Hello family,
This week we have been working working working! And it feels great - its too the point that I am not really worried so much about what we are doing as long as we are working and working hard. We have been focusing a lot in our mission on praying specifically for our investigators and focusing on them in every way, planning for them and teaching prepared lessons to meet their needs. This has been amazing I feel so much more effective in every appointment that we teach whether it is with members, less-actives or investigators. We are no longer just teaching these people to teach them but we are teaching them with a purpose. President Eyre has been inspired in the last little while to make some pretty big changes throughout the mission we no longer make nightly follow-up calls we are more focused on our purpose to invite other to come onto Christ when we speak to them on the street (or in other words we "oym" them which stands for open your mouth) it has been great and I am continuing to learn so much each day. Coming out to Oakville was definitely
... break between emails .....
I was writing that Oakville was a really inspired decision for me because it gave me a lot of new challenges that I honestly hadn't had yet on my mission - working with a few of the missionaries in the district and with the ward and area- its been a fast - paced rewarding experience and I am glad that I will be able to end on a sprint there is more work to be done!!! Love you all and I will call to take care of the C.D. thing today and I will send another E-mail in a week! I love you all and I really appreciate your prayers.
Love Elder Joshua Olson
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Here we go....
Not to much to update this week. We did have another amazing miracle yesterday. One of our recent converts in the oakville area Celina Xavier gave us the most amazing referral. She was on a plane back from Dominica where she is from in South America. She was sick and told the lady next to her to warn anybody if she had a seizure on the flight. The lady she was sitting next to was a lady named Katrine from St. Lutia. Katrine was leaving St. Lutia to escape an abusive relationship and is coming to Canada to apply for refugee status. It turned out that sometime during the trip the friend that Katrine was going to be staying with could no longer board her. So Celina invited her to her house. She invited us over to meet her and we asked her if we could watch the restoration dvd with her. We were going to start it but she had to go so she invited us back the next day to watch it. We watched it with her and the whole Xavier family, Celina talked to her in Patwa (carribean language another word for broken english) and then she told us that she wanted to repent of some things that happened in her past and start a new life. She accepted a baptismal date for july 26th and we saw her the next day and she had read a chapter our of the book of mormon and is excited to come to church!
Everything else is going well... all the missionaries in my district are very young. One has been out a year, one nine months and the 4 others about 6 months. They are always joking with me about how old I am. It is really strange to be around so many young missionaries, its exciting but I feel really old! I am always telling these stories about missionaries or things that it seems like everyone should know and then it turns out they went home a few months before any of them came into the mission. And then they mention something that happened within the last few years in the states and I have no clue...
It was a great blessing to be able to come to oakville there is a lot of work to be done here with the ward leadership to get them excited about missionary work - the other missionaries in the ward are perfect to help it to take the next step and we are really trying to get the ball rolling with member missionary work over the next few weeks!
I love you all and look forward to hearing from you next week! Good luck with the bike trips, school and all other things that are going on!
Love,
Elder Joshua Olson
Everything else is going well... all the missionaries in my district are very young. One has been out a year, one nine months and the 4 others about 6 months. They are always joking with me about how old I am. It is really strange to be around so many young missionaries, its exciting but I feel really old! I am always telling these stories about missionaries or things that it seems like everyone should know and then it turns out they went home a few months before any of them came into the mission. And then they mention something that happened within the last few years in the states and I have no clue...
It was a great blessing to be able to come to oakville there is a lot of work to be done here with the ward leadership to get them excited about missionary work - the other missionaries in the ward are perfect to help it to take the next step and we are really trying to get the ball rolling with member missionary work over the next few weeks!
I love you all and look forward to hearing from you next week! Good luck with the bike trips, school and all other things that are going on!
Love,
Elder Joshua Olson
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Good Week!
We had a good week this last week. Our district set a goal to get 9 people to church this last Sunday which was a large stretch because the week before we had only gotten one. We all worked really hard for it and in the end we hit exactly 9. Then just last night while I was on exchanges in another area. Someone that we had spoke to on the street the day before accepted a baptismal date for July 12th. Her name was Aleshya and she had a good friend that had just died 3 months before. The day before we spoke to her she had been praying to know what happens after we die. We talked to her on the street and told her about the spirit world and baptisms for the dead. When they taught her yesterday she said it was an amazing answer to her prayers. A real miracle for us as we have found many new investigators but have been having trouble finding those that will keep daily contact. We just keep working and we are being consistently blessed in our area. We still have a lot of faith in our investigator pool with quite a few people that can still be baptized this transfer. I just talked to one of my recent converts, Monica Nolan, from Etobicoke. Apparently without me knowing she had planned my entire last Wednesday to be at her house with some other missionaries eating Guyanese food... shes a really nice lady I will try to convince her to cook some curry and roti. She was excited to hear that she could meet the family as well. Once again everything is going really well I honestly don't even know what to write anymore and I am just trying to enjoy every minute of the next 3 weeks or so.
Love,
Elder Joshua Olson
Love,
Elder Joshua Olson
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Everything going well.
This may need to be really quick but everything is going well we are teaching another investigator family named Johnathon and Martha. Everything goes well and we are busy it was good to hear from everybody and I will write more next week. I am excited to speak in church on the same day as becca!
Love you all
Elder Joshua olson
Love you all
Elder Joshua olson
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The Begining....
This week has already flown by out here in Oakville. I am in the furthest west area and south in the mission. It is a very interesting and prepared area. The Oakville area covers some of the richest places in the mission and quite a few poor areas as well. On my first day in the area we saw 4-5 cars that would have cost well over 150,000 just within a few hours. The area has been very well prepared - we have already committed 4 people for baptism and have a goal of baptizing 5 people this transfer.
It was a strange feeling coming back into the field after about 5 months of work in the office. We still worked our area in the office but not as regularly as we would have liked. The first day being back felt like a breath of fresh air. I miss the work I was doing a lot and I learned so much from it, I especially miss working with all of the missionaries, with my companions and with Pres. and Sis. Eyre. However this is what I've learned how to do for the past few years and what I have really learned to love. Going on travels and working in our area had just seemed like little disconnected pieces of missionary work. Being back has been a blessing. I get to have a full hour of personal study every morning and I I finally get to have companionship study again! It will also help me to be able to finish my two years with one basic focus and to be able to concentrate all of my energy on that focus.
My two companions are E. Tapp and E. Stidham from Rigby, Idaho and Salt Lake City. E. Tapp and I have a very similar sense of humor and it is going to be very fun working with him. E. Stidham as well is a little bit harder to get to know but can also be fun to be around. The best part is that they want to work really hard and are pretty much right there with me on everything. Even though they are very young, they are also very capable. We have started teaching a part- member family with three people that we have preparing for baptism as well as another family from Ghana that we just taught the wife yesterday who is now preparing for baptism. We still need to find more though and we are expecting a few good member referrals this weekend as well as many others that the Lord will lace in our path. I also have a good District out here and am excited to work as a District Leader again because I never felt like I did as much for my District as I wanted to. They are all very young most only about six months with one out for about a year. In our first district meeting we set a goal for 21 baptisms as a district which is the biggest one I’ve seen and most of it came from them they have a lot of faith.
It is weird to be doing everything for the last time but it is also encouraging. Every time I get tired or hesitant I just think that I only have a few opportunities to do any of this again and so I need to take them now. I want to make this the most faithful and hard working transfer of my mission. I love you all and hope to hear from you again next week!
Love,
Elder Joshua Olson
It was a strange feeling coming back into the field after about 5 months of work in the office. We still worked our area in the office but not as regularly as we would have liked. The first day being back felt like a breath of fresh air. I miss the work I was doing a lot and I learned so much from it, I especially miss working with all of the missionaries, with my companions and with Pres. and Sis. Eyre. However this is what I've learned how to do for the past few years and what I have really learned to love. Going on travels and working in our area had just seemed like little disconnected pieces of missionary work. Being back has been a blessing. I get to have a full hour of personal study every morning and I I finally get to have companionship study again! It will also help me to be able to finish my two years with one basic focus and to be able to concentrate all of my energy on that focus.
My two companions are E. Tapp and E. Stidham from Rigby, Idaho and Salt Lake City. E. Tapp and I have a very similar sense of humor and it is going to be very fun working with him. E. Stidham as well is a little bit harder to get to know but can also be fun to be around. The best part is that they want to work really hard and are pretty much right there with me on everything. Even though they are very young, they are also very capable. We have started teaching a part- member family with three people that we have preparing for baptism as well as another family from Ghana that we just taught the wife yesterday who is now preparing for baptism. We still need to find more though and we are expecting a few good member referrals this weekend as well as many others that the Lord will lace in our path. I also have a good District out here and am excited to work as a District Leader again because I never felt like I did as much for my District as I wanted to. They are all very young most only about six months with one out for about a year. In our first district meeting we set a goal for 21 baptisms as a district which is the biggest one I’ve seen and most of it came from them they have a lot of faith.
It is weird to be doing everything for the last time but it is also encouraging. Every time I get tired or hesitant I just think that I only have a few opportunities to do any of this again and so I need to take them now. I want to make this the most faithful and hard working transfer of my mission. I love you all and hope to hear from you again next week!
Love,
Elder Joshua Olson
The Begining....
This week has already flown by out here in Oakville. I am in the furthest west area and south in the mission. It is a very interesting and prepared area. The Oakville area covers some of the richest places in the mission and quite a few poor areas as well. On my first day in the area we saw 4-5 cars that would have cost well over 150,000 just within a few hours. The area has been very well prepared - we have already committed 4 people for baptism and have a goal of baptizing 5 people this transfer.
It was a strange feeling coming back into the field after about 5 months of work in the office. We still worked our area in the office but not as regularly as we would have liked. The first day being back felt like a breath of fresh air. I miss the work I was doing a lot and I learned so much from it, I especially miss working with all of the missionaries, with my companions and with Pres. and Sis. Eyre. However this is what I've learned how to do for the past few years and what I have really learned to love. Going on travels and working in our area had just seemed like little disconnected pieces of missionary work. Being back has been a blessing. I get to have a full hour of personal study every morning and I I finally get to have companionship study again! It will also help me to be able to finish my two years with one basic focus and to be able to concentrate all of my energy on that focus.
My two companions are E. Tapp and E. Stidham from Rigby, Idaho and Salt Lake City. E. Tapp and I have a very similar sense of humor and it is going to be very fun working with him. E. Stidham as well is a little bit harder to get to know but can also be fun to be around. The best part is that they want to work really hard and are pretty much right there with me on everything. Even though they are very young, they are also very capable. We have started teaching a part- member family with three people that we have preparing for baptism as well as another family from Ghana that we just taught the wife yesterday who is now preparing for baptism. We still need to find more though and we are expecting a few good member referrals this weekend as well as many others that the Lord will lace in our path. I also have a good District out here and am excited to work as a District Leader again because I never felt like I did as much for my District as I wanted to. They are all very young most only about six months with one out for about a year. In our first district meeting we set a goal for 21 baptisms as a district which is the biggest one I’ve seen and most of it came from them they have a lot of faith.
It is weird to be doing everything for the last time but it is also encouraging. Every time I get tired or hesitant I just think that I only have a few opportunities to do any of this again and so I need to take them now. I want to make this the most faithful and hard working transfer of my mission. I love you all and hope to hear from you again next week!
Love,
Elder Joshua Olson
It was a strange feeling coming back into the field after about 5 months of work in the office. We still worked our area in the office but not as regularly as we would have liked. The first day being back felt like a breath of fresh air. I miss the work I was doing a lot and I learned so much from it, I especially miss working with all of the missionaries, with my companions and with Pres. and Sis. Eyre. However this is what I've learned how to do for the past few years and what I have really learned to love. Going on travels and working in our area had just seemed like little disconnected pieces of missionary work. Being back has been a blessing. I get to have a full hour of personal study every morning and I I finally get to have companionship study again! It will also help me to be able to finish my two years with one basic focus and to be able to concentrate all of my energy on that focus.
My two companions are E. Tapp and E. Stidham from Rigby, Idaho and Salt Lake City. E. Tapp and I have a very similar sense of humor and it is going to be very fun working with him. E. Stidham as well is a little bit harder to get to know but can also be fun to be around. The best part is that they want to work really hard and are pretty much right there with me on everything. Even though they are very young, they are also very capable. We have started teaching a part- member family with three people that we have preparing for baptism as well as another family from Ghana that we just taught the wife yesterday who is now preparing for baptism. We still need to find more though and we are expecting a few good member referrals this weekend as well as many others that the Lord will lace in our path. I also have a good District out here and am excited to work as a District Leader again because I never felt like I did as much for my District as I wanted to. They are all very young most only about six months with one out for about a year. In our first district meeting we set a goal for 21 baptisms as a district which is the biggest one I’ve seen and most of it came from them they have a lot of faith.
It is weird to be doing everything for the last time but it is also encouraging. Every time I get tired or hesitant I just think that I only have a few opportunities to do any of this again and so I need to take them now. I want to make this the most faithful and hard working transfer of my mission. I love you all and hope to hear from you again next week!
Love,
Elder Joshua Olson
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Hey I got Transfered...
Well on the Monday after we talked on the phone President told me that I would have the opportunity to go back to the field for my last transfer. Its sad to leave, especially being able to work with and see all the missionaries but I am really excited to be able to concentrate and just work an area for my last transfer. In the office we do a lot of long-term planning and think a lot which can be unsettling when you are getting old in the mission. I'm going to an area called Oakville, which is full of rich people but it also has a good balance of other people too. I'm going to be the district leader out there which I am very excited about. It will be nice to get to know and work with a smaller group of elders and to be able to focus most of my time with my companions (I have two) and my area. My new companions will be E. Stidham and E. Tapp. They are both really young, right around 4-6 months. E. Stidham is from Salt Lake City, Utah and E. Tapp is from Rigby Idaho. They are both hard working fun companions E. Tapp has big round Ray-bon glasses. I had the chance to give my companions their transfer calls to tell them that we would be companions. When I called him I told him that we were going to buy matching glasses! We apparently have a really good investigator that we are teaching with a baptismal date, a body-builder named Reza, and a lot of potential with the members in the area. Its a really weird feeling going back to the field. I am excited to focus and to work but its feels weird - I feel like a lot of responsibility has been taken away and its kind of a hard adjustment. I've been able to talk to my last two companions that did the same thing and they have given me some good advice. I don't think that there are any questions that I need to answer or anything but if I do I will be back on the regular Wednesday e-mail schedule - old predictable. I hope everyone in Virginia has a good Camping trip and We are about to drive back to Oakville and start the transfer fresh. I've set some goals for my last transfer, and I want my last transfer to be the most hardworking transfer of my mission - I think it will be because both of my companions are really hard workers so we will all be on the same page!
Love Elder Joshua Olson
Love Elder Joshua Olson
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Here we go really quick!
We are heading out in a minute to go to district meetings and then to go on travels... So for the calls this week our church gets out at 1:00 and then we go around toronto to any baptisms that we can attend in the mission usually from about 1:00 - 4:00. Then Sunday night we are putting together a Mission President's Fireside for the members and investigators in toronto that starts at 7:00 - 9:00.
If it works out for you we can do calls at 4:00! Each of us have our own Cell Phone so it is going to be really easy for us to do our calls. We won't have to wait for each other. I can call you and then you can call me back as normal but in-case anything doesn't work out this is my number 416.464.7552.
Everything is going well we've got to go but we are doing well we are going on four travels this week so we are going to be gone for the next two days! Fun and busy as always!
Love Elder Joshua Olson
If it works out for you we can do calls at 4:00! Each of us have our own Cell Phone so it is going to be really easy for us to do our calls. We won't have to wait for each other. I can call you and then you can call me back as normal but in-case anything doesn't work out this is my number 416.464.7552.
Everything is going well we've got to go but we are doing well we are going on four travels this week so we are going to be gone for the next two days! Fun and busy as always!
Love Elder Joshua Olson
Here we go really quick!
We are heading out in a minute to go to district meetings and then to go on travels... So for the calls this week our church gets out at 1:00 and then we go around toronto to any baptisms that we can attend in the mission usually from about 1:00 - 4:00. Then Sunday night we are putting together a Mission President's Fireside for the members and investigators in toronto that starts at 7:00 - 9:00.
If it works out for you we can do calls at 4:00! Each of us have our own Cell Phone so it is going to be really easy for us to do our calls. We won't have to wait for each other. I can call you and then you can call me back as normal but in-case anything doesn't work out this is my number 416.464.7552.
Everything is going well we've got to go but we are doing well we are going on four travels this week so we are going to be gone for the next two days! Fun and busy as always!
Love Elder Joshua Olson
If it works out for you we can do calls at 4:00! Each of us have our own Cell Phone so it is going to be really easy for us to do our calls. We won't have to wait for each other. I can call you and then you can call me back as normal but in-case anything doesn't work out this is my number 416.464.7552.
Everything is going well we've got to go but we are doing well we are going on four travels this week so we are going to be gone for the next two days! Fun and busy as always!
Love Elder Joshua Olson
Saturday, April 18, 2009
New companion in the office...
Adonde Vas?
Sorry that it has been a few days/weeks since I’ve e-mailed… we’ve just been busy out of our minds again. I’m not even sure what I wrote about last time but my companion E. Nelson went back to the field for his last transfer. He was the last of the two assistants that brought me into the office (both of my last two companions went back to their field for their last transfers so it’s a possibility that I will as well). So now I’m with my companions E. Diehl and I have a new companion E. Earnhardt. You might remember me writing about E. Earnhardt, we were companions over a year ago in Whitby for two transfers when I first got to that area. We enjoyed serving together a lot and I was really excited that when I heard we would be companions again. We had mentioned when we were together before that we thought we would be companions again. So E. Diehl, E. Earnhardt and I are having a blast. We just finished Zone Leader’s Council and the first 2 Zone Conferences of this transfer and it has finally become warm! Last night I was on the bus on a travel with the missionary that I trained, E. Purnell. It was felt really good to see all the progress that he has made on his mission.
Today we had to drive to Brampton, which is just outside of the mission to pick up a few 8x8 foot displays that the P.R. department in Toronto has for our Upcoming Parenting Fireside with Richard and Linda Eyre. We are expecting a big crowd we are hoping to completely fill in the Chapel, overflow and gym in the Don Mills stake center which would seat about 1,300 – 1,500 people. Then the same fireside two days later we are expecting to have 500-700 people as it is further out in the country. In other news President Eyre is gone for the weekend until Monday and guess what he is in Washington D.C. for a Mission President’s conference! So he asked for your phone number and I gave him the Home Phone (703.330.0665) so look for a Call! Everything is going really well up here. we have zone conference on Tuesday so we will be on travels Monday and Tuesday and then we are planning an after zone conference preparation day activity for that Wednesday (it is the first preparation day of the transfer that we have time to take) and we are going to go golfing in the country! Here I found a really good scripture the other day that I really liked – Romans 5:19 – for since by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of man many shall be made righteous. That is a paraphrase that I think is pretty accurate because I just memorized it a few days ago. It is talking about the fall and the atonement but I really like the application that it has for us. The obedience of one person can have a great influence to make those around them obedient. The work is going well! At zone conference this transfer I presented what we call the “State of the Mission” which is where we talk about our mission goals and statistics and though we are behind in our goal of 500 baptisms so far this year. We have picked up a lot since the beginning of the year and are pushing hard to reach 500. Other than that all is well and hopefully nothing crazy happens this weekend while President Eyre is gone!
Love you all!
Elder Joshua LinneÍ´ Olson
Sorry that it has been a few days/weeks since I’ve e-mailed… we’ve just been busy out of our minds again. I’m not even sure what I wrote about last time but my companion E. Nelson went back to the field for his last transfer. He was the last of the two assistants that brought me into the office (both of my last two companions went back to their field for their last transfers so it’s a possibility that I will as well). So now I’m with my companions E. Diehl and I have a new companion E. Earnhardt. You might remember me writing about E. Earnhardt, we were companions over a year ago in Whitby for two transfers when I first got to that area. We enjoyed serving together a lot and I was really excited that when I heard we would be companions again. We had mentioned when we were together before that we thought we would be companions again. So E. Diehl, E. Earnhardt and I are having a blast. We just finished Zone Leader’s Council and the first 2 Zone Conferences of this transfer and it has finally become warm! Last night I was on the bus on a travel with the missionary that I trained, E. Purnell. It was felt really good to see all the progress that he has made on his mission.
Today we had to drive to Brampton, which is just outside of the mission to pick up a few 8x8 foot displays that the P.R. department in Toronto has for our Upcoming Parenting Fireside with Richard and Linda Eyre. We are expecting a big crowd we are hoping to completely fill in the Chapel, overflow and gym in the Don Mills stake center which would seat about 1,300 – 1,500 people. Then the same fireside two days later we are expecting to have 500-700 people as it is further out in the country. In other news President Eyre is gone for the weekend until Monday and guess what he is in Washington D.C. for a Mission President’s conference! So he asked for your phone number and I gave him the Home Phone (703.330.0665) so look for a Call! Everything is going really well up here. we have zone conference on Tuesday so we will be on travels Monday and Tuesday and then we are planning an after zone conference preparation day activity for that Wednesday (it is the first preparation day of the transfer that we have time to take) and we are going to go golfing in the country! Here I found a really good scripture the other day that I really liked – Romans 5:19 – for since by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of man many shall be made righteous. That is a paraphrase that I think is pretty accurate because I just memorized it a few days ago. It is talking about the fall and the atonement but I really like the application that it has for us. The obedience of one person can have a great influence to make those around them obedient. The work is going well! At zone conference this transfer I presented what we call the “State of the Mission” which is where we talk about our mission goals and statistics and though we are behind in our goal of 500 baptisms so far this year. We have picked up a lot since the beginning of the year and are pushing hard to reach 500. Other than that all is well and hopefully nothing crazy happens this weekend while President Eyre is gone!
Love you all!
Elder Joshua LinneÍ´ Olson
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Calmed down up here a little bit.
Family,
So I am pretty jealous that the family is going on a cruise! Especially to the west coast! I've never even been to California, much lest the west coast of Mexico! That sounds really fun, I hope everyone has a good time while they are there. Send me some pictures please... speaking of which I still need to find the time to send you my pictures... Things have calmed down a little bit up here. Although this week my companions and I all got really sick for about 2 days. It started Wednesday morning we all woke up on the way to the gym with sore throats. I took some sudafed and we felt alright until about 10:00. We were messing around in the apartment for a few minutes with the other companionship that lives with us when one of them E. Pauni a 300 poung tongan elder threw a broom lightly at my companion E. Diehl. He blocked it with his hand but the metal top gave him a deep cut right into the palm of his hand and it bled profusely with a lot of fatty particle sticking out. So we bandaged it up and took him to the hospital to get stitches. While we were there I developed a fever and crashed on his hospital bed while he sat on the chair! (he was tired of laying down anyways and had gotten sick earlier and was already getting over it.) After about six hours of waiting (it made up for it because we didn't have to pay for anything with Canada's free medical care), we were able to leave, just in time to go proselyte. The next day we were planning to go on a two-day travel and we woke up and my companion E. Nelson and I were both still running fevers. We took some rest, some medication and gave each other blessings before we left for our travels. It worked and we just got back this morning in time for our meeting with president and I feel a lot better. Right now we are just preparing really quickly for next weeks transfer meeting before we get to go out and work in our area! Hey everyone have a good time and get a lot of sun, its just getting warm enough out here to walk around without a heavy coat! It feels like summer...
Love Elder Joshua Olson
So I am pretty jealous that the family is going on a cruise! Especially to the west coast! I've never even been to California, much lest the west coast of Mexico! That sounds really fun, I hope everyone has a good time while they are there. Send me some pictures please... speaking of which I still need to find the time to send you my pictures... Things have calmed down a little bit up here. Although this week my companions and I all got really sick for about 2 days. It started Wednesday morning we all woke up on the way to the gym with sore throats. I took some sudafed and we felt alright until about 10:00. We were messing around in the apartment for a few minutes with the other companionship that lives with us when one of them E. Pauni a 300 poung tongan elder threw a broom lightly at my companion E. Diehl. He blocked it with his hand but the metal top gave him a deep cut right into the palm of his hand and it bled profusely with a lot of fatty particle sticking out. So we bandaged it up and took him to the hospital to get stitches. While we were there I developed a fever and crashed on his hospital bed while he sat on the chair! (he was tired of laying down anyways and had gotten sick earlier and was already getting over it.) After about six hours of waiting (it made up for it because we didn't have to pay for anything with Canada's free medical care), we were able to leave, just in time to go proselyte. The next day we were planning to go on a two-day travel and we woke up and my companion E. Nelson and I were both still running fevers. We took some rest, some medication and gave each other blessings before we left for our travels. It worked and we just got back this morning in time for our meeting with president and I feel a lot better. Right now we are just preparing really quickly for next weeks transfer meeting before we get to go out and work in our area! Hey everyone have a good time and get a lot of sun, its just getting warm enough out here to walk around without a heavy coat! It feels like summer...
Love Elder Joshua Olson
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Last weeks continued
To start off this week we had our normal president's meeting and then we drove about 2 hours to go on travels with missionaries out in the country we spent the night and had the country zone conference the next day where we did our workshop and I gave my talk for the last of three times I think it went pretty well. Then right after zone conference we went on travels again in the country. I went with the zone leaders of one of the country zones. We had an amazing miracle and we were able to get into a door and commit this lady named Natalie for baptism and daily contact, she was really excited. Then the next morning we drove back into toronto and we traveled a few district meetings and then I went with a mandarin speaking companionship for the day. I slept overnight there and we went with their zone to the temple for the day. Last night I got to sleep in my own bed and we are going on travels with another companionship at about 1:00. Its been really tiring. I'll just tell a quick funny story... but I have to go so I'll tell it next time!
Love Elder Olson
Love Elder Olson
Friday, March 13, 2009
This week ...
To start off this week we had our normal president's meeting and then we drove about 2 hours to go on travels with missionaries out in the country we spent the night and had the country zone conference the next day where we did our workshop and I gave my talk for the last of three times I think it went pretty well. Then right after zone conference we went on travels again in the country. I went with the zone leaders of one of the country zones. We had an amazing miracle and we were able to get into a door and commit this lady named Natalie for baptism and daily contact, she was really excited. Then the next morning we drove back into toronto and we traveled a few district meetings and then I went with a mandarin speaking companionship for the day. I slept overnight there and we went with their zone to the temple for the day. Last night I got to sleep in my own bed and we are going on travels with another companionship at about 1:00. Its been really tiring. I'll just tell a quick funny story... but I have to go so I'll tell it next time!
Love Elder Olson
Love Elder Olson
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Here we go!
Family,
Hey everybody I don't think I'm too late writing this week. This week we had zone leader's council and two zone conferences, only one more zone conference to go and then our big meetings are done with for this transfer! I gave my talk at the two zone conferences so far. It was supposed to be fifteen minute talk on enduring to the end and finding joy in the journey. The topic was assigned by President. It was strange that it actually took more effort to stay under fifteen minutes than it took to stretch it to that length. I didn't share everything I had planned in either one. I think it went pretty well here I'll just list one thing that I shared in my talk from Neil A. Maxwell. Dad, I think you agree, it’s just hard not to quote him. Neil A. Maxwell Patience - Patience is not indifference. Actually, it means caring very much but being willing, nevertheless, to submit to the Lord and to what the scriptures call the ``process of time``. There was another one but I can’t find it.
Today we are just doing a lot of preparation and we are setting up for a mission president’s fireside tomorrow night. The zone conferences were pretty hectic this transfer. Not only did we have the normal preparations but we had a lot of work preparing for general conference and for a parenting fireside coming up. For both of them we made really nice color flyers and posters that look much more professional than the ones that we had in the past. One of the people in the office here photoshoped the general conference invite and we did the other one. Then we spent a lot of time getting them translated into the 7 different languages that we have in the mission and then finding a printer planning all the amounts and how to get them to everybody. It put a lot of extra hours in. The night before Thursday’s zone conference we had to meet the printer at 8:30 p.m. in another part of the city (we have permission from the president to stay out past normal times to prepare) he ended up not being done until about 9:30. It was actually a pretty funny story. First of all this printer we never spoke to at first a Senior sister had talked to him and then sent in an e-mail to order the first round of general conference invites. Then when we wanted to go pick them up and place another order we couldn’t get any kind of contact with him. His website didn’t work and neither did his phone number. We had two address for him, his normal location and a temporary location. We went to the temporary location and found an unmarked warehouse we went inside and couldn’t find anything. So we went to the normal location and the address that was advertised was a physic palm reader. Now we thought he was just a crook, but we decided to check the warehouse again anyways and this time we came back from a different direction. My companion jumped out of the car and we ran into a random door, unmarked and we found this guy just printing and cutting on his printer in what looked like the most makeshift print shop imaginable. We considered that a huge miracle. Then when we came back at 8:30 a few days later this printer had a friend over who we weren’t sure what he was doing. The whole time we were waiting he just kept talking about other “businessmen” that he knew. He talked about the guys who were apparently the only two people in Canada to be able to import blank cds illegally and sell them for a lower price and a lot more. We weren’t sure what was going on but it felt a little shady. Then the printer told us to come out back to his trunk to pick up the rest of the flyers… pretty funny although we really never felt like there was really anything going on. After getting back to the office at about 9:45 we still had more things to prepare so we were ended up staying up to 12:00 to get it all done. It was a pretty crazy day in the life of a missionary.
Well that’s pretty much it for now. Just to follow up, that family that I told you about Merwan and Gulzar from Iraq, were able to get their permanent residence in Canada and are going to be baptized one week from tomorrow! Hopefully we will be able to attend. They have now permanently left everything in their former lives behind in order to stay in Toronto and receive the gospel.
Love Elder Joshua Olson
Hey everybody I don't think I'm too late writing this week. This week we had zone leader's council and two zone conferences, only one more zone conference to go and then our big meetings are done with for this transfer! I gave my talk at the two zone conferences so far. It was supposed to be fifteen minute talk on enduring to the end and finding joy in the journey. The topic was assigned by President. It was strange that it actually took more effort to stay under fifteen minutes than it took to stretch it to that length. I didn't share everything I had planned in either one. I think it went pretty well here I'll just list one thing that I shared in my talk from Neil A. Maxwell. Dad, I think you agree, it’s just hard not to quote him. Neil A. Maxwell Patience - Patience is not indifference. Actually, it means caring very much but being willing, nevertheless, to submit to the Lord and to what the scriptures call the ``process of time``. There was another one but I can’t find it.
Today we are just doing a lot of preparation and we are setting up for a mission president’s fireside tomorrow night. The zone conferences were pretty hectic this transfer. Not only did we have the normal preparations but we had a lot of work preparing for general conference and for a parenting fireside coming up. For both of them we made really nice color flyers and posters that look much more professional than the ones that we had in the past. One of the people in the office here photoshoped the general conference invite and we did the other one. Then we spent a lot of time getting them translated into the 7 different languages that we have in the mission and then finding a printer planning all the amounts and how to get them to everybody. It put a lot of extra hours in. The night before Thursday’s zone conference we had to meet the printer at 8:30 p.m. in another part of the city (we have permission from the president to stay out past normal times to prepare) he ended up not being done until about 9:30. It was actually a pretty funny story. First of all this printer we never spoke to at first a Senior sister had talked to him and then sent in an e-mail to order the first round of general conference invites. Then when we wanted to go pick them up and place another order we couldn’t get any kind of contact with him. His website didn’t work and neither did his phone number. We had two address for him, his normal location and a temporary location. We went to the temporary location and found an unmarked warehouse we went inside and couldn’t find anything. So we went to the normal location and the address that was advertised was a physic palm reader. Now we thought he was just a crook, but we decided to check the warehouse again anyways and this time we came back from a different direction. My companion jumped out of the car and we ran into a random door, unmarked and we found this guy just printing and cutting on his printer in what looked like the most makeshift print shop imaginable. We considered that a huge miracle. Then when we came back at 8:30 a few days later this printer had a friend over who we weren’t sure what he was doing. The whole time we were waiting he just kept talking about other “businessmen” that he knew. He talked about the guys who were apparently the only two people in Canada to be able to import blank cds illegally and sell them for a lower price and a lot more. We weren’t sure what was going on but it felt a little shady. Then the printer told us to come out back to his trunk to pick up the rest of the flyers… pretty funny although we really never felt like there was really anything going on. After getting back to the office at about 9:45 we still had more things to prepare so we were ended up staying up to 12:00 to get it all done. It was a pretty crazy day in the life of a missionary.
Well that’s pretty much it for now. Just to follow up, that family that I told you about Merwan and Gulzar from Iraq, were able to get their permanent residence in Canada and are going to be baptized one week from tomorrow! Hopefully we will be able to attend. They have now permanently left everything in their former lives behind in order to stay in Toronto and receive the gospel.
Love Elder Joshua Olson
Saturday, February 28, 2009
A little later this week....
We are in the office late tonight which gave me a minute to send off an e-mail...
This week has been really busy with transfers and with preparing all of the transferly meetings. This week we had an extra little surprise. When we sat down to do transfer meeting, right after the prayer (it was just President and my companion and I as usual) President said "just to let you know unless you have already been told by the spirit we are going to need another companion for Elder Wylie" and he moved the picture of Elder Wylie's companion Elder Diehl over to the pictures of my companion and I. At first we were just kind of shocked, we kind of thought he might be joking. Usually when they call a new assistant we know beforehand that he is going to and he calls them a few days before. But he was sitting in an Interview with Elder Diehl and just felt impressed to call him, we have had a lot of assistant threesomes in the past and they more effective- we can get more done in the office and go on more travels! So now I have two companions again, just like I did at the beginning of last transfer. Elder Diehl was in my MTC district so we know each other pretty well already; he is from Salt Lake City and was almost a professional skier. Anyway that was a long story but an interesting one.
So we've been working a lot the past few days to prepare zone leader's council and zone conference. I am giving a talk in zone conference this transfer; there is always one assistant that speaks. it is going to be on enduring to the end or in the context of the mission never losing faith or fire no matter what happens and trying to give as much effort in every minute of the day as you can. It’s going to be really enjoyable I’ve been reading a lot of talks by Neil A. Maxwell about enduring to the end, he is probably one of my favourite speakers.
In other developments we did something recently that as far as I know has never been done before. Once a transfer we drive one of our mission vans over to the west mission which is in the City of Brampton where the temple is and drop it (we each have on but we borrow the other missions so that we have two for transfer week). This time we decided to make it really effective so we called the west mission assistants and we asked to take them out to breakfast just to go over how each mission works to get some new ideas. Really interesting, really good missionaries but even without bias (because I am probably really biased towards the CTEM) I would say that I am glad I had the opportunity to be in this mission.
Hopefully that was a few interesting insights into what is going on in the CTEM, hope to hear from you soon!
Love Elder Joshua Olson
This week has been really busy with transfers and with preparing all of the transferly meetings. This week we had an extra little surprise. When we sat down to do transfer meeting, right after the prayer (it was just President and my companion and I as usual) President said "just to let you know unless you have already been told by the spirit we are going to need another companion for Elder Wylie" and he moved the picture of Elder Wylie's companion Elder Diehl over to the pictures of my companion and I. At first we were just kind of shocked, we kind of thought he might be joking. Usually when they call a new assistant we know beforehand that he is going to and he calls them a few days before. But he was sitting in an Interview with Elder Diehl and just felt impressed to call him, we have had a lot of assistant threesomes in the past and they more effective- we can get more done in the office and go on more travels! So now I have two companions again, just like I did at the beginning of last transfer. Elder Diehl was in my MTC district so we know each other pretty well already; he is from Salt Lake City and was almost a professional skier. Anyway that was a long story but an interesting one.
So we've been working a lot the past few days to prepare zone leader's council and zone conference. I am giving a talk in zone conference this transfer; there is always one assistant that speaks. it is going to be on enduring to the end or in the context of the mission never losing faith or fire no matter what happens and trying to give as much effort in every minute of the day as you can. It’s going to be really enjoyable I’ve been reading a lot of talks by Neil A. Maxwell about enduring to the end, he is probably one of my favourite speakers.
In other developments we did something recently that as far as I know has never been done before. Once a transfer we drive one of our mission vans over to the west mission which is in the City of Brampton where the temple is and drop it (we each have on but we borrow the other missions so that we have two for transfer week). This time we decided to make it really effective so we called the west mission assistants and we asked to take them out to breakfast just to go over how each mission works to get some new ideas. Really interesting, really good missionaries but even without bias (because I am probably really biased towards the CTEM) I would say that I am glad I had the opportunity to be in this mission.
Hopefully that was a few interesting insights into what is going on in the CTEM, hope to hear from you soon!
Love Elder Joshua Olson
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Sorry I missed a week!
Yes, I am still alive! Don't worry Just missed a week because we were a little busy. Transfer week is coming up, it is a little exciting but I'm also just bracing for it. Little sleep and a lot of meetings and organization. Its rewarding though I am learning so much about just how to be effective while helping to organize the mission. My companion and President Eyre are really talented so I'm learning a ton every day. Write now we are just doing some pre-transfer meeting planning and preparing ahead for the new missionary meetings, zone leader meetings, and zone conferences. Other than that, we are going to the temple today - we are also going back to the gym and are on a work out program again... In other news were have been able to get out and work in our area. We were able to commit an investigator for baptism the other day, a 20 yr. old guy named Josh(funny) who we found when we went to an appointment with his mother who ended up not being there but we were able to meet him for the first time and he let us teach him. And then just last night we were tracting in an apartment building and we knocked on one door that sounded like world war two was going on inside. This Nigerian guy answered the door and he in a huge rushed asked us who we were and what we were doing and then said he would be back in a second. When he came back to the door he had a playstation controller in his hand and he told us to come in. I had to wait for my companion who was talking to someone else in the hallway so he told us to come in wherever. We came in and had to wait for about five minutes for him to finish his world war two game but then we were able to teach them and his two friends. It was an amazing lesson. Really powerful and they understood everything really well until right after the first vision when both of the nigerians said , 'Man cannot see god, I've read it in the bible' and also they asked the question ,"Why would god have to come down if Jesus could?" So my companion immediately taught about how important it was for the father and son and the holy ghost all to be present because it meant a great revelation on the nature of the godhead and then I was able to share a few accounts of people in the bible seeing god and then gave them acts 7:55-56 to read about stephen seeing god with christ on his right hand. Both of those answers and after we bore testimony that we knew that man could see god and that Joseph Smith really had. They completely changed their attitudes and the first guy we talked to Nick said "Oh, I didn't know this about your church all I heard was crazy stuff like you didn't believe in Jesus, I really want to come to you church." Although they didn't accept a baptismal date on that appointment, mostly because they were running out of time they are really solid and I am excited to go back and teach them. Anyway Thanks for the e-mails and we will talk to you later!
Love Elder Joshua Olson
Love Elder Joshua Olson
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Hey Family
Hey how are you doing! Thanks for all the e-mail. Its weird that you got my release papers already... although I don't know what time they usually come. Although come to think about it I think my trainer's parents got his when I was with him which was at about the same time in his mission so I guess its normal. Everything is going well up here we are beginning to plan for next transfer's zone conferences and meetings so we are getting really well prepared for that. I'm going on travels for the next few days. Here I want to tell the story of an amazing lady that we taught the other day when I was with a companionship on travels. Its was in probably the most downtown area of the city, which includes union station (where they filmed parts of the first x-men movie) the CN Tower and the most major down town parts of the city. We met a lady at church who a week before had just come to ESL class (which the missionaries teach at the church) and asked to be baptized. They taught her the first lesson right there and committed her for baptism which she accepted. They couldn't meet until a week later which happened to be on the day that I was coming with them. This lady, Gulzar (pronounced gool-zar), was so amazing she is from Iraq and came to Canada on an educational visa but she did it really to get away from the country and would rather stay in Canada permanently. On this lesson the missionaries had planned to watch Finding Faith in Christ because she was Islamic and new few details about Christ. After watching it we asked her how she felt and she told us that she was so happy about her decision to be baptized. We then asked her about her immigration status. She told us that her visa only kept her in Canada until October. When we asked her about teaching her family more, because they had all come to church the week before. She said that her Husband was scared because of the retaliation of her family when they would be going back to Iraq in October. If anyone in her family in that culture converts to Christianity they literally cut their head off, it is the established punishment. She said however that it was her life and that she knew she wanted to be baptized into the church and did not care about the consequences. It turns out she had already told her family back home about her decision but she was so faithful and desirous of being baptized that she was willing to face whatever circumstances in order to receive the gospel (not yet knowing the church policy not to baptize people from arab countries who would be returning - because of the fact that that they will be killed). Since that time they continued to teach Gulzar and right now she believes that she has found a way to stay in Canada as a refugee although her husband may have return home to Iraq. She said that it would be another great sacrifice because they had worked hard to build a life in Iraq. She earned a degree in English language and linguistics as a native Arabic speaker in an Iraqi university and she has a very good Job. Her husband owns a business there and they have a large house with a comfortable lifestyle. However she said that she is willing to give it up and live in one of the worst parts of Toronto working as a very recent immigrant just to stay alive possibly separated from her family for long periods of time in order to receive the gospel. She even asked the missionaries if she could be baptized sooner, her date was for about a month after the day that she walked into ESL class. Now they are working on bringing the Farsi members (Iranians) to fellowship the family in hopes that the husband will also decide to stay in Canada so that he can also receive the Gospel. Gulzar will probably be the first Iraqi person baptized in this mission and possibly in Canada or even farther reaching because they would most likely come to Toronto first. Teaching her was one of the most spiritual experiences of my mission because the sacrifices that she was willing to make for the gospel were so drastic. It really made me think a lot about how important the gospel is to each individual.
Well that is pretty much all that is going on here in Toronto with me... I enjoyed hearing all the good news from Everybody except for that little bit about the release papers... anyway I'll talk to you soon.
Love Elder Josh Olson
Well that is pretty much all that is going on here in Toronto with me... I enjoyed hearing all the good news from Everybody except for that little bit about the release papers... anyway I'll talk to you soon.
Love Elder Josh Olson
Saturday, January 31, 2009
A little late...
Sorry I am a little late this week. Only had a few seconds to check e-mail on Wednesday. Here is the good news I made it through the crazy first 3 weeks of the transfer! We had new missionary orientation, zone leader's council, and 3 zone conferences. Our zone conferences are a little different than they are in other missions they are really multi-zone conferences with 2-3 zones and we put the meeting together with President Eyre. So we do one group of zones then the next day we do another group and (thursday and friday) and then one the next tuesday, and then we go on travels before and after each conference. I was really tired after the last zone conference in the country then we had a 6 hour drive back into toronto because of snow... So now we are doing other assignments and going on travels whenever possible with missionary companionships. Its so different being an assistant- President Eyre is a really successful in business so he knows how to delegate. We just get assignments for example I want you to figure our how to display parts of mormon.org at a zone conference. Just simple statements and then we just have to figure out how to do it and all the details. Like this morning we had to figure out and create a poster for a fireside with Richard and Linda Eyre on parenting from some pdf of an old poster. While we are organizing handing our $6000 worth of bus passes to all the missionaries and finding a new apartment to move one of my companions (hes going back to the field to train for his last few weeks). And a ton of other stuff (delivering a microwave). Life is very good, I am learning a ton about setting up sound systems, and wireless microphones, writing talks and presentations, and using photoshop and sound editing software. Anyway its definitely an adjustment, I am definitely feeling withdrawals from not going out and proselyting all day. Now that all of the meetings for the transfer are over we will have some time to proselyte almost every single day! I hope that answers some of the questions. Thats just about it I hope everyone is doing really well and I'll talk to you next week!
Love Elder Olson
Love Elder Olson
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Not too much going on.
Hey Family,
Ok, this week has been a little different form last week. Transfers were all worked out and went smoothly, and we got all the new missionaries oriented and are getting into the flow of things. This week were are just beginning our big push of meetings right at the beginning of the transfer. Yesterday we had zone leader's council. We spent a lot of time preparing for it and for zone conference this weekend and so I was going a little bit crazy being in the office for such a long time. However, the meeting went really well it actually surprised me. The spirit was really strong and there was such a strong feeling of unity and brotherhood among all of the zone leader's. I gave the longest presentation of my life... it was planned for about 35 minutes and i ended up taking about 40 minutes, talking about how planning is the key to a consecrated day- it was hopefully pretty interesting though, we had a lot of discussion and we had a short role-play where the zone leader's corrected each other's planners from early on in their missions. We had a big shock at the end of president Eyre's talk in the middle of the meeting he pulled out a big newspaper article with the face of Barack Obama (spelling?) on it and started talking about how the new president was being inaugurated at just that moment (because it was tuesday just a little bit before 12:00. Then he basically said that the U.S. has played an integral part in the history of the church, and its policies today continue to affect by where we are allowed to preach the gospel. Though we have more members outside of north America, most countries still associate our proselyting work with the united states, probably because most of the proselyting missionaries that would be able to go to a new country would be from the states. So he offered a pray to help President Obama essentially to help world relations in order to open more countries to the gospel. (Especially since the recent trend has been a lot of negative world opinion to the U.S.) I'll admit that at first I was kind of shocked (he told us he had a surprise but gave no hit to what was going on in any of our planning meetings) but once he started praying for the opening of other nations it made more sense and I started to understand why. Well thats just a random bit of new concerning the inauguration up here. The rest of the meeting continued to go really smoothly. It was all really focused on how we can become better leaders, on ways to inspire the zone leader's to reach farther and do more and we had a lot of good insights. Now we are just doing some preparation and then we are going to have a zone conference tomorrow another one on Friday and then the one after that will be on Tuesday. After each zone conference we are going to be on travels and we will be traveling saturday as well. The Tuesday conference is out in the country zones, where I spent the first year of my mission. The furthest country zone, which is really hard to go on travels(exchanges) with hasn't been traveled in awhile so we are going to spend the entire week out there and travel the entire zone right in a row. I imagine that it is going to be pretty exhausting but fun. Other than that life is pretty normal, going to buy some new shoes today because mine are becoming impossible to shine, and I'm gonna get a haircut. Its gonna feel really good. I hope everyone stays warm and healthy and I will talk to everybody soon!
Love Elder Olson...
Ok, this week has been a little different form last week. Transfers were all worked out and went smoothly, and we got all the new missionaries oriented and are getting into the flow of things. This week were are just beginning our big push of meetings right at the beginning of the transfer. Yesterday we had zone leader's council. We spent a lot of time preparing for it and for zone conference this weekend and so I was going a little bit crazy being in the office for such a long time. However, the meeting went really well it actually surprised me. The spirit was really strong and there was such a strong feeling of unity and brotherhood among all of the zone leader's. I gave the longest presentation of my life... it was planned for about 35 minutes and i ended up taking about 40 minutes, talking about how planning is the key to a consecrated day- it was hopefully pretty interesting though, we had a lot of discussion and we had a short role-play where the zone leader's corrected each other's planners from early on in their missions. We had a big shock at the end of president Eyre's talk in the middle of the meeting he pulled out a big newspaper article with the face of Barack Obama (spelling?) on it and started talking about how the new president was being inaugurated at just that moment (because it was tuesday just a little bit before 12:00. Then he basically said that the U.S. has played an integral part in the history of the church, and its policies today continue to affect by where we are allowed to preach the gospel. Though we have more members outside of north America, most countries still associate our proselyting work with the united states, probably because most of the proselyting missionaries that would be able to go to a new country would be from the states. So he offered a pray to help President Obama essentially to help world relations in order to open more countries to the gospel. (Especially since the recent trend has been a lot of negative world opinion to the U.S.) I'll admit that at first I was kind of shocked (he told us he had a surprise but gave no hit to what was going on in any of our planning meetings) but once he started praying for the opening of other nations it made more sense and I started to understand why. Well thats just a random bit of new concerning the inauguration up here. The rest of the meeting continued to go really smoothly. It was all really focused on how we can become better leaders, on ways to inspire the zone leader's to reach farther and do more and we had a lot of good insights. Now we are just doing some preparation and then we are going to have a zone conference tomorrow another one on Friday and then the one after that will be on Tuesday. After each zone conference we are going to be on travels and we will be traveling saturday as well. The Tuesday conference is out in the country zones, where I spent the first year of my mission. The furthest country zone, which is really hard to go on travels(exchanges) with hasn't been traveled in awhile so we are going to spend the entire week out there and travel the entire zone right in a row. I imagine that it is going to be pretty exhausting but fun. Other than that life is pretty normal, going to buy some new shoes today because mine are becoming impossible to shine, and I'm gonna get a haircut. Its gonna feel really good. I hope everyone stays warm and healthy and I will talk to everybody soon!
Love Elder Olson...
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Crazy Week
OK, since I last wrote e-mail life has been crazy, a busy kind of good crazy but crazy none the less. So I got the call from president on Wednesday while I was on travels with another companionship. We continued the travel for that day and the next morning we really didn't have a preparation day because we were taking the zone to the temple so most of the day was spent doing that. The time I had left before we went out to proselyte I spent packing a two day overnight bag. After proselyting until 9PM I got picked up and went into Don Mills went to what is now my apartment and the next day we had transfer meeting and did other work and I got acquainted with life as an assistant. We had our Saturday morning meeting with President Eyre and then we continued to work on transfers until Saturday around 6:00 (along with a few other things). Then I went back to my area for that evening said goodbye at church the next day and left right after church to come back to Don Mills. We ran a Mission President's fireside that night and then worked like crazy to get all the travel plans for all the missionaries being transferred across the whole mission (a pretty tough problem working out buses and rides and times and the transfer van) so they would be ready to give to the missionaries when we gave them their transfer calls on Monday night. We worked on that as well as our normal Monday morning meeting with president and a few other pretty big problems that came up across the mission. We ended up putting together the transfer plans all the way up until right at 9:00 when we started making transfer calls. (It was weird to be on the other side of the phone!) The next day we prepared the new missionary orientation looked for new apartments for the 3 new areas we are opening this transfer, went to the airport to pick up the new missionaries, who were late. Then we delivered the transfer vans to the senior couples that were driving them and dealt with all the problems that came up in between. We get in the apartment every night at 10:30 at the earliest and get up at 6:25 at the very latest (once so far). This morning we got up prepared the missionary orientation meeting, had the new missionary orientation meeting (I conduct all the meetings this transfer because I am the new assistant) and here we are. Finally got a little moment to write an e-mail, which we just do whenever there is a minute to do it and try not to do a total of more than 1 hour a week. It’s been pretty fun though. My new companions are Elder Clayton and E. Nelson. E Clayton goes home this transfer and E. Nelson one before me. The usual thing is that the assistants stay in the office until they go home. But in the past during my mission there haven’t been any assistants called with 6 months left except for (My two companions and I who all were) so I will probably be an assistant for the rest of my mission or go back to the field for my last transfer. So that’s all the news so far, a pretty long e-mail. Now we are starting to work on Zone leader’s council and zone conference. We have zone leader’s council and 2 zone conferences (which we prepare) next week. --The two tickets I have the speeding ticket I was pulled over and is legitimate (I’m sorry) the other one was because apparently we didn’t have the ownership in the glove compartment which I don’t really control so I am going to see about getting the mission to reimburse that one. I paid the $120 (#4862-999-00-89544731-00) one but it wouldn’t let me pay the other one. I meant to pay with my home card but I accidentally paid with my mission card so I’m going to pay for my mission stuff with my home card until I Hit 120. If you want to reimburse me then… if not I did speed so it’s really my fault.-- Sounds like everything is going well at home! Keep me updated. Love you all so much!
Love Elder Olson.
Love Elder Olson.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Some Changes.
Hey how is everyone doing? This last week I've just been excited to be able to kind of get back into the flow of things after the holidays. Christmas is both good for missionary work and disruptive to it. It can through missionaries off a little bit and it can really mess with the schedules of members and investigators. But we are teaching a couple of new families right now a lady named veronica and her 12yr old daughter and 10 yr.old son. A really nice family. And a guy named Jason who has two kids. a few other people as well all pretty new investigators so no really big developments yet. Its still pretty cold up here and we got some more snow yesterday - in Toronto you can never get away from the salt. They don't usually even plow they just salt the roads so your boots and your pant cuffs get consistently covered in salt stains! It get get pretty frustrating. I guess the only really new thing is that I got transfered again. This time i'm going to the office - so anything you send I can just pick it up there at the Don Mills address- i'll be there every day almost. President Eyre called me yesterday to be one of his assistants. my new companion is picking me up tonight so that we can go into the office for tomorrow morning's transfer meeting. I'm pretty nervous right now as you can imagine. It's kind of funny because i'm not supposed to tell anyone in the mission until we make transfer calls Sun. and Mon. night so only my current companion knows so I don't really have anyone to talk to about it so the nervousness isn't going away. Thats going to be a new experience - every time I get comfortable I get moved! I'm not really sure when I'll be e-mailing from now on i'll know more next week sometime but from what I gather it is just going to be at random intervals in the week. Life as an assistant isn't like normal missionary life it will definitely be an adjustment. My new companion is a really good guy. His name is E. Nelson hes from utah, not sure where. He has 3 transfers left and I have 4 so we'll probably be companions for awhile. Umm other than that we went to the temple today which was a blast... hmmm... I don't know what else thats pretty much it... looking forward to hear from you next week. I'm probably just going to go shine my shoes!
Love Elder Olson.
Love Elder Olson.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Christmas and birthday and everything else!
Hey!! Its been a bit since I've done any e-mail! Last week every library in Toronto was closed for boxing day and then our preparation day was moved again because of new years (and by the way next week our preparation day will be on thurday because we are taking our zone to the temple). Life is good in toronto - we are just having a blast with the zone - we had a zone companionship study and volley ball activity this morning. Everyone is so fired up at the beginning of the transfer we set a goal to be a zion zone- we wanted to be totally unified and personally consecrated and we have seen so many miracles. The whole zone is doing amazing right now we have over 30 baptismal dates which is a record I think for the mission for along time- definitely for the zone. There is one companionship that at the beginning of the transfer seemed like it was going to be the biggest problem- they worked it out and right now they have 13 baptismal dates! This kind of thing is probably only exciting to me. We've just been amazingly blessed we have so many good missionaries right now. Its kind of reflecting the mission as a whole though we were going a little down hill for the last few months but President Eyre really pushed us with our new mission mission plan and a few other things and now the whole mission is getting back into what it was like in the ctem glory days! PHeww...
Anyway I did get the birthday and christmas package you sent me a few days ago and thank you so much for all the gifts- Mom and dad for the chess board (awesome!) and the thermals, 180's (really usefull) the mini ping pong and the sweater vest! Dad for really nice japanesse day planner. Grandma and Grandpa olson for the money, Mormon tab. Christmas cd and the really nice tie! Grandma and Granpa warner for the shirt and Green tie! Lindsey for the great home knit scarf and hat (i'm wearing the scarf right now) and Becca and Zach for the 3 very cool ties (i'm wearing the green one right now). Just in case I don't have time to write personall thank you notes! Thanks for everything it really made christmas and my birthday fun, oh and the snickerdoodles, delicious.
Well this week should be another fun one we are coming down to the end of the transfer and I've been in my area for about 6 months. I really hope that they don't transfer me... I love this area and the whole zone. But wherever the lord wants me to be.
Love you all!
Elder Olson
Anyway I did get the birthday and christmas package you sent me a few days ago and thank you so much for all the gifts- Mom and dad for the chess board (awesome!) and the thermals, 180's (really usefull) the mini ping pong and the sweater vest! Dad for really nice japanesse day planner. Grandma and Grandpa olson for the money, Mormon tab. Christmas cd and the really nice tie! Grandma and Granpa warner for the shirt and Green tie! Lindsey for the great home knit scarf and hat (i'm wearing the scarf right now) and Becca and Zach for the 3 very cool ties (i'm wearing the green one right now). Just in case I don't have time to write personall thank you notes! Thanks for everything it really made christmas and my birthday fun, oh and the snickerdoodles, delicious.
Well this week should be another fun one we are coming down to the end of the transfer and I've been in my area for about 6 months. I really hope that they don't transfer me... I love this area and the whole zone. But wherever the lord wants me to be.
Love you all!
Elder Olson
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