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