Pheww.....

This one is going to be a little quicker, we went to a new library this week and for some reason it gave me a really short time to do my e-mail, so after I e-mailed my weekly letter to the president I looked up and had about 10 minutes left to read and to write! This week went really well we had miracle after miracles. I taught more lessons this past week than any week of my mission so far and we have more solid investigators. We are still teaching the muslim man from lebanon who is completely ready from baptism but is just worried about what his wife will think. We are also teaching another really great woman named pauline who had a vision that she was in a deep river and she was trying to get to a green place on the other side but couldn't make it. After we taught her the first time she told us she thought that she had found that place. Our zone as well is doing amazing- we lead the mission in every area except for one and all of our missionaries are fired up and excited. Sorry about the lack of a postal code, I keep forgettting it at the apartment and there is no was to find out once i'm here because postal codes in canada are really, really, really, specific- even to the side of the street apparently(!?) Other than that everything is going really well- I am still trying to find time at all to write some handwritten letters but since I got my new calling I've had even less time than before Love Elder Olson.

Busy Week

This week has been so busy, it started of pretty slow but the weekend was completely full, we were really blessed and spent pretty much the entire day saturday and sunday teaching. We found two more people that are going to be baptized. Right now we are working with a lady named Tracey- who has a strong testimony of the gospel but is trying to work out her living arrangments, hopefully tonight. We are also working with an Indian guy named Naveen who is a strong hindu but hes been to church about 20 times. The new people we have been working with this week is a muslim guy from Lebanon who before we met him had almost become a christian and he is now very excited about his baptism. He is about 50 yrs old and he speaks lebanese, arabic, english(slowly), french, and german. I think we gave him copies of the book of mormon in almost all of those languages just to see which one he knew best. Then we are now teaching a Indian lady in her late twenties early thirtes who was a Christian in india and came up to canada for her postgraduate degree. We just had a great apointment with her last night- when we asked her how she felt when we prayed about what we shared she said she felt a great peace come over her, so we bore our testimonys and set a baptismal date with her- the only problem is that between school and work she only sleeps for about 4 hours and doesn't really have a whole lot of time to meet with us. Other than that our zone is doing really well- weston zone is leading the mission in its yearly baptismal goal and we really feel like we'll be able to exceed that- I'll probably be in this area for quite along time so that was a blessing.
In our mission there are two zone leaders in a companionship together in each zone, there are 8 zones 5 of which have english zone leaders, one has spanish, one has mandarin, and the last has cantonese. But every once in a while when the missionaries in the language areas change they switch to and from english. So far the biggest diferrence in being a zone leader is that I don't get nearly as much sleep because we are always on the phone. We also just had my first interviews and skills meeting as a zone leader, which we are in charge of it went pretty well- hopefully. I talked on the 10 minute active member drop by! Hope everything is going well, I can't believe school is going to start again soon! How did everyone's trips go? Keep me posted!

Love Elder Olson.

Here is another letter

Here is my new address:

49 Bemersyde Dr.
Etobicoke, ON
CANADA

No Postal code yet... I always forget those

This week we had zone conference and my first travel as a zone leader. The week went really well. We also made alot of progress with one of our investigators here, a lady named Tracey, she is the daughter of a member and she will be baptized as soon as she changes her living arrangements- because right now she is living common law (not married). I think that she will be baptized this week or in the next few weeks. Zone conference was great- we had a big focus on setting up cottage meetings and teaching our investigators in our members homes - its the next big change in the mission to always be trying to teach in members homes and have them invite their friends there to be taught. So far we have seen alot of success with it throughout our zone and in our area as well. My first travel as a zone leader was with a former companion who is now one of the district leaders in the zone- elder Earhnhardt. It was a really good time I went to the roughest part in all of Toronto- some apartment buildings on the corner of Jane and Finch. As we were leaving two of the sisters we were with (who's area it is actually in) pointed to a pane of bullet proof glass on one of the exits and said- they just replaced this wo days ago because it had been shot to pieces- then they pointed to another bullet mark in the glass- this one just happend last night. Its the kind of area you only go to during the day. Then we found an amazing family from Haiti and were able to committ them to come to church and to be baptized in a month- they were very excited. I also rode the bus for the first time it was great- one of the bus drivers was yelling at us and then he almost crashed the bus- we couldn't help but laugh pretty loud.
This week we have a general authority visiting the mission- elder packer, president packer's son who was recently called to one of the quorom's of the seventy. Then this tuesday we have our zone skills meeting which is the other big zone meeting that we have to prepare. So we are going to be very busy again.
I hope everything goes well with grandpa's birthday and with the vacation- Zach if you didn't get my letter last week then- Happy Birthday! Lindsey congratgulations on the apartment! Becca- very good! Well there are the shout outs.

Love Elder Olson.

Pheww! Quick week.

This week flew by- we have been so busy that I haven't had time even to think. I've been trying to learn the new area and all the companionships in the zone and all the new things I have to do- its been a little crazy, but its been great. The last two areas that I was in were country zones so I didn't see too many members of the zone very often- we were just too far away. Out here we see them all the time. I'm am still in an area with a car- but every single other area in the zone is a bussing area- so When I go on travels next week it will be my first experience contacting and riding on the bus- which is notorious in the mission. My zone is called weston zone and it is notorious because it covers the roughest part of Toronto. The most infamous intersection in toronto is in the sisters area- a place called Jane and Finch- thats the most famous but apparently a few of the appartment buildings in our area are as rough or more... but really its a pretty safe place.

Our zone has a bunch of good missionaries in it we have 3 spanish speaking companionships and 4 english companionships including ourselves. We have seen alot of success already- we have about 13 baptismal dates in the zone with a goal of 16 by the end of the week that we will achieve. We had zone leaders council yesterday and our zone conference on friday- so its been a hectic week. As for the baptism it went really well thank you for all your prayers- the family was confirmed this week and they are doing really well. It was my first time actually doing the baptizing so it was pretty exciting. They are a really good family and the parents are progressing well they just need a little more time.

The city work is alot different- we live in a basement apartment and we aren't downtown so there are alot of houses mixed in with the high rises- our are covers the airport but we don't go there. Especially in one part of our area the work is pretty different- we cover a place called malton which is just north of Toronto's big airport its a little more poor and the west side only has indian people and the east side only has jamaican people. The indian people are also mostly Sikhs which is a newer religion that is kind of like a mix between hinduism and islam. You can always recognize them because they always wear 5 things... a braclet on the left wrist, a turban, a ceremonial dagger, hindu looking pants and long hair with beard. And if you go to a Sikh temple they will always give you a free meal.

I hope everything goes well with all the vacations and the relazing - today was the first time i played golf since my mission began that was really exciting we also had a zone sports activity so I'm pretty exhausted. Hopefully i answered most of your questions I'll have to write more next week! Keep me up to date and it was great to hear from you!

Love Elder Olson.