Transfers are coming up...

We were shocked as well up here in Canada to hear about President Hinckley passing away. We recieved a call at around 10:30 from our Zone Leaders telling us what had happened as well as a few more calls the next morning from some members of our branch. Its completely different I guess from what dad wrote me about on his mission. We didn't need to go somewhere for a pay phone to talk to the zone leaders they just called us on our cell, we have free minutes after 8.

It was pretty sad news though after every conference people kind of expected it. Every one loved President Hinckley. When we told our recent conver she said , "oh no, hes the one with the kind face!" Its makes things a little different when we contact people , "Hello we'd love to tell you about how there is a prophet on the earth today! Well, kind of, I mean well there are techniclly about 14 prophets, seers, and revelators today, but yesterday there were fifteen. Its just that right now maybe not one of them is technically the prophet." The great thing is that, even though its very sad to see him go, the the work the church and everything moves on without a hitch. We are going to watch the funeral ceremony at our church building and are suppossed to try to get all of our investigators to go.

Transfers are coming up in less than two weeks. This transfer blew past. Its been cold and windy and icy and I sometimes I don't remember what it was like to be warm. Its to the point now that I really have no clue what will happen. At this point the could send me to the opposite side of the mission or to downtown toronto. If I leave I think I will be going alot closer to the city. Even though I'm kind of in a city now, in mission talk we still call it the country because it is so far from toronto (the real city). There are a ton of possibilities one of which is as always no change at all. I am both excited and nervous about possibly getting sent to a new area. Sometimes I feel tired of going to the same places and driving on the same streets day after day. However I've gotten to now the people in this branch pretty well and its wierd to think that I could actually miss some of them. Its pretty fun to be a missionary and the youth and young adults(20 -30) come up before church just to talk to you about what pedals they are making for their guitars or a hundred different things. There is a strange thing that keeps happening however, people keep asking me how much time I have left on my mission as if I was coming towards the end. I think they are getting confused because I've been around for awhile and have a younger looking companion. I still feel like I've just started. The other day an older brother in the Branch presidency shook my hand and said in his hilarious wise old person voice- "It amazes me, you just keep coming to church."

President Callister isn't afraid to leave missionaries in an area for along time though- not usually more than 6 transfers or 9 months and I would have one more to go before that point since this is the end of my 5th. Its becoming harder to count now how long I've been out. Now months feel like weeks did at the very beginning, and transfers feel cramped for not having enough time in them to get all the work done that we want to.

I didn't have enought time to answer all you questions or write everything so i'll write some more in my letter.

Love Elder Olson

Elder Olson

Family,

It was nice to hear from you this week. It has been snowing for the last few days. Snow is great- when it snows we shovel people at every opportunity its actually kind of a nice break, and they always give us hot chocolate. After awhile you get really really good at shoveling.

The work is going really well up here still learning more every day- except for a few of our strongest investigators we have few people to teach at the moment so we are doing alot of work trying to rebuild the area. We've seen alot of success with the members in the church that we are working with. The 20 year old guy that ended up baptising our investigator has been coming back to church since the baptism so that he can serve a mission.

Oh yah! The dunder mifflin t-shirt was awesome I wear it all the time - to bed and on p-day. I'm serioius when I say I'm writing letters so I'll write some more then.

Love Elder Olson

Work, work, work

Hello! I didn't get any e-mails or letters from you this week so I'll just give an update of whats going on in Canada as always. Mostly it is just work as normal- I did recieve a huge banner that says ELDER OLSON in huge letters from the ward's young women that they all signed. I promptly taped it to the wall above my desk- just to make sure that Elder Hatch remembers which desk is mine. Speaking of Elder Hatch- I'm trying to get him to get me a signed tie from Orrin Hatch and an Orrin hatch for President t-shirt, its just so funny that I ended up being companions with Orrin Hatch's grandson, how ironic- I remember spending nights last year with my roomates trying to find a cd of Orrin hatch's songs on the internet because we thought it was hilarious.

Not to much to mention about this week- we just had a really good zone conference and then we were traveled by the assistants again. We get travled by them alot because we are the closest area to the zone leaders. Were working really hard and teaching alot of really good people- I have some really funny stories though that I'm gonna write up in my letters.

Hope everyones doing well.

Love Elder Olson

Stressful Week - Baptism

The last week has been the most stressfull that I have had so far. Planning for our Investigator's baptism almost killed me. Since I had never had to plan one before and neither had my companion and neither had my branch mission leader. Everything in the end turned out alright. Though just the night before we found out that another baptism was being planned at the same time for an eight year old in the other branch even though we had already scheduled the font room. She wasn't certain who she wanted to baptize her until about two days before hand when she asked her previous neighbour who she had grown up around to do it. He was a twenty year old guy who though we had taken with us to apointments before but hadn't been to church in year or so and he was really excited to do it. It was a good service and all the 35+ seats in the font room were taken and people were standing in every other spot and even outside the doors. There is usually a good turnout in the branch since it is a slower area and baptisms are held only about every 6 months at the best. We are working to break that though since we have another investigator with a date for February 10th.

I got Dad's letter with the talks and the article about Mitt Romney, they were all really interesting-. I'm always amazed that Canadians who don't even know who the prime minister of Canada is will know who is running for president. I also really quickly wanted to thank everybody for the gifts this christmas and birthday although I wrote more about those in my letters.

Its actually amazingly warm up here right now for some reason it got up to about 13 degrees today- it felt like spring and most of the snow melted away. Apparently though the worst is still yet to come.

Thanks so much for everything the blog site is really cool ( although in almost all of the pictures of me on there right now I have just about the goofiest smile ever - the one where the eyes almost close). Hope every gets better.

Love Josh.

Elder Olson

New Year 2008

Everythings going well up here, no changes in companion or area. It always seems like transfer calls come and I always get really excited but then no one ever calls me. It looks like I'm in my first area for the really long haul. Its going to be great when I move to a new area but for now I have alot of work to do here still. For now I'm still with Elder Hatch who is an interesting guy, its interesting the types of people your companions turn out to be. I'm preparing like crazy for a baptism on sunday because our investigator Laura was out of town for Christmas and we weren't able to contact her to make any plans.

It sounds like everyone had a good time over christmas break- I hope you guys ate eggsbrunch, (or egg sprunch or ekSprughetsch however you spell it) I really missed that. I was sitting on Christmas morning in my new pajamas just thinking about it. I was thinking hmm somethings missing - obviously my family, but what else something a little different.

Well my first companion in the mission to leave just left so that was wierd. Elder Brennan went back to england.

I'll be sending a tape soon- I started to make one for christmas but then I realized the novelty might not be so great because I would be talking to you anyway.

Love Josh.