Family, Friends... Hello.
This is e'mail number two, even though I have been out for what I thought was four weeks but is really only not quite three.... Yikes.
Canada has been very wet so far. Not like Utah where it will fluxuate from extreme to extreme. It's pretty consistant. So wet, I had to go and get myself a rain jacket. We found a nice post-winter sale and found a very sweet snowboarding jacket that was almost conservative enough for a mission. It was warm, waterproof, dark, solid color. The only problem was that the inside of the hood was orange.... It wasn't crazy expensive either... Would have definitely been worthy of the money they were asking for it because it would have lasted me like 10 years or so... but the orange killed that idea... So I stuck with a light waterproof rain jacket that will keep me dry, but not super warm. I figure that's okay because april is supposed to be wet but warm here. and it is! about 19 degrees C today. big step up from the 4 we've had the past few days.
It's crazy diverse out here, I've met people from ugo-slavia, Iran, Jamaica, Taiwan... Lots of Nationalities. Our mission has the most languages of any mission in the world. Korean, Portugues, Spanish, French, English, Farsee (Iran, Iraq, Egypt, middle eastern language), and Mandarin... maybe there was another... idk. But it is the only mission in the world with missionaries who speak Farsee. The language is so rare amongst missionaries that there isn't a program for them to learn it at the MTC. So, they just go for their traditional language then they show up here and Surprise! Guess what??!? You're speaking Farsee! kind of cool.
I Arrived in Canada at about 2:00 your time, which would really be around noon, my time. For my first time flying I have to say I enjoyed it a lot more than I had expected. I thought that It would be a lot more jarring than it was. The thing that impressed me the most was the sheer speed we were traveling just before take-off. Add that with a little turbulence to wake you up at 3 am, and my grin was bigger than the cheschire cat's.
After a lot of monotonous meetings and dinners and interviews, i finally got to meet my companion Tuesday afternoon... His name is Elder Binford, from Fresno California. He was saying that we were going to not necessarily hide how old I really am, but maybe not broadcast it. He was trying to relieve some of the tension that can be created when a senior companior or a trainer, of which he claims both titles but he doesn't hold that over me since he has only been out for three months.
Unbeknown to him however. Being younger makes me more popular! The ward loves me! There are a couple of boys who are prepping for missions who bore their testimonies on sunday of how inspiring it was for them to have a missionary in the ward who was younger than them. (That's right boys, keep stroking my ego).
Our area is called the NewMarket south area. We are responsible for the southern half of our ward boundaries. There is a sister missionary companionship who are responsible for the north area in the ward. Sister Green has been out for three months and sister Lang Came up the same day as me.
Because we are in a brand new area, we don't have an appartment... yet... We are staying with this old geezer who reminds me of Gpa Todd. Only because he knows how much he can get away with. So he does. You have to second guess every word out of his mouth and he harrasses store clerks with as much sympathy as Papa Todd. He says he's allowed to because he's old. "you can do whatever you want when you're old" He tells us he won't cook for us but then he makes a two-course breakfast. He's fantastic. We love him and he loves us even more. He tells us to call him mom because that's his job right now, to look after us. So naturally that makes us doubly tidy so he doesn't have to. I could go on and on.
NewMarket South is brand new. It used to just be NewMarket but for whatever reason they split it into two, gave the sister's the north and us the south. It's kind of nice having just one bishop to worry about as compared to the dozens the Grantsville missionaries doubtless have to coordinate with.
On the downside is the fact that all the investigators that NewMarket had before it split live on the north side. So, we on the south have literally nothing to go off of. Just some couple year old past investigator slips that we check up on every day so we have something to do. Everything else we do is street contacting and tracting. Neither of which are very effective. Except for the first day.
The first day, Tuesday, We didn't know what exactly our area was, so we just went out and got cooking. The first guy to answer was a man from ugo-slavia (spell check) who chatted with us for around 40 min on his doorstep. He seemed really receptive. Looked up Mormon.org on his phone and started watching a video by Elder Holland, accepted a BOM, even scheduled a return appointment. Come to find out, once we figured out what our area is, he wasn't in our area. Have a freebie, sisters... We have met a few people who we then had to turn over to the sisters. They have more work than they can handle. It's almost like a sick joke. Two baptisms coming up..... Call me jelly...
The second fella we talked to that I want to tell you about met us a couple of days later on Friday. We just happened to bump into him and his girlfriend in the parking lot as we headed to go check up on someone else (she ended up having moved) we struggled with him for about a half hour or so, gave him a BOM and a card before he let us go. I say struggled because he was really fidgety. And wouldn't sit still long enough to let us finish our thought before he was asking some other question. Come to find out on Saturday he was high. We saw him walking down the street, so naturally, we chased him. He kept looking over his shoulder at us and fidgeted with his pocket as he was walking away. When we caught up to him and he finally recognized us he confessed that he had his knife out and was fixing to defend himself until he recognized us when we got about ten yards away from him. That's when he said, "yeah that chat we had yesterday was fresh eh? Yeah, I was baked as **** though... **** I'm high right now too eh?" I don't think We're gonna hear much from him, but you know... I hope so. That'd be a cool story for posterity.
I hope everyone is well and doing great. I love this new rule that we can e-mail anybody. It makes it easier to keep in touch.
I love you all. Even you sorely lost and confused bloggers who are probably looking for information on Italian Basketball star Trent Whiting. I wish you well in your search.
Love
Elder T
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