To my firstborn.

Do you know how much you are loved by your family? Well, it's a LOT I can tell you that! Dad and I were just talking as we were getting ready for bed. We are thankful you came to us and are part of this family. We miss you and can't wait for his conference in October just to be in Vancouver. I'm SURE you won't still be there... so no need to worry about your mother stalking you.  Hee hee. How was your week? I am amazed at how different Vancouver is than your time in Burns Lake. I was fascinated by your e-mail last week and how crazy busy you seem to be now. And I would sure like to meet this Elder Smith. :)  You need to remember all the stories I'm sure you will have to tell. But I hope you are able to work hard together and have success. Speaking of success! Dad probably told you but we are having a little missionary work going on in our family. IT'S SO EXCITING. And you get to do this every waking minute. Having the Dubanowiches here was really special and I think it was meant to be. They were touched by the missionaries they met at temple square and the LOVED the Family History Center. They felt the Spirit at church. I think I told you Jenessa sent Griffin home with a B of M with her testimony in it. She got an e-mail tonight (5 days later) that he finished it. He has couple of questions for her, he wondered if Zion meant Salt Lake City and he wondered if the civilization left after Moroni were the American Indians? I just can't believe he read it so quickly and I so wish you could teach him! I told him he could write you if he had questions and I directed him to mormon.org. There is so much anti-mormon garbage on line. So let me know if you have an advice or something I could share with him.

     G and G Blotter have been in Armenia and are expected home Tuesday. Can you believe at 74 they are traveling the globe like they are? They are awesome. I get to go to the temple on Tuesday with your cousin, Jami. She is going through for the first time in the Bountiful Temple and then getting married the next week in the Brigham City Temple.

     What do you think about the GPS? I am more than happy to send one, but I would think you may want to pick it out and get one that is just what you want. Let me know what you think about that. Today was the first time I taught the new "Come, Follow Me" curriculum in YW. No lesson manual. It was on (probably my fave subject) the Holy Ghost and the YW did wonderfully sharing ways the Holy Ghost had blessed their lives. I think it is inspired and will be great. Dad and Ness taught Jed's primary class today and were so surprised he was the BEST kid in the class! I think Miss Smith has trained him in school to be good. She is an amazing teacher. Jed got a chinese checkers board for his birthday and we've been playing alot of that, along with Sorry and Uno. And Jacey got a long jumprope for Christmas. Because the great room is so big we've pushed the couches back and I tied one end to the door going downstairs so I can turn it alone for them. We are spending HOURS jumping the rope. On Sat. Dad took J and J to the Beav and when they got home the started jumping rope with Rachael and by the time they went to bed they were asleep before their heads hit their pillows. Life is rich and good and we are blessed. We love you. Next Monday we will be e-mailing you straight from Disneyland. Can't believe we talked Dad into it.  Have a wonderful week.  Love, Mom

Well! Here I am. Vancouver. Happy New Years Eve!

Well, hello!

Sounds like it was a pretty good Christmas in Cache Valley, and pretty good skiing at the Beav! It was good to see the pictures of everybody and everything. I hope that Jed has continued to perfect his harmonica skills. He was already pretty good by the time that I talked with him.

It has been a great week in Vancouver! Whew. The days go by so fast down here. It has been a crazy! I swear, over the past week I have had more food from Phillipines than most missionaries actually serving there. There are so many people on the streets of so many different cultures and races and who knows what else. It has been awesome. It's quite a bit warmer here, too, which is nice! To get to the library from Burns Lake, we would jump in the truck and drive for like 30 seconds across town to the library. Here, we walk from our home to the Nanaimo skytrain station, ride that to Commercial-Broadway, catch a bus for a couple blocks, and walk to one of the only libraries here that is open on Monday. It's pretty intense here! Stuff is always happening. For example, in the past half hour or so we got a mormon.org referral (that comes in the form of a text on our phone) that somebody wants us to stop by and give them a Dutch Book of Mormon. Hopefully we will be able to communicate with them somehow. Just a minute ago, while we were waiting for a computer, this black teenager and this old white guy had an argument over some dumb thing about using of a public computer that sounds like it is now going to result in a civil law suit.

Anyways, the work in Vancouver is awesome! In an average day, we usually just take public transit somewhere to visit a member or a less active, and then knock some of the doors around their home and street contact in the area that they live. We have had a ton of dinner appointments over the past few days, because of the Holiday season, and so we've been eating way too much. We talk to hundreds of people. When we get back into our apartment, we have lots of other missionaries from other parts of Vancouver or that speak other languages or from areas in BC that have investigators move to Vancouver call us and give us potential investigators or referrals. It's a really busy just trying to get in contact with some of the people that are around. We have a lot of really solid people that we are teaching. One guy, Conrad, just approached us when we were sitting on the bus because he had heard some bad things about our church and he wanted to hear "our side of things", and now he's a really solid investigator. One of our baptismal dates, Cheryll, just kind of decided by herself that she wants to "be Mormon" after reading a book by Marie Osmond or someone like that. There are some people that have committed to be baptized just after we or some other missionaries talked to them on the street for a little while. There is this OCD recent convert named Lee who met missionaries because he was in the emergency room because he thought the end of a Q tip was in his ear, and he randomly asked one of the missionaries (who were there because one of them had an allergic reaction) who they were, and he got baptized a few weeks later. But he is obsessed with the church. Literally obsessed. He's unemployed right now, and all he wants to do is come with missionaries to appointments and tract and all that sort of stuff, which is awesome, because we need to have males with us to come to appointments. We carry pass along cards in Korean and Vietnamese and Mandarin. It's definitely different than Burns Lake here, but I am loving it.

My companion, Elder Smith, had previously served with Elder Epperson. Ha ha... actually, it's pretty funny. I spent 3 months hearing horror stories about Elder Smith. They did not get along at all. So, when I heard that I was going to serve with him, I just sort of committed to myself that I was going to love him and get along with him no matter what. And... so it's going to be a great transfer. Elder Smith is awesome. I will definitely be able to learn a lot from the transfer. When transfer calls came, it was pretty crazy.

This new area will be awesome, too. The East side is supposed to be the "sketchy" side, but it hasn't seemed too bad! There are lots of places to go and see on Preparation day. We're going to Chinatown today because we weren't able to last week. There are a lot of areas where we aren't allowed to be after 7:00 PM. Apparently there was a gang fight and a burnt corpse outside of the missionary's apartment in the morning a while ago, (we've moved since then), but that's probably just a missionary rumor. Ha ha. There are a lot of awesome restaurants that I want to try here. This East Indian style Chinese food place has caught my eye.

Well. Serving here so far has really made me appreciate how blessed we are as members of the church. There are literally millions of people here that don't have access to saving ordinances. We are so blessed! What a privilege it is to share the gospel with these people. I can truly see the Lord preparing people here, as well. So many people approach us and ask us questions. So many people want to hear our message. This truly is the Lord's work, and it is incredible blessing to be working in the vineyard!

Well. I'm out of time on this library computer. Love you all. Have a great week!

Elder Blotter

Merry Christmas to us.

                         Presents from Elder Blotter in Canada!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2012

We LOVE Canada!

Re: Van City...

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

Van City...

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

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

Elder Blotter

Burns Lake

Well!

It's been a great week up here in the North! Not too cold, either. Sounds like it was a pretty great week in Cache Valley too. The MoTab concert sounds like it was pretty great! Sounds like Jacey got to see a really good one for her first round with the choir! Sounds like you got to meet the Manwarings. Sister Manwaring was an awesome member missionary. I'm really glad that you were able to have them over. I'll bet that was great. It's not too far from Christmas, either! I don't know how it will work out for sure yet, since I don't know if I'm getting transferred or not, but I should hopefully be able to let you know next week how it is all going to work out. I probably won't need a calling card or anything, we'll probably just call from a member's home.

This whole week has felt pretty bittersweet! As (maybe...) my last week in Burns Lake, it has felt pretty weird. The Branch up here is just like big family, and so in a lot of ways, leaving this place will feel like leaving home again! The members up here are awesome and have spoiled us with all these Christmas gifts like Canada pajama pants and legit maple syrup and some "Burns Lake Branch" ties and things like that. Pretty awesome. Yesterday we spent quite a bit of time sharing messages with members and talking with them about people they can share the gospel with. As far as transfers go, transfer calls will come this evening, and then we'll know if anybody is leaving or not! In a couple hours we'll probably be on edge.

The work this week was really solid. We were able to teach a lot of lessons. Brooklyn really wants to be baptized, but her parents aren't being the most supportive, so it might have to be pushed into January, which is really too bad. She'll get in the water though. It has been awesome to teach her all of the lessons and help her get ready. One of our baptismal dates, Heather, was hung over and couldn't come to church Sunday morning (she committed to live the Word of Wisdom Saturday evening), and that's kind of heartbreaking, but we had a miracle to make up for it! At the display of nativities a couple weeks ago, we talked to a woman named Margaret who lives about an hour from the church. Us and a member invited her to church, and she didn't come that Sunday, and we kind of forgot about her. But lo and behold, this week she pulls up in the church parking lot with a bunch of cash that she had saved all week for the "collections plate". Margaret is this awesome widowed lady who has a broken heart and a contrite spirit and feels really lonely. The gospel will be so good for her. She's totally going to be baptized in a couple weeks. She's going to need some help quitting smoking, but the church will be there for her. We're still teaching the Filipino family, quite a few native families, and a handful of other Canadians. Canadians are usually about as hard hearted as Americans, but up in the North, they're so polite that they'll still invite you in. It will be quite a different story if I move to a city area this week!

I feel really blessed to be able to be serving the Lord at this time. Right now, in the Canada Vancouver mission, there are 118 missionaries. By July or August of next year, there will be about 250 missionaries. The Lord is really hastening His work, and we're seeing a lot of miracles as a result. Every day we have powerful spiritual experiences. The Lord's children up in Canada are certainly loved by Him. The church is true! Say woo woo!

Well, we have to go get our truck's bumper fixed because a first nations guy backed into our truck when we were teaching a lesson, so this email might be a bit short! I love you all and I'll talk to you in a week!

Elder Blotter