Guys, I'M IN CANADA!!!!!!! all my preparation is actually paying off!!! I'll start by just telling you about... well, like everything haha.
We woke up Tuesday morning at 5:00 in the morning so we could finalize putting a few things away, getting dressed, and heading out. we had to be at he MTC travel office at 6:15, and we left to the airport at like 6:45, a little behind schedule. on the way, i met a few other people going to Calgary with me and my comp. One of them is from Toronto, but who cares about him, he's too prideful for me haha. but we went to a train station first and hopped on a train. after like a 30 minute to an hour long train ride (i didn't really keep track of time), we go off, walked over to another area, and waited for another train. after that one, we were at the airport. we just went straight to our terminal, and waited around for a bit. a couple people went and got breakfast, and me and a few others stayed behind to watch the luggage. after they got back, my comp was still on the phone, so i tried to call too. the calling card i came here with didn't work for some reason, and kept saying it didn't support the numbers i was trying to call. but thankfully, while i was trying to figure something out, some totally random lady was walking by and OFFERED me to use her phone!!! i was like ummmm i don't know, i may take a while. thankfully she was an employee, and she just said that once i'm done, i can just take it around the corner and knock on her office door and give it back!! well once i was done calling, i went and got some McDonald's (amazing food after the mtc haha), ate, and boarded the plane. when we landed, we went to customs, which apparently is super lengthy and whatever for Canada. all we did was give someone our passports, go to immigration, give them our passports again, wait a bit, come back, GET our passports, and we're good!! haha then we went and met the mission president and his wife, who are both SUPER AWESOME!! take some pictures with him, and head to the mission home. once we got there, we had some orientation stuff, a short one on one with the mission pres., dinner (which also rocked), and went to sleep. the next day (Wednesday), we just had breakfast, had a little more orientation stuff, and basically waited around until 1:30), when all the trainers come and we find out where and with who we're going!!! we had a short slideshow presentation of the mission, us new guys bore our testimonies (i cried of course, as y'all may be able to guess), and then it was time. we each got a little slip with a paper saying who we have and where we go. i am in the Medicine Hat zone, Brooks ward/area, and my trainer is Elder Keck!!!!! I'M SO STOKED!!! Last night, the first night IN THE FIELD, we went to an investigators home and had dinner. the were all Mexican and only the kids spoke a little bit of English. i was a little nervous at first, but discovered that i actually understand like 75% of what pretty much EVERYONE IS SAYING!!!! even like the crazy fast native speakers i can sort of understand!!! but now, today, i'm finally in my zone and area and ward for the next 12 weeks!!! my trainer is super cool and i really don't think i'll have a single problem with him. he's a super cool guy and really nice. unfortunately though, he dies in 3 transfers :( but that's ok, i'll have some kids some day i can pass his legend onto :) oh, and everything like going home, training, and whatever else like that, is like dying, having kids, being a grandpa, being an uncle, etc. haha but it's super cool, and we had dinner tonight with a member at some buffet. it was pretty good. i keep hearing, also, from pretty much all the other missionaries I've talked to, that brooks (my area i'm in) is super awesome, and has a lot of work. mostly English unfortunately, but a lot of work. I've also heard that this mission is a lot like something like Europe, where there isn't a high baptizing rate, but i know for a FACT that that won't get me discouraged, and if the church is true, then one way or another, these people will have their chance to hear it, and make their decision to accept or deny Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father. So it's not me they're rejecting, it's Him. I Love you all, and hope you're having a blast back in Texas, because i think i'm gonna have a blast up here :)
Sincerely,
Elder Levi Windham
P.S. you have to send mail to the mission home.... i'll send it to y'all next week. i'm out of time for today. and i'll also send pictures too :) love you guys
okey dokey everyone, time for the update!!!
so yeah, again, not much has gone on this week.... like literally, hardly anything... my comp is super close to dying (going home) and only has this transfer and 2 more, so it's kinda a bummer because his trunkiness/old missionary laziness is effecting me too. not necessarily in the sense that I'm being the same way, but i kinda have to since he's the one teaching me like "how to be a missionary and do missionary things", but we don't do much. we came here with two pre-existing investigators, one Spanish and one English, and we don't know or have like ANYONE else. in the mornings, he'll sleep until like 7 or 7:30, then he'll get up and read the scriptures in Spanish and take a shower and won't get out of the shower for like flippin 20 minutes sometimes!! but it's kinda nice because i can get a lot of scripture reading in. as of last week when i got here, i have read from the beginning of second Nephi, all the way to chapter 18 of Alma!!! at this rate, I'll probably be done in way less than a month!! so after he get's all done with that, at about 9 ish or later, we'll talk about what we read and found and how we feel about it and what it means to us. then at about 11, we'll study some spanish, which is without a doubt my LEAST favorite part of the day because i'm not used to not knowing how to do stuff, like in math or whatever at school, but for some reason, this all seems so much harder and stressful and it stresses the heck out of me. so sometimes it gets hard for me to stay motivated and keep the desire to speak Spanish, but i know it just requires patience and time, but i know it'll come to me, i just need to learn to wait for it... unfortunately haha. so ok, after Spanish, we'll either go to get lunch at this place in town that gives us free sandwiches every day!!! or we'll do "12 week program", which is what the new missionaries are supposed to do when they're training. but once we finish all that, it'll be about 1 ish or so, and this is when the lack of work comes out. it's a serious bummer being the greeny being trained by someone as old as him, because we spend a lot of time doing nothing really. like there's a pool table and dart board where we stay, and we play a lot of that, and we'll spend maybe like an hour or so tracting or whatever. we've only tracted one street in town so far, and have like two people who may possibly be interested, and taught like 3 lessons to the same person. it's a serious buzz kill not having investigators to teach or practice "being a missionary", and i'm gonna make it my goal this week to get us out more and find more people, because there are a lot of people in this town, and there's got to be at least a couple who are interested... it's just a matter of getting members to help us and finding them ourselves. but one pretty cool thing that did happen was yesterday at church some random (black) guy came!! one of the members kinda introduced him to us, and we asked him where he was from, and he's from Congo!! he has a super thick accent which is pretty cool, and we asked him if he had any questions after sacrament meeting, and he said yeah, but we didn't talk to him about them. we asked if we could come over some time and teach him some more and he said yes and we got his address!! so hopefully that's another investigator for us to teach..
so ok, i think that's enough for this week haha. oh, and don't worry about sending me emails instead of letters. I'm fine with having a bunch of emails to reply to, because they're easier to reply to than letters :) so send basically as many as you want or as long or whatever, i get a pretty good amount of time to email P-day :) OH YEAH!!! and we should be getting Facebook in the next couple months!!!! so i can't wait for that!! anyways, i love you guys, and keep emailing and writing me!! love you all!
Sincerely,
Elder Levi Windham
