Shout out from Vernon!

Family,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elder Blotter

:)

Dear Elder Blotter,

      I only have a minute to write but I want to tell you that I loved being able to talk to you on Christmas and feel of your spirit and love. I want you to know that I love the Savior and am so thankful for His atoning sacrifice and His love for us. I don't know why I was born into a family with the Gospel in Lewiston, Utah but I want to do everything I can in my life to repay that blessing and for the knowledge I have of the plan of salvation. I love the Gospel. I love my Father in Heaven and I recognize the blessings in my life. Thank you for serving a mission and helping others to come to Him. 

     We are off to take the Hevia family to Hardware Ranch right now. This has been the craziest, busiest holiday season ever. Dad's work has been so busy. Griffin coming the week before Christmas and the Hevia's the 10 days after. I will breath a sigh of relief in January. But life is good and we are blessed. I hope you have such a wonderful week and know we are thinking and praying for you. What is Elder Fitzner like? You haven't told us anything much about him. I love you to pieces.   Love, Mom

New Year.

Elder Blotter of the Okanagon,

Well, we did enjoy our 60.00 minutes of conversation with our young stripling warrior up north.  It sounds like things are continuing to go well and you are actively engaged in the harvest.  A well known movie producer made a 4 DVD series entitled "The Bible".  It is quite well done, and interesting.  It is pretty accurate, with a little Hollywood bling thrown in.  You will like it. We have it on Blue Ray.  (yes, even the Blotters have gone Blue Ray.)   Anyway, it really surprises me how much things change, and even more how much things stay the same.  A covenant people begin in a promised land, and flourish under the blessings of the Lord.  Prosperity leads to excess and wickedness with pride and arrogance.  The wickedness increases and  societal norms begin to break down.  Good becomes evil, and evil good.  The few faithful are considered extreme, weird, and foolish.  The Lord sends disciples, teachers, and prophets as a voice of warning.  They are rejected, and the people  are destroyed.  This happened from the creation right on down to the present time, and on both continents.  We are in the same cycle now, and you are basically a modern Jeremiah, or Abinidai for that matter.

Well, the news of the week for us, is the visit of the Hevia family from Asturias, Spain.  Wow.  We have Juan, Begona, and Paula, with Claudia already in place.  They said that they wanted a 'ski holiday' and who better to provide that than one James W. Blotter.  Well, I took them right to Snowbird with visions of riding the tram and busting down the Upper Cirque.  Well, we got to the top and I realized that they really don't ski, and they don't have real mountains in Spain, and I have no concept of skiing difficulty.   A little crisis then unfolded as altitude sickness set in, panic seized them, and things melted down.  This was followed quickly by a 300 yard, sliding, yard sale of a crash with papa.  The tears were flowing and the whole mountain mobilized to save our Spaniards, from, well, me I guess.  Needless to say, they are done skiing, and now we have to find some way to entertain for 10 days.  

Aside from the above, we love the Hevias.  They are fun, and witty, and very much like us despite being a world and culture apart.  Juan and I are both 46, worry about our childrren, love our good looking wives, and hate taxes and big government. 

The timing is a little rough, because I am on the tail end of of my busiest month of my last 4 years.  Wow.  I have performed a mind boggling number of complicated surgeries this month.  Christmas was a blip on the screen for me in a life consumed by blood, sutures, wound, scopes and lasers.  While most families gathered around singing carols sipping cocoa I was using a Xomed high speed drill to drill a hole into the skull of a 79 year old Grandma to let this foul pus out of her head because it eroded it's way into her eye.   The only thing more complicated in my life is Jacey's soccer team!  I feel blessed, in that the Lord helps me with difficult trials.  I am an instrument in his hands to answer prayers and play a sacred role in their lives.  I alter the bodies created for them by the Great Jehovah himself.  That why l listen to the Book of Mormon on the way to work. 

Well, I hope it is a good one.  The Lord is counting on you to be that instrument in his hands!

Love

Dad

Christmas Morning...

Merry Christmas!

Family,

Merry Christmas! What an exciting time of the year. Actually, it just feels extremely weird that it's already Christmas. I can't believe that I'll be chatting all of you on the 25th. It's strange that it's already been a year since I was being dragged around with my jaw on the floor trying to adjust to Vancouver after being in Burns Lake for 6 months! One of the good things about being in Vernon as opposed to Vancouver is that this year, it's a "white" Christmas. Christmas just doesn't jive with moss and grass and flowers and lots of rain. (Plus, it's a balmy +3 degrees outside, so we get the best of both worlds in the Okanagan. It really isn't that much colder here than Cache Valley)

The past week has been a great one. Since Elder Baker was gone, and Elder Fitzner didn't arrive until Friday. And with transfers and Christmas calls and the monthly meeting with the Stake President, and a bunch of not-that-exciting administrative stuff, combined with working with the teaching pools of two different areas, it was just a really busy week. And when you're a missionary, being as busy as possible is a good thing. Because I was the only zone leader left holding up the fort, there were a whole bunch of decisions that were made kind of... one sided. For example, they put some sister missionaries in our ward (Our area was super small. And now is super smaller. They probably just put in another set here instead of a place with more wiggle room because the work is going well in the Vernon 1st Ward. But still! 4 sets of missionaries in Vernon! The work is hastening!) It kind of felt like cheating to pick which areas to keep in our area and which parts to give to the new sister missionaries, but we gave them a good chunk of Vernon and the promised land of Armstrong, so they should be all right.

Among other things, we had the biggest polygamy throwdown since Wilford Woodruff and Warren Jeff's great-great-grandpa. We've been working for a few weeks with April, our polygamist investigator, and we finally just had to lay out everything about polygamy and how she would need to find out if Thomas S. Monson was a prophet of God and commit to leave that lifestyle behind if she wanted to be baptized. It went very well, and her concern now is mostly that she doesn't want to get divorced if her husband wants to stay on the path that he's currently traveling down. Just in talking with April, it's helped me realize that we're very blessed to have a prophet on the earth today to give us guidance from our loving Heavenly Father. What a confusing world it would be if we were left to try and pick and choose and guess at what our purpose in life was meant to be. We have a path directly back to our Heavenly Father laid out for us, and we've been given the agency to choose to follow it for ourselves and see the blessings that follow in our lives. I can't think of better Christmas presents! 

Toni, the eternal investigator who we just love to death, is totally going to get baptized when she gets back from Christmas break. We've been working with her ever since I came to Vernon. It's almost been like a funnel with her. We've slowly been working through her concerns, and she's just made so many awesome changes in her life.

Family, I want each of you to know how grateful each one of you! Thanks for all the support that you've given me over the past months. And I'm grateful for this beautiful Christmas season when we can reflect on the Savior and ultimate gift that he's given each of us. I hope that you all have the merriest of Merry Christmases!

Well, talk to you soon! I'm going to try to send off that Christmas package home sometime today. The Canada Post probably takes 6 months off for the Holiday season, so I might not be able to send it until next preparation day. But... Merry Christmas!

Elder Blotter

Elder Blotter's Testimony read in Sacrament Meeting, December 22nd, 2013

ELDER JOSH BLOTTER-

          I know that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the World. I know that He knows each of us. I know that He is our Advocate, Redeemer, Brother and Friend. I know that when we act in love, we serve him, and when we sacrifice, He sees it, and He blesses us so much more than whatever we gave up. He is our example, and when we follow with an eye single, we are filled with light and happiness.

     Our Heavenly Father is a perfect, loving God. A God of Mercy and a God of Justice. For him to be able to create this beautiful plan of Redemption and become more like Him, there would have to be one willing to literally go through the darkest of dark, experience the most bitter of pain, bleed from every pore, and pay the ultimate price for us. And he did that, so that we can have the opportunity to return to live with our Father. He suffered for each of us. He knew every rebellious mistake that we would make, and he still chose to extend the ultimate gift, the greatest gift of all time, because he has a perfect love for us.

           It is because of Him that we can change. I know that the only way, literally the only path that leads to happiness and light and love, is through the atonement of Jesus Christ.  "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth of the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord and becoming as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father".

            The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is just that. I know that. And I know that as a missionary, I am doing his work, and what He would do. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen!

Feliz Navidad

Elder Blotter, of Vancouver Fame,

Well it sounds like things are happening in Vernon BC.  Which is a good thing.  The sad thing about those good companions, like Elder Baker, is that it is like poof and they are gone.  The difficult ones, like Elder Holtby, put a new meaning to the word time and all eternity.  It is the difficult ones though, that teach you the most and give you the  most life skills.  Hopefully your new arrival will be a great Elder, with an eye single to the Glory of God.  

I have been a little surprised at how much success you seem to be having.  It is a great thing.

We had a great Christmas program today.  One for the ages.  As you know, Chris Corcoran gathered up the testimonies from the missionaries in the ward, and had their Mom's read them.  Yours was a great one, and it was a good experience.  Your mother was a bit of a wreck, but she powered through.  She was crying before she even got up to read the  testimony.  It was a fun thing to do.  I hope you had a great ward program up in good old Vernon.  I never was homesick at Christmas time, due in a large part to the opposite seasons.  It was just weird in Argentina where they celebrate Christmas in the heat of the summer, with fireworks and drunken debauchery.  

When Landon's mom got up I thought, Holy Cow, Landon will be home in just over a month!!  I am quite proud of Landon.  I did not know if he would make it, and he had a tough start with a jerk of a companion who made fun of him and belittled him.  But make it he has, and it will set his life on a great trajectory.  David Nielson is also doing well.  His dad says he is a distict leader and likely keeping at least most of the mission rules.

As for us, we are all doing well.  The Beav opens tomorrow and the fam is headed up.  I have to work, but that is okay.  Someone needs to fund the expedition, and I have learned that funding things is my primary role in life.  Griffin Dubanowich is visiting this week.  He will be attending USU next fall, so that will be fun.  He is a good kid.  Those Dubanowich boys love Utah.  My theory is that deep down it may have something to do with the abundance of lovely, wholesome, LDS girls of European descent.  Like your sister. 

Well, I am off to sleep, because the office has been really rough these days, but I am grateful to be busy and have a lot of work.  Looking forward to Christmas and a little authorized chit chat with out favorite missionary.

Dad.