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