January 13, 2015

This week was the craziest week ever!

We were super low on food and out of money last month so last
Preparation day we decided to go out Costco and load up! We bought so
much food! The only bad part is we're like sick of all of it now haha..
we still have about 2 months of most of the food left to eat though...
oh well. Then we Met with our investigator Sean and shared Elder
Bednars Patterns of Light videos with him and he really like it. He
seems to still be progressing.

Tuesday was when things got really weird! We went to lunch with a
member and she told us to meet her at a Japanese restaurant at 12:30
and she didn't get there till 1:15 or later and that was a pretty big
waste of time but we ate lunch and caught up since she had been in
china for the last month. She is super rich and has like 4 houses in
china. Were trying to get her to come to church more but it kinda
seemed like a lost cause. She is still living a good life but just
wont come to church. That's something that seems particularly hard
with Chinese people, getting them to give up 3 hours on sunday to come
and listen to a bunch of people talk about the gospel. Especially
since its in English. 

We also traded our car for bus passes for the day and that helped a lot with contacting. We got onto the LRT and talked to tons of people! This is the really crazy part... So just before we were going to get off A TON of people got on the train. There was literally no room for anyone else on the train.. and i was on the wrong side of this giant crowd and my stop was coming up. I was talking to a member sitting next to me when we pulled up to our stop. I said goodbye and told her goodluck because her son is serving in eastern Canada. I started shuffling through the crowd and when i was about half way through all of these people more people stepped on and then the doors started closing!!! I wiggled my way as fast as i could and reached out my arm to stop the doors from closing. Literally an inch before my hand could reach far enough to stop the doors, they shut... I pushed the button to open them again but they would open. The Conductor came over the intercome and said step away we have to pull away right now, everyone step away we have to pull away right now there's another train behind us. My moral dropped... There was no way i was getting off and as soon as we started to pull away I saw Elder Bird had gotten off, we made eye contact and he said "Ill stay here". Just then a guy next to me said "you can be on splits with me". That made me feel a lot better. So i rode the train for a while and talked to this guy not thinking much of it. A few stops went by and since we only ever ride the LRT up and down and never ever get off it didn't even cross my mind to get off and get on a train going back the other way...... at least it didn't cross my mind until we were on our way to the very last stop at the end of the line... Im an idiot.. haha Everyone got off the train since its the last stop and it was really weird.. long story short i got back to Elder bird and we ended up being separated for about 25 minutes. We got back together and just laughed it off... I didn't think that was going to happen again any time soon but it almost happened again yesterday!! luckily this time i got off haha.. i guess weve got to be careful on the LRT!


Also a native told us to stick our bible somewhere it doesn't belong.. lots of drunk and high people on the LRT but there are also lots of Chinese people so its worth it. We had dinner with another member and she cooked us Gyros and Cheese cake. It was super good. The rest of our week wasn't too crazy. We had a few good lessons, a Zone Training Meeting where we got trained on facebook and how we use it. Im making a new one so if you could help me connect with old friends or anyone that might be interested in the gospel that would be great. We have an hour a day to use it but its really ineffective if we use it that long..

I got to see Elder Garver again at this ZTM and it is like a flash back to home everytime i see him! We always just say "dang, we are in Canada right now!" Im sure its even weirder for him since hes been out for like 18 months now! Elder Birds birthday was on the 10th and we went out to eat a lot this week because all of the members wanted to take him out for a treat. We went and got hotpots with yiming. Its a really fancy Chinese food where everyone has their own boiling water pot built into the table of really weird not edible things like roots, mushrooms, various parts of animals, fruits, and vegetables that you boil meat or vegetables in and they absorb the flavor. It was soooo good!! we ate a ton! They also have a bunch of weird things that we ate. Fish stomach, cow stomach, goat/lamb, chicken hearts, fish tofu, fish balls, squid, a bunch of weird mushrooms, and a bunch of regular meats and veges too. I am getting super used to weird Chinese food and everything tasted really good! i also had some whole deepfried fish today. We also had Dimsum yesterday and that was super great! The food here is pretty awesome but everything is super expensive. hotpots for 3 people was $100 dollars.. luckily the members paid for us.

Overall it was a great week, im learning a lot from the Book of Mormon and reading it everyday. We are working hard but during your mission ive come to find that even with a lot of hard work results are few and far between. At least that's what it seams like.. I know im making a difference in my life and hopefuly in others.. it just is very hard to see. But i know that when i look back at my mission life in 2 years i will be able to see how far ive come and how far others have come in their journeys in developing faith in our savior. You don't always see results but if you are working hard I know the lord will bless you. Even if it takes a while for us to notice how much he has changed our lives. We also had the great opportunity to go to the Temple today. Sooo great. I love the spirit there and being able to see our mission president. I hope all of your weeks are great and know that i really do love all of you and each of you have helped me in my journey to this point of my life in lots of different ways and all of you are invaluable! Love you! be safe -Elder Ostler