Hello from Burns Lake

Family!

It is great to hear that all is well at home! The trip to Israel sounds like it is very exciting. I've just finished Jesus the Christ and I think it would be awesome to see that very historic area first hand. I am envious, even though Alma 5 says that I should be stripped of envy. I will have to re-read the chapter in Preach My Gospel on Christlike attributes. Are you planning on doing Lotoja next year, Dad? Or is it still coaching soccer and things like that? And it is certainly true that a mail strike for 6 months is worse than missing an email for a week!

Well, Burns Lake is beginning to change colors! About a week and a half ago a bunch of yellow appeared in all the trees overnight, and it just seems to be getting closer and closer to a full blown fall It has been surprisingly warm though for the past 2 weeks. Apparently it hasn't been normal. Usually it drops below freezing at night and in the mornings, but the afternoons are still pretty warm. Aside from that though, there are a lot of trees here, and so it is very beautiful with the changing colors.

When I left Utah, I passed a lot of fires in the mountains on the way to the airport. It is Northern BC's turn to be on fire now! Apparently there is very large fire in Tweedsmuir National Park, which is fairly close to Burns Lake. Yesterday we spent the evening tracting houses in Decker Lake, a small area that is a few minutes from Burns Lake. Slowly, a massive smoke cloud rose over the mountains and eclipsed the Sun. It looked scarlet red. It was pretty awesome at first, but then it got really hazy. We're told that the fires are quite a ways away and there is no real danger, but we figure that if there was an evacuation, and we don't have radio or TV, people might forget to let the missionaries know. :)

The past week has just been a week of miracles. We have found four new investigators. One of them we are going to be baptizing at the end of this month! Her name is Vanessa, and me and Elder Garner, the district leader, found her about 2 months ago when tracting out a little apartment complex. We had been trying to schedule an appointment with her ever since, but usually she cancel the appointments for some reason. When we finally got a lesson in with her, she accepted the gospel so readily. I can't count the number of times I tried to schedule something with her. I had her number memorized weeks ago. You have to come to church at least 3 times before baptism, and she came this week, she is going to be coming to Stake Conference in Prince George this Sunday, and so she can be baptized after church on September 30th. I feel like I learned so much from the experience. Elder Neher and I really did not expect to find success with her, but we didn't give up on her and we continued to try and share our message with her. She told one of the members last Sunday that she was so touched that I kept trying to work with her, after realizing exactly what blessings the Gospel is going to bring to her life. Being enthusiastic matters! She said it was one of the reasons that she said yes. I also learned how little missionaries do in the conversion process! We didn't convince her at all. She just heard the first lesson, and accepted it as truth very readily. The Spirit was so strong in the lesson and did... everything! Vanessa is a single mom with a 2 year old daughter, and we can just see the positive influence the church is going to have on her life. What a miracle this week has been! What a blessing it is to do missionary work and to see miracles happen first hand!

Just before emailing we had a lesson in a park with Dr. George Magee. His daughter is LDS, and a member in Burns Lake (who passed away years ago) gave him a Book of Mormon many years ago and wrote her testimony in it. When we first came in contact with him, we knocked on their door, and his wife answered and said they weren't interested and began to close the door, but he briefly mentioned he might like to meet and gave us his number. We called him, and though he wouldn't meet with us in his home, he would meet with us in a park. So... that's what he did. He takes a very scientific approach to spirituality, and he mentioned a lot of books and concepts that I was very familiar with. In particular, he discussed the idea of memes and how all religions could just be memes. I had written a 10 page long paper on memes last transfer at USU in my English class, and I was able to completely address that concern. There's another reason I'm in Burns Lake! He invited us to speak at a Rotary club that he is a member of. We'll have to see if I'll be in Burns Lake to be able to do that!

I also learned that you should... not be racist. Basically. We were out tracting little 2 or 3 house reserves on Southside, and we dropped of a Restoration pamphlet at a trailer to a young man that we would assume had never stepped foot inside a public school. The trailer smelled like smoke and beer. He seemed very quiet and listened to us, but didn't really give us any indication that he understood what we were saying. We dropped by a week later, and he invited us inside. We sort of talked to him like he had very little understanding what we were there for, and then he just cut in and told us exactly what the Restoration pamphlet said and that he wanted a Book of Mormon. He could understand the complicated language of the scriptures and could tell us exactly what things like Moroni 10:3-5 meant. Wow. That is far and away more than what other investigators who even have been to college can do. He has probably never been in a school, and probably taught himself how to read. If he was in my place, he would probably have cured cancer or something like that. We are excited to work with him.

I don't want to leave Burns Lake! I could be leaving here by September... 25th or something like that. I really hope that doesn't happen.

Elder Blotter

*He totally might come see" Dr. Blotter" as a patient. He is moving back down to Idaho and has a sinus problem or something.

PS- I was in Unit 3 for AP Government. I'm guessing it was supposed to be that and not AP History? Is Ethan doing AP Gov? I think him and Rigby would really click.

PPS- Elder Neher wonders if you have a really easy gravy recipe. He tried to make moose gravy today and it was literally miraculous how flavorless it was.

On the ferry at sunset....

A Day Early!

Family,

We had a "mini-Zone conference" in Terrace on Sunday, and we only had time to drive back to Smithers yesterday, so we are having our P-day in Smithers this week! It has been nice because there are lower prices on food and things here, but it also means that we are able to email today! So, this email is a little early.

It is weird how fast time has flown this transfer. It's already halfway over! In just over 2 weeks we will find out if we're being moved or not. I hope I'm in Burns Lake for one more round, but we'll have to see how it goes. There are a lot of people that have one foot in the font and the other on the banana peel, and they just need one more nudge for them to either be baptized or commit to be baptized, and I really feel like there is more for me to do in beautiful Burns Lake. I guess we'll just have to see what happens! They have a new training program for new missionaries called the "12 Week Program" where for the first 12 weeks in the field you spend an extra hour a day studying things in Preach My Gospel. I'm 3 weeks away from being finished with that, and I will no longer technically be a "greenie" when it's over. That's pretty weird!

This week has been an interesting one, because we spent a lot of it in other areas, but it has also been a week of miracles. Every week is week of miracles, of course, but still. :) We left on Friday to spend a day having another district meeting and companion exchange in Smithers, and then drove to Terrace and spent some time up there. When we got to Terrace, there was another companion exchange. It was pretty hectic, but I think everybody learned a lot. When we were in Terrace, I was with a group of missionaries and we went to tract out a trailer park. I was paired with an elder who is leaving after this transfer, and we agreed that whichever group found a new investigator first had to buy the other group milkshakes. At the second trailer that we visited, we saw somebody standing by a window and we got their attention to come to the door. When we looked at the door, there was a piece of paper taped to it that rather impolitely told people who were proselyting to leave the trailer alone. But... the person opened the door, we got in, and we managed to get a lesson and two new investigators from the trailer. One of the investigators committed to be baptized as we were leaving. It was certainly a testimony that even in unexpected places, the Lord is preparing people to hear the message of the Restoration.

Another experience we had when tracting Burns Lake is we ran into a man, named Ridge, who we had street contacted into and tracted into previously, and in both situations he had said no. We were out on a random street, and we knocked on the door of a house, and suddenly Ridge walks up to the door. He was just there to pick up his brother because he was intoxicated, but we had a conversation with him, and he told us he wanted to be a better father for his kids, and we basically taught him the Restoration on the doorstep of that random house. We gave him our number and set up another appointment, and left. We were like 5 minutes away and he called and told us to visit somebody down the street for him, and as soon as we hung up the phone, a car pulled up and rolled down the window to talk to us, and it turns out, it was the guy that Ridge told us to visit. He initially said he wasn't interested, but when we told him Ridge wanted us to see him, he agreed to give us his number and meet with us.

We're working in Burns Lake in a lot of different ways. We're starting to get some of the elderly natives to just come to church. We're not allowed to visit single women without a responsible male adult 17 years or older present, and there are a lot of old women on the reserve, and since there just aren't enough Priesthood holders in Burns Lake to get in the number of appointments we would like to, one way we've been getting people to come unto Christ is by setting up rides for them to come to church and teaching them there on Sundays. We'll have to see if any fruits come that way in the future. We know that we need to be working harder for Burns Lake to blossom, and so we're doing what we can.

The town itself of Burns Lake is small and only has about 1500 people in it. There are other areas in BC with massive wards in them and no missionaries. But there is work to do in Burns Lake, and the experiences and miracles that happen like that every day are just another witness that the Lord has missionaries where they need to be. It is so surprising to see the people that the Lord has prepared, but he has certainly prepared them.

Well, it has been a great week! I love serving the Lord. It is very fulfilling work. I am blessed to serve in a beautiful and uniquely challenging area. I hope all is well at home! All is well in Burns Lake. Oh. I also found out that the name of Queen Charlotte's island is spelled "Haida Gwaii". Just for clarification. :)

Hope to hear from you next week! Have a great one. I've got to write President Tilleman.

Elder Blotter

Burns Lake Report #.....8 or something like that.

Family!

Burns Lake is beautiful! I'm glad that you're able to at least see some of it through Google Earth! That's something that certainly wouldn't be possible ten years ago. Every time we're driving to the church or Southside, I just look around and see so much evidence of a Creator. It is just so beautiful! Especially now that it is already getting dark a little past 8:00. If we take the 8:30 ferry back to the house, we get to enjoy a moonlit ferry ride on the lake. I feel very blessed to be in the area that I am in. We encountered our 3rd bear while tracting this week! The first one was a cub, and far away, and the second one got chased away by a bunch of dogs that lived in the Reserve we were visiting, but this one was neat because we were in the truck so we could try to take a picture of it. Hopefully I will survive my remaining time here without getting mauled. But we routinely see eagles, foxes, moose, deer, and dogs that we think are rabid (on the Reserves) over the course of missionary work here. It's beautiful! Of course, hiking around Logan is beautiful too, so it's a good thing you were able to do that this week as well.

Wow, it sounds like last week was not a good week to be traveling by car, then! It's good that everybody seemed to be okay. Elder Pierson is still up North, but he's serving... in Kitimat or something like that, not in Smithers, so he was okay. As far as the Elder who served in BC, Queen Charlotte's is now in the Terrace zone. I think that the Terrace zone was recently created, and it all used to be the Prince George Zone, so it would make sense that he might not have served during it. Queen Charlotte's island is the Hidagwy area that I was talking about earlier. BC now refers to it as Hidagwuy or however you spell it as a throwback to the First Nations, because that's what they called it. Kelowna used to have 2 companionships serving there, but last transfer one of them was pulled out. President Tilleman thinks there is a shortage of missionaries in BC. He wants more! I obviously wouldn't tell your patient this, but apparently the mission president before President Nelson, (who was before President Tilleman) allowed a lot of disobedience, and it wasn't as successful at the time. The mission president really sets the pace for a mission, it seems. And yes mother, some week when there is time, I will tell President Tilleman's story. :)

It's good to hear that the missionary work in Hyde Park is going well!  I wish the Elders in Hyde Park the best, because street contacting and tracting would be rather ineffective down there, and so they probably have to figure out how to be successful!

In Burns Lake, we have managed to find quite a few new investigators this week! Because it gets dark earlier, the natives get drunk earlier, and for some reason, when people are drunk, they are more willing to give us their numbers and talk to us. Whatever gets our foot in the door as far as teaching them the gospel, we'll take it! We are also working with different member families. We are going to be following up with the Franz's, the family I talked about last letter, this week. The Moore's, the member family, gave them a Book of Mormon with their testimonies in it, and so we'll see how that went! James Witter, one of our investigators, survived his first Fast and Testimony meeting, and he seems to have enjoyed it, so we are excited about that. We are taking him lunch today. (A&W... we ran out of time to make anything else. Otherwise, we would have jumped at the chance to get rid some of that fish.) We know we can get a baptism in September! I do not want to leave Burns Lake until it is better than when I came here. I feel blessed to be able to serve the Lord.

I pray for the family every day! Tell Jed and Jacey that I love them lots. I hope that all is well and that you remember Burns Lake in your prayers as well.

Elder Blotter.

Report from Burns Lake

Hello!

Well, first off Mom, you are a gem. Thank you for going to all of that effort! My companion can use the other one, so all of that work into making the little Preach My Gospel was certainly not wasted. You're the best. And isn't that life? Of course they would make a little Preach My Gospel right after you went to all of that effort. It looks good though! The package arrived this Monday, so I think that this one arrived a little bit quicker than the previous one. The Burns Lake Elders had a good haul this Monday, because Elder Neher got a pretty big "Over the Hump Day" package because his 1 year mark was on August 24th. Transfers will be in the beginning of November, about 2 weeks before my birthday, so I might be in Burns, and I might be transferred. We'll have to see! Thanks for everything that was sent! I can certainly use that jacket, because I didn't have one, and Burns Lake doesn't have any form of clothing store, and the thrift store jackets were... not really missionary compatible. In short, thank you!

It sounds like just about everyone in my "generation" has left on their missions, and some from 2 years ago are already getting back! I remember when Todd Partridge was leaving. He's already back? Wow. He was Captain Hook in the Sky View production of Peter Pan! How could I not remember anyone who was involved with Peter Pan? The Peter Pan Pit was the pinnacle of my high school experience! Dad's email of David's living arrangement had the title "David Nelson home" and so I was worried that he had chosen to go home from his mission at first, so it's good that he is still sticking it out. I'll send the pictures of my Burns Lake home eventually, but they will probably be of the pictures of all of the different rooms we had, so that's... a little bit different. Every mission is different, I guess!

This is supposed to be on the down-low, (as in, the zone leaders told us, but the Smithers elders haven't chosen to talk to us about it yet) but over the course of the last week, the elders from Smithers rolled their truck and completely totaled it. They only had minor bruises, which apparently is a miracle if you see what the truck looked like. Apparently, they were going way too fast on dirt roads, and there was a sharp turn, and the truck didn't turn with it. We are very grateful that they were completely okay. Our district was blessed! I feel bad for the driver, because Elder Thornton has only been out a transfer longer than me.

Of course, we did have one driving incident this week... We were tracting on a far-distant road on Southside called Ootsa-Nadina East. It's the norm out in the Canadian boonies to have gates and things blocking off your driveway for some reason. A farmer had a barbed wire gate that I put down and then set back up just in case he had any animals that would get out, and then we went to the house to see if the people living there were interested. He wasn't, and we drove off, and Elder Neher forgot about the gate and drove through it! It was pretty awkward to go and tell him what happened, but he was very nice about it. That was good.

I had quite a few new missionary experiences this week too! Before the accident, we were on companion exchanges in Smithers, and me and Elder Garner had planned on tracting, but nobody was home because there was a parade. So... we went to the parade to do some street contacting, and when we were there, we decided to just walk through the parade! I walked down one side, Elder Garner walked down the other side, and we handed out pass-along cards and pamphlets to anybody that smiled and seemed interested. We were right between a fire truck and a group called "The Indo-Canadian Culture Dancers" or something like that. Marching band must have prepared me for missionary work somehow!

After 2.5 months of effort and encouragement and commitments and brainstorming, we FINALLY got members to invite over potential investigators for a family home evening/dinner appointment. They prayed for 3 weeks for a missionary experience with a family, and then we tracted into them! We helped them move and got to know them, and then worked with the member family until they invited them over. And it was awesome when they finally did! Their friends seem very ready for the gospel. We'll have to see how that goes! My point in saying all of that is that I am sure the missionaries appreciate your efforts to fellowship the people in your area. It helps a lot, and investigators found from member referrals have a 20-30% chance of being baptized, while investigators found from missionary efforts have a 3-5% of being baptized. So good work! :)

Well, I've got to write my mission president! Talk to you next week!

Elder Blotter

Burns Lake Report

Family!

I am going to be in beautiful Burn's Lake for another transfer, at least! I prophesy 2 transfers, but we'll have to see! Other than one of our zone leaders finishing his mission, and going home ("died", in mission lingo), our entire zone is staying the exact same. I have grown to love this little village up in the North, and I've really grown attached to the members here. Plus, me and Elder Neher get to fly down to Richmond tomorrow to go to the "new missionary training", which will be pretty much what I went to when I arrived in the mission field, but I get to go to again! Usually they have all missionaries still in the "12 week training" program go, but it's very unusual to have greenies from the North go down, because of how costly it is to fly us down and drive us around and stuff. I guess they figure that I need some remedial training. :) I am quite excited though, because we are flying out of Prince George this time, and I should be able to see more of the areas in the mission and meet more of the elders serving here. Other than the assistants, most of which who are going home soon, I haven't met any elders out in the boondocks of Burns Lake! It should be exciting.

As far as the Burns Lake area goes, it's about as far out as you can get from the mission home as far as travel times. I think Smithers is a bit more North, but Burns is another 2 hour drive from Smithers. The only area that I know of that is further away is an island called... and I'm going to butcher the spelling here... Hidagwie... Hydagwy... Um... I have no idea how you spell it, but it is pronounced Hi-da-g-why, which is a teeny island about the size of Burn's Lake that is only accessible by a ferry that runs every week or so. Right now, President Tilleman is in the process of closing a lot of areas down and opening up new ones. With so many villages dotting this really big area, and so few missionaries, the mission field is constantly changing.

The weather here during the day is just about perfect. I have no idea what temperature exactly because the small talk about the weather is usually in Celsius, ha ha. It's a little chilly in the mornings during our studies, though! That's good though, because it keeps us awake. It's going to be hard when snow starts falling, though, because we won't be able to go running outside. There's a track a couple blocks from our house and we have permission to run on it in the mornings, so I can still run a 5k every day. That has been a tender mercy. Oh well, I'm off topic. Summer up here, though only about 2 to 3 months long, is the ideal temperature, and the days are really long. When I first got in the area, the Sun didn't start going down until about 11:00 PM, but now it starts getting dark at around 9:00-9:30, which makes it a lot easier to sleep. We no longer have to hang towels over the windows in our bedroom!

Oh, it is great to hear that the kids are doing well and all practiced up for Halloween! I miss them a whole bunch. Has Jed sprouted another 4 inches yet? It's also good to hear that the ward is doing well. I feel quite bad for Wyatt... I can definitely see now that one advantage of an English speaking mission is spending a transfer longer in the field, as opposed to the MTC! The MTC at this point just feels like a blur that was a couple days long, though. Time is really starting to slip by. I'm going to need to start working harder!

Oh, and Dad, I met somebody who served in your mission up here! I remember you saying that RMs are a little weird around women when they first get back from the mission field, and I think that Rosario must be particularly bad. During testimony meeting he said that "he would like to bear his testimony that he was here to see Amanda Boehmer", and then almost proposed at the pulpit. Our branch president kind of coughed and that sort of stopped him, but I laughed when I was talking to him after and he said he served in Rosario.

As far as the work in Burn's Lake goes, it was an interesting week! We helped a less active member haul hay, and that made me think of my relatively brief haying days at the ranch. We tracted into a "little Germany" on Southside, and have been working with some German people, and that has been great. The end of August is going to be really really busy. We're bracing ourselves. Because summer is so short, everybody is really busy or on vacation pretty much for the entire time, and as soon as fall starts rolling around, they have a lot of free time. We have about 20 potential investigators who are solid and seem interested who asked to be called at the end of August/beginning of September, and about 5 actual investigators will be able to start meeting with us again. We're praying for miracles and baptisms in September! I absolutely love it here, and amazing experiences are had every day in one form or the other.

Oh, and me and Elder Neher became smugglers of illicit contraband, this week. One of the natives that we meet with had a freezer full of salmon that he harvested last year and hasn't been able to eat, but wants room in his freezer for this year's fish. So... we told him that we would get some of the members of our branch to take it off his hands. But before we gave it to the members, we wanted to make sure it wasn't disgusting/freezer burnt, and so we asked for a little bit for ourselves, just so we could investigate. He came out with a 40 pound box of salmon. They have their heads and tails chopped out, and (most) of the guts removed, but that's about it. Anyways, as we were leaving he told us not to tell anybody because "he hasn't been in trouble with the law for 20 years" and didn't want to get in more trouble. We think that because natives have different rules, they're not allowed to sell/give non-natives any fish. And... so now, we have a freezer full of illegal fish, and we're not sure what to do with it. We left one massive salmon on our counter all night to thaw, and now the house smells pretty bad now. We put some sliced potatoes where the guts used to be, wrapped it in tin foil, and put it in the oven for about an hour and a half at about 400 degrees. And ate it for lunch. So... before I forget, how do you usually cook that fish that we would eat on Sunday? We have to eat through it all before the Mounties come and turn us in to a Canadian federal prison. I don't know if Canada has a writ of habeas corpus or not.


Love you all, and until next week!
Elder Blotter

PS- I think I've been getting all the emails, but when I try to respond to them sometimes, the computer shuts off before I can send my response! These library computers shut off after exactly an hour before I can hit send sometimes. I recognized the park! Where is the rolly bar slide, though? I couldn't really tell if it was there, and that is what "bent my bone"!

PPS- Um, I still haven't found my retainer. That is all.

Missionary report from your Firstborn Son

Elder Blotter and Elder Neher

Well!

The past week has been quite the week, and next week is already the last one in the transfer! Time goes by so fast. Mother, Sister Raasvelt, the woman who did our housing inspection, said that our mothers would be quite proud of our house, so don't worry, we're doing good. She did say that we needed to clean up all the lint in the laundry room though, because we've just been banging the filter on the shelf above the dryer and we forgot to clean that up, so I'll have to report back on the lint situation next week. Ha ha. We've also been eating super well, yeah. We've had to get a bit "inventive" at the end of the month because we ran out of grocery money, but I'm by no means going hungry! Life is good. We just finished doing some service at the food bank in Burn's Lake, and so I definitely appreciate what we have!

Yes, the natives here are "first nations". Macaroni and cheese is called "Kraft Dinner". Beanies are called "toques". Color is spelled colour and fiber is spelled fibre, Etc etc. It's all about the same, but every so often something comes up that makes you scratch your head a little bit. Keeps it exciting.

The work this week was a bit different than in past weeks. Me and Elder Neher had a "purge" of sorts of our investigators. One family that we've been meeting with for a couple weeks now we had to drop just because they're just not progressing or interested in progressing at all. It's kind of hard because we really like them and we have great discussions with them when we go. When the went to Calgary a week ago, they brought back lightsaber bubble wand things for us as souvenirs. Roger, another one of our investigators, we may need to stop meeting with because he doesn't want to come to church or keep committments any more because his mom told him "he was born Catholic, raised Catholic, and will die Catholic" after he came to church with us two weeks ago (Roger is 59, and we're hoping that his mother doesn't hang on for much longer. Is that a terrible thing to hope for?). The natives are very culturally oriented, and whenever one begins to make changes in their lives, sort of like crabs in a bucket the others begin to pull the investigator back down, and it's hard to watch the people you've been teaching being dragged back down.

But, miracles are definitely happening in this area! Apparently, last transfer, Elder Neher and his last companion, Elder Owens, gave the challenge to a family in the branch to pray for a whole month for a missionary opportunity with a specific family in mind. When we were tracting some obscure street east of town, we ran in to them and they want to meet with us! Prayer works. We're planning on meeting with them in the member's home sometime over the next week. There have been some pretty neat experiences up here in finding investigators, that's for certain. Because the town is so small, whenever we find a new investigator, we look through the teaching records in the area book and a surprisingly large amount of the time, they've met with missionaries in the past. It has been neat to see how the Lord prepares people and softens their hearts over time.

Finding investigators here is always an experience, too! On Southside, you have hermits who believe very strongly in "nature", or Mennonites, because the Canadian government apparently colonized Mennonites there many, many years ago because they're industrious and would build an infrastructure). In town, there are natives (who comprise most of our investigators), and (quite unfortunately) a multitute of Born-again Christians. Each one tries to get our first names so that they can pray for our salvations, and tells us to come to their homes when the rapture happens so that we can look though their stuff and find out how to get to Heaven too. I think they rehearsed it as a congregation or something. Ha ha... Born agains. Oh! And there are a bunch of Jay-dubs, how we affectionately refer to the Jehovah's Witnesses. Those guys are brainwashed! They are all entirely convinced that their faith is the only one that believes in Jesus Christ being separate from God, in resurrection, etc, but they won't let us in their houses or take pamphlets or learn anything about our faith. Also, they believe in pretty kooky stuff, too. Being out here in the world, away from Cache Valley, has really led me to appreciate the knowledge that we have. We are so blessed! Being able to serve as a missionary and sharing the gospel is such a blessing, and teaching investigators is awesome. Over the past month I've learned, even further, that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the Lord's church, and I know that we can know of that for ourselves by the power of the Holy Ghost when we ask in prayer. The Book of Mormon is awesome. You can entirely tell if an investigator kept their reading committments or not, just by the spirit that is with them when we meet with them again. The church is true! Say woo woo! Also, say prayers for the missionary work in Burn's Lake, right after you say woo woo! You are all the best. And... I've got to write my letter to President Tilleman.

Until next week!
Elder Blotter

Report from Burns Lake

Familyyyy...

It sounds like everyone is doing good, other than some of the usual stresses of life! It's good to hear that everybody, minus Jed's digestive system, is doing well. I hope Jenessa does well with soccer and that Jacey gets all of the pet shops that her heart desires. :) Also, before I forget, since packages take about 2 weeks, and I might be leaving in 2 weeks, (although I rather doubt it,) hold off on sending packages to Burn's Lake from this point on. The package on the 27th should be good though!

I had the craziest dream the other night, and I say craziest because I actually remembered it. Usually, I have really intense dreams and I wake up feeling some emotion or the other, but I forget what happened in a couple minutes. This one, I remember almost perfectly. So, in my dream, we got to go home for a couple days after the MTC. No idea why, but they flew me to Sky View High School in a little airplane like the one I flew here in, and then I got out, and Ethan was waiting for me to be my companion while I was home. We walked home along the canal. It was a great welcoming, let me tell you. Anyways, I got home, and at first in the dream I was really excited to do all of the things that I did before I left again, but then I remembered that I couldn't do any of it because I was set apart as a missionary. So Mom had me cutting strawberries for a couple hours. I woke up realizing that in the mission field is where I am supposed to be, and even though I miss all of you oh so dearly, I am where I am for a reason.

Anywho...

The week was great! As I believe I mentioned last week, Elder Neher took a tumble mountain biking, and so he's been limping, but he's back to about normal now. We went to Smithers for a companion exchange/district meeting, and so that was exciting. We also did a lot of service, and so I did quite a bit of painting and electrical work for this community service project. By electrical work, I mean army crawling with wires underneath a building with dead rats, broken glass, and cigarette butts. It was quite the experience, ha ha. We also had a tire pop out at the very end of Cheslatta Road on Southside, which is pretty much the end of the Earth, as far as civilization is concerned. We knocked on the door of the one house at the end and this elderly guy talked to us about string theory explaining everything and we talked to him about God being the answer. Neither one of us was too convinced, but he helped us get the tools we needed to change our tire, so we were grateful! We taught some lessons, found some investigators, and had this native, when we knocked on his door, come out and grab us and say this really long prayer. It... was another week!

The members here are asked to do quite a bit more as far as missionary work goes than in Cache Valley. We're really struggling to get them to have the faith that their efforts will result in baptisms and blessings. Fast fact: investigators found by missionaries have a 2-3% chance of being baptized, while member referrals that result in investigators have a 20%-30% chance of being baptized. They just need to do the work. We recieved revelation that the way we need to do it is by having them have Family Home Evenings and otherwise studying the basic doctrines and missionary principles in Preach My Gospel and the scriptures. With an eternal perspective, trying to share the gospel isn't embarrassing or awkward, it's giving the person eternal happiness and doing what Heavenly Father expects us to do! Chapter 3 in PMG explains the first lessons so simply, and chapters 11 and 13 talk about what members can do. We think it can inspire them.

The missionary work in Burn's is slowly but surely progressing! Although... our most progressed investigator is spending the rest of the month fishing, and one is moving at the end of the month for as long as a year. That's a minor setback. We're still looking for truth seekers and working with the investigators that we have. Many have had trials and hardships in their lives. The Natives here have all had hard lives, usually as a result of broken families and drug problems. The gospel can definitely bless them, and it has been inspiring to see the changes in those that we have been working with. We have to move very slowly though the lessons because many of them have a hard time reading and understanding, which is probably a good teaching style for me to be learning right in the beginning.

Most of our investigators are from the reserves, but we have some solid potential investigators right now that are living along the roads East of town, so that may change soon. The reserves are interesting places, as are the gas stations around here. If you're going to be a Native American, Canada is the place to be. They have bands here, not tribes, and the bands are heavily funded and provide housing, and if desired, access to schools for natives. The natives also have status cards that allow them to hunt and fish whenever and whatever they would like, and they don't pay any taxes, so gas stations have two prices, "status, and non-status". I think that if they tried to introduce that in the States, it wouldn't go over well, but hey, it seems to work fine for the Canadians!

Our house is definitely not in that condition! Sometimes the table that we study on gets disorganized during planning on study sessions, but that's about it. We're pretty clean. No holes in the walls yet! We have an inspection on Wednesday though, so we'll have to see if we pass that! It is cold in our house though. It's usually below 60 degrees. Which is nippy. Summer here is only "hot" for about 3 weeks, and that was apparently my first 3 weeks here. The people were complaining about it being hot, but it was probably only about 80 degrees at it's worst. I thought it was nice!

Well, until next week!

Elder Blotter

PS- Next time you do send a package, send up the rest of the ties that I have at home. All the Elders here have like 50 ties and trade them all the time. I keep on forgetting to ask that. Also, for my birthday this year, here's the desire of my heart: some computer savvy family member should download Preach My Gospel as a pdf file online and put it on a flash drive. Then go down to Kinko's or wherever, and ask them to print it out at 60%, spiral bind it, and laminate the cover. The result is a PMG that will fit in a scripture case. Which would be nice. But that also would be a bit of a pain, so I know that it might not happen! Anyways, you guys are great!

PPS- My house number is actually #236 on 4th Avenue. I don't know what I was thinking earlier.

PPPS- Did I bring my retainer, or is that at home? I'll look harder for it.

Greetings from Burns Lake, eh?

Fammillyyy...

The missionaries in Terrace told me about a heli-skiing resort that is owned by a part member family. I can't remember their names, but where did you go again, Dad? That would be kind of neat if it was the same place. I definitely am going to have to pay another visit to BC when I'm off the mission to do some of the fishing and skiing that they have up here! We tried to go mountain biking at Boer Mountain yesterday, but we only made it about 20 minutes before Elder Neher took a tumble and we had to pay a visit to the hospital for him to get some stitches, although he ended up being fine. C'est la vie! It was beautiful while we were biking though! A bit different from the biking we did in Moab and Canyonlands. Instead of large rocks being the main obstacles, you were swerving between pine trees and roots. And it was interesting to see socialized health care in action! He walked in, a nurse swabbed the gash on his knee, told him the doctor could see him in a couple hours, and so we just sort of left and came back! It was kind of weird.

Oh! That will be great for Jordan. It's weird to think that Elder Nelson is still in the MTC, too... since I've already been here for almost 3 weeks. One advantage of going English speaking, for sure! You'll have to keep me posted on where other people go, even though most of my friends have pretty much gotten their calls.

It's good to hear a little bit about the outside world! I heard about the shooting in Colorado because an investigator had their TV on, and I figure that as long as people can afford to drive cars, no global catastrophe has occurred... yet. And when the smoke up here cleared up, I assumed that the fires hopefully didn't burn our house down. But that's about as far as I go in terms of knowing what's going on!

Apparently, President Tilleman only sends missionaries that he can trust up in the North, because of how far away it is and how little oversight he has over the area, but I figure that because he has absolutely no experience with me, I'm definitely an exception to that. I guess I can prove myself while I'm here, though! As far as how transfers in the mission go in this area, in the past, he has sent a greenie here with a trainer, then moved the trainer out after a transfer, so that the greenie is the one who knows the area and has to participate more. But, the zone leaders say that you never know with President Tilleman. They say that many Elders in the North qualify for living common law because of how long they're there, and sometimes you're only up for a transfer. I expect that I'll be in Burn's Lake for at least another transfer, but Elder Neher, who was in this area last transfer as well, might be shipped out. I know that however it is organized, it's the way that the Lord wants it, however, because President Tilleman is very in tune with the Spirit and I have full faith that how he organizes it, it is supposed to be. Have I told his story in emails yet? I don't think I have. I'll do that next week or when there's time, because it's definitely inspiring. President Tilleman is awesome.

Me and Elder Neher definitely have our differences, but we still get along great! Pretty much, we both want to be good missionaries, he just feels like that is accomplished through planning extensively, and I like to stick to the time guidelines that are in the white handbook and in PMG. I've just sort of figured that it is probably better to do things his way and have a good relationship, than to become frustrated and create a rift between us. It's definitely hard to constantly be doing your best to be working hard, but when you do manage to do so, you feel so much more satisfied. I'm by no means a perfect missionary no matter how you slice, but I'm doing what I can.

The work here is starting to progress! When me and a zone leader, Elder Reynolds, were on splits, we found 16 potential investigators in one day, and for an area where tracting and street contacting aren't very effective, that was awesome! I have a very strong testimony that the Lord puts people who are prepared for the message in your path. It is amazing to being to see the changes that the gospel brings in people's lives. We have 3 different baptismal dates set, and we are planning on committing about 3 more to be baptized. We have faith that we'll be able to have a baptism in August, and hopefully one per month, even though our Ward Mission Leader is insistent that 1 baptism every five to ten years is acceptable. We're trying to infect him with how awesome missionary work is. :) There is a lot of potential here, and we are going to make stuff happen. I've definitely been humbled, however. The Lord is the one who does missionary work, I'm just here to get the ball rolling.

Well, talk to next week!

Elder Blotter

PS- Thanks for the package, mother!

PPS- With emails, I can only email direct family and grandparents. You can forward me stuff they say and forward what I say, but that's about it. Also, in this mission, we can only listen to music that would be appropriate to play in Sacrament Meeting. So thanks for the music you sent! Next time, send some MoTab! It's fantastic stuff. I'll be good for a while, because Elder Neher has a bunch.

HELLO!

Hello everyone!

Sorry about being unable to email on Monday! The public library is closed on our p-day, and the white handbook pretty much eliminates the other... four or so computers in existence at Burn's Lake because we're not allowed to use member's computers. So, we are trying to change our p-day, but in the mean time, we have permission to set an hour apart from a normal day to write President Tilleman and use email. Either way, we don't have too much time as of now, but if we can work that out I should have more time in the future! And on the subject of mail, we only check mail on Mondays, but it wasn't there when we looked. Elder Neher thinks that it will take about 2 weeks for snail mail to get up here.

Dad went heli-skiing in Terrace??? That is pretty neat. Now I wish that I had gone with him! It would have been weird to have seen part of my first zone as a normal person. They call the area around Burn's Lake "3,000 miles of fishing" and so I can totally see them visiting here on a fishing trip. A good chunk of the members here are retired dentists/doctors/whoever else that live up here now to fish.

Our house is on 4th avenue. I forget which number... it's like #463 or something like that. There's a tree or two in the front yard, and it has a little deck in the back. It's on the right hand side if you are facing the dead-end part of the road. That's pretty cool that you can see my area though!

Being a missionary is fantastic! I feel like it is such a blessing to be here. I've learned and grown so much over the past 2 weeks I feel like, so come 23 months from now, I have no idea where I'll be. But it will be good. Ha ha. So far, I've definitely faced a bunch of challenges. Elder Neher's style of planning is a bit more... extensive than I would otherwise plan (IE... our weekly planning session takes an entire day, even though Preach My Gospel says it should take 2-3 hours), and so we've had to overcome some different styles, which has been difficult but we've made it work without any conflict, which is nice. I've learned a bunch from him for sure. I feel like I've already been blessed with more patience and sanity here, as well. I have a strong testimony that whom the Lord calls, he qualifies, although I definitely have a lot further to go before I feel qualified to be here, ha ha. I feel like I could/should be doing so much more!

The work here has been pretty successful over the past couple days! We've found 3 new investigators this week. Most of our investigators are on the reserves for Natives here. It really does feel like I'm in a country a lot further than Canada.

Elder Neher says that we're leaving in ten minutes, and I still need to write President Tilleman, so I guess that's all that I can say for now! I'll write back sometime next week!

Elder Blotter

PS: I haven't tried my debit card again yet, but I might need to pretty soon. And... I'm not starving. We don't get too many dinner appointments, but when we do, they give us lots of food from their gardens and/or animals. Today, some less actives gave us a bunch of halibut. That should be tasty. Anyways, I digress. I don't think I need anything! It's been great. I sent Jed and Jacey a letter last Monday, so you'll have to tell me how long it took for that to arrive.

PPS: Tell Jed and Jenessa congrats for their respective successes! T-ball is cool and AP History is hard. And give Jacey a hug for me.

YEAH!!!!!

Mother Dearest! Daaaaddd... Faammmillyy....

Well! I definitely did make it here safely! I'll give you the low down on where I am and everything. And... I live in a house right now. But... first things first, ha ha.

My first companion is Elder Neher, which you pronounce like the hair removal product. He's a great Elder, which is a good thing. If he could be any animal, he says he would be a hippopotamus. He's kind of quirky, but I guess so am I, so that's okay. He's from Ontario, Canada, but is going to BYU-I to become a mechanical engineer. He... really likes ties and has quite a few shelves of them. I can tell you more about him later, I guess.

Before I forget, my mailing Address:

Box 1017
Burns Lake, BC, Canada
VOJ1EO

My first area is called Burn's Lake, one of the farthest in terms of travel times from the mission home. It is out in the boonies and makes Cache Valley seem massively populated. To get there, we took a two hour flight in a propellor-powered plane (we flew over absolutely gorgeous mountains and lakes and endless trees. It was awesome) from the Vancouver airport to a town called Terrace, which has... maybe 18,000 people in it. Then it was a 3-or-so hour drive to Smithers, which has... maybe 3,000 people in it. And then it was another 2 or 3 hour drive to Burn's Lake, which apparently has 2,000 people in it and the surrounding areas. The area seems to mostly be dependent on logging, milling, tree-planting, and mining. Right now, everybody is commenting on how hazy it is here, and they say it's from smoke from the fires down in the States. So... the haziness makes me think it might be the same air from home. Sigh... People are also complaining about how warm it is up here. It feels perfectly cool outside. I think I'm blessed to be here now, cause I would guess that winters here are miserably cold!

Well, in the first couple minutes after meeting my first companion, I was given a cell phone. I thought I was going to be able to get away without using one for 2 years, but I guess not! The first contact I had with a real investigator was via text message. Kinda lame... but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do. We also have a car, and apparently 94% of the mission has a car. Also... we have a two story house with a deck, three or so bedrooms, and two bathrooms. Not even joking. Apparently, the missionaries in the area used to stay in a member's house while they were on a mission, and then they got back, and there aren't any acceptable apartments for missionaries in such a tiny area, and so we're renting a house for now. And it has two floors. Which is way too much for two missionaries to use... so we have a room for clothes, a room to study in, a living room, our bedroom, a kitchen... and so on. We don't really go downstairs except to do laundry. And, although it's super awesome to have our own house, it's actually kind of annoying, apparently, because we have to spend time on P-day doing yard work and stuff. But, no complaints from me. The missionaries in Terrace were living in the garage of a member, the missionaries in Smithers, who are only other companionship in my district, are living in a relatively small apartment. And I'm sure there are missionaries in Argentina living in a tree house they made themselves or something. So I'm blessed. Oh, Elder Pierson is one of the missionaries in Terrace. The day we passed through he was really excited because they had had some successful work that day. Good stuff.

 The work here... has unique challenges. Our area is bisected by this gigantic river-like body of water, Francois Lake. If you pronounce it correctly, you say Fran-swah. French pronunciations... what're you gonna do? If you find that lake on Google Earth, the church house is relatively close to it. Anyways, most of the members live on Southside, which you have to get to via a fifteen minute ferry ride. The ferry leaves every half hour or so, and you just drive on to it. It's kind of nifty. But anyways, most of the members live scattered out miles apart from each other on Southside, and the chapel and most investigators are on the North side in Burns Lake, so it's really difficult to get members to come to appointments with investigators.. Also... there are just no people here, so you can't really street contact. Apparently some times we still try to on the little clump of businesses along the road that goes through the town, but only when it's busy. It's also really spread out, and because we have a very limited amount of kilometers, tracting is hard. I've haven't done it too often, but it mostly consists of driving through heavily forested areas on dirt roads, with random roads that either lead to houses, or the middle of nowhere because they're roads that were once used for logging, but are abandoned now. Also, it's kind of terrifying, because every house you go to (literally) has five or six dogs that all run and try to maul you. And then when the people do come to the door, they seem like hermits and either smell like incense or marijuana, or have naked children running around, or don't speak English, or who knows what else. I actually really enjoy But, they're God's children and they need the chance to partake of the fruits of the gospel, so I guess that's what I'm there for! We haven't visited it yet, but apparently a large amount of the people in our area are Natives living on Canadian Indian reserves. Except here, they're called "First Nations". Anyways, apparently the way the system works is that their lifestyle is subsidized by the government to preserve their way of life and culture and stuff. As a result, they're usually home and don't mind meeting with missionaries. But also, they're apparently flaky and will frequently miss appointments and forget about commitments and stuff.

In a nutshell, what our work here consists of mostly is trying to build a foundation for future missionary work. We're really trying to get the members here excited and participating in missionary work. I think previous missionaries have sort of tired them out, and most of them seem really discouraged about missionary work. So now we're just trying to plan activities and gatherings that members can invite potential investigators to, so that we can trick them into helping. Ha ha. And they definitely help us out, so I hope I don't sound like I'm negative towards them. On Sunday, one member gave us a bunch of frozen moose steak and stuff from their garden to eat, and another member gives us a big jug of milk straight from their cow each week. It's weird because members will talk about how they know everybody in town because it's so small... and at the same time they can't think of any referrals for us to teach! I don't really blame them, though. There aren't too many people around. The branch members here mostly consist of a few large families and their children's families, so about half the branch has the same 3 last names. Small world here, for sure.

We have a really nice chapel building! I'm glad, because it means it's big enough to have a family history center with computers in it. Apparently the area used to have more members because there were ranchers from Idaho and Utah that moved up here, but eventually their offspring moved back to the states and they sort of died off.

In Burn's Lake, they just had a convert baptized who had been investigating for 2 or 3 years, which is cool! Hopefully it will invigorate the members here. Regardless, we're doing everything that we can! I have faith that the Lord does not give commandments, or otherwise ask us to do things, save he prepares a way for us to accomplish them! I'm doing quite well here! I have yet to starve or die of exposure, so it can't be too bad! I really am enjoying the amount of studying and gospel discussion, and it's awesome doing the Lord's work. It takes what feels like excessive amounts of planning to figure out how to do stuff, but I'm happy to be here, and I'm going to do my best. It's weird, because you leave the MTC feeling remotely prepared to be a missionary, and then you get in the field and you realized that you're nowhere near where you wish you were. But! I have 2 years to improve! So... I guess until next week!

Elder Blotter


To my ever supportive mother without whom I could not be functioning:
PS- My debit card failed to get any money out of an ATM. So... we should figure that out. I'll see if someone from a bank or something can get it to work. But... yeah. Kind of a problem, but I can make do on the money they give us for groceries and stuff if not.

PPS- I think I could maybe use another short-sleeve white shirt. A pen exploded on one when it was in my pocket. Kind of unfortunate, really... I'm trying to see if I wash it enough if the ink will go away. We'll see.

PPPS- Send this to Amelia and Grandparents because I don't think I'll have time to write this week. I'll try, but I had to spend forever in this government building trying to get a BC driver's license. So... we're time crunched.