Received Monday, March 23, 2015

Holy cow, i remember josh leaving in april, i guess i was wrong, or maybe he left a transfer early for school, that is a busy schedule.

i remember brother reed's son went on a mission to toronto and brother miller or brother reed were going to figure out if he went to the east or west mission so that i could maybe find someone who knows him, i think they forgot. i think it would be pretty cool to know that. i am currently technically where the toronto west mission was even though i am barely west of toronto.

I think i forgot to tell you but last week I actually gave a talk in sacrament meeting and i used a parable for the baseline of it. I spoke on the gospel of jesus christ (faith, repentance, baptism, Gift of the holy ghost, endure to the end) and i told it by going through different steps in walking across a slackline (kinda like a tight rope, i had some friends who slacklined). i talked about having the faith to take a step, then repenting as you fall off and get back on, baptism when you make it all the way across, holy ghost when you are strengthened by continuing to walk across without falling, then enduring to the end as you learn to do tricks but still mess up and stuff. i will send you my talk notes when i send you the SD card for my camera.

also i may have forgotten to say also that this week was transfers. we did get a transfer call last night! I will be staying here, elder Yardley is going to bowmanville and elder beyeler (BEELER) is coming here. I came out with elder beyeler so i kinda know him. i havent really served around him though. he is from a very small town in idaho, cant remember exactly where but i do remember that he only had about 20 students in his graduating class in high school.

on to questions:

QUESTIONS:

Where will you watch conference?

oh that also reminds me, we had stake conference this week and because Sudbury stake is so huge and the stake center is so far away from everyone (the closest ward is 2 hours away) they actually started videoing it in kinda like general conference. so we went to our church building and watched it on the screen there. it was set up kinda ghetto but it was ok. they did it pretty much like a conference call, then they put the laptop on the side part of the pulpit and tilted the camera up to look at the speaker, then here we just hooked it up to the big screen. pretty funny. conference was still good though, there was an area 70 there, not sure his name though. a few people here were surprised when i told them that most places dont normally have a general authority at every stake conference. apparently they have one just about every time. i guess thats what happens when you have the prophet and one of the 12 (ballard) serve as mission presidents here.

anyway back to the actual question. we will watch it at the church building.

did you get the Pi card I sent??

Yes! it was pretty great i have to admit. the 2 holders for the card and sd card were pretty great too. very creative.

did you enjoy your warmer weather this week??

it was very nice, then all of a sudden it cooled down this weekend. not too bad though. it was kinda funny, on saturday morning it was somehow raining and snowing at the same time so it was coming down basically as slush. then saturday night it must have snowed because we got up that morning and there was 2 inches of snow on the ground! pretty funny. pretty cool. i liked it.

Find new people to teach?

yes. a lady who is actually the daughter of an old woman who we do a bunch of service for. the old woman is very very catholic, but she asked us to go and do service for her daughter and to maybe see if we could teach her too because she is a little less religious. she was very nice and very happy to hear from us.

What was the most interesting thing you ate this week?

irish stew. so one family here invited us to go to some community dinner thing with them and help them out on wednesday. this family used to own a bed and breakfast so they know how to cook for a mass amount of people so they volunteered to help and invited us along so we could meet a bunch of people from their community (baysville). they made this irish stew for st patricks day. really it was a lot like your beef bourgandy with peas and a couple extra things in it, so it was pretty good.

What was the most interesting thing you bought this week?

2 more boxes of trix, couldnt help myself. it was only 2.50 each. I may or may not have a stock pile of 5 boxes of trix now. also Mr.Noodle was something else i bought today. that is the canadian version of top raman. I really didnt need to get much today because we have a dinner appointment 5 out of 7 days this week.

How often do you put gas in your car?

elder yardly likes to fill up at about half so about every 3 days. we have to drive a lot, when it gets warmer i'm going to see if a member has some extra bikes or something and a bike rack so we can not burn so many kilometers.

Do they call it petrol or gas?

normally gas but one of the big gas stations here that normally sells the cheapest gas is called "Petro Canada" just about everything here has the word canada in the name, its pretty cool. even the mcDonalds "M"s have a little maple leaf in the middle of it.

Do you buy it by the liter?

yes and one interesting thing is that the gas prices are listed by the amount of cents it is no matter what, so if it gets worth a dollar or more it is just listed as "105" for one hundred and five cents on the thing with no decimal. normally it is in the mid 90s to the hundreds.

Who puts the gas in the car, you or your companion?

companion. i like the warm car a little better.

I love that you buy tissues. Is that something that your companion uses also, or mainly you? I am a tissue LOVER.

and you made me a tissue lover too. nobody uses tissues for some reason, its weird. when they really need something they will just get some toilet paper. i'm not down with that.

what did you study in PMG today?

gospel of jesus christ, going throught he scriptures for faith. i need to read throught he pamphlet a few times more also so i can know the words in it better. we taught it yesterday and i realized that i really didnt know the contents of it well enough to use it as best I could.

Where are you in the BOM?

just read to 3rd Nephi 10 today. I learned that Jesus Christ really didnt come until about a year after the darkness and earthquakes and stuff. pretty crazy. look up the beginning of chapter 8, it says the earthquakes was the 1st month of the 34th year in the 5th day and Mormon says that the happening with Jesus were at the end of the 34th year at the end of chapter 10.

any funny stories from this last week?

the slush rain, ummm. sadly i only have my planner from this transfer just starting and not the one from last transfer so i dont have it to remind me of all we did. sadly i cannot remember much more funny stuff that happened.

we did knock on this one guy's door, he said he wasnt interested in a message but he would show us his train set. the train set was crazy huge, in his attic he had set up 4 layers of trains going around the room that was probably about 20 x 10 it was pretty cool. we left giving him our number and telling him to give us a call if he needed anything.

Playing pool today?

yes, and snooker. i won most of the games. that was probably because the old man who owns the pool table wasnt playing most of the time though. the guy who owns it is about 80 but he usually plays with us and he beats us just about every time.

IF you got your Pi card, have you used your new ATM card? I did the thing so it should work just find for you.

I did not, i will have to use it next week on a haircut though. I was going to get one today because it has gotten pretty long again but elder yardley is getting transfered so haircut time got taken up for packing. i will have to take a picture.

one cool thing about the card is that it has a chip in it. which that is a little chip on the front of the card that you can just put in the bottom of a cashier machine thingy so that it is less easy to steal information. all canadian cards come that way now so when us with the silly american cards that need to be swiped, we cant really use the swipe anywhere we want actually. so the chip makes things nice and easy.

alright I think that is about it for the day, here is a picture of the milk bag, what the bag comes in, and what you put the bag in to as the container.

I love you,

Quinn

ps. forgot one great thing that happened this week. so one member here is famous for his killer chocolate milk he makes, so naturally i have been bugging him for a while to make us some and this week he did! basically all you do is get a 4 liter jug (basically a gallon) of chocolate milk from the store, empty out a liter (read: drank the liter) then you add a cup of sugar and 1 liter of cream. soooooo good. apparently missionaries in the past have drunk 2 cups and had to go throw up. elder yarley drank some and didnt feel like drinking much more so i had most of the gallon for myself. i had the jug done in about 3 days. it was very very good. it tasted a lot like the BYU Creamery Cookies and Cream milk that they sell.

aaaand yes we did get to teach that one family last week. they loved it again. no one sick this time. sadly one daughter (who was the daughter of the father there but she came from a previous marriage) her mother said she was not allowed to hear anything from the missionaries so she had to leave and go to her mom's house while we were there. very sad, hopefully that mom will eventually warm up to missionaries, the current mom (mom of all the other kids) was very annoyed about that, she wanted her step daughter to hear it. while we were there she said she would like to come to church again and that she knew the kids would love it too.

ok now thats all.

I love you... again.

Quinn

I asked Quinn to take a picture of his milk. This is how he buys it and serves it!

Received Monday, March 16, 2015

lots of weird crazy changes in football that dont seem to make sense to me but whatever. i'm gonna go ahead and hope jay cutler is done after this year though and they can finally get a good quarterback and good line. also that is very surprising byu basketball has done a lot better than i expected them to do, glad tyler hawss got his act back together and kyle collinsworth is a baller. is jimmer still floating around stuck on the bench somewhere?

I didnt even know that wyatt was that old! i thought next year was his senior year or something, thats crazy. good to see him going on a mission though, that is awesome. speaking of mission people i heard fairly recently from paige (christie hokanson's cousin, goes to BYU-I) that scott card is or at least was assigned to the rexburg byui campus area.

I actually didnt remember hearing anything about nana and bumpa going on a service mission. maybe a slight little memory of mom telling me that they were but not much else, where are they again? up here there are missionary couples assigned to specific branches also and they stay in the same branch for a whole year and a half and they are essentially just told to do missionary work there until its their time to go home. they actually almost always make a huge difference in every branch they are at.

funny there is no school tomorrow there because here this week is everyone's "march break" which is basically their version of spring break... no i have no idea why they dont just have a spring break.

90: that is really crazy... straight up ridiculous. this week someone asked me where i was from, I said california, they said oh wow how did you survive this winter or something like that. this is an extremely common conversation. this week i said in response "yea i dont know, back home right now its about 20 degrees" (just under 70) thinking that was just a little exaggeration just to make them be extra surprised. i guess i should have exaggerated much more. that temperature right now feels just a tad unbelievable. that is about 32 degrees. it has been exceedingly warm here this week again, it has been between 5 and 10 all week haha.

yes here they do celebrate st. patrick's day here.we were very unaware of it happening this week until we walked in to the dollar store (dollarama) today and saw a bunch of st patricks day green stuff. also we saw squirrels outside today so spring really is coming, it is interesting seeing a squirrel for the first time in months.

Questions:

did you get a card in the mail from me?
nope, i fully expect to see it tomorrow as well. i did get a card from sister sotis this week though which was nice, i havnt seen any sister hagen programs in a while either, i've got a feeling there are probably 3 or 4 in the cobourg apartment. always nice to see those.

how is your snow level?

gone down a ton, still a bunch of shoveling though. many people here have metal roofs so that they dont actually have to shovel their roofs in the winter. as the sun heats up the metal it melts the snow on top of it and it all slides right off. the only problem is that the old people cant shovel those mounds of snow so they ask us if we can do it.

still have to plug in your car at night?

this week we finally stopped doing it, i think we have done it for the last time this winter.

did you ask your mission pres about snow shoeing? you might be missing your chance!!

sadly i have missed my chance for this year, the snow is too shallow and too mushy, i will have to do it next year. :(

how did the potato cannons go last week?

I honestly dont remember talking about that... hmmm oh yes now i remember. sadly we did not make it in time, he had to help his wife with dinner and house work and stuff. but we did see them on thursday. there is a youth recent convert in the ward whose mom is a little crazy and just disappeared immediately after the baptism (like 4 months ago, some big long weird story, very happy and supportive then she just was suddenly gone) but we heard he had been coming the last few YM nights so we went last thursday... sadly he wasnt there but they were firing off some potatoes when we got there and it was really cool and they went really far (at least 100 yards)

that reminds me of a really quick funny joke that a lot of people like to say here. when they see elder yardley's name they go "youre in canada its not yardly any more its meterly" very funny

you said last week in your letter that a couple of less active people had  you over for dinner. How do they let you know they want you to come to dinner. And that is so great that they have you over!!

they have been taught by the missionaries for a while the ward wants us over there. the husband is not a member and the wife is less active. they love missionaries so sometimes they will invite us for dinner when we ask to set up an appointment, its very nice.

How was your food this last week?

it was all good, nothing really too standout-ish. oh someone did make homemade poutine for dinner for us this week which was very good (cheese curds, gravy, fries). and someone else made home made butter chicken for us also. that is an indian dish, white people made it for us though. butter chicken is good. its like chicken and a bunch of butter mixed with other stuff, it is orange. so not just regular white people food this week.

What did you buy at the Walmart today?

we already have a bunch of food in our apartment for this week so dont be alarmed with the lack of real food from my grocery list for today: tissues, deodorant, cheese, nesquick, breakfast cereal, trix, milk, toothpaste.

that reminds me, interesting thing about trix. in canada trix has been banned because it is much too sugary for all the little children so it is against the health code. last week i randomly saw some trix for cheap and not knowing this last fact i grabbed one box and moved on with life. during the week i learned that is regularly wasnt on the shelves and was only brought back for a limited time (i think it is kinda like the way mcdonalds does the mcRib thing). this made me very excited so i ended up buying myself 3 boxes today  

please take a picture of your milk, it the bag, then what you put it in to pour it. thank you.

i am a little disappointed i have not done that yet, i will do that. also i will take a picture of a cheese block they are a little different here too. they are long and skinny.

are the streets more clear of ice and snow?

all the main streets are totally clear. the sidewalks all still have big piles next to them though.

do you get snow tires put on your car for winter?

no, we should though and every memeber says we should. actually this car here, right before i got here, the tires needed changing so they called the vehicle coordinator senior missionary, asked if they could get snow tires, he said yes. they went in the canadian tire (store) to buy them and got a call from the vehicle coordinator saying that he had called church headquarters and they said no to the winter tires... kinda lame. whatever. it is kinda funny driving around seeing all the schoolbusses and stuff driving around with the big huge snow tires on though.

any word on up coming ipads? (I would have thought that in this last round of zone conferences something would have been said about them!)

we will get them by 2021. that was a joke president clayton said to tell us still no new news (say those last 3 words 5 times fast). elder yardley's call letter tells him that he will have to buy a mobile device (meaning ipad) on his mission. so they will get here eventually.

do you have any sisters in your district?

there are no sisters in the sudbury zone. they dont want to leave sisters stranded alone without any real leadership around for hours. they had sisters here in bracebridge for like the first time ever for about 6 months this year, then they got emergency transfered out for some reason and it has once again been elders since.

eaten at Tim Horten's lately? If yes, what did you eat there?

We almost never get food at tim hortens, the food is kinda gross and too expensive there. sadly the doughnuts arent too good either. every year during winter though they have this big thing they do called roll up the rim to win. where with every cup of coffee or hot chocolate you buy, you can roll up the rim of the cup to win anything from another free hot chocolate to a new car. so a week ago we got hot chocolates there. i won another free hot chocolate.

over the last week, has anyone asked you about that badge you are wearing? (elder cole name badge).

actually i am surprised by how not often people actually dont notice the name tag. most of the time people dont have any clue i'm wearing one until i point to it when i tell them my name. it is kinda funny. the only place where people seem to notice it is at walmart, which makes them think i'm a worker there. hmmm i should give mormon.org cards to people who do that from now on.

alright thats it for today,

I love you!

Quinn

Received Monday, March 9, 2015

It seems like g-man is pretty much a baseball pro now. 

also i got dad's message about leshon mccoy being traded which sounds a bit silly to me but whatever.

i'm glad patriarch mc ewin got some good recognition this week. i remember him talking baring his testimony in sacrament one time a few years ago (before i got my patriarchal blessing) saying that he was about to become emeritus status then some general authority or someone told him that he could keep going. of all those stake presidents i recognize all the names but i probably could only pick out the faces of the turtle man and president magnuson.

That was a great wooram story, very funny. i'm glad he stood his ground. what is he doing right now, is he taking some classes at PCC or something?

glad to get my card and the sd card. i have purposefully been taking a bunch of pictures this time so maybe i will try to send the card down again once the tranfer ends in a couple weeks (the 22nd i believe, same time as our stake conference). i feel bad but i dont really get the joke when you said the card would be less relevent after saturday. i'm guessing it has something to do with the 3 4 5 part of the date but i cant figure out any more.

QUESTIONS:

Do you remember when your picture was taken at the special conference?

I do that was this week on friday (february 27). hmmm i feel like i meant to tell you to tell you to watch out for it, i guess not. i am glad i didnt have to skype in either that kinda would have stunk

Tell us about the time change! How did you know, did you change  your clocks?

many different random church people on saturday told us about it. i told them they shouldnt have told us as we were blissfully unaware of the time change, but now that we became accountable to it we actually had to follow it. also the next morning bishop called us to let us know there would be no ward council that morning because there was an unexpected snow storm, at the end of the phone call he said "and i hope you guys were aware of the time change last night"

were you given permission to go snow shoeing?

oh man, i totally forgot about that. i will definately try my best to remember this week, we will see. i might not have too much more time, apparently this next week is going to be blazing hot all positives all week.

How was your testimony meeting yesterday? With so few people coming to church, do most people bear their testimony, or do you have long blank spaces?

no testimony meeting yesterday, we do things right up here in canada and actually hold our testimony meetings on the first sunday of the month. it was good a week ago though. not too much empty space. some people rambled on a little long though. one old man as he was baring his testimony, halfway through he had forgotten what he said and repeated the same thing over again, it was pretty funny. bishop had to tap his shoulder to let him know he was taking a little too long.

do you and your companion usually do something to help with the sacrament each week?

not really actually, it is handled pretty well without the missionaries. this last sunday we did pass the sacrament though, it was nice.

what are you doing for p-day today?

pool, email, the young men have been making potato cannons and we are having dinner at the young men's president's home tonight so we might come early so we can see him shoot off a couple. sadly no snowshoeing today.

do you have any dinner appts set up this week?

a bunch, 5 of 7 days! last week we had very few but throughout the week, random people gave us calls and invited us over for dinner, it was very nice. a couple less active members had us over.

how is your family with all the sick kids, did you get to see them this week? I hope so!!

the parents were very sick this week! i guess the disease was working though everyone. like everyone up here is sick again even outside of their family.

Is this the place where you play volleyball every week? If yes, do you enjoy it; is it well attended? how long do you play?

yes it is! i greatly enjoy it, every once and a while i have to remind myself im a missionary though so i cant go quite so hard as a normally would to make sure i dont get hurt. it goes for 2 hours, we normally make sure to set up an appointment with several people while we are there

Any interesting food stories?

not this week :(

Any interesting general stories?

sadly kind of a boring week

driving stories?

again not so much

thats about it,

I love you!

Quinn

 

Received Monday, March 2, 2015

Sometimes i guess you gotta have a boring week i guess. i do think its funny that in the new family photos of people at home people no longer have to stand 30 feet away to take a picture with everyone in it. and i understand what youre goin through gman pictures after church kinda stink.

Questions:

So what do you know about you paying taxes?

i know nothing, that is really weird. i havent had a job where i have made enough money where i had to do that yet.

how has your weather been this week?

warmed up like crazy, it was pretty nice. its been only between -10 and -5 most of the week (between like 10 and 25 probably in ferenheit) it snowed just a little bit a couple days but not much. apparently it should maybe start warming up soon. apparently this was actually a record breaking winter, on a few days it was the coldest for that day than it has ever been.

Any interesting songs sung in church on Sunday?

i actually knew every single one we sang yesterday. spirit of god, while of these emblems we partake, those are the ones i remember. the people who normally make the programs were out of town this week and i guess no one else was asked to do it or something so i have no program to check. i made sure to sing really loud this time because i actually knew what i was singing. my goal is to sing loud enough that everyone else will feel like they have to sing louder to drown me out.

Any random singing done in your apartment or car?

some, not too much that i can think of though. of course there are always certain songs that you have to sing as loud as you can to though. every once and a while i will be catch myself singing an apostate song (song that doesnt follow white handbook standards i.e imagine dragons) then i will laugh and stop singing.

Any interesting texts from your mission pres this week?

nope no texts but he did stop in! President and sister clayton came to North Bay (2 hours north east of here) to have a special zone conference with our zone (half the zone was too far, over 5 hours away, so they had to skype in) it was a good cool meeting he was doing this meeting with every zone, most of the time they will have a couple zones come together to 1 meeting so president doesnt have to do it so many times but we are so far in the boonies that he just came all the way up here. anyway the next morning towards the end of companionship study we got a call from him telling us that they were just going back down south to barrie and they just wanted to stop in and look around the apartment and say hi. so they did. i guess thats what happens when you live next to the main highway.

Any good work with investigators?

we have one, gavin who is pretty awesome. he comes to ward volleyball night every wednesday and actually changed shifts at work a couple weeks ago so that he could make it to church, so he has been coming to church since then. he is in his early 20s (no YSA in this stake) and is a friend of another member. sadly he doesnt have too much support from his family so he says he cant really read the BoM or pray at the house but he is moving out soon and he will get back on track. hes pretty cool.

Do you grocery shop at Walmart?

yup, and the cool thing is that we dont even have to go directly home afterwards because the outside is already the perfect refrigerator .

What cereal are you currently eating?

just moved on from off-brand frosted mini wheats to honey nut cheerios. normally i wouldnt get those but they were on sale.

How is the less active member with the 5 kids?

we couldnt come by last week because the kids were all sick :(

Find anyone new to teach this week?

sadly after much effort no. we did go by one former investigator mother and she said she was kinda busy because they are working on moving soon but to stop by when we are in the area. she was very happy when we offered to help her move when she needed us, she wrote down our number and names and everything.

Eat anything new/interesting/different?

i made my own omlet this week, it was pretty delicious.

what did you do for p-day?

going to go play pool and pretty much just more emailing stuff, i am going to write to president clayton today and ask him if he feels like going snow-shoeing is OK or not a few people have offered to take us. the only thing that might outlaw it is "no winter sports"

alright thats about it for now,

I love you!

Quinn

Received Monday, February 23, 2015

{Talking about the new Imagine Dragons Music}  I feel like dad told me that album came out a long time ago, I have heard none of that new album from any random passing by radios, or at least i have not recognized it. i have heard that new taylor swift song a few times the one that goes "we're young and we're reckless" i have to say i am slightly disappointed.

{A toy car suddenly started making the siren noise during church!} very funny car story, i believe lizzie and jayna's faith was finally sufficient.

{Holes in a dress, had to cover them up} i do see the black dots, i think that is very funny that is the quick answer that you gave for your problem. good problem solving mom!

{Referring to a song that I played in church} good you get to play piano, i have never heard that song before or at least i dont recognize the title. 

in our appartment we are on the far left side, there is a big tree in front of our big window to the street. no we do not have green shutters, i cant remember if anyone else in those front windows has green shutters or not.

yes i believe i have seen the griffin pub, i think they have a little sign they put up on the street saying what specials they have for each day.

looking at just a little bit of stuff here from our area, i would say that everything looks completely different totally covered in snow.

Questions:

Do you remember the Song Quinn the Eskimo? Someone in church would sing it to you. Kylie is the one who told me about it. It came up in conversation this last week!

yes, by bob dylan but manfred mann does the more famous version of it. bishop dunham was the one who would bring it up all the time. the reason why i remember who did that song so well is because a member told me it just this week! this family likes missionaries to write down their names and addresses and stuff down whenever they have them over, when they saw me write down my first name, the husband brought up that song. I told him only 1 other person has ever brought that song up to me and he (bishop dunham) was from alaska. i am going to guess only people from eskimo type places know that song.

How has your weather been this week?? Talk about walking from the car to whatever building you are walking to.

very cold some days (-30) very nice other days (-7). it is a very interesting thing when you start saying -7 is very warm weather, but it really was very nice outside.

Do you ever worry about your car starting, or having car trouble in that amazing cold?

do you remember those horror stories that bishop has told us about how in alaska people plug in their cars to keep the engine warm enough through the night? yup, we do that. i keep meaning to take a picture of the plug but i keep forgetting. it is always very important to remember to have totally dry hands when you plug in the car though otherwise you get shocked a little bit and it is not fun. i learned that pretty quickly. it is kind of funny when it snows though the night and there is snow all over the car in the morning, there is always a little spot on the hood where it has all melted because of the heater block.

How are things with elder Yardley?

great, elder yardley is pretty cool, i like him. good, fun companion.

Are  you getting to know the area better, where things/people are?

yup getting to know it decently well, i'm knowing the people a lot better. i would say i know the names of almost all the ward that comes in now.

Do less people come to church when it is colder?

yup, also when it snows. that is a fairly popular excuse. the old people have a decent enough excuse with it though because they have that human berometer effect (they get all achy when the atmospheric pressure changes).

Is there a place to hang coats when you enter the building?

yup, i guess i will take pictures of those too, i totally forgot that wasnt just a regular thing everywhere.

do you have to keep any of your living area clean from snow, like doing the shoveling?

we probably should a little more but we dont really, and there isnt too much, just our steps going in to the house.

Have you done any shoveling to help others?

tons and tons. helped shovel off someone elses roof too, this time we used a roof scraper though. the first time i saw it from far away i thought it was a pool net, but on closer inspection it had a little plastic end like a snow shovel. it is an interesting device. also we help other people shovel their places all the time, it helps to find people. if they are out shoveling we jump out and start helping.

Where is elder Yardley from?

Las Vegas, the cold doesnt really bother him too much either though.

Do you know what missionary I was talking about in the GREAT STORY? When did he start his mission? It will be great if he gets to our ward.

Elder Tim Woodcock from Pickering (well he really lives in whitby but he goes to pickering ward)! yup he left some time in september i believe. he is a pretty cool guy we took him out teaching with us a couple times. that is one of the most important things i gave for him. that would be pretty cool if he came to the ward. and yes that was a GREAT STORY.

Any interesting dinner appts?

yes! on monday we had dinner at the Petrie family. brother Petrie asked me where i was from, i told him Arcadia and began to describe a little better where it was already assuming the next question (oh where is that?) . as i was explaining brother petrie turned to sister petrie and said dont worry we already know where that is. apparently that is where sister petrie served her mission! she was apparently originally called to portugal but then couldnt get a visa so she ended up serving the duration of her mission spanish speaking in arcadia. pretty cool. she didnt remember exactly where all she served but she did say the first week she was there there was a pretty big  earthquake and she had no idea what was going on (no earthquakes up here). also she was there when it snowed apparently.

How does this Ward do for singing in sacrament?

not too great, i try to sing louder but we always do songs that i have never heard of so when i try to get a little over confident we sing a completely different note than i thought it was going to be.

Does this ward use an organ or piano?

organ!

How do you do your laundry? Is there a washer/dryer in your apartment or do you have to go to a laundramat?

actually there is a super nice member who volunteers to do it for us so long as we supply the soap! very nice. it is the wife of the quinn the eskimo guy. the MacNaughtons. they play the bagpipes.

What are you doing for P-day?

we played pool earlier, not too much outside of that.

How long does it take you to drive to your Ward building?

about 5 minutes, it is very nice, we are very close.

Are the roads fairly cleared of snow?

yea they are pretty well cleared, or at least covered in sand and dirt and stuff enough so that you have good grip anyway.

1 cool missionary experience:

last week we randomly stopped by this less active member that no one really knew. her, her husband, and her 5 kids (none baptized, 3 over 8) were there and she invited us to come back to teach the kids last friday. when we came back they were all ready the kids all loved the lesson and really wanted us back, the parents said that would probably be a good thing if we did, so now we will be coming back every friday. when we told bishop he said, "wow we have been trying to get in there for a year and no one has ever been there." apparently 40 day fasts for missionary work do something.

thats about it!

i love you!

Quinn

No explanation on this picture, but the snow is amazing! Maybe this is a road he drives down!

This is how he  plugs in his car so it will start the next morning!

Received Tuesday, February 17, 2015

I SAID whats cooler than bein cool!? Ice Cold!

Do the sister missionaries not have bikes or something? i thought most of them did its kinda weird that they would pretty much just leave the sisters chillin in arcadia without a car, bikes, and a pretty bad bus system. In our mission they pretty much let every area have a car unless they have a decent bus system. anyway glad beebee could help em and you could make them some pancakes. you shouldve just told them that you werent a short order cook and just give them the one option.

funny and a little weird from the steimles which is right on par with them.

exciting for nana and bumpa, also i'm pretty excited to see all sorts of interesting autocorrect mistakes.

i was at byu-i when they changed it so i was there for a little bit when it was like that, it was a little annoying because i felt a little less comfortable blasting my very loud rock music right by where the mission office people were working.

christopher can feel a bit better knowing that it is probably a bit colder here. this week was the coldest of the year so far and throughout the week with windchill it was -40. And would you like to know what that is in Fahrenheit? -40, yes it was very cold, luckily i have some good warm clothes and many layers to wear so it really wasnt too bad.

QUESTIONS:

Do you know your new address?

yes! it is:

147 Richard Street #4

Bracebridge, ON

P1L 1J3

1 quick joke i heard earlier. so youve probably recognized that the canadian zipcode always goes letter-number-letter like that right? thats why canadians like to claim that santa clause really lives in the canadian part of the north pole (canada and russia lay claim to the north pole) because he always tells people his zip code H0H 0H0

Does Elder Yardley know Brittanni Cole's husband Justin Yardley? Are they related? Justin's dad is Roy Yardley from Gunnison Ut.

I asked him the first day we were together, he said he did not know a justin yardley.

How did you even get up to your new area?

by driving a car, everyone who gets tranfered meets at the stake center in Brampton (just west of toronto) which also has the temple next door. thats where you meet up with your companion and drive up in to the great white north

How is your apartment?

pretty nice, it was a sister appartment for a while up until like november so it has to be nice.

where are you emailing from?

the ward building family history center.

Is there more snow where you are now?

much much much more. there was maybe like 6 inches on the ground in cobourg, there is a couple feet here, its pretty sweet.

How is the Ward?

pretty good, apparently regularly like 70 people come during the winter and during the summer it gets huge because bracebridge is apparently a big vacation place. tons of summer "cottages" people move up to during the summer. actually just down the road they have a little theme park place called Santa's Village which is only open during the summer and christmas day... for some odd reason, still havnt been able to figure out why.

ayway back to the question, it is good. lots of people who have strong testimonies and are excited to do missionary work. One of the first days i was here was the end of the ward "40 day fast" for missionary work which they did for the first time. they had a calendar of 40 days apparently and 40 different people signed up on each day to fast for a day. pretty cool. also every wednesday night they have a volleyball night that we go to that people invite friends and stuff to.

How long has your companion been in their area?

2 transfers so i think thats since mid november, this was his first area.

Have you had any meals at member's homes since you've been there?

yes, like 4 set up ones and another that we came by their home, meaning just to be really quick and introduce myself and set up an appointment for a mini lesson some other time and they just invited us in for dinner because apparently the wife had accidentally made way too much for everyone to eat.

Do you know the person that took your place in Cobourg?

interestingly enough it was actually the other missionary that was here, elder christenson.

Do you know, was your mission pres gone to a big conference over this last weekend about the "rollout" of the ipads? The Arcadia Mission pres was at that conference.

i really have no idea and havnt heard anything about it, he might have, we didnt get a president's letter from him this week oddly enough so maybe he was spending too much time working on that.

What happened in Canada for Family Day? Anything? A Parade?

no parade or anything, just a day off from stuff for families to hang out together.

Any interesting stories?

i shoveled off someone's roof this week, you read correctly i shoveled their roof. apparently it snows so much up here that if you dont do that every once and a while the ice will build up so thick on your roof that it will cave in and break your roof! when someone first said that laughed and thought they were joking... nope :D

another interesting thing, the husband of a member (now passed away) who is in this ward is mentioned in preach my gospel! i cant remember exactly what page it was. it is in the "working with members" section. it mentions a man by the last name of stoneman who used to be part of the united church i think... or it might be the catholic one i dont remember.

Any big meetings coming up...with General Authorities?

actually yes! apparently there is some general authority, i think the area 70, coming up to stake conference here in the end of march. good inspired question.

Are you a driver?? I think you are.... if yes, how do you like it?? Enjoy having a "backer"?

i was for most of this week. it was great no problems, the only thing is that the whole time i had no idea where i was going, elder yardly had to just tell me where to go. So at the end of the week we just asked the senior missionary in charge of cars if we could just switch for the transfer while i figure out where i am actually. they said yes. so back to being backer while i figure out where i am, this is a pretty big area.

what is cooler than cool?

ice cold, I said, whats cooler than bein cool!? ICE COLD

Thats about it, i'm staying warm, all good, nice and happy.

I love you!

Quinn

Received Monday, February 9, 2014

Why do i feel like you've made chicken cordon blue casorole a lot of times? isnt that the stuff with the peas?

That was a good talk from g-man, did sister thurman say anything about taylor swift this week?

I do not remember that "the lord is my shepherd" song just from the lyrics, probably would with the music though. is that the one that is like go tell aunt rodey?

why cant they just call that crudite stuff celery and carrots, that makes way more sense.

I have a copy of true to the faith, i have not used it too much, maybe i will try to use it a bit more. i have heard our search for happiness is a pretty good one too. that one is written by Elder Ballard and essentially goes through all the missionary lessons i guess.

 

QUESTIONS:

 

any transfer news today?

Yes! very surprising actually. I will be going to bracebridge (i'm pretty sure thats how you spell it) i dont know too much about it aside from the fact that it is about the same size as cobourg and about 4 hours north of here i think. my new companion will be elder yardley (dont know who he is), and i will be designated driver. i guess that means i will be getting much better at driving in the snow. i am a little sad to be leaving cobourg, i really like it here, but the location and everything for bracebridge sounds good. brace bridge should be colder (not good) but there should be a lot more snow (i've decided that is a good thing) and maybe i will finally be able to see a moose. i wonder if they sleep in igloos up there... just kidding. it should be fun, more on it next week.

Last week, I think you thought this week would be full of snow. Any of that happen?

that has got to be one of the craziest, grammatically correct sentences i have seen, i applaud you mother.

Yes, lots of snow this week, only about 20 people came to church because of it. there was also a bit of freezing rain while we were in the church.

What are you doing for P-day today? Working on your moccasins?

nope we are going to go to oshawa for sports, it will probably be the last time for a while for me to be able to do that actually because the zone i am in is huge (like super spread out).

did you do game night? how did it go?

We did! it did about as well as expected granted the weather... no one showed up. it was just us and the ward mission leader. there was lots of snow and stuff though so it was understandable. if the weather was fine i would have guessed about 7 other people would show up. so it should end up fine.

is valentine's day something they celebrate in the old Canada?

yes, or at least i'm pretty sure the people of old canada do celebrate it.

did you send us your SD card with your pictures?

I did, hopefully you will get it pretty soon.

Tell us 3 things you ate last week.

turkey, ribs (super good), and spagetti.

have you heard any new news on ipads for your mission?

nope. also i'm pretty sure when we do eventually get them that the missionaries will have to buy ours also.

Any good stories?

when we went out from church this week the car battery was dead! we went around the church, found someone who said she had jumper cables in her car, walked out and saw that her husband was jumping her car as well! that was pretty funny. he went and jumped our car, we left it running for a while, all has been good since then. it was probably just the cold and the wind blowing on it that killed the battery or something.

Anything interesting happen while you are out tracking?

i went on exchanges up in peterborough on friday. the missionary i was with is pretty new and has done hardly any tracting since he came in the mission. we had a little bit of extra time so he decided we should go tracting really quick, i told him ok but we would only have time to go to a couple doors. we knocked on 2 doors and we got 2 new potential investigators. ridiculous, he has some magic or something.

 

 

Ok, that is all I've got!

Pooped.

i'm glad you took the time to go poop trying to think of what else to say before you signed off.

I've just started the "Captain Moroni" chapters in the BOM. They will be interesting to read tonight. He was a good man.

that is actually where i am as well right now. i just read where amalikiah is killed. lots of good lessons.

alright thats it for me

i'm in the library and would rather not poop here so sorry i'm not taking that time.

I love you!

Quinn

Received Monday, February 2, 2015

Those dang cheater patriots won? too bad, we had dinner at a less active member's home last night before the game and one of the sons was talking to me about the patriots cheating and thats why he was cheering for the seahawks. also i found out on sunday that my bishop here is a chicago bears fan, he told me they fired all of their coaches except the receivers coach apparently... again.

every single time i read GD class i think "Gosh Dang" class instead of gospel doctrine.

I remember the name of elois wayment and would probably recognize her face if i saw it but i cannot think of it. 

Questions:

How is your eye??

much better, basically gone. i can actually put my contacts in. My last companion (Elder Burton) got one when i was with him and apparently his still hasnt gone away and president clayton told him that he would probably have to get it drained when he gets back! really stinks for him, glad i dont have to do the same thing.

Hey, do you have transfer news?

transfers calls are next sunday, so no. sorry for possible misinformation in the past.

did you get your package - large yellow envelope?

i did! it was leaning against the door when i got back to the apartment. in the letter it said you did not remember exactly why you felt like you had to send me a shirt. the reason is because i showed you the shirt with the exploded ink stain on it.

did you happen to find the very funny pterodactyl card with your ATM card in it?

no :( really have no idea where it would be, and my credit card is currently not working for sure. I hope the latter does not have to do with the first.

how long did it take you to take the exit exam? How many hours?

i have no idea,all i remember is it being really easy, probably didnt take too long.

How did your moccasins turn out?? Talk about that experience!

they take a while, but i started them, then realized i had threaded it incorrectly! so i had to pick it out and start over, i just havnt taken too much time to work on them this week so not too far along.

Have anything in particular that you want Griffin to say in his update about you in Sacrament meeting?

everyone should learn how to play hockey and pray and read the scriptures.

Get much snow this week?

actually yes i did. many random crazy measurements involving centimeters and milimeters so i cannot remember how much is on the ground, it is currently snowing though and apparently it is supposed to snow about half the week.

How is that family doing with the lessons? Meet with them this week? Find anyone new to teach?

They got sick again!! now its the other half of the family, i told them by the time we meet again they should have the whole book of mormon finished. they thought it was funny and said they would make sure to read once the kids are in bed.

one girl who is a former investigator who is a friend of a couple members who just started coming back to church was very excited when we came by and told us to come back next week, so that is great!

How is your Ward's Mission Leader?

he is good, he works very hard at his work and is very busy though so its a little hard sometimes, but he does his best at his calling. he is a former bishop/branch president from the ward, so hes got a lot of good info and stuff from that time.

actually last correlation we decided to try and start up a monthly games night (people bring whatever games they want, board games, mini hockey stuff, etc. and we play for a while) we are hoping that will be a good thing to give so people can invite their friends to it and we can meet them. it will be the first saturday of every month starting this saturday. i dont think the turnout will be too great this time because of snow and that it wasn't advertised that well, but it should pick up in the following months.

Anything else going on that you want to tell about?

really, sadly this week was very uneventful again! lots of appointments moved to next week, lots of tracting.

last thursday we went on exchanges and i drove again. of course that is the day when it started snowing a lot, the roads were pretty bad. it was fun, i drove slow.

What will the Canadian holiday be in February?

national family day, that will be in 2 or 3 weeks on a monday so i will probably have pday on tuesday that week.

When you come from outside into someone's house, have you ever felt like they keep their house to warm? Yes, that is my question.

very very uncommon. normally its the really old people who get cold super easy. if it is very warm then i just soak up the warmth and disperse it throughout the time i am in the cold.

I am going to send you a letter today with my sd card of all my pictures! i gave descriptions of the pictures, also i sent some notes from the talk i gave a few weeks ago that you will maybe be able to read, also i sent last sunday's ward program. you should hopefully get it next monday or tuesday.

really trying to think of more exciting/remotely interesting things to tell but i cannot really think of anything so i guess this will have to do.

I love you!

Quinn