Six Weeks

Today is my first transfer day and both my companion and I are staying in the Cataraqui area. If you are getting transferred you get the call monday night anywhere from 9:00 to 10:30 so it is a pretty nerve-wracking hour and a half. Next time will be worse though because I will probably moving and I will definitely be getting a new companion. I did get a new Zone leader, which I see alot (almost every morning and some p-days) because they are right next door. Whats really exciting though is that the district leader in my area is training so I will not be the newest missionary anymore and when we go on travels I will actually be the experienced missionary for one day.

Other than that the most craziest thing right now is that its p-day and we didn't get our monthly allowance yet so we have no money to buy groceries this week, I have 3 dollars and my companion has 4. Luckily I have enough change to do laundry. I don't want to get in the habit of paying for groceries and laundry with my own money so I'm just gonna have to suffer this week and be more a little more stingy next month.

Anyway, its great to hear from you and I'll see you next week same bat time same bat channel.

-Love josh.
(thats elder josh to you!)

Letter: Dear Fellows

August 29, 31, 2007

Dear Fellows,

This letter should be a little later than usual because I’m actually writing it on Friday instead of Wednesday. Wednesday was a pretty uneventful p-day. We didn’t go grocery shopping because we hadn’t been paid, of this month and we could hardly do laundry. So right after studying in the morning we took a three hour hap, which is the first real nap I’ve taken since I went into the MTC. For once I actually felt rested, so it figures I would ruin it by getting one of the worst night of sleep I’ve ever had. Anyway, that kind of went over my letter writing time. In fact we went to the library when I was doing laundry and I wasn’t in my proselyting clothes. We just happened to run into the Branch President’s family when we were leaving and all the kids were yelling, “Elder Olson’s in jeans”. It was kind of awkward.

The first week of the first transfer is almost over, and I just found out that everyone in my MTC district either got transferred or got new companions, except for the only other guy in my Zone and I. In fact, apparently all the rest just kink of switched trainers, I’m not really sure why. Anyway, I’m excited to start this transfer with a little bit more experience, in fact I was a little over-excited and I got myself into some trouble.

In our interviews with the Mission President last week he stressed how there were a few different levels of missionaries. The first was those people who talk to a lot of people they see, the second was those people who talk to everyone that crosses their path, and the third were the missionaries who were “hunters of men” and would search for people to talk to, every hour of the day and talk to everyone in visible range. So it was about 9:45 at night and my companion and I were talking about how we needed to be better at hunting and even pull over the car when we’re driving to talk to people on the street. So after dropping by an investigator we were driving home and saw a guy unloading his car. It was 9:55 and we had about 5 minutes left so we pulled over and ran over to talk to him. While I was talking to him, Elder Brennan went to talk to some other people. The guy I talked to told us we could come back and just then I saw a lady on a bike to by, so I yelled after her car and asked if I could give her a copy of the Book of Mormon. She told me I could if I could catch her. I thought about it for about 3 seconds as I saw her get further away before I bolted after her. My pens flew out of my pocket and pass along and scripture memorization cards were floating behind me. I caught up to her and tried to hand her the Book but she almost crashed so she told me to wait a second until she got to her house. It turned out to be about a 5 minutes heavy run. By the time I had given her the Book I realized I had left my companion a few streets back so I bolted back to the car. When I got back to the car he wasn’t there so I started looking for my pen when I heard someone yell, “Newbie!! From back the way I had come from. It turned out that just after I ran away he had come back to the car and was amazed to see that I was no where in sight. He immediately thought that possibly I had got into some kind of a fight with the guy that I had been talking to. Then he saw my pen and cards strewn all over the street and that pretty much convinced him that I’d been kidnapped. He got really scared, picked up my stuff and went to the investigator’s house to call the Mission President and tell him he had no idea where I was. He thought that I was going to be dead after only being one transfer out and that he was going to be sent home. After we finally got to the apartment and called the President to tell him I wasn’t dead, everything was fine. Elder Brennan told him that it was the scariest experience of his mission, and President Callister said, “Now you know what it is like to be a parent.” I felt really bad for scaring everybody around me but that’s alright. It was actually pretty scary just being without a companion for a little bit. It is amazing how you get used to never being alone.

Anyway, that’s my story for the week, so now I want to hear a crazy story from you guys. Hope your doing well and I miss you all.

Love, Josh

(sorry about the handwriting)

(cute picture of a square cow)

August 22, 2007

August 22, 2007

The only time I lave to write today is in between loads of laundry, so while I’m writing I am being periodically distracted by the news and cheesy soaps (the T.V. kind not the laundry kind). Anyway – After about two months of wearing proselyting clothes everyday, I’m finally getting used to it. We don’t even wear normal clothes on Preparation day if we can reasonably wear our proselyting clothes. The one change is the temperature, last week it was 30 degrees C. for half of the day until it suddenly dropped to about 12 degrees C. Ever since then it has pretty much long sleeves. Apparently that quickly the summer is over.

Friday I am going to be trained by the District Leader for the first time, which basically means that I’m gonna be the one in charge of planning teaching and deciding what to do while my trainer is in Napanee (which by the way is Avril Lavigne’s home town, apparently missionaries tract into her mom all the time. I was there 2 weeks ago and it’s a bum country town…and that is your most random useless pop culture trivia fact of the week).

I thought you might want to know a little bit more about my area, Catoraqui. It is basically the suburban area of the city of Kingston. Kingston is a really old city with a bunch of old churches and buildings. It also has Queen’s University, which is apparently the best Medical School in Canada, and is where Hockey was invented….I went to a Hockey Museum and learned all about it. It’s pretty much classic Canada, about every few days we’ll knock on someone’s house who only speaks French because it is pretty close to Quebec. And just like in the movie, every single thing label, document, and sign is written in English and French (if you look really closely at a picture of the Toronto temple you can see that below where it says “Holiness to the Lord” it’s written again in French). It’s actually kind of odd considering the lack of exclusively French speaking people.

The missionary work is going pretty well, we have a whole group of new people we are teaching and we are hoping to see a lot of people progressing towards baptism in the next transfer. (six weeks) We just taught a great girl named Shannon who was perfectly prepared. We were in her neighborhood fro an appointment with a lady we’ve been teaching for a while but who can’t quit smoking. She missed her appointment, which she does a lot so we decided just to drop by Shannon and her mom who we had street contacted and who sounded interested. As we walked into her driveway, she pulled right behind us and we were able to teach her all about the restoration. She told us all about how she was looking for something more in her life and had been wanting to o to church. Apparently, her mom had always been kind of anti-religion, but ever since we talked to her on the street she had been much more open to the idea. Another one of our investigators Matt, who went to Youth Conference with his friend is the most solid person I’ve ever taught. Most people we have taught always forget to do the reading we asked them to or are stubborn or nervous and too lazy to get up for church. This guy reads everything and asks other people for things to read, he goes out of his way to learn more and even gets up himself and rides his motorcycle 30 minutes to church every week. He would even have a baptismal date if it wasn’t for one of his parents being somewhat opposed to it. He keeps going on the internet to dig up anti-mormon stuff. As soon as we can teach Matt with his dad and clear up all the misconceptions, he said he wanted his friend to baptize him.

I’m having a great time so far. I am just to the point where I am getting used to missionary work enough so that I can actually enjoy it. It is hard and I never feel like I get enough sleep, but it’s great to be busy every day, it really makes you appreciate the times that you can just sit down and relax (about once a week during church). I hope to hear from you soon, I’m gonna be better at writing every week. I like letters so much more than e-mail because I can read them other times that in the space of one hour once a week. Anyway, I want to send my memory card to you guys, but I need to back up the pictures onto a CD first, if you have any ideas of the best way to send it just email me (will it b e alright to just put it in a letter?) Anyway----

Love, Josh

Hey!

How is it going? I hope you got my letter from last week by now but if not don't worry I'm going to be getting in the habit of sending one a week from this point on especially now that I bought Canadian stamps.

This is my sixth week in Canada and the last week of my first Transfer. I find out if I am tranfered on monday night, although I probably won't moved because you usually stay with your trainer for two transfers. That is a good thing because I don't want to have to get to know a whole other ward and area already. I just gave a talk on sunday which almost killed me because I didn't have a computer to type it up on and I had to prepare it during my personal study and that was all the time that i had, it was on how charity is the source of a real missionary attitude. It went alright though, this week I am going to be teaching elder's quorum. Out of the 5-6 sundays I have been here I think only two elder's quorum meetings have NOT been taught by us, Its a pretty small branch especially during the summer last week we had 40 people total at church. Between having to teach and speak in church and giving people blessings alot I've already had to learn to overcome alot of nervousness. For some reason people keep asking me to give the actual blessing when a husband or more experienced missionary is around, its kind of frustrating. I had my first kind of "bible bash" session the other day which happens even if you try to avoid it apparently, it was with this crazy pentacostal guy who just kept talking about the gift of tongues.

I'm still trying to balance what I write in my E-mails and letters so I apologize again for being kinda sketchy. I hope to hear from you again next week.

- Love josh.

August 19,2007

August 19, 2007

There is a little trick that trainers like to pull on their greenies. It goes like this, he sees something off in the distance like a plane and says, ”Hey Elder (Greenie) how far away is that plane?” The inexperienced missionary looks up and says, “I don’t know a few miles?” ---“Nope,” the trainer says, “Two years away.” Luckily I heard about this joke before my companion could pull it on me. That’s basically how it is around here. The 5 older elders in my district have all been out over a year and a half. Two of them are Zone Leaders and one other elder, who I am going on a travel with today, is leaving at the end of this transfer which is 3 weeks away. But that’s alright, most people tell me I look pretty young but today some told me that we looked older that the last missionaries who came by which were “just a couple of young guys.”

My area “Cataraqui” = cat-uh-rock-way, is basically the suburban areas of the Town of Kingston, which is an old historic town which was basically established when all the loyalist left the states after the revolutionary war. They also had a big in flux of confederates after the Civil War. So basically whenever anybody loses a war in the states, they come to this area to get away from repercussions. It’s a smaller branch, but with a few pretty strong families, so we get fed a lot.

I’m working really hard but having a pretty good time while doing it. My companion plays bass guitar and listens to a lot of punk-metal-emo music. So we switch off playing guitar while the other brushes teeth and such-not. We had a pretty serious fly problem so we made a trap out of a bowl and a moldy piece of pineapple. We left it overnight and the next morning there were about on-hundred dead flies in it, not exactly sure why they died…it must have been really moldy. Eventually we found the source, it was a stinking bag of potatoes in a closet. When we picked it up to carry it outside the bottom ripped out and flies flew everywhere—we had to remake the moldy pineapple trap. So that’s pretty gross. My apartment is pretty much sketchy—no air conditioning, (it’s about 30 degrees Celsius up here, do the conversion, F = 9/5(C) + 32 degrees – I think.), smells kind of funny, bugs everywhere, no vacuum, tiny kitchen, and the freezer leeks water so everything we put in it gets encased in ice and we have to chisel it out. Eventually the ice actually entirely fills up the freezer and slowly pushes the door open an inch at a time.

The teaching is really starting to pick up. We are teaching a few really good people. We just started teaching this seventeen year old lad named Matt. He had started to come to youth activities with one of his friends because they played a lot of soccer and Frisbee. After meeting him at a dinner with a member family we asked him if he wanted to take the discussions. We taught him on a Friday and then he went to church on that Sunday. We set an appointment up with him on the coming Friday but he called us back later and said he couldn’t make it because he had decided to go to youth conference. We were pretty excited. All the other youth in the ward have kind been inspired from this. One guy who we take out on a lot of appointments with us, just came up to us one day and told us he was going to bring his girlfriend to church because we needed to baptize her. Beside a few other people who are taking a little longer, we are teaching a 30 year old woman who actually bore her testimony last Sunday and who we are going to try and commit to be baptized in one week. She has already been interviewed by the Mission President but then she backed out, but we think she is ready now.

Yesterday we had an amazing teaching appointment. We talked to a guy named Kevin just the night before and he told us to come by the next day. When we knocked on his door nobody answered so we knocked on a few other housed and we saw his wife walking by. So told us to check in the backyard and we were able to teach both of them. This guy was so prepared to be taught, before we even began teaching him he was talking about how he didn’t believe that his own baptism had meant anything because it had happened when he was an infant. So we taught him about the Restoration and the Spirit was so powerful that we committed both of them to a baptismal date on Sept. 2 and they agreed to work towards it. So while the first three weeks were a little dry we are starting to get a lot busier (however you spell that).

I had my first Zone Conference last week and I learned a ton, even about washing hands. Apparently, it doesn’t matter what temperature the water is or if it is antibacterial, that actually just kills the good germs, but the soap creates more friction so that you actually rub off the bacteria when then gets caught in the soap bubbles and is rinsed away by the water. Washing your hands well for 25 seconds keeps them clean for about 30 minutes, whereas that antibacterial gel keeps them clean for about a 3 minutes. This pretty much blew my mind, I haven’t been washing y hands fight for years. We also got to watch a few clips from Hoosiers. The assistants to the President used the clip of when the coach yells at them for not passing enough and not listening to his directions “What I say when it comes to this basketball team is the law, absolutely no question,” and the final game to talk about team unity. It was pretty great.

Anyways, I’m excited to here more from you guys all about what going on in Virginia. I’m pretty jealous that you all got to read Harry Potter. (by the way its kind of funny when people tell you that they are just way to busy to have read any of the Book of Mormon, but then tell you right afterwards that they read Harry Potter in 4 days. Ha?)

Anyway, you guys seem pretty busy with all kinds of trips and concerts, and high adventure, and birthdays, and breakfast cereals, and picnics, and oranatangs, finishing the 10^th grade (yay) and “l____?”, “three sir!”, “Three ???” and keep writing me letters because apparently I’m a 4 year old child and can’t really handle e-mail. Oh no… my hands are so small! I can hardly press all the buttons!

Love, Josh

(funny picture)

Dad

DAD,
It sounds like you guys have been pretty busy out there with going to wyoming and everybody getting married. Its strange to think about Jeff coming home from his mission, older missionaries keep telling me that it goes by really fast but it still feels like its going to be ages long. This is probably a good thing however because right now my companion is dreading the end of summer (in about 2 weeks) because it means that winter is coming and he'll be going home, so I'll try to enjoy the endless mission feeling while I still can.

I can't believe Bro. Lee is in Iraq that is pretty insane, I kind of thought it was farther away but I guess that means your own trip is coming up pretty soon.



I hope the summer isn't going by to fast. Its been pretty crazy out here now that i've been out a month. It kind of feels like its taken a really long time to get here but it also seems like it just flew by. There are 2 weeks left in my first transfer starting today so we'll see how that goes. You already know how it is but missionary work is kind of shocking at first, you really work ALL day and there are almost no breaks. Its strange to think that it is really relaxing to help someone move for a few hours or clean up there house because it gives you a little break. I have a few letters that i haven't sent yet. I just realized last week that i've been sending letters with U.S. postage... I didn't think about getting Canadian until I actually looked at one of my letters and realized there were little american flags in the corner. Anyway I'm doing really well up here, as the days start to go by faster it is becoming a little less tiresome and I am starting to enjoy it more. Anyway I hope your doing well.
Love josh.

-----Original Message-----
From: "Eric Olson"
To: "Joshua Olson"
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 06:46:59 -0500
Subject: Missionary Dude

Josh,



I hope this letter finds you well. Last weekend we had a quick trip to
Wyo for the family business meetings. We stopped in Provo to pick up Lindsey. We left Becca and Zach at home. It was nice to see everyone. I had a template for the new LM Olson website and reviewed it with Gregg and Gary on Friday and then presented it on Saturday at the Board of Directors meetings. I still need more content from Gregg and Gary but at least we have settled on the look and feel of the web site.



Jeff came home from his mission in Atlanta GA. He looked good. We had to get back to SLC for our flight home so we didn't hear him report on Sunday but Grandma and Grandpa said it was a great report. He is going back to BYU this fall.



Lindsey is doing well. She is finishing up her summer term this week and then she will be moving to another apartment that she has yet to find.



Brother Chris Lee is in IRAQ now. Lia called for me to come over last night to fix a plumbing problem. Zach and I went over and fixed it and then Kyle came over to stay overnight. Zach and Kyle are going biking today. LIa says Ryan is doing well. He has been there eight months now and she thinks this next transfer will make him a trainer.



Brother Faust past away over last Friday. I am sure that you heard
about that. He was a great man and great leader in the church. It will be
interesting to see who gets called into the presidency, but that probably won't be announced until October conference.



Nate was married last weekend. He and Beth are back here this week and they have their reception on Saturday.



Your cousin Brody is coming to live in Virginia. He is going to a Baptist school in Virginia Beach to become a minister in the Baptist church. He will be there for 4 years so we will be able to see him more often. He will be driving through tomorrow night and staying with us for the evening.



Well, I better get off to work this morning.



Love always,



Dad

Fossils!

Ahhhh! this email is terrible. Last week I wrote a pretty long e-mail and then write before i sent it i hit the forward button on the mouse and it got erased (now i know how becca feels) and just now I wrote another long e-mail and then tried to add an address and it got erased! So my communication up to this point has been pretty sketchy but from now on I'm will be sure to write a letter every week. The prep days up to this point have just been hectic. We usually go to the hospital so that the doctor can look at my companions spleens and the between that, laundry, groceries and e-mail 10 o'clock to six o'clock runs out pretty quickly, especially with a dinner or teaching apointment set up during prep day like today we are teaching someone at 4:30. But i need to catch you up on what i've been doing for three weeks. I'll be sure to write a letter every week now that i'm more used to the schedule.

I'm doing great I''ve finally gotten adjusted to waking up at 5:45 every morning(or as adjusted as you can be) we do relaxation breathing excersises at night to make sure we get good sleep (trust me it works). Just take 6 super deep breaths and breathe out slowly through your nose while thinking about something positive, you'll sleep like a baby, or a kitten, i sleep more like a kitten.
(a box of kittens!)

The teaching is going really well our area kind of went though a dry spell the first 2 weeks or so all the investigators we had kind of fell off but the ones we found since being here are just shaping up so we are doing pretty well. Last week we had 6 lessons with a member present and so far this week (2 days) we have already had 7 and the weekly mission standard is 14.

It sounds like you guys are having great time back in old virginia.
That salsa sounds really good and mom Its pretty hilarious that you got jury duty, classic. Oh yah i've only got three minutes left so i'll send this before it gets trashed agains so i'll write more about this later (dad you'll appreciate this) but in our first zone we watched parts of Hoosiers to learn more about unity, it was awesome.

and please forward this again to lindsey but i believe her address is smurffette at byu.edu but it didn't work last time so hmmm... thats the one you guys keep telling me about. lakljfljf BYE

-----Original Message-----
From: Leslie
To: Olson.J.L.CANTORE@myldsmail.net
Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:06:15 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: What's up

Josh,

We got a letter from your Mission President with a picture enclosed today. It said that you had arrived and were doing well. The picture was of you, your companion (I guess), and the mission president and his wife (I assume). You look great and Becca noticed right off that you were wearing her and Natalie's tie.

Well, you've been in Canada for three weeks now and all we have gotten are a couple of short emails. You keep saying you are writing but we havn't received any letters. Zach did receive his birthday present. It was great of you to think of him.

We celebrated his birthday yesterday, Sunday the 5th and had Mike and LInda come over for dinner. He also opened his presents then. Tonight his actual birthday , Zach, Dad and I are going out to dinner. Becca has a dance practice tonight. Guess what, Becca finally finished her Sophomore year today. She sent off her last English Portfolio. Well she actually has to take the final but that will take a couple of weeks to get here and she is not worried about it. Also on Wednesday we have an appointment at OP to register Zach for High School. Wooo.

I wrote you last week so this week I am emailing you. I don't know if you would rather get emails or letters, let me know.

We are heading out to Wyoming on Thursday for our August meetings. This weekend is always so tiring. We are flying into SLC and driving to Provo to pick up Lindsey, then we are driving to Wyoming. It is going to be a long day. Jeff Beaty just got back from his mission and will be in Rawlins this weekend. If fact he is giving his homecoming talk on Sunday. Unfortunately we will not be able to stay to hear it, as we need to leave early to catch our flight home from SLC.

I have jury duty this month, every Monday. Fortunately I didn't have to go today. I call every Friday evening to see if I have to report on Monday. I won't know until Friday if I have to report next Monday. We'll see.

We went and got peaches on Thursday. We didn't get to pick them we had to buy them already picked. But it was OK. While I was there I was able to buy a half a bushel of fresh tomatoes. Yea! So Zach and I made salsa again this year. We made 24 pints. We made it alot more spicy this time. We put in a Habanara pepper and Jalapeno peppers along with a red hot pepper. It tastes great. It sure is fun to make it with Zach. I'm glad he likes to help me. With the peaches of course I have been eating them everyday. But I also made some more frozen peach pies. So it's been a pretty busy week.

I hope the work is going well with you. I hope your health is good. That you are eating well. I do worry about what you guys eat. I hope to hear from you soon with a very long letter about how everything is going with you and the work.

I love you and pray for you constantly.

Love, Mom