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

Letter from President Eyre

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...

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.

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.

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