9.21.2009

Hello Everyone,

So, I'm officially a real missionary teaching real people (not fake ones in the MTC). I am loving it out here. Winnipeg is very beautiful and very flat. As President Paulson puts it "you can stand on a tuna can and see a train coming for days". President Paulson and his wife are really nice and I really like them. The first day I was here I went on splits with an Elder Salsbury (I think) and we taught this really good couple named Bernie and Chastity. He is a drug addict but he is trying his hardest to stay clean. I think they will get baptized some time. He just needs to stay clean and they need to get married. Then Elder Salsbury took me street contacting which is pretty scary thing. After a while I got use to it and gained more confidence.

Well the next day I met my trainer. His name is Elder Ewell (pronounced E-Well). He is a super neat guy and we get along great. He is one of the best missionaries (or so I've been told) so I'm grateful to have him as my companion. He is from Tokerville, UT outside of St. George and he has been here for about 7 months. We've been teaching, tracting, and proseliting lots. This is tough work but it is so rewarding.

One experiance the other day was we went to go see this girl Melissa. She was a turn over so somebody else found her but she wasn't in thier area. Supposidly the day before we went there, the elders went over and her boyfriend told them to come back another day but kinda rudely. Well we went back over and the boyfriend answers the call box (outside of an apartment, i'm not sure what they are called). He told us that we needed to go away and they weren't intrested. We apologized and turned around to leave. We were standing there planning what to do next and we here "hold on". The boyfriend and the daughter came out and he told us to teach his 5 year old daughter cause she never gets to her stuff like that. We came up and taught the daughter and the mom, Melissa. The boyfriend wasn't interested and went to take a shower. By the end of the lesson, he was there and participating. We commited them to be baptized (soft commitment "when you find out these things are true, will you be baptized) and they said yes. They are so excited to see us again. We are going there tonight. Best part is they told us they are getting married in a month. That takes the law of chastity problem off the table.

Two things that are completely different that I'm working hard to do is 1. Not use missionary swear words, this includes slang such as awesome, sweet, cool, or anyword that doesn't mean what we use it as. I am constantly trying to correct myself.
2. Partting my hair. My hair is trying to recover from using gel which I don't think there has been gel in my hair for years.

There is only one temple here, and its in Regina (I don't laugh at it anymore) I only get to go there if I serve in Regina. I will probably be sending a few things home. Backpacks aren't allowed and no missionaries get to baptize, only the members do.

My first area is called Agnes (cause that is the street we live on). It is a "nice" part of town. haha. It definately is an eye-opening experiance but I love my area. It is so great. The people there are very nice and talkative. There are lots of natives here, there are also people from all over the world. I have rarely met the canadians we think of (white, with a heavy canadian accent). Yesterday we taught the second lesson to a man named Sacapau. He is from Thailand and speaks some crazy language that isn't Thai. We are trying our hardest to get him a Book of Mormon in his language but we are having difficulty. He barely speaks english and had to translate for his entire family. We would then ask him understanding questions and he barely understood what we were talking about. It makes me wonder what he was translating. Whatever haha.

Well not much more to say. I enjoyed talking to everyone the other day. I wrote lots of people and gave them my address with my name first which means I won't get it, so i'm going to have to write them all back.

In closing, I just want to say that I know that this gospel is true. Especially from teaching people from all over the world, I know that it is the same all over the world. Just from getting out there and teaching people, my testimony has grown an amazing amount. I challenge you guys to get more involved in missionary work at home. It is amazing how important members are to investigators. Well I love you all and hope to hear from you soon. Say hello to Jayden for me and teach him how to swim by the time i get home so we can play water polo or something.

Love,
Elder Turner

Here is a picture of Paul at the airport in SLC as he was flying to Canada. He ran into a friend of the family from Tokyo. The Mittons use to live in their neighborhood. It's a small world!