T's Canadian Newsletter

Family, friends, hello.

 

This week's edition of T's canadian newsletter features a happier tale than last weeks.

 

First, in response to recent demands, here are some weird facts about canada:

Milk comes in bags

you pronounce bags as if you were to say baegs, like baegle.

color is colour, favorite is favourite, and similar misspellings are common

they really do say eh. But it's not weird because it's similar to how i say yeah? or right?. as in: we're headed to the park yeah? you wanted the blue ball right?

The new currency they released is indestructable... mostly, waterproof, tearproof, fire proof. I think they mostly have it for big bills.

They accept american currency, but most places just count it as canadian currency, which means you lose something like three cents on the dollar.

I currently reside in a town called Aurora. Which is probably an hour northeast of downtown Toronto.

 

Now, if that satisfies everybody, we'll get along with the meat.

 

I mentioned that life is getting better. It is. We have our own apartment which means we don't have to drive 20 kilometers to get to our area. and a lot of the time we can walk to whatever we want. We still have to drive quite a bit, which makes it nice that we have a car.

 

The week was fairly standard not a lot happened. We met some cool people on the street. Some pretty good potentials. Things really took off, however, when we went on exchanges on friday with the district leaders.

 

Before I go there, I want to mention a family that we taught on thursday night. They are from Brazil. The wife is a member, the husband is not. Wife is called Eve, Husband is named Fabio. Their children are too young to be baptized. We went in thinking that we would be targeting the message toward the husband. It went well, he was rather receptive, sort-of quiet. They told us that they love having the missionaries over because of the respect they have for what we are doing. (she has two brothers who served and a nephew who is currently serving) The real surprise came when we invited them to church. Instead of Fabio rejecting us, Eve

did. She said that she had been raised in the church, but that she had realized that she didn't have a testimony. She felt like a hipocrite, here she was, a primary president, teaching children stories that she didn't believe. She had to stop. She tried to find her testimony, but grew tired and gave up. She agreed to let us help her try to find it. And Fabio agreed too. They said we could meet with them again in two weeks. That brings our official investigator tally up to one!

 

So, Friday, I was sent to a town called Orangeville with the Elder who is serving as our district leader. He had a lesson planned for a lady called Renee whom they had ran into on the street. She didn't like being catholic because of the lack of childrens programs. The important part of the story is that at the end of the lesson, I was trusted with the responsibility of inviting her to be baptized! After some things were explained and she had some questions answered, she said yes! She is scheduled to be dunked on May 12 ish. I think. After that we went on some visits around to ward members and came back to Newmarket so that he could officiate a baptismal interview for an investigator who belongs to the sisters north of us.

 

Upon returning, we learned that our companions had done some heavy lifting in Aurora. They got about 13 phone numbers from people on the street. Coordinated about 5 return appointments. They literally did more work in one afternoon tha either of us had seen in a week. So, we have around 5 appointments on tuesday, plus whatever we come up with after that! The district leader has only been out for nine months and between the three other Elders in the district, he has more experience than all of us combined. He calls it "Exchange Magic"

 

So, Saturday Elder Binford and I set off to meet with our forst appointment. An 81 year old man named George who is from Ireland. He used to meet with missionaries, but took a break when they switched from Elders to Sisters. At least one person likes us better. He likes joking about God zapping people with lightning for misbehaving. After a fun lesson with him, we scheduled a return appointment for this wednesday.

 

After meeting with George, we went a couple of doors down to knock on the door of a man named Shane who also used to meet with the missionaries. The intel we had on him said that he had a weird fascination with thinking that God and Jesus and Angels were Aliens... Yes Aliens. So naturally this spiked my interest and made me really excited to meet him. Even though our intel also said that he had turned to the internet and found some anti-material. (Anti, Antied: missionary slang for things that pull people away.) The particular anti material referenced a conference talk by I think it was Russel M Nelson back in 97 where he talks about the Urim and Thummim. This info was connected with the rumors that Joseph Smith was a gold rusher (once upon a time, Smith did work for a man who was digging trying to find a silver mine, Joseph convinced the man to give up. You can find that story in Joseph Smith History verse 56. He says this is where the rumors were started). These two stories were merged into the story that Joseph Smith would tell people that he could find gold with his magic hat and rock, they would pay him to find gold, he would take their money, and run. Shane called him a con-artist. He also found some stuff to do with the priesthood and blacks. He wouldn't listen to us.

 

After that made my day even more though. We went to meet with a man named Chris who sometimes liked discussing gospel with the missionaries in his driveway. He told us we were welcome to continue that practice saturday afternoons. He's not the cool story though.

 

The cool story is his next door neighbor who we knocked on his door. His name is John. His parents are members, he is not. While we talked to him you could see his eyes light up. He invited us back, tuesday afternoon. After arguing with a man like Shane, this was just what I needed to get back into the swing of things.

 

I think my favorite part about this week was teching lessons. Especially Renee, George, and John. They all had the light in their eyes that says they felt the spirit. I have high hopes that all three of them will get dunked.

 

So, there you have it. Plus a few pictures. I'm really looking foreward to tuesday. We get to have dinner at the home of the FLIPPING PRESIDENT OF NIKE CANADA! Second coolest guy ever. (there are some awesome people in our ward including a guy who is recieving the medal of canada, or something like that. It's basically the highest civillion honor a canadian can get. Comperable to being knighted. He's a non-member husband to a member though.) Tuesday is going to rock. If we play our cards right, we can hit the standards of excelence. (a set of mission wide goals that only 9% hit all of them.) All this after only our second week here!

 

I love you all. I will talk to you soon.

 

Love,

Elder T