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

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

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