"missionaries don't actually leave their families at all to go on missions"

May 16, 2016

Hola,

It has been a good past two weeks. Obviously Mother's Day and the
FaceTime was a highlight. It was good to see that Dave Heywood is
still alive…I was beginning to wonder.

Other exciting things that have happened:

1. We got a new Corolla! Now we can listen to music from USBs again

2. We did one of the most disgusting service projects of all time: One
of our investigators got sick two years ago and to be able to pay her
hospital bills, she stopped paying the trash bill ...and continued to
quit paying the trash bill. So we went in with a few members of the
Elders Quorum. Remember that this trash has been rained on and
inhabited by flies for the last two years. Wow it was bad. After the
first 30 minutes my comp and I were the only ones willing to actually
touch the trash and rebag it.

3. The Ravenbergs are out of town so we have the house to ourselves!
Unfortunately that means that the supply of sugar free cookies is
dwindling.

4. We almost died an honorable death of over-consumption of Arepas. A
sister in our ward is from Venezuela and that is a very popular dish
down there. I can see why. It was our third dinner of he day, but
somehow I was still able to pound down four and a half ha. (I had to
beat the Spanish missionaries' record of four).

5. We have tried literally every finding method we could think of..
and then some. This week, per the request of one of our ward
missionaries, we tried getting 5-6 families in the ward to stand on
the busiest corner we could find and sing hymns as loud as we could
and give Book of Mormons and pictures of Jesus to everyone that rolled
down their window to listen to the music. It worked pretty well except
for the rain haha.

Overall it has been a pretty eventful last couple of weeks, but also
kind of frustrating because we have tried everything we can think of
to bring this great message to the people of Vancouver, but nobody
yet has let it into their hearts.

Parting thought about families: What is family? Well in the words of Jack Kelly from the song "Santa Fe" from Newsies, it is a "Mother Father Daughter Son." And since we know that relationships and love come shared experiences together, I submit that missionaries don't actually leave their families at all to go on missions. From the time missionaries arrive in the MTC they are assigned a son of daughter of God to be with 24 hours a day. Then they get on a plane with a hundred or so other children of God and fly to "a far corner of the vineyard" Where they spend months and months pleading with, fasting for, and serving their brothers and sisters. Throughout all this time they are enveloped in the spirit of and study the teachings of their very eternal father and brother. If anything, a mission is time set apart to be with dad and enlarge his family and ultimately ours as well. Thank goodness for missions, families, and our older brother who ensured that those are one in the same.

Love you all,

~Elder Paul Thomas

 Snake