The sun will come out tomorrow! tomorrow! bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there will be sunshine :)

So it’s been raining the past 2 days…..non stop!!! it’s been pretty crazy! It was kinda nice though cuz I strangely like the rain…It kinda made me feel like I had been sent to my dream mission of England haha but life’s been good!!!

Zone leader has been a lot of fun. Just more responsibility and more opportunities to serve other missionaries! The city has been pretty different so far. The numbers on average are a lot lower than southern alberta but I’m working on changing that! There’s more accountability individually as a companionship and for your entire zone though! We meet with the stake president weekly to report on the numbers and how the zone is doing. Our stake president right now is very straight forward and motivated for missionary work. He even was a mission president is New York at one time! He’s been called to the 70 in June though, so it’ll be good to work with him for a bit before we get a new stake president! The type of missionary work is a bit different. I’m definitely trying to utilize all of the people that are out walking and on the streets though. I had the idea this week to make copies of The Proclamation to the World for the Family and on the back of it copied some qr codes that take you to mormon.org as well as leaving our number and some other info. We’ve been trying to hand them out recently and have gotten them into the hands of a few people but the people in Calgary all seem to be 5 minutes late to somewhere and won’t even accept a free piece of paper sometimes! So frustrating! One piece of paper could change the course of their lives and they won’t even scan over it….but I’m sure we’ll find more prepared people this week. We’ve also been trying to work with more less actives and recent converts lately and it’s been a good experience.

We visited a man this last week, who is well known around the mission for always helping missionaries out and being a big help to them. He went through a bad bacterial infection from the hospital a few months ago and is also in very sever stages of cancer. He is expected to pass away this week or even last week. But he’s very strong willed and won’t pass away quite yet. We got permission to visit him but were told to be very careful because he passed the infection to the previous zone leader who lost 40 pounds and had to go home. So we went to see him and it was a very humbling and spiritual experience. We walked in his room where we found what looked to be a skeleton in the bed. It was hard to find words of comfor or anything at the time. I just felt like crying and I didn’t even know the man. He was very appreciative since he spent so much of his life SO involved with the missionaries and loves them so much. He couldn’t even make too many words that were identifiable. We got to talk a little bit I said a prayer at the end. The man had gone from 6 ft 2 and 180 lbs and is now down to around 120 lbs…it truly made me grateful for my trials and for the knowledge of the plan of salvation.

We also taught our investigator Ruth and she’s on date for the 15th of June. She also came to church for the first time!

The fam sounds good! I love you and am so happy to hear about the success of the bbq!

What a transfer! What a week! What a month for that matter!

so….just when I thought that the mission couldn’t get any more random….

Well….I’m doing great!!! So many things have changed since I last talked to you though! I’m now in the Calgary Zone instead of the Calgary West zone…and I’m a zone leader…so yeah! Crazy times! We had to go on a 3 leg with a member of my district last week because his companion went home for a possible shoulder surgery, so we moved in with him and left the zone leaders. We were planning to stay on that 3 leg until the end of the transfer in 2 weeks and then we got a call from president on Friday. He mentioned how the zone leader in Calgary had gone home for medical reasons and that he’d like me to serve there….So here I am! I’m serving with Elder Atwood from Ohio now and life’s good!….It’s different….but it’s good! haha I hesitantly unpacked my stuff this week with the worry that I might get moved again but I think I’ll be here for at least a transfer or 2.:)

I’m currently just trying to figure out a new area…again…but I’m excited to be here! I’m in the “heart” of Calgary now. So there’s all of the tall buildings, masses of people walking around and city atmosphere. It’s stoked to be here and I’m sure that we’ll do a lot of work!

We taught an investigator last week and watched “to This End Was I Borne” with her. It was a really good lesson and she is super sincere!

I’m glad to hear that things are going so well at home. I hope Jessie can figure something out there at Utah. It sounds pretty perfect right now! No news from Aust or Kels but I’m sure they’re doing great!

I miss speed training with Dan and Loni!!!! I’m definitely going to work out there when I get home. It helps a ton. And I always gain weight there for some reason…probably from getting bigger legs!

Connor sounds like a stud! I love to hear that he’s doing so well!

I’m so excited for the new turn of the business! I hope that it all works out and the bbq is a success! I really like everything that you told me about that stuff!

But I love you all and look forward to good times here in Calgary!
P.S. the zoo was great!

He just takes the tractor another round,

pulls the plow across the ground and sends up another prayer, he says lord “I never complain, I never ask why, please don’t let my dreams run dry…underneath this amarillo sky”

So the lyrics to jason aldean’s amazing song sum up my week pretty well! LOTS of service!

We’ve been able to do some good old fashion hard work this week!….for the most part…:)
We got to work in the Calgary temple this week for about 3 days and it was UNREAL!!!!! It seriously was such a unique experience and one that definitely doesn’t happen often. We had to do a bunch of odd jobs. Everything from taking down scaffolding and carefully moving it out of the building, to climbing ladders and using my height to clean wood framing really high up, to cleaning crystal on the beautiful chandeleirs! It was really cool to go around the temple and see so many different places that we wouldn’t normaly see. We were able to go on the roof at one point and got to see the beautiful view of the valley! We also got to be at the base of the baptismal font and walk around the oxen and move scaffolding out of there. We also had the opportunity to work in cealing rooms and clean wood around the mural in one of the instructional rooms. We also were in the “guts” of the building dusting the plumbing and other pipes in the basement and higher up! EVERY inch of our temples is cleaned and accounted for! It’s so cool! I also had the amazing priveledge to work in the celestial room on the last day that we were there. They only needed one person in there with there shoes off to hand chairs to people in the hallway to take to another room. So I got to marvel at the beauty of the room and feel the spirit SO strongly for about 20 minutes. It was a memorable experience that I’ll never forget.

We also did a highway cleanup for about 9 and half hours on Saturday….I got a lot of sun haha We got to go out to the mountains to clean up the highway towards the end of the day and it was so beautiful! I can’t wait to go to Banff on one of these P-days! Anyways, it was really hot and tiring all day and when we were about 8 hours into cleaning up I told the group I was with (jokingly) “I’m just going to walk into the forest and die…” so I went into the woods shouting to all the bears that I was covered in honey and they could come eat me……and then I found a sweet elk shed!!! I came out of the forest holding it and everyone was SO shocked! haha Anyways. It was a really fun day but my back has been kiling from bending over and picking up so much trash!

That’s SO exciting for Jessie!!! I’m so proud of her! Everything is going to work out and I’m sure that she’s going to get some better offers in the near future! That makes me so happy to hear!

I think I’ll call at about 12:30? Does that work for you? I’ll check my email tomorrow because we have to do some survey. I was planning on skyping again if you guys want but we can just do a phone call if you want but I’m plannin on Skype so just tell me otherwise!

I love you all and can’t wait to see/hear you!

I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes. Ace of Base

I don’t have a ton of time to send something this week but I’ll try to fit some good info in!

I’m in West Calgary now and Bamf and the Calgary temple are both in our zone! I’m super excited to go to both of them! My new companion is great! His name is Elder Owen and he’s about 5ft 6….we look pretty great together:) I like him a lot and he’s a great teacher. We’re living in the basement of a member with the zone leaders right now until they can find us a place to stay. It’s been a great experience and the members upstairs are the coolest people ever. They’re a couple that are in their 80’s and they’re so knowledgeable in the gospel and worldy things. I love getting to learn from Brother Pitcher because he has so much good advice and insights on different subjects!

We are purging into this area, so both of us are figuring out who and where everything is here. It’s been a lot of fun to be in the city for the first time and in a different atmosphere. There are a lot more people that are out on the streets that we can talk to and there’s a humble neighborhood in our area that we can tract and have a good time in. We got a lot of rejection the other day when we went there but then a couple let us in right before we were going to call it a night. They’re young and clearly struggle with the word of wisdom…but they were super open to talking to us and becoming friends! We meet with them again on Tuesday and I’m looking forward to it! It’s also gotten really warm the past week and I love it!

I’m glad to hear that things are going so well at home!

I’m so excited for Jess! I honestly think that it would be sweet if she played at Utah!…it would be weird since we all go to BYU….but I think that she’d have a really good experience! That’s SO exciting!

I love you all and will talk to you next week!