I am going to start off with the funny/negative and say that during my first full day in Canada, I have honestly never been even close to as cold as I was in my whole life. Not even kidding. It was something like -14 C, with 10 k/h winds and 90% humidity. The humid wind cuts straight through all your clothes and chills you to the bone. Not fun. It is really funny that I have to walk around in it all day. It makes you laugh as you are walking on the sidewalk freezing about to die. You just need to make things funny or you would want to die. But its okay, things are good here.
I guess I should start off my saying that my P-day is actually on MONDAY. It used to be Wednesday a year ago or so, but it has been changed to Monday since then. My trainer said I could e-mail my family and everyone else as soon as we could because I hadn't been able to do it for about a week. So expect a regular update every Monday. The reason I wasn't able to update it until now is that there was too much snow. Seriously. So check this out...
I live in an area that is called "The Snow Belt". Haha, isn't that funny? I think it is funny. And the funniest part is that we do not have a car. Every other companionship in our area has one except for us, which is way awesome! We litterally get to walk for 2 hours through 4 foot deep snow to go teach investigators that sometimes end up ditching on us. But that is alright, more street contacting hours for us! It is extremely hard to find people that are willing to stop and talk to us when it is around 5-10 degrees F. The wind is what makes it absolutely unbearably cold. I am proud to report that my winter gear will be adequate. My garments, thermals, shirt, sweater, coat liner, and coat are enough to keep me bareably warm. My boots are great and keep my feet warm most of the time. So that is a lot of exciting things already! To sum it up, I live in London, it is called the snow belt, it snows unimaginable amounts, and things are very hard, but good. It snowed so much that the busses were cancelled, and the whole city shut down. No busses, no library, and no government building were open in downtown.
We get an hour and a half to do emails out in the field...which is sooo excellent compared to the 30 ridiculous minutes we got in the MTC. This is like heaven. So I will be able to write home again on Monday. But normaly it will only be once a week. And I get to call home on Christmas which is excellent.
So I'm sure you are excited to hear about my first few days in the real missionfield! I got through customs and everything alright. We took a real sketchy tiny propellar plane from Detroit to Toronto. It was kinda scary going through the giant storm in it, but we didn't die so that is good. President Brower picked up me, Elder Nash(companion from MTC, he's from Ireland), Elder Silva (He is from Brazil, and I didn't know him in the MTC), and Sister Cheng (she is from HongHong, and I had met her once or twice in the MTC.) We were the only 4 new missionaries this transfer, which is a pretty small group. So President picked us up from the airport on Monday night, around 8 or 9, and we drove with the AP's to the mission home in Brampton, about 15 minutes away. The AP's are Elder Messik, and Elder McKee. They are both amazing teachers, and they somehow make you have a desire to be like them. They are both awesome and super nice guys. We got to the mission home in Brampton and we had a nice big turkey dinner made my Sister Brower. She is an amazing cook! She is the sweetest and funniest lady ever. I really like her a lot. After dinner, it was pretty late so we just took a few pictures and Elder Nash, Elder Silva, and I went with the AP's to an appartment in Brampton to stay the night. They call it the Mission Mansion! It is no mansion or something, but 6 missionaries live in it, which is pretty much unheard of. It is always 2 or 4 living together. But 6 live here. The AP's, the Brampton Zone Leaders, and the Spanish speaking missionaries in Brampton. There are a ton of extra beds in the basement for new missionaries to stay the night like we did, so the 3 of us stayed there that night and got to sleep in until 7:30 which was amazingly wonderful. We had gotten up at 3:00AM to go to the airport the day before so sleeping in was amazing. We got ready real quick and went back to the mission home with the AP's to meet the 3 trainers. We weren't assigned to anyone yet, but we got to meet them. We had some quick training from the AP's, and some meetings and interviews with President Brower, and then we were assigned our companions. I love President Brower so so much. You can just tell that he sincerely and genuinely loves and cares for you so so much. It is such a good thing. Because moving to another country, away from your family and friends that you love, to somewhere where you don't know anyone, and it is always cold is really scary. This whole thing is extremely nervewracking and horrifying in some ways. Everything will be okay though.
So after my interviews and things, I was assigned my trainer companion, who's name is Elder Lee! He is straight up asian, and is origionally from South Korea, but he has lived in Alberta with his family for a number of years. He is a GREAT trainer. He has said some really nice things about me. When the AP's called him last night to see how I was doing, he said "What? Elder Porter? Oh man don't worry! I feel like he is already trained. Seriously. He's got it." So that was really really nice to hear him talk about me like that. It gives me some more confidence. And confidence is super important.
He is really good at street contacting which is kinda scary at first. You can tell people don't want to talk to you in the freezing cold wind. Some people are actually really really rude to the missionaries. I have been cussed out more than I ever have been in my life in the past 3 days. For real. But it is all okay when you find people that are interested or are really nice to you. I have already talked to hundreds of people, and it is great to talk to people and hear about their lives. Last night it started snowing again, and we stopped a man who proclaimed to be an athiest. He was extremely persistent in his belief that there could not be a God. I firmly held my ground and bore my testimony, and he didn't really know what to say. No progress was made, but a week ago there is no way I could see myself doing that. It is great to see myself growing and getting better so so fast. I feel like I will do really well once I catch on to the trends of the work and really get into a solid missionary mode. It will take some time, but it will come. I totally respect all the missionaries for hanging in there. I didn't realize how much of a sacrafice this all really is. I had been in the happy magical MTC land where everything goes your way. That is in no way how the mission field actually is. People say things and ask questions that would stump you unless you had the spirit with you. Without the spirit you would be eaten up by people in the world. Most people are not happy to see you, and even for a nice guy like me it is hard to keep smiling and tell them to have a nice day after they cuss you out or tell you to go to Hell and stuff. Please keep praying for me. I need it so much. This is impossible work without the Lord and prayers. I know we can do it if we always stive to do His work in His way.
The discouragement is overshadowed when you have success. We visited a semi/not-active member yesterday. She absolutely loves the missionaries, and has a testimony, but she doesnt go to church much. It makes no sense at all. She is a funny lady with a really strong personality. She is the kinda person that gets things done. We visited her and Elder Lee put me on the spot and had me share a spiritual thought. I talked about leaving my home that I love so so much, and leaving my best friends that I thought I could never go without, and I talked about how we simply need to put faith in the Lord and everything will happen how it is supposed to. I also talked about the Plan of Salvation and how we will always be with our famililes again. And she started crying! It was amazing. She told me in 19 years of meeting with missionaries all the time, I was the first missionary that made her cry. It took her 17 years to get baptized, so I was extremely proud of myself. I know the spirit told me what to say so I could touch her heart in the right way. Her 13 year old daughter Samantha is not baptized, but she loves us and gets along with us too. I think Elder Lee and I have a really good chance and presenting the Lord's message in the right way to help Samantha see why she needs to be baptized. I really think it could happen. I found out that the average baptism numbers for my mission in 2 years is about 5-6. I know numbers don't matter, but it is still nice to know.
Oh, I forgot to say. So I know when I lived in Utah I thought places like south Orem and South Salt Lake were ghetto. Well let me tell you. Any of you soft people living in Utah have no idea what a ghetto is. We live around LEGIT ghetto's. The chinese missionaries in our district have had their car shot before! They said they had to file a really strange accident report, haha. Also, you can hear gunshots sometimes in the apartment complexes around our area. Lots of druglords and drug deals. There are a few places where we aren't supposed to tract a lot. But don't worry, the Lord will keep us safe. It will all be okay. Elder Lee and his past companions have had success acting off impressions they had to tract in those complexes before. The Lord will always provide as we strive to follow his promptings. Especially as missionaries. Anyways, I will try to keep you updated with how my progress and the work is coming along here in the Ontario, London 2nd ward. Elder Lee and I are going to work miricles here. I can feel it. We are both missionaries with great faith, and I know good things are going to happen here. I love you all so so much! My new address is...
45 Pondmills #207
London, Ontario
N5Z 4W5
CANADA
Pray for the Lords work to go forth, and for the missionaries to find his elect and prepared people! Miricles happen in the mission field. Love you all so much!
Elder Porter
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