Final Letter From the Mission Field

Hey everybody my time has come sadly. I do not wish to go nor am I truly happy bout it. But do not email this email anymore. As I will be returning home this week. I love you all and look forward to seeing you! This week was amazing and this transfer was a great transfer to finish off the mission. I have learned so much as a missionary and come to love and want to live the gospel so much more in my life. I know the joy and happiness that lasts only comes from the gospel and knowledge of being with our families forever. It amazes me this week as I look back and see what I have learned. My faith in Christ has strengthened so much and I know that He rose on the third day. Christ lives and God does too. They love us and know us personally. What life throws at us we can use principles of reading and praying daily to cope and deal with challenges. The time of this life is to prepare to meet God. Through our faith we can be able to overcome any challenges we face. I love families so much. I am so excited for the day when I can have my own family. I am so excited to one day enter the Temple and be sealed for time and all eternity. That is my greatest wish to be with my loved ones forever which is only possible through the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I have felt the love that comes. I realized this week that the love I have for these people is so real. I truly do love the people in the Canada Toronto mission. I have spent the last 24 months serving them, ministering to them, and teaching them to help them in anyway I can. I will never forget these experiences nor forsake them. I could not imagine what my life would be like if I did not serve my God for two years. I have grown so much and been able to come to understand more of life. Coming back to reality will be scary. It will be hard not always having the missionary Spirit with me. Being able to go contacting or tracting haha. To go to amazing members homes to share a delight meal with them. But there will be much to be enjoyed eventually and within time. I will see you all within the next week. I love you and wish you all the best!

Transfer 17 Week 5

Well everybody for starters I know how much all of you loved emailing me and sending me letters. I thank you all for the love and appreciation and support you have shown me over these two years. I would ask that you do not send any snail mail to the mission office or to my apartment. Thank you. So this will be the 2nd last report I send home. This transfer has been wonderful and a blessing from God. I have grown so much and been able to just work so hard and be able to see miracles come to pass. Last Sunday by complete miracle from God, Shemar, Monica, and Mallory all came to church out in Peterborough. It was a great meeting and we got to bond over a nice picnic at the Peterborough zoo. It was fun to  be able to slide down a long slide there haha. Oh what it is like to be kids again. We had spent a few days taking sometime to call a lot of the members out in Peterborough and invited a ton of the YSA. Sadly we only had one show up from the area and she was aawesome! She even agreed to come out to YSA activities more! It was a great time bonding with the members and getting to know them so we can be able to help them in their own testimonies and help them to share the gospel. I have loved being able to focus more on the whole work of Salvation. A lot missionaries will get caught up with baptism but I know that that is not exactly our purpose. Our purpose is to help people to progress towards the next saving ordinance so they can continue to live and apply the gospel of Jesus Christ. That gospel being Faith in Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. It has been so much fun working with members whom are trying to grow in their faith and help them to see how the gospel can really apply to them and help them overcome the challenges they face! Oh how grateful I am for the people I have met and how I have seen the Spirit and the gospel help them. Monday and Tuesday we started our week with a great start and had 4 friend present lessons! We got to teach Monica and Mallory! So Monica had been praying about a date and she wanted to tell us her experience. She had wanted to do the 20th of September! We were so happy! One neat miracle was that we had planned on last Thursday to help her work towards September 20. The Spirit is definitely inspired haha. So cool how the Spirit helped all three of us understand when she would be ready by. I am so sad that I will not get to see her and Mallory's baptism but I hope and pray that by some odd chance maybe I will be able to come back for it haha. It is so crazy how you just wanna help these people and how you come to love them. I have never loved anybody as the people that we are working with and have in the YSA ward. Donovon one of our other invs has been doing well. We seem to be finding a lot of people in very similar situations. He was supposed to be baptized but sadly did not make it. So we will continue to work with him but I find it interesting how all of the most solid people we are working with are member referrals! I know that that is the best way to do missionary work! That is how we keep people in the gospel when we help our friends receive it. A lot has happened and even yesterday we had 4 people at church. It has been a wonderful experience. I love you all talk to you later sorry bye! 

Cutest puppy at our invs place!

new tradition! When a missionary passes away we do a death photo. Elder Smith whom I came out with is going home!

Peterborough District

Oshawa YSA at a picnic in Peterborough. Such a sight for sore eyes. I love these people!

Transfer 17 Week 3

Well this week was pretty good. We saw many blessings and miracles. We were soooo busy this week we almost did not have time to weekly plan! We had about 23 lessons along along with 3 missionary meetings all back to back haha. Our preparation day was moved last week due to those funny holidays haha. Oh Canada and those random ones. On our prep day we got our car taken to do oil and emailed at the library and finished off our day with some sports. We do not get to see missionaries as often out here as back in Toronto which is a bit sad but that is okay. I will survive. We ended our preparation day early and went to have dinner with a wonderful family in the ward. I will admit now that we are not in Toronto anymore the houses get a little less expensive and so some of the members live in really beautiful houses.The Maglioli family was really kind and made a delicious super! It was like tacos but in a pan haha. For our message we shared with the family we talked and discussed the merit behind following up and talking about our missionary experiences. It was interesting thought to Elder Mangakahia and I as members get invited so oft to invite their friends to learn yet they usually move onto the next and I know speaking from mine own experience forgetting to follow up to see if the person had any questions or neat experiences with what I invited them to do. I was actually able to message one of my good friends from back home and he had not heard from me in awhile. I had given him a copy of the Book of Mormon and he had actually picked it up and was  reading it awhile ago. So it goes to show you never know what experiences you may be missing out on by not following up.

Well that was last week this is this week! We sadly were not as busy as last week well did not teach as many lessons as we hoped we taught about 20 lessons. Last sunday we had a really sweet experience. We have been being diligently obedient and working with members and doing all parts of the work of salvation. We had a member come up to us and be like Elders I got someone for you to teach just out of no where! Oh the blessings from heaven haha. That evening we also had another lesson with a new convert named Daniel. We quickly mobilized our members and we were able to teach both of those lessons as Mallory the referral girl wanted us to teach her. It was awesome be in two places at once haha. We also went on splits a couple more times and got a lot done this week. We had one of our friends that we found at the beginning of the month actually come to church! I was so happy, his name is Diego! He is from Mexico. He really enjoyed church but sadly will be going to Montreal soon. We also had some great experiences this week. This last week we got to also teach Donovan. He is a great guy from Jamaica. He is one of the friends of Daniel and Sam. It was a huge relief to be able to contact him as we had not seen him for awhile. He is planning and accept a date for the 30th of August. I pray that he will be able to make it. On Saturday night we had a member help us out and brought Diego down to the church and even one of his friends too! So we were able to do a chapel tour and find another new last week! I love how God will always make it possible to achieve the goals we have set. Overall good week :). I love you all! I know that we all face struggles in this life. I know that we may find happiness in being complacent or within worldly things. I know and stand as a witness that the world offers loneliness and only Christ offers peace. I have felt that in my life. I would invite any of you in to look at the blessings that come from following the commandments and than try them out. I promise you that you will find great peace as you seek to keep them. In church we learned about forgiveness and how we need to forgive people and how the Atonement can help us. I know the Atonement can cover anything we face. 

I hope you all have a great week!

All the zone leaders in the CTM!

My companion and I looking fresh!

We can all dance! Pickering district

This is one of our invs Diego and his sister fabiola. With our member friend Andrew.

Transfer 17 Week 1: New Area Oshawa

 

Well here it goes!

Sadly I found out that my passport will not be needed to travel home. So that foiled my plan to use that as means to stay in the mission longer haha. Oh well. I will continue to work hard till whenever. I am so grateful this week for the new testimony I have of Faith. Faith is truly how everything happens. We have worked hard and been obedient all week. We had yet to find two new invs and were struggling to find people whom we could sit down and formally teach. We  came to Sunday night and had planned to find 2 new that day. We had finished church and we got a text back from one of our friends Diego whom is from Mexico! He said we could come over so we grabbed Johnny who just got home from a mission in Chile. He knew Matt Pitcher actually! he came with us to that lesson and we were able to have a great spiritual lesson in which Diego expressed his concerns with us and was very open and willing still to pray about all we had shared. Than we went into a dinner appt with the Alpentista family! Their son Joshua served in the Calgary Canada Mission! I had actually met him back when he was helping clean up in High River! it was so cool to met him. Than after getting out of the appt in time we went quickly to go and find some former sheets and make calls to people and go stop by. We only had 3 hours left to find somebody new. Than as we were calling and Elder Mangakahia was calling this wonderful girl called us named Azan. She is awesome! She said that we needed to come over now and talk with her so we drove back picked up Josh and had the most spiritual lesson and experience of my life! Like wow. I will leave that experience at that. But it truly was a tender mercy from the Lord that we were able to find 2 new this last week. I know that God will help us out when we do our part and keep to the Faith. It was a very rewarding and great feeling driving home that evening. So ever since last Tuesday my life as a missionary has gotten crazy!!! I get to drive a brand new Equinox 2015. Oh man does it drive nicely. I love being behind the wheel again. It is a weird feeling for not have driven for the last year or so haha. We got to the area and had Sports night. It was good as we got to meet a few of the YSA branch. Elder Mangakahia served here bout a year ago in the family ward so he knows a TON of people haha. I feel kinda helpless in that area. I love a lot of the member families here already! They are sooo nice! We get the chance to go and eat with them and their YSA son or daughter. It is so much fun getting to know people. Wednesday was our first full day and we got right to work. We are working with a wonderful brother named Kenon. He actually came to church this last Sunday! He even bore his testimony! I was like oMGOSH he is so solid! Such a cool thing. He really enjoyed church and it was kind of the most smallest group of members I have seen. But I love the Spirit that was there even though there was only 15 people the Spirit was strong and they all have such a close relationship with one another. It was really neat to see how they are dependent upon one another. We have quite a few invs but him, Azan, and Diego are the notable ones. We are working with a feel of the RMs and RCs. One of them is named Ross. He is a solid brother! He has a sweet beard and nice flow haha. He is quiet but has great questions. He has been struggling with coming to church but has now been coming back and has such a wonderful testimony of Christ. I love being able to work with people my own age and being able to relate really really well with them. I find the work has gotten not necessarily easier but more enjoyable. Another cool returning member we met is Andrew! he has a brother out west. We went and taught him in the morning and got to know him. He has been just so busy with moving and life so he had let church fallen by the side but in the evening he texted us and said Thanks for coming over guys I appreciated it and had just finished saying a prayer! AHHHHH so awesome! Man I love the work of the lord! SOOOO much! Well this is it from OSHAWA till next week haha. Hope all is weelll! Email me if you have questions haha.

Love,

Elder Sopal!

Transfer 16 Week 5

Hey everrybody!

Well I have gotten to the point where I have lost all joy or having fun while emailing haha. I actually rue it but that's okay because I love you all I will continue to write! This week was pretty good. So you all remember Jean the Baptiste! Well he came to church this past sunday along with a great guy named Bro. Calendar. Elder. T has been loving talking with Jean as they both speak fluent french and Jean's English is decent but he cannot express himself as much. Yesterday morning we had the opportunity to go and pick him up for church. It was really fun travelling to church with him. While E. T chatted with him I went to work on the bus contacting. On our second bus I got to talk with a guy from Peru. He tried bashing with me in Spanish and kept telling me that the bible was all we needed and how John wrote about that. I love that verse, people must note a few very fine details. In English it is a easy concern to deal with haha. It specifically refers to the Book of Revelation and along with that this exact reference is found in several other places.  However my skills in Spanish are not good enough to explain that so I just simple testified of what I did know and what it meant to me. It was a really neat experience. I saw the Spirit calm the man down and he listened to me struggle to keep on testifying. I am so grateful for the Spirit which helped me to accomplish that. Monday we hung out at Ossington and played sports. Than on Tuesday I got to go on exchanges with E. Wehi, my grandson and also E. Oviatt. We had a great exchange as we worked hard and played hard. We taught quite a few people and had some great moments. I got to visit with one of the invs from last time I had met, Ed. He loves me for some reason haha. At church he follows me around like a puppy dog. He is an older man and quite interesting. We spent most of our Priesthood class outside talking with him trying to resolve his concerns. It was nice as we talked simply and boldly the Spirit was ever presented and testified of the truth of what we were saying. I love being able to feel the Spirit. On Wednesday we had a celebration for Sis. Gayle whom is turning 90 years old! We had cake and everything. It was great.  Wednesday we had an answer to a prayer! We have been trying to visit this LA member but could never catch him home. He is from Syria and a doctor. We went and knocked and thought he was not home but we knocked on a window and he ended up answering! He is the nicest guy you would ever met! He welcomed us in and gave us ice cream. He talked about his conversion and why he has not been at church. He told us how much he missed going to church. I think that would be so hard. To be forced not to go to church so that you could be able to practice and do what you did back in your home country. His courses go till October and so he will not be back till then. It is a part member family too and so man it just makes me wish that we could help them to have a miracle. I am excited to work with this family and get to know them more. This week we had a lesson with Chan and her family. It was great to visit with them and chat with them. She is now calling us her sons haha. She is so cute. It is so amazing the relationship you develop with people out here in such a short time. 

 

This week was just another good week. No really notable things but just little miracles here and there. I love seeing how God is one of miracles. We are so blessed to be missionaries at this time. Transfers is next week and well I feel like it will be interesting the last phone call! haha. Hopefully I get to stay! I have come to love a lot of the members here. They are so awesome and I just have come to love them dearly. I hope you all have a great week. Be grateful for the people around you and remember to treasure the moments you get to spend with them. There is  new Mormon message! Check it out its called building families! Love the message! I love you all my friends and family and look forward to all the more memories we will create together! Love you all! 

 

Sis. June Tomkin - the "missionary grandma"  She looked after the Elders and fed them every week. 

 

Transfer 16 Week 3

it is amazing how young I look as a missionary compared to how old I am in the mission :P or wait when was this taken haha. Cute pic of me

hey Errbody!

Well another week has come and gone! So cool story to start off we meet this really nice and awesome girl whom took us out for Dinner at Mongolis grill. She is the one whom wants to interview us! She is really sweet and really kind. I really do appreciate people whom are so kind and generous towards us. It goes to show that there are still good people left in this world. I love Charity. If everybody in this world was more charitable to one another a lot of the issues we see around us today would become easier to deal with. It always come back to love. I think the young people in the early 1980s had it all right. Its all bout the love! 

 

esta familia es impresionante! The Paz family.

last week some of the Highlights were seeing one of the Families in the ward finally have one of their son's get baptized. The Spirit was so strong at the baptism and so special. It is so amazing to think that now another family can be sealed together and be able to receive the blessings of the Temple. If you ever want to help someone feel the Spirit invite them to come to a baptism. I promise you they will be able to feel the power that comes from that ordinances. I got to go on exchanges with E. Lasley this last week. We had a pretty good exchange and taught a few people. We found this one super nice girl from India. She just recently moved her and has been looking for a church to attend. Sadly she did not come to church but it was cool to see how a prayer to find someone new worked. You know I had an interesting thought. It is true that with Faith anything is possible and even to move mountains. I think that Christ was not necessarily referring to actual ones but the mountains within our lives whether they be challenges or trials we face. It is so true everything comes from Faith. We cannot progress or go anywhere if we are bereft  ourselves of faith. Wednesday was good. We have been working with this older guy named, Jack. He is this funny little old man. He has a lot of issues but we love him still and will continue to do all we can to help him. He has been trying to stop smoking and has failed all the times before. Now he has gone down to but a few a day and it is so exciting to see him progress. He is a lil bit crazy but hopefully all works out with him. We did not even have to much time for weekly planning haha cause we have been teaching a lot of people this week. it has been nice to be busy. We had a lot of appts bomb but it has been nice to have people to work with. We had skills and interviews this week. I was so excited for it. I love having interviews with the President Clayton and his wife. They are such an amazing couple and truly inspired. I know that he is truly her on the Lord's errand and there is going to be so amazing things start to happen in this mission. I am saddened that I may not be here to see a lot of it come to pass but I am so glad that I have gotten to contribute to that vision and further the work here in this part of the Vineyard. I do not have to much to write this week. I just really do appreciate oppertunities to help people out and give service. We have been really able to bond with one of our families we are working with and it has really grown their trust of us. We had a lesson with them last night and the Spirit was so strong. I hope and pray they will be able to find the gospel and find out what God really wants for them. 

Love, 

E. Sopal

good ol albions. Still my fav restaurant nothing else will ever beat it!

Transfer 16 Week 2

hey all!

This week was really good. We might have a really interesting opportunity we may get to do a interview with a new tv show that is coming out! Showcasing all that Toronto has to offer and about the different people in Toronto! It will be cool we are jusst waiting on permission from the President. That evening we had Family Home Evening. It was really nice to teach at it and we taught about the Plan of Salvation. I LOVE the plan of Salvation. We met a lot of people who have had trials in their lives this week along with people passing away. It has made me so grateful for the knowledge I have that I can be with my family forever through the sealing power of the Priesthood within the Temple. Than on Tuesday we had Zone Conference. I woke up that morning with dread in my heart haha I did not want to get up because I that means that I would be one step closer to going home! I hate it and the thought of going home. Honestly I love Toronto and I love the mission. Elder T had to drag me outta the house haha. Zone conference was really such a spiritual experience for myself. I really felt the Spirit bring to y memory all the times and experiences I have had and the peoples lives I have seen change. I have loved serving the Lord these two years. I was sad when I had to give it yet I was still a ways from September haha. It was another last there will not be another zone conference to attend sadly. We had a delicious ham and scalloped patato meal. We sang our thank-you, Called to serve. It is so amazing the Spirit that descends upon a room full of missionaries as they sing called to serve! It is truly special. We did not end up getting back into our area for a really long time but that was okay :). We had a fun time contacting with the YSA sisters back down to ESL. We ended up teaching both classes again and man I still love ESL haha. Wednesday nothing really crazy happened but we got to see Chen again and visit with her and Sis and Bro. Gayle. Sister Gayle testified to her of the importance of relying on the Savior and it was a great lesson. She also once were driving hom efrom the appt said that next week she wants to come with us and ask Chen why she will not just get baptized already haha. I love her boldness it is so cute. thrusday it started to pour! From Thrusday till Sunday it poured. I have now gone through 5 umbrellas haha. Oh the joys of walking and trying to do missionary work in storms haha. I love it. Thrusday we had a great FHE with the Bunsee family. They are so sweet. We reviewed the Gospel of Jesus Christ and have determined we need to learn better how to teach children with very very short attention spans. Elder T and I have committed ourselves to get good at it! Maybe that will help for the future. Friday was good as we had our weekly dinner at Junes place. It was pretty good. I could not complain. She made us breakfast for dinner. Than after we taught her along with Demitri one of our friends we are working with. He seemed very dis-interested but today we found out June talked with him and said that we could lay off for awhile but he said that he wanted to keep learning and progressing! I am so happy! I am over joyed haha. We found quite a few people this week just from talking with everyone again. The member referrals are not yet coming but we will continue to do what we can and find on our own till we get the help of the Members. Now members invite those individuals to come with you to activites or church or FHE. Just anything! It is our job as members to invite :) I promise you blessings. We had a cool experience with faith and I really came to see that God in in our work. We had gone to a building and it was pouring outside. EI had tried the door but no luck it was locked. With a pause Elder T went to the door and pulled it open. It was amazing. We went in and found some cool people and testified a lot of the Plan of Salvation. It is so neat to see how God places us and will help us get to where we need to be. I love this gospel and I love how God is always watching out for us. I would encourage you all to look for how God is working in your life! I love you all :) bye! Peace and blessings