Wednesday 18 February 2015

Transfer 13 Week 1: New Area

Location of York (red), as compared with the rest of Toronto.

Hey everybody!

Well this week was a little bit more harder than most. I will be honest. I have been stressing and been just very tense I guess you could say. The change of transfer really shook me up. I am now serving in the Toronto North area. I am in the Toronto Ward! The building is awesome! It is a older church building and looks super sweet I will send a picture next week! We are right next to a HUGE catholic church that they put up after our church was built. My opinion is that they are trying to steal our members haha. So this area is actually around where my trainer Elder Koceja served. He told me many stories about this place and one of them was confirmed the first week we got here! There is a place called Albion's! He lovessss missionaries and we love him. All the missionaries who have ever served here go and eat at his place haha. We all have him on our speed dials. If you ever come to Toronto you gotta go visit there! So Elder Bowman is my new companion! He is from Arizona. He has been out just over a year now and came out with my first son Elder Lowry. Funny side note actually, Elder Lowry my first son and my second son, Elder Nugent are now serving together. They are killing it together and already have had a baptism! I love em!!! They both work so hard. Elder Bowman was involved in track and x country back at home and has a lot of athletic experience. He is a well seasoned missionary and will be a pleasure to serve with for the next while( Hopefully more than one transfer). He is a funny guy who tries hard and works hard too. We have stayed up a few nights tossing back and forth stories and getting to really know one another. 

Well now for the area. So we white washed into a little bit of a awesome part of Toronto. We are literally in the Downtown core and have the CN tower, Eaton centre, and a lot of other places here. We are mostly using buses, street cars, and subways to get around now! It is sooo much fun to contact on the Subway as you really get to know your timing and how long you have got. I love the sure number of people in this area too! There is def never a shortage of people to talk with! My goal is continuing to try to talk with 50 to 100 people each day even though it has been hard to do in the past week. I do miss my old area but this will be a new adventure for me. Now the work in our area is next to none. So one of the missionaries stayed in the ward and took all their invs and solid people with them, along with the food too haha. So we are starting from ground zero with invs and finding solid potentials. We have done a lot of finding this past week! Good thing I like finding haha. So we got into the area on Tuesday and was the earliest time I have ever gotten into our area. Than we went to Albion's our first day haha. We skipped a lot of meals this week as we had little to no food. Wednesday was our District Meeting and my district is all Spanish missionaries! It has been fun practicing my Spanish with them and getting more familiar with Spanish work! We had some technical difficulties at our meeting as the tv would not work and the Zone leader kind of rebuked me for it. I felt pretty bad things were not working. Than that evening and every week we have FHE! YAY I have missed that soooo much! So we got to teach the lesson! We planned to talk about the Prodigal Son and how we can always return to God and feel his love in our life. One of the non-members there was struggling with his faith in God and so it was a Spirit inspired lesson! What a coincidence! I think not haha. Revelation for the win! We had our Weekly Planning session and it was probs the most quickest one I have ever done! We spent a lot of time riding Subways and buses and it has been great. The temperature has beeennnn FREEZING! It has been -35 and even -40 some days here. On Sunday Elder Bowman and I went out and blitzed for ESL and we also decided to help out the Sister's as they have been so busy so we blitzed for them too. We put up 71 flyers this past week and we only needed to do 25 haha. It was fun! We froze our hands to the point we could both not feel them and could not even move our fingers lol. All in a day of a missionary in Canada during the winter haha. The ward is a very diverse ward and is smaller than most I have been in. Supposedly lots of people move in and out of it. It will be great getting to know the members! 

Oh the other sweet thing is that we live with 2 other companion ships in the same apartment! It is a party from 9:30 till 10:20 we also go up and chat and what not. I love being around and close to so many missionaries. 

Well I love you all and hope you have a great week! Happy Valentines Day! and Family day! 




Transfer 12 Week 6: Baptism & Ballin'



Oh ya looking fresh in white! haha

the awesome bridge we found! 

We found a good place to see Toronto!

Our basketball clan! We balling every Friday!

Love these guys !

Well y'all,
The Weston west area is getting closed down! So both Elder Hatch and I are being separated and I am going to Toronto North, unsure of the area and everything. Heard it is a good area though. It is apart of the downtown core and should be fun! Demetri and Nat were both super sad that we were taking off and not coming back till later. I will miss that apartment and all the people in this area. There was honestly SOOOO much potential  that for now will remain untouched till they have missionaries there again. In our mission they are falling down to about a 3rd less than what we have now. So they are shutting down a few areas. 

Well this week we had Cayden's baptism! It was sooo awesome! He was so prepared and ready. We had actually a lot of people come to the baptism! We also had Densel's baptism too! Cayden was beaming all afternoon at church and nervous but ready. He had some questions about mission after his baptism and was like when can I get to go out there and serve haha. I love it! he is so excited to go to the Temple! I hope that he enjoys that experience and continues to have this fire for missionary work and the Gospel. Densel I had met awhile ago and was not our invs but might of been haha. He is a nice older brother from Trinidad. He made soooooooo many changes in his life and it was a special experience interviewing him. By witnessing him and speaking with him I have seen the Atonement at its finest again. It is so amazing how no matter what we do in this life that the Atonement will fix everything. I know it will. I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior. I am sorry for any of the past people I have harmed, lied to, and did anything that was negative. I wish to make this right and will. I love you all and think you are all amazing. I pray everyday for you all. Know that. Please know that I do mean it when I say I love all of you. You are some of my dearest friends and family. I pray that you will be able to partake of the Atonement as I have had in my life and to see the change it will make in yours. 

Have an awesome week! 
member gave us some good cake! so rich!

from the apartments, a good ol'selfie.

My interview with Gigi for her baptism with the Sisters!




February 2

yep that's right! elder sopal is now baking brownies! so good!

this is our subway adventure!

this is the craziest thing I have seen in awhile! the building just started billowing smoke!

This is my get up for the cold haha! looking like a bandit

still writing my songs!