BANFF, CANADA
Nestled among the breathtaking mountains of Canada's Banff National Park is a small LDS branch with large issues.
About two dozen members of the Banff Branch, Calgary Alberta West Stake, attend Sunday meetings each week, according to Branch President Mark Yawney. But total attendance often swells to three, four or even five times that on a regular basis as tourists drop in.
During a Church News interview, President Yawney said with a smile, "I feel like a visitor every week here because I look out and I don't know anyone."
The visitors are welcome and the active branch members accommodate them as best they can.
"We grow closer together because all the members are striving for this common goal: to be able to provide visitors with a proper place to worship, with good instruction, where they feel comfortable," President Yawney said. He added with a grin, "Most Sundays it works out OK, and some days you have a wheel fall off."
A few couples from Calgary, such as Jerald and Sheila Palmer, are called to support the branch, doing such things as home and visiting teaching, teaching in Church, and being resources as needed to the branch presidency.
Though there are currently only one young man and one young woman in the branch who are active, the youth leaders have to be prepared each week for any number who may drop in.
The bigger challenge, according to President Yawney, is the Primary.
In sacrament meeting, he said, the music director, who is also the Primary president, looks out at how many children are in the congregation and contemplates how many classes she'll need. She then considers how many branch members approved to teach Primary she'll need — beyond the three set apart.
The visitors are a blessing, President Yawney said, explaining, "Fast and testimony meetings are awesome. The people who come to Church here are faithful saints. They come out on holidays (vacations) and they seek out the Church and come here."
The active branch members are very faithful in their duties. They are spread within branch boundaries extending from just west of Cochrane, near Calgary, to Lake Louise almost at the British Columbia border. In their midst are almost unlimited outdoor activities including skiing and hiking, fishing and camping.
Those activities are an attraction for President Yawney and his wife, Jody, who don't anticipate ever leaving the beauties of nature that surround them. A co-op work program with the park administration brought them to Banff while he was a management student at the University of Lethbridge. After graduating, he got a similar job and kept it for a year before becoming general manager of Banff Airporter, a company that primarily transports tourists between Calgary airport and the national park. With good employment and a good life, the Yawneys are happy. "If it's our choice, we'll stay," President Yawney said.
Within the past three years, the branch has been joined and strengthened by two new converts. They talked to the Church News about their path to baptism.
When Christine Ganter's son asked if she could help out a traveler in 2006, her willingness to do so changed her life. Patrick Pomares was in Banff in a motor home with nowhere to plug it in for power. She invited him to park in her driveway and ran an extension cord out for him.
One of the first things he told her, she said, was "the Church is very important to me."
She said she answered, "OK, let me hear about your Church."
He told her to read the Book of Mormon and gave her the full-time missionaries' phone number. She called them and invited them to talk to her.
She clearly remembers going to Church for the first time on June 2, quitting smoking on June 4 and being baptized July 29, 2006. She married Patrick and on the one-year anniversary of her baptism was called as branch Relief Society president. "In small branches, they put you to work fast," she said.
She explained that she has always been religious. She said she and a friend, at age 14, were dissatisfied with their own churches and visited every other church in their community, but couldn't find one they liked. She said she quit going to church, though she read the Bible faithfully on her own.
But she said the first time she stepped into the Banff Branch meetinghouse, she thought, "Now I'm home. And I've never left."
Inez Peyto has a friend, Floyd Black, who is a faithful member of the Banff Branch, she said. He invited her to branch activities like river rafting, Christmas parties and summer barbecues.
"I met so many members of the Church, and after a while I thought I would like to just go to Church sometime and see what it's all about."
The first time she went, she said members stood up and bore their testimonies.
"I thought I would never be able to do that — get up and talk in front of all these people," she said.
But she continued going to Church, was taught the discussions and, at age 86, was baptized on Oct. 14, 2006, on a "wonderful day in Calgary," she said. Soon after that, she was given three callings — branch librarian, Relief Society music director and sacrament meeting greeter.
She still remembers with joy going to the Salt Lake Temple a year after her baptism. Later, in the Cardston Alberta Temple, she was sealed to her husband, Stanley, who died in 1984. Adding joy to that trip, she said, was being accompanied by fellow branch members George and Marion Barker who had prepared her for the temple.
For the Banff Branch, such fellowship is the core of faith that is spread to visitors from around the world who drop in for Sunday services.
