August 10, 2015 - Area 4: Surrey East

Just Ian Hello again at the beginning of another transfer. Elder Shelley arrived on Wednesday. Elder Erasmus left with the zone leaders on the ferry to Courtney. Elder Shelley, our new companion, is from Clearfield Utah and he's been out just under a year. He seems to be a really friendly guy and is very much "on the ball" with missionary work. The day he came into the area, he immediately studied the maps, the area book, and the ward list asking lots of questions and coming up with ideas on how we can improve. The first time we took him to Surrey central was a bit of a scare for him since he was up in Prince Rupert (a town off the northern coast of BC with 12,000 people living in it.) Our results this week were pretty similar to last week. Once again, we are still not teaching anyone frequently except Ian. Earlier in the week we taught him about fasting which he seems to be fine with since he has on occasion fasted for 3 days straight when he was younger as part of training for boxing! fasting for just a day should seem like a cake walk for him. We taught him again just before a baptism that the sisters had on Saturday, going over Mosiah 18 in the Book of Mormon. He attended the baptism and seems to like it. He seems to see a lot of things that "make sense" in the doctrine of the church. Just after the baptism we had a ward party that ended up getting rained on. Ian had to leave before it started, but it was still a good time. With our personal finding seeming to be "unfruitful" as of late, we've decided to do all within our power to focus on member missionary work. We have a number of scheduled member appointments this coming week. Hopefully we can get some referrals this week. Ian looks likely to be baptized on the 23rd this month, but beyond him we need to build our teaching pool. I've seen a lot of faith in Elder Shelley, and him and Elder Tolman and I hope to put in strong efforts to achieve meaningful results. With these few things in mind, I will conclude this email. Enjoy the week! Elder Maclean Samis