June 21, 2010

Hey everybody,

So my Pdays are now Mondays! Oh boy where do I begin woth so little time to write?

So the flight was good and all. I was talking to a sweet old lady on a motorized cart (I didn't even see her coming!) JK, thats froma movie... she was on a plane... anywhom!

We landed in Calgary and got our visas and everything which went smoothly. Then President and Sister Archibald met us and drove us to their home. They did all of our paperwork and everything and everything went smoothly which was awesome. We got the mission rules and I also had my interview with President which went well. He talked about the importance of being obedient and where your loyalty lies (with the Lord).

I'm in Lethbridge right now which is an awesome area. I would say it's like the Penasquitos of Canada. There are some very wealthy members and the wards are huge!!! All of them have overflow sections for each ward (3 of them btw). Oh, by the way, if you think 3 hours of church is bad, try 7 hours with meetings and 3 different sacrament meetings... AND FASTING (on the 3rd Sunday of the month!) It's really not that bad though, I actually enjoy it because it gives me some good time to reflect on everything that is going on throughout the week.

I bet you want to hear about my first day tracting! Check this out, the first door I knocked on was a member's home. WADDUP!!! Haha it was an elderly couple and Brother Bowden and I talked about hunting most of the time and he gave Elder Sanders and I a bag of jerky. Double whammy!!! Aww the members are so awesome. Every single one of them is friendly. Oh and mom, I eat properly and nobody has called me out on anything so I think I'm good. Elder Sanders is my companion. He is so awesome! We work hard and have fun at the same time. He's really good at showing me the ropes and everything. We're in a 3 companionship right now with Elder Foutz but he goes home on Tuesday so it's only temporary.

We haven't taught any investigators yet but we're hoping to be able to teach some on Tuesday. This one man, his name is Tony. We were looking through his teaching record and we saw that he had taking the discussions and that he was reading the Book of Mormon but then just stopped talking to the missionaries all of a sudden. We were able to get in contact with him though and we set up an appointment for Tuesday so I hope everything goes well.

K, cool impression came across me in church yesterday. So we were learning about the life of Christ and my mind drifted off to the pre-existance. Christ and Lucifer both came up with plans that would take a lot of effort on both of their parts. Christ would have to perform the Atonment in His ministry and Lucifer would have to put a lot of effort into making sure that everybody followed every single one of God's commandments. Although both plans required a lof of effort and work on their parts, the effectiveness of both plans were very different. Obviously, Christ's plan was the only way where we could show our Heavenly Father the love we have for him. The other point is the motivation behind each of the plans. Lucifer would put all of that work into his plan for himself. He wanted all of the glory and only cared about his wants. Christ completed the Atonement and His Ministry and all of the glory went to the Father.

I thought about this with my mission. I thought, what is my motivation for being out here. The answer came instantly and the first word that popped in my head was "happy". This gospel makes me happy. This gospel causes me to make choices that I know are for my benefit although they may be hard and against what the "natural man" would do.

I love you all and you are always in my prayers everyday. I dont have the time right now, but I will definitely have some challenges for you next week

Love,

Elder Madsen