February 17,2014 - Nanaimo South, British Columbia (first area)

Hello again! I don't have a lot of time today so this email may be short. This week has been an interesting one. The rain has poured and my companion and I are finally settled in our new apartment! It's a nice one, in fact probably the nicest building for a few blocks. We are in a poorer area of town where quite a bit of crime has taken place. Moving in wasn't easy, we had to collect a bunch of items from the ward members including some very heavy furniture! As for meal appointments? Well we no longer get those nor have I ever had one. The mission president has this idea that "consecrated finding time" is the best time (or during meal time) to find investigators since it's the time of day when most people are home. We eat dinner at our apartments at 4:00pm and then go out at from 5:00-8:00pm.

The weather hasn't been kind to us, in fact it snowed yesterday when we went tracting! We got lucky. The Elders in Duncan were hammered by so much wind and rain that it got to the point where they had to go back to their apartment to change into a new set of clothes! 

On Tuesday and Thursday we went street contacting downtown. Though I'm getting more and more comfortable with going door to door, I'm still finding it hard to talk as much as my trainer, especially when talking to people on the street. Elder Groneveld is a talker and it seems that most of the people we have conversations with involve me not saying very much. Even when I do, it usually makes me unintentionally interrupt someone and then I feel bad. :P This is probably because I'm still "green." It's just not natural for me yet. Remember all those lessons we got from last week? Well all of them have fallen through and we still haven't been able to teach any investigators yet. They say the Canada, Vancouver Mission was not too long ago among the hardest missions in the world. Most of the people in British Columbia are not bad, but a lot of them are just not really interested in hearing the gospel. We have found a few more people to teach this week and it's still VERY early in the mission for me so I guess we just have to press forward and stay positive!

Yesterday after church, we met with an inactive member who is interested in coming back to church. His name is Brother B. He was born in California and used to be a marine. An older fellow with a beaming attitude, Brother B was thrilled that we called him to set up and meet him. We didn't really teach him much but we had a great visit with him and we gave him a blessing before we left. He really is an amazing guy and it was great listening to him say that he wanted to start coming to church again! Though his wife is inactive and hasn't been to interested in the church in previous years, Brother B gave us a call after our meeting with him and told us that she was interested in meeting with the two of us again!

Despite the difficulties, my attitude has been positive. It's just amazing how well the Lord helps his servants. The fact that someone like me is serving a mission is an absolute miracle. I love you all and miss you and I look forward to hearing from you next week. I'll be sure to keep those photos coming!

Until next time,

Elder Maclean Samis