Yesterday was my first zone conference. Since our district is so far away from everybody, we drove to the zone leaders apartment the night before. They have a really nice apartment! With a dishwasher and a bench press. Man, I would love to have a dishwasher in our apartment. In the morning we made the long drive to the stake center and we met our new mission president and his wife, President and Sister Brower. They are incredible. They remind me of Brother and Sister Lott, actually. President Brower was a ward bishop over Elder Nelson, Uchtdorf, Hales, and probably a couple other elders that I forgot. He served in the Canada Toronto Mission while I was serving in the pre-existence, haha. His mission president was M. Russell Ballard. Which is cool, because he married Elder Ballard's daughter. President Brower told us that all mambers ask you the same two things when they meet you. And this is like 99% of the time: 1) Where are you from? 2) How long have you been out? Elder Uchtdorf said that the answer to the 2nd question should always be, "I'm about halfway through." Because members won't trust someone at the beginning or end of his mission, and from the eternal perspective, your mission is so short that it doesn't matter. What's half of one trillionth of a nanosecond?
President Brower told us that there are going to be a lot of changes to the missionary schedule, like when we have zone conference and whatnot, and this all comes straight from the Prophet. There are going to be some sort of monthly specialization meetings for leaders or something. I'm not too worried about it because I don't know how things used to be so it's not much of a change. But zone conference is going to be once every 3 months now.
I got a lot of letters yesterday and I loved them all. It's great to hear from family and friends.
This week we did service for some German family that owns a farm. We picked strawberries and picked like half a field's worth of strawberries. It's too bad olive trees don't grow in Canada, I could always use a better understanding of Jacob: 5. We have a man named Ross, he's about 50, scheduled to be baptized August 7, but it's going to take a lot of work to get him there. Not that he's a bad person at all, he just seems to have a sort of casual idea of how church is supposed to be. So we need to hammer in our invitations better. We had a member present with Elizabeth, but it was cut short because she had to take her pet to the vet. We committed Ross and Elizabeth to come to church. But they didn't come...And Elizabeth lives like 30 feet away from the chapel! Anyway, I'm going to work on making better invitations this week.
Honestly working at the farm last wednesday seems like a month ago. I probably won't be able to write everything important that happened this week because it doesn't feel like most of it happened this week at all.
Fast Sunday was brutal. It was 90 degrees outside and we couldn't drink water. It didn't help that my companion and I spent our time between doors talking about sodas, slushies, and ice cream. And even worse, we tracted a lakeside neighborhood. We met a family there that lived in Florida and came up to their lakeside house in Canada for two weeks out of the year, which seems like a waste to me. There's a way better lake a state above them.
I've decided that my goal for this transfer and my mission in general. Is to truly love the people of Ontario. That's a pretty big goal, but I know that it's central to my success as a missionary and I want to work every single day towards that.
Love
Elder Wade Wade
