach!

...So that's pretty much what our days consist of. We wake up, do the missionary schedule rigamarole, study, eat and then leave for the day until we get back at 9 because we don't really have time to go home. So you'd think that being on your feet all day would result in weight loss, right? Wrong. Just as there were pride cycles in the Book of Mormon, Elder Blotter's weight cycles based on if he is in the North or in the Lower Mainland. In the North, I've always lived by a track and could go running if my companions didn't want to, and food is scarce. Here, there's just too much left over food from ward activities and things. So, I had lost all of the MTC and deep-fried Mars bars weight in Kitimat, but I predict that it will be back after a few weeks. Alas, I'll run it off next summer or something.

We saw quite a few miracles this week, however! A few things have happened this week that have made me reflect on the evidences in my life that there is a loving Heavenly Father. Usually, they are just a bunch of small things that are orchestrated to make things work out just right. At one point, we were up in the North part of Burnaby for an appointment with a a member (so, it's already unusual that we were in the Sister's area, the only reason we go there is for an appointment with a member, since there are multiple companionships for the same wards here) and when we went to catch a bus going back to our area, the buses weren't on schedule (unusual. Well, not that unusual, but still) so the next bus wasn't for a long time. So, we called the zone leaders for permission to just take the Skytrain into the east part of Vancouver to transfer at Commercial-Broadway onto the line that goes right through our area. And so then we were off through Van East, which isn't even our area, which was unusual. After a few minutes on the Skytrain, this woman walked up to us and introduced herself as a member of the church, and told us that just a few minutes before she had been praying and praying and asking for a some sort of a sign to some question she had, and with tears in her eyes, she said that we had gotten on the train just moments after she had prayed. Very cool to see how God can put you right where you need to be when you need to be there. Secondly, on Fast Sunday, we were about to catch a bus in the evening so we could head home to eat. We were waiting for our bus, we sat down on the bench to make some phone calls while we were waiting. And... for whatever reason, the bus chose to just drive past us, without picking us up. Which mean probably over an hour of walking to make it home. Such a waste of time. Gah! I remember just praying that someone would pull over and offer us a ride. And sure enough, just a few minutes later, a car pulls over and a member already giving the Korean-speaking elders a ride pulled over and gave us a ride as well. What a miraculous answer that was. God is good, and he does answer prayers!

And well, I hope that you all have a really good week this week. Thanks for all of the support. It's good to hear how everyone is doing back home. The church is true!

Elder Blotter

P-day in Burnaby...

What Chinese food looked like in the 1920's......

Introducing Elder Francis....

Flying South for the Winter, Part II: Return of the Basement Suites, Skytrains, and Oodles of People.

Family,

Well, I'm back to Van East! Well. Van East East. Burnaby South, if we want to call it what we're supposed to call it. I have been transferred to the area adjacent to Van East. Boundary Rd is in my area again. Since I've left, they've had to squish in massive amounts of Sisters in a lot of different areas, so now Burnaby is cut in half and elders are in the Southern half, but that's the stomping ground now. And goodness. I. Love. Vancouver. I forgot how much I loved Vancouver because of how much I love Northern BC, but Vancouver is a great place to be. It feels like the perfect temperature outside always. The bishop is from Japan, the opening prayer to Sacrament Meeting was in Mandarin, the ward mission leader is from Uganda, etc. etc. etc. Going running in the morning, you run past Filipino bakeries and it smells good. There's people all over the place. Frozen pizzas don't cost 9 or 10 bucks. You don't have to eat frozen pizzas, because food is cheap. ...Apples taste really good. We live in the basement of an East Indian family's house.  The list goes on. Anyways...

So my new companion is Elder Francis, who I am follow-up training. He's been out for 6 weeks. (I think I'm just going to be training for the rest of my mission, or something) He was originally called into the Spanish work, but has been serving in the English work because there's not enough Spanish areas for the number of missionaries that we have right now. His dad is a diplomat for the Canadian government, and so... he was born in Colombia (his mom is Colombian and his dad is your typical pasty white Canadian. Not that pasty white Utahns can point fingers), and has since lived in Argentina, Guatemala, Toronto, England, Hong Kong, Romania, The Philippines, and... Utah, because he went to BYU for a year. His family is currently living in Kenya. So... there you go. He speaks English and Spanish, decent French, and a little bit of Mandarin. He's a pretty cool elder, to say the least.

And the work in Burnaby is very cool! This Sunday, a wonderful little 10 year old girl named Faythe Mileta was baptized. The missionaries here have been working with that family for a while. Brother Mileta is also investigating, but he just has not been able to quit smoking. His wife, who is a member, obviously wants him to quit, but is kind of an enabler and doesn't want him to get too worked up or stressed about quitting smoking. In the first lesson that we had with him, we reset a date with him for October 13th and made a plan for him to quit smoking. Right now, he's smoking "maybe a little over" a pack a day. But he can do it! Elder Aidukaitus (perhaps... I misspelled that) of the Seventy was visiting our mission, and he went out of his way to specifically visit them, and after he pulled us aside and told us to make sure we baptized him. General Authorities. They're the best. Apparently, at the beginning of August, Elder Francis and Elder Kennedy (who is 7 foot 6 or something insane like that and has full rides in either basketball or football to BYU... I have some literally big shoes to fill) set a goal to have 10 baptisms, but all of those people have kind of been dwindling aside from the Miletas.

The ward here seems very cool as well. We have everything from this prim and proper British lady who, if you impress, will spend thousands of dollars on you in the form of new suits, shoes, food, etc. (she's included past missionaries in her will, apparently) But she picks favorites, and some missionaries just get the cold shoulder. There's this Iranian guy, Sammy, whose dad owns the largest construction company in Iran. Sammy had a rare disease that only 6 people in the world had, and his dad funded millions in research until they found a cure. Anyways, he's blind and a little disabled, lives by himself here (and somehow became a Mormon), and since he's blind he has no idea what time it is. And he calls all the missionaries in the area 5-10 times a day, which most of the time we can't answer (which if we don't, he sings the "I'm so lonely" song). And since he has no idea what time it is, that 5-10 times a day need not be restrained to the hours of 6:30 AM to 10:30 PM. We've been woken up a few times already. Good people though, that's for sure.

We've met a few people that seem very promising, but we have a lot of digging in to do to pick the work up in Burnaby, and there are a few challenges. When I came into the area, the area book hadn't been updated for a while, and the teaching records were all just kind of jumbled together in no particular order at the front of the binder. The area isn't... organized at all. We need to break the area down into smaller areas, organize the area book, and get a big map of the area and plot out where all the less actives, part member families, members, etc. etc. live so that we can plan better. And we can't afford to sit around in the apartment doing that, so... we'll probably do that for the rest of the P-day and then in the mornings and evenings until it's done. And transit here... well. In Vancouver, transit was incredibly overwhelming at first, but eventually you just figure out that more or less you Skytrain as East/West as you need, and you learn the buses that take you as North/South as you need. The buses are more sporadic and the city is in less of a grid than in Vancouver, so it's going to be a little dicey and takes about an hour to get anywhere, but hey. We'll get there. Right now we're emailing at the "Justice Institute of British Columbia" and it took us an hour just to get here. It'll take at least an hour to get back, and then we've got all the other P-day errands to run... Fun stuff. Better than having to drive in Vancouver. Anyways.

Well, there are certainly a lot of challenges up ahead, but I'm excited for them! The challenges here are a little daunting, but preferable to the challenge of knocking the same door for the 7th-8th time. Shout out to Elder Atwood, who is staying and training in Kitimat and will be there for at least 6 months!

Well, dad sent a little video attached to one of the emails of Jacey doing a backflip. That's a super cool trick! But what in the world! Jacey, you already look a lot older and you've still got quite a bit of time to grow! And Jed, look at you in your football pads. You're old enough for that? What in the world! Ha ha. Well. I hope that you all have a great week!

Elder Blotter

Mother, I forgot my camera, but I'll try to send some pictures next week.