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
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