Another week in Whitby

Every since I moved to my new area time has flown by so quickly, I feel like I've only been here for about two weeks. I had an interesting experience yesterday when I was sitting in a room waiting for my interview with president Callister that happens every 6 weeks and I realized that out of the 8 missionaries who happened to be in the roomat that time I was the 2nd oldest(been out the longest) one. It was kind of lucky that way because obviouslly most missionaries have been out longer than me, but it just made me realize that I am no longer really a new missionary although I still feel like one. It just kind of happens that way, I was talking to a missionary who had only a few transfers left and he said he felt like he was only out for a year. Its absoloutely perplexing.

I found out something interesting the other day. I was talking to one of the elders in my district and he told me he had grown up in highland and lived in American fork. I told him about our relatives up there and it turns out that for the last few years before his mission he had worked at that one random Kohlers in Alpine, UT. The one we always go to when we visit grandma and grandpa warner its an institution. We decided that we had probably seen each other before. That reminds me I wasn't sure if I ever told you that my branch president in the MTC roomed with either uncle Gary or Greg at BYU - his name was president Marriott and he says hello, 9 months later, just in case i hadn't told you.

We are still super excited about the work up here in Whitby, we keep finding new people every week and I'm learning alot every single day. We were able to work with President last weekend and had a great night- were able to teach the plan of salvation to our Iranian investigator Daniel Ghofrani.

Hope everything is going well (Becca's story about her CVS robbery was completely insane) and am going to send some pictures down hopefully this week, I am still taking pictures.
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Love Elder Olson

Letter from Mission President-March 2008

Fastest Transfer Of My Life

So far this has been the fastest transfer of my mission so far, I imagine they will each seem to go by faster and faster. Some how it seems like moving to a new area and having more to do has just made the time go by so much more quickly. Its pretty scary when you think about it, becasue I still feel like I am a brand new missionary and that I have so much more to learn. It never seems like we can do enough in one week. The work is still going really well, we are finding alot of different people. Tomorrow President Callister is coming to work in our area with us in the evening- hes taking us to dinner at 4:00 and staying until 9:00. Its pretty exciting because he is leaving in June and I wasn't sure if I was going to get the chance to learn directy from seeing him teach, its apparently pretty legendary. Hopefully our apointments go though.

The persian family we are teaching is islamic, though like most persians they don't really practice it or read the qu'ran. Mostly the only one we can really teach is the 16 yr. old son. He has the best command of english but he only can really read out of his farsii bk. of mormon - he is always translating passages of it into english for us. His translation of "Jesus Christ performed the atonment" is , "jesus christ stood up between the living and the dead". We also found a great young family who came to a youth activity and loved it but who didn't make it to church because of a huge snowstorm. That storm was insane- apparently there has been more snow in the toronto area this year than there has been in 50 - 70 years, more than most people can remember up here. We spent the whole morning shoveling for people, then went to do service by shoveling wood shavings for this member's barn, then we went back to work but because of the snow our appointments started to fall through so we were still shoveling everywhere, we shoveled our own driveway 2-3 times and then woke up the next day and shoveled it again.

Everything is great up here, just dieing for spring (how warm is it down there?). I still haven't recieved the letter you sent me a while ago but its glad to hear that everyone is doing well (I can't believe jeff is marrying sis. Piefer)- keep up the good work team. (thunder thunder thunder thunder cats!)
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Love Elder Olson

Man Alive!

I'm sorry about the incomplete postal code the full address is

Elder Joshua Linne Olson

Canada Toronto East Mission

4 Bach Ave.

Whitby, ON L1R 2K5

CANADA

Whitby is a alot like manassas in its proximity to D.C. it has about 110,000 people in it and it is full of suburbs. It is alot more diverse than my last area but nothing like the actual city of toronto. We are however alot closer to more missionaries. In kingston at first we were only close to one other companionship and the next closest was a 20-30 min. drive. Now there are about 5 within 15 min. and about 6-7 companionships within the 30 min drive. My district, like alot of districts, is made up of two companionships- just the missionaries in whitby. I am as far as life age is concerned the youngest person in my district. Though I've been out 1 transfer longer than my companion the other two elders in my district are at about 20 months.

Right now I feel like time is just flying past and there is never enough time to get anything done. This transfer is already over halfway over. when that happens it will be almost a full 3rd of my mission. Before I know it i'll be out for a year, I wish I could slow it down. It really feels like by the time you get comfortable doing missionary work your mission will be almost over. Yet somehow it seems like its been winter up here forever and that spring will never come! We had a taste of 1 degree whether the other day and we were loving it, it felt like spring. Then the next day it dumped another 10 cms of snow.

The work is amazing up here, we are working super hard and we keep seeing miracles. The persian family that we found in the first few days of the transfer is still coming to church. Two days ago we tracted into a middle aged lady with the flu. When we came back for our apointment she didn't have alot of time but we told her a little about the church and she got super excited and wanted her kids to go to youth night- so that day we got her daughter to go to youth night and she came and was incredibly excited and can't wait to come to church.

I miss you and hope everything is going well.
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Love Elder Olson