Letter to Zach - July 26, 2007

July 26, 2007

Zach,

How does it feel to be 15? (Aye?) In six months you’ll be getting your learners permit and tearing up the roads. I saw those pictures of you at high adventure, it looked pretty intense. Did you fall out of the raft at all? The ones I saw had you right in the front. I didn’t get to ask you too much about high adventure on the phone, you really only told me that they stranded you. Which is sweet to just have to to fend for yourself for one night.

I also heard that you got the bike all tuned up, which seemed to work out for you. Dad said you, Kyle and Scott rode at fountainhead the other day. It was probably way better without the chain problem and all the other fixes. I’m probably going to be buying a bike up here sometime soon, even though we have a car, sometimes it’s a lot more convenient with a bike.

Anyway, I’ve been seeing a lot of people carrying around the new Harry Potter book, I’ve managed to avoid hearing anything about it but I’m not sure how long that will last. You need to tell me if it was good. I did hear a little bit about that, but I don’t know of I trust them.

The apartment that I’m living in is small but it’s not that bad, we have a random arch right in the middle of it. The good news is that there was a little guitar here when I moved in, so I have time to play if for about maybe five minutes a day. Also I don’t know if you heard but my companion is English (British). The funny thing about that is in Britain a lot of words we would consider swearing are totally fine, so sometimes he will just break out into searing and other missionaries will just kind of look at each other and be kink of shocked. In fact one time he was calling some Sister missionaries to get their numbers for the week and he accidentally, said “What the hell have you been doing all week”, and she broke into tears. (ha ha)

I basically get up at 5:45 go to the gym, eat breakfast, study, and then start working from 10:00 to 9:30 at night. So I’ve been pretty tired but I’m getting used to it. We’ve finally started to get some actual teaching appointments, so the days have been going faster. You meet all kinds of people doing missionary work, some are crazy and some are really cool. You get all kink of reactions just walking around and tracting. Sometimes people will literally run away into their homes. We knocked on this one door and the guy came running out waving his arms yelling, “no, no, no!”, and then we ended up talking to him for about half an hour. A lot of people are nice though, they will invite us for drinks even if they’ve talked to missionaries one hundred times. We were even in this kind of run down area and we are pretty sure that a couple of fourteen year old girls were taking pictures of us on their cell phones.

I wanted to send you some cool Canadian stuff for your birthday, but I couldn’t find any. So I went into the CD shop, I was looking in their clash DC’s for the one you were looking for last time, but they didn’t have it (Canadians (snakehead)), but I saw this one and I was like “that’s just as good”. I’ve never heard of this one before, so you’ll have to tell me if it’s sweet. It’s deerhoof so I’m guessing yes.

Anyway, I hope to hear from you soon and I hope your having fun your last summer before high school, and I remember high school being so much better than middle school.

Love, Josh

Howdy

I'm writing a letters today so I won't write alot. Its been one week in Canada and its been a pretty long one. I'm still getting adjusted I guess to the hours since I still get really sleepy right about lunch time I feel like an old man or a cat or both. Its a mission requirement to excersize every morning so we just got a ymca membership so I wake up at 5:45 and go to the gym every morning a feel like a loon. I'm not sure how I'm doing now but for a while people would always comment on my accent which I don't have. What i think was happening was that since my companion has a british accent and everyone else spoke like a canuck I was getting confused because no one around me spoke normally... for a few days I kind of forgot how to talk. So either I've remembered or people just stopped telling me about it.
My address for the next 5 week is 693 Glencove Street, Kingston, ON K7M 5G1. If you send it to the mission home just be awareI won't get them every week, I'm not really sure how often they go and get them from toronto. They recommend you still send to the mission home but i guess its up to you. Packages though always go to the mission home otherwise i'll have to go to the post office to pick them up.
I didn't get anything from you guys this week and I still haven't gotten the first letter you sent so I guess things are still going good. I just got to take a few more pictures before I send them to you. The downtown area of Kingston, which is just out of my area is really cool it is full of old buildings and stuff but I go there once a week because my companion gets blood drawn at the hospital, I don't know if I don't know if I told you already but apparently he almost died about 2 weeks befeore I got here from kidney disease, hes doing alright now.
Send me some stuff so I know whats going on with you guys, I know Zach's birthday is coming up. Any way...

Love Josh

I got a return on this e-mail so I'm sending it again in case it didn't go through so just ignore this if you've already read it.
--------------------- First day
Hows it going aye? I've been in Canada only for a day and i've already heard quite a few good ayes, including a drive bye aye.

My flight was a straight through flight to Toronto, about 3 hours. We were greated by alot of friendly people in SLC and on the flight including the Toronto Temple president who I was able to talk to on the shuttle from the plane. (We got off the plane on stairs - classic). Then we met the Mission President who helped me and two other Elders who had a problem with an unfriendly immigration officer. He was the only officer who wouldn't mark a religous exemption on our visas so that we could qualify for health care.

The city of Toronto is very cool, it really does have and incredible amount of diversity. The Assitants to the President were telling us that even if you see someone in the city who you might think is an authentic canadian it will turn out that he is from the Ukraine or Denmark. After eating at a Brazilian bakery we went to a Baptism which was being held in a Mandarin Spanish and English speaking ward. In the mission there are about alot of Mandarin speaking missionaries, five cantonese speaking, two portuguese, alot of spanish, a good amount speaking korean, alot of english, and two who are learning farsee in the mission.

After staying the night in the Mission home we went to the Stake Center for orientation the stake center was adapted from a planned office building and is three stories high, the second largest in north america. The only larger one is apparently in Vancouver and has pull out bleacher seating. I was assigned my first companion, Elder Brennan from Schoffield, England. They then shipped me 4 hours out to almost the very east of the mission to the canadian countryside where it is almost all english speaking and looks alot like virginia (trees) although i'll have to send you a picture of the penitentiary which looks like a castle. My area is called Cataraqui, not sure about the spelling, and is in Kingston. Kingston is apparently where all the prisons are in Canada.

My apartment is a small basement with two rooms and a washroom (restroom). My bed is a box springs and mattress lieing on the floor the Kitchen is tiny with a tiny stove and a tiny refrigerator. I'll be sending some pictures soon to show you. Anyways I'm pretty excited to get to work. I haven't really done anything yet but i'm teaching my first lesson in the field tonight as well as going tracting. So I'll e-mail an update next week. Love Josh

p.s. if that isn't actually lindsey's address forward it i think it is but i forgot to bring her letter where she sent it to me.
------------------------------------------------------

Canadian Sunset

Canada

Hows it going aye? I've been in Canada only for a day and i've already heard quite a few good ayes, including a drive bye aye.

My flight was a straight through flight to Toronto, about 3 hours. We were greated by alot of friendly people in SLC and on the flight including the Toronto Temple president who I was able to talk to on the shuttle from the plane. (We got off the plane on stairs - classic). Then we met the Mission President who helped me and two other Elders who had a problem with an unfriendly immigration officer. He was the only officer who wouldn't mark a religous exemption on our visas so that we could qualify for health care.

The city of Toronto is very cool, it really does have and incredible amount of diversity. The Assitants to the President were telling us that even if you see someone in the city who you might think is an authentic canadian it will turn out that he is from the Ukraine or Denmark. After eating at a Brazilian bakery we went to a Baptism which was being held in a Mandarin Spanish and English speaking ward. In the mission there are about alot of Mandarin speaking missionaries, five cantonese speaking, two portuguese, alot of spanish, a good amount speaking korean, alot of english, and two who are learning farsee in the mission.

After staying the night in the Mission home we went to the Stake Center for orientation the stake center was adapted from a planned office building and is three stories high, the second largest in north america. The only larger one is apparently in Vancouver and has pull out bleacher seating. I was assigned my first companion, Elder Brennan from Schoffield, England. They then shipped me 4 hours out to almost the very east of the mission to the canadian countryside where it is almost all english speaking and looks alot like virginia (trees) although i'll have to send you a picture of the penitentiary which looks like a castle. My area is called Cataraqui, not sure about the spelling, and is in Kingston. Kingston is apparently where all the prisons are in Canada.

My apartment is a small basement with two rooms and a washroom (restroom). My bed is a box springs and mattress lieing on the floor the Kitchen is tiny with a tiny stove and a tiny refrigerator. I'll be sending some pictures soon to show you. Anyways I'm pretty excited to get to work. I haven't really done anything yet but i'm teaching my first lesson in the field tonight as well as going tracting. So I'll e-mail an update next week.
Love Josh


p.s. if that isn't actually lindsey's address forward it i think it is but i forgot to bring her letter where she sent it to me.

First Day in Canada

First day in Toronto.

President and Sister Callister and my first companion Elder Brennen from England.

Family! - July 11, 2007

July 11, 2007

Family!

How are you guys doing out there? It is about one-thousand degrees in Utah, you said Becca was complaining about the walk to dance class, I can understand, especially when I have to walk around in a suit.

Time goes fast here at the MTC, already I’m a veteran with the second group of new Elders arriving today since I’ve been here. When the first group showed up I felt so experienced and now these new guys are trying to five a lot of their “wealth” of knowledge when I’m pretty sure they’ve only been here for about 2 day (or a week). It’s gonna be a shock when I get to Toronto and suddenly experiences are measured in months and years as opposed to days and weeks. This is making me even more excited to get to Toronto.

My flight leaves at around 8 or 9 on Tuesday morning. From here on out I am only preparing to leave. I am going to teach the third lesson to a practice investigator tomorrow. I even got my required departure haircut today (I don’t think I have ever had so little time between haircuts).

Here is an interesting story, we met our Branch President for the first time on Sunday because he has been on vacation. At first I just thought it was a coincidence because his name was President Marriot and he is the cousin of the Marriot’s. In the interview I had with him I told him that my Mother grew up in Virginia and my Father in Wyoming. Then he told me to ask if we knew the Olson’s from Rawlins. It turns out he roomed with Uncle Steve and Dad’s cousin that sings in the Tabernacle choir when he was at BYU. So we talked about that for a while and he told me my shoes might be a distraction (but he wasn’t telling me to necessarily blackout the stitching) and that anything besides the 4 books on the list were contraband, including The Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (which I will probably have to send home).

For the 4^th of July we had a special fireside where we played the chimes, it was kind of awkward. After that though we were allowed to stay out till eleven o’clock! And watch the fireworks. It was unprecedented. That didn’t really make up for the fact that Mission President’s week ended the day I got here so I haven’t seen an Apostle yet. Although we did have a few emeritus members of the Seventy, which I had never heard of before.

Anyway, I’m preparing hard so that I’ll be ready in a week but I’m getting nervous because once I get out of the MTC there won’t be a safety net anymore. I can’t wait to here from you guys again, and if I ever can find the time on P-day, I’ll send some individual letters very soon.

Love, Josh

Email...

I just set up my e-mail account, so here it is please send it to Linds, I couldn't remember her e-mail, and anyone else you guys want (do becca and zach have e-mail?). Anyway happy late birthday I'll be writing you guys today so I won't write too much now, but I'm leaving in one week so I'm getting pretty excited to get to Canada. I'm doing great right now just doing some laundry and I'll be going up to Mt. Timpanogas temple later today, Provo is closed. Hope you guys are doing alright. Say hi to becca and zach for me.


Josh!

Heres my E-mail

I just set up my e-mail account, so here it is please send it to Linds, I couldn't remember her e-mail, and anyone else you guys want (do becca and zach have e-mail?). Anyway happy late birthday I'll be writing you guys today so I won't write too much now, but I'm leaving in one week so I'm getting pretty excited to get to Canada. I'm doing great right now just doing some laundry and I'll be going up to Mt. Timpanogas temple later today, Provo is closed. Hope you guys are doing alright. Say hi to becca and zach for me.


Josh!

First Letter - Wednesday, July 3, 2007

Wednesday, July 3, 2007

Family,

Hey, how’s it goin? I wasn’t sure how to start a letter so I decided to do it with a rhetorical question that you couldn’t possibly answer without sitting down and writing a letter and then sendng it in the mail for a few days…anyway…. It feels like a month since I’ve been here. When I sat down to write I was trying to remember what happened on the firs day here and I couldn’t, but after looking in my journal (which didn’t help at all), I managed to remember. I realized that this was because it seems so different from when I first came here my first day, after stepping off the bus into the confines of the MTC. The first thing they had us do was to be ID’d and tagged before shuffling us into the gymnasium where we were filed, checked, and immunized. Like nuts being sorted, the line of missionaries was passed slowly from one lady to the next who asked questions, gave us papers, took our papers, informed us of what needle we would be getting and where to wait for it. Finally having been fully screened we were packaged into our district containers of nuts. Personally, I’m of the Toronto variety but I live near a lot of Philippines nuts, New York and even Korean nuts. Some people even live in cans of assorted nuts. The buildings seem all sharp and alien and the sun would steal your will to move as it baked you alive in your suit. The MTC was almost like another dimension that day, every building looked so similar that every time you entered and exited one I would wonder if I had ended up somewhere completely different.

All new missionaries were given an orange sticker on their nametags so that they would be given special treatment. This treatment basically consisted of every other missionary informing us over and over again that the first three days were miserable, but that everything got easier by Sunday. This turned out to be true, although for me it happened around Friday morning when we had gym, because this was the first time that I hadn’t been miserable hot when I left any building. Apparently this has been the hottest week of the entire summer. Now I am pretty much adjusted, my first P-day has been very relaxing and I no longer have everything scheduled for, but I now get to decide how I should spend a lot of my time outside of class. My companion’s name is Elder Zueigg. He is a pretty good guy. He’s not an academic by any means, but he makes up for it by being able to run over 120 miles in less than 2 days. The other Elder’s that I’m working with are Elder Chu, and Elder Haytz. Elder Chu has been teaching me how to say a few phrases in Cantonese like, “Le-ho ma” is “how are you doing”, “da dinwa bai Chu Janglo” is “call Elder Chu using the phone”, and “O-de iu sow-la” “is we need to go!” (I made up the spelling it really looks like this #$%^^%$#... or something).

The four of us and the other tow guys in our district have become good friends and I’m having a great time when we’re not studying and a lot of the times when we are studying. We’ve started memorizing one scripture a day because we heard that President Monson promised that if you memorize one scripture a day for everyday of your mission, you’ll have a photographic memory. We’ll see how long that lasts. I’ve been mission you guts a lot, and I would have wrote sooner but apparently you are only allowed to write non-emergency letters on P-day, and maybe Sunday although I’m not sure.

It has been a huge adjustment living with a companion every moment of the day, sometimes I just want to be by myself for a few hours but I can’t. It’s at times like that I start thinking about home the most, but I just kind of sit somewhere a little further away and pretend like I’m alone and that’s almost as good. Other than all the annoying stuff, there is a reason why they call it “Alcatraz”. I’m really enjoying the MTC. I’m getting excited about studying the gospel, and am making a lot of progress with my ability to teach lessons. I’ve been to one of the training centers here where you teach a local volunteer the first discussion, which was pretty intimidating. That was nothing compared to working at the Referral Center. There I sit at a computer with a phone and take calls, from actual investigators. Their either got the number off a television or some kind of pass a long card. We take down their information, bear our testimony, and teach them a little about the restoration. It may be the most nerve racking experience ever. Anyways, thanks for the cookies Mom, they were great. I realize now why it is so exciting to get mail. Other than that, if you guys could send me my ‘spy’ t-shirt, my ‘cougars’ t-shirt, my black wells fargo t-shirt, that I turn inside out, and a few more plain white T’s without pockets, that would be great. If that’s too much to send just send me some of it, but we have gym 4 times a week and I need shirts to sleep in so I realized that I’m drastically short. I’ll try to set up my e-mail before I leave, but I’m not sure if I can use it before I get to Toronto. Also I think I left my laundry bag at the grandparents, it’s tan and blue. Today I carried my laundry in my bed sheet. I miss you guys a lot and I can’t wait to get your letters.

Love Josh (Elder Olson)

By the way I saw Spencer and he left on Tuesday before I could get his address so if you guys could send me it that would be great. And it you still need a scripture for my plaque you can use 1Corinthians 13:12 the one that starts “for now I see through a glass darkly…”

(picture of some sort of bird)

MTC Zone

Joshua's Mission Training Zone