Canada Eh!!

It's been a crazy time since my last email! I'll go through the last 10 days! Thanks for all the birthday wishes!

I'm doing well, but struggling a bit with the language haha! They speak English here but they talk super weird and say random phrases that I don't know. Canadians do say eh! 
My comp is Elder Hatch and is from Calgary, Canada.

Sunday- It was our last Sunday in the MTC and also our last day as a district. We went through all the normal Sunday meetings and for the devotional it was the MTC President and Sister Martino. They talked about how missionaries had been a big impact on each of their lives. After that for our last Sunday film we watched a talk by Elder Holland called Missions are Forever. It was really good and had a ton of good points. One thing I liked was - "missions are not easy, because salvation is not a cheap experience." After the film we said bye to Sister Wheeler and Sister Peterson. Shout out to them for writing us all letters. That was super nice! They left on Monday. along with the Elders going to California and Zimbabwe so we said bye to all of our district Sunday night. We got really close as a district so it was sad to see them leave. 

Monday- On Monday it was just the Canadian Elders. We got up and did service and then we had class. Both classes on Monday were mostly just messing around and hearing mission stories from our teachers. It was like the last day of school. We were all excited to be leaving. That night we played spikeball and then packed everything up and got ready to leave and said some more goodbyes.

Tuesday- Tuesday was a long day. We got up a 4:15, got dressed and went to the travel office. From there we got on a bus which took us to the frontrunner station. We rode that to SLC and then got on Trax to the airport. When we got to the airport we got through security and then a nice lady bought breakfast for me and Elder Atkins! While we were waiting for our plane we got to call and talk with our families! It was really good to talk to everyone but it brought back some homesickness. We took off around 10:00 and landed in Toronto at 4:00 Toronto time. From there we had to go through customs and all that fun stuff and hop on our next flight all in an hour. The homesickness hit me hard for home and especially the MTC. I was tempted to only get my visa for 2 weeks instead of 2 years but I ended up going with 2 years and I'm happy with that choice haha! Waiting for all the immigration stuff was the absolute worst. The room was hot, smelled bad and had bad vibes. I swear there must've been a no smiling sign in there, because everyone in there looked unhappy. When we finally made it through all that and got our bags our flight was long gone. We got tickets for the next flight to Halifax which wasn't til a couple hours later. We ate some subway and waited til we eventually took off around 10:00 p.m. When we finally landed in Halifax we got our luggage and President and Sister Low were waiting for us with the APs. We went back to the mission home and had some food and got to sleep around 3:00 a.m. It was a really long day

Wednesday- we got to sleep in til 8:00 and it was needed. When we woke up we went for a walk around a lake and had breakfast. After that we went to the mission office and had an orientation meeting. For lunch we had sandwiches and poutine. The poutine was actually good! After lunch, Elder Scott, an elder from my travel group, Elder Sawa Sawa the AP and I went to the mall and bought phones and then went and got our drivers licenses. A little later we went to downtown Halifax and did street contacting. I was not excited for it at all. In my head I was thinking "this is ridiculous I've been here for like 12 hours let me go sleep" but we said a prayer and it ended up being fun. We met all kinds of people! We talked to a guy named Rick and his wife Debbie for a while. He told us about his life, drug dealing and his 16 years in jail. He had some crazy stories from his time in "the hole" and told us "never steal from where you live" When we got back to the mission home  we found out where we were going. I found out I was going to Corner Brook Newfoundland! 

Thursday- Thursday was transfer day so everybody met at the mission office early in the morning. Since I was going to Newfoundland I had to fly there, so I hung out with the Cole Harbour Elders until they took me to the airport. Later, they took me to the airport and I took an hour and a half flight to Gander, Newfoundland. It was a smaller plane and the flight reminded me of a roller coaster. The whole thing was a little sketchy! When I landed I went and met my comp Elder Hatch. He's from Calgary Canada and is super cool. We drove to Corner Brook which was a 4 hour drive from the airport. Our area is huge! It's the biggest in the world, we have half of Newfoundland and all of Labrador! The nearest missionaries are in Grand Falls - 3 hours away. When we got to our apartment I unpacked and went to sleep.

Friday- first full day in Corner Brook! We did studies and regular mission stuff all day. We went on a trail walk and contacted people. There were some sweet views there! Then we went to the church for awhile and I made a Facebook account and got going on that. For dinner the Sheppards who live upstairs (our apartment is their basement) invited us over for dinner. It was really good and so nice to have a home cooked meal. We also had fresh blueberry and apple pie with vanilla ice cream. We spent the rest of the night looking for the person that we were going to help move but never found them.

Saturday- it was a pretty fun day. We went over to the church and worked on some things. Elder Hatch made a Google doc with our goals on it so we'll know what were trying to do. I worked on a training that I'm doing at district meeting. After that we did some study and then some digital finding. We are one of like 3 missions testing out Instagram and I love It! That night we went to captain James Cook lookout and took some pictures. 

Sunday- I was excited to come on a mission because I knew it would be different and exciting. Church was exactly that! We have church in a building that used to be for some other church. Supposedly our twig has 30 people that come, but I think there were 11 including us on Sunday. We also have Grand Falls and Gander branches Skype into our sacrament which brought us to about 25 members in the sacrament meeting. I gave the opening prayer, led the music (pretty much sang a solo) and passed the sacrament and then introduced myself and bore my testimony. After sacrament we had Sunday School and Priesthood. We all had Sunday School in the chapel. It turns out we are the Young Men leaders, so we had class with our 2 young men and planned activities. Later I had a nice birthday dinner of a pb sandwich and chips. After dinner we went out knocking. Not much success here, most people don't answer the door for us.

Monday- yesterday was good! In the morning we had call ins with the district leader so we went to the church and Skyped them. For lunch we went to a park where they had free burgers and hot dogs for Labor Day, then we went and did some knocking with very little success. After we did that and studied we went to a members house for a bbq. They have a Great Dane and it is the biggest dog I have ever seen! We also got some leftovers which is a huge blessing when you are on a budget like us. After that we had FHE where we played volleyball with our 2 friends that we're teaching. Briana is awesome, she gave me a birthday card and cake! She is probably going to get baptized soon! We also had Brandon there and he seemed to have a ton of fun! 

It was a long crazy week, but lots of great times! I'll be posting on social media so watch for that! Talk to you all next week!

Elder Tait