Sept. 24 2014

Well today is the first day of school! yay for Canadian school!!:) haa I guess the government and the teachers finally agreed on something. The government did not do anything about the protesting but I think that the teachers got their way.

So this week our whole zone drove up to Cranbrook (2.5 hours from Trail) for stake conference and Leghbridge (3.5 hours from Cranbrook) the next day for zone conference.  For zone conference and stake conference  Elder Allan F. Packer was there and he talked to us and I got to shake his hand and eat lunch right by him at zone conference!:) he asked me if I was related to the organist that play the organ in general conference, I said I'm not sure. So can you find out if there is any relation? Because there has been about 20 people who has asked me that question. Elder Packer is going to speak in this upcoming General Conference so make sure that you pay attention and when you see him speak you can think me. :) hah He spoke in stake conference when they called a new stake president. 

Yesterday for zone pday we went golfing! A member owns the golf course so we got to golf for free! It was so fun! I want to make golfing a hobby. Although right now I'm not very good at golfing I got 71 in a 9-hole that's not very good haha. I rented a cart! (we had to pay for the carts):  ), that's okay it was so fun! I almost tipped the cart                                              

over when I was driving because we were doing doughnuts and trying to drift in the wet grass, and also because I was driving backwards from hole to hole. haha Im the worlds best backwards driver! I jumped out of the cart while it was driving because I lost my ball, I almost caught my balance but the ground was too wet and the cart was going to fast I slipped and slid 6 feet. haha that was fun.   :)

This week was slow and we did not go much because my comp got sick and then I got really sick. I was out, I slept for like 20 hours. Last week was a very productive, a week of sleeping, reading Scriptures, studying, watching church stamped movies, and taking medication. haha  So now this week we have to make up for last week. And this week we may be having a baptism because our investigator said she wanted to be baptized! If not then it will not be the first time she cancelled  her baptism. 

Sept. 15 2014

September 15,2014

So this week went good. We did a lot of service, probably more than we should have, but we did. We helped someone in the ward move. she was moving from an apartment that was not a good place and not in a good location. She was married. She wants to get her kids back. Her parents are very active. they were the ones that called and asked us to help. So we helped her move into a home that is nice. That was a two day job. We helped for about 3 hours the first day and about 2 hours the second day. There was a lot of stuff, more junk than there should be.

We taught our investigator a lesson last week and she even fed us dinner on Thursday. She gave us steak and it was good. We got a call from someone in the ward asking us to help someone not a member to pick apples, and pears in her yard. She is an older lady, and a heavy smoker. But she was so happy that we were picking

Elder Condie's watch obsession

the apples and pairs. She was really nice. She thought that I was really handsome (she said that a couple of times). She said thank you so much lots of times because otherwise the fruit would fall off and rot. As we were leaving she said thank you and we shook her hand. But then she was like “I have to thank you like this”, and she put out her arms and gave me a hug. haha I was like “your welcome, thank you for the fruit.” And then we hopped in the car because it looked like she wanted more. haha;)  We filled like 3-4 boxes of apples and pairs. We gave them to people in the ward.

We did some street contacting last week at a nice park that we live by called Gyro Park. The Columbia flows right by it. We meet some interesting people there. We do more street contacting because it is more successful than door-to-door.

Right now we are in Creston with the district because interviews with the president are tomorrow. So that is what happened last week.

Thank you for all you all do. Love you all.   

Sept. 9 2014

Hey Family!

So Thing are going so well right now. So this month President has challenged all of us as a mission to hand out 10,000 Books of Mormon, which is possible! Every missionary as a companionship has to hand out at least 2.3 Books of Mormon a day. So far my companion and I handed out 6 of them. That is really good for this area because this is a really hard area- Trail is. Because there are SO SO SO many different churches! Like 2 JW, Gateway to Trail, Church of Castlegar, First Baptist Church,  Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day saints, and like 5 others haha so there are a lot of religions. There are also a lot of crazy people like in the head crazy haha but that's all good. In two weeks we are going to Lethbridge for like 3-5 days because its some conference, and there will be a general authority there speaking to us. Elder Allan F Packer. Elder Packers son. There will also be interviews by President, like just to see how we are doing, and other things.

Today is p day because it is transfers this week. I’m staying in this area for another 5-6 weeks. Our DL Elder Hulse is going to Calgary. He is from Utah and went to sky view. He is going to USU.

 So this week went good. last week we had district meeting and the ZLs were there. One of them handed me  a letter and said this is for you. And I was like “I got mail?!? no way?! Really?!” and it was from the Hermansens. They sent letters to me. That was cool.

 So there was no baptism this week. But she came to church on sunday and she was crying all through it. You could tell that she was feeling the spirit. This last week we have been doing a lot of street contacting trying to find someone.

 So good news! this month they are going to approve the use of Facebook for missionaries. we could still get on but they asked us not to. So they will let us use it and this fall they are going to give us ipads. I’m way excited for that! So as far as winter clothes go, I am not going to buy boots because you dont really need them because we will be doing alot of driving. But I will be buying a coat. Elder Lybe said that he bought his online. But I dont want to do that so I will try and find a store somewhere that sells coats.

Thats way cool that my mission plaque is up. I bet it looks good.   DAD! that football from the USU game is MINE! hahajk I did not see the video yet, but I will watch on a different computer. The members here in Trail are way cool. they feed us dinner like everyday. We have a dinner like 6-7 days a week.  

 Everything is going good. Thanks for everything. Love you all!

Hey Caleb!

CAnada is way awesome! I have not had any doors slammed in my face yet. I saw that video of mom and the bucket challenge. I would never have thought that she would do it! haha my comp is nice. he’s a cool guy. thanks for the letter Caleb.

Love you too. 

Sept. 1, 2014

Taken from the ferry

Wow!! Thank you so much for the suitcase and everything inside it! The handbag is way nice and the suit was nice. I wore it to church when I gave my talk! I talked about finding joy through scripture study. I was asked to speak for 15 minutes and I honestly thought that I had less then 8 minutes. But when I gave it it turned out that I took almost 20 minutes! That was amazing! It was a great talk! The funny thing is that none of the bishopric was there! Bishop Redakop is a way cool guy but some Sundays he works so he misses church alot. His 1st counselor was in England all of last month and his 2nd counselor was gone. So none of the bishopric was there. It was kinda funny.

Thank you for the bread and cookies. it did not go bad. That is the right size of suit case. With the address you will have to wait because I don't think I will be in this area until Christmas. 

This week went by so fast! That baptism has not happened yet, but it will sometime. This week we did alot of street contacting at two huge nice parks that are in Trail and Castlegar.      

Elder Condie

"Look what book I found!!" -written by Elder Condie's seminary teacher, Donny Anderson

August 25 2014 This week was Awesome

So this week was awesome, and it went by SO fast. I cant believe that this month is almost over! On Wednesday and Thursday we were in Cardston which is like a 7-8 hour drive from where we are at. so that's like driving to St. George for you guys haha. I like Cardston it is, no joke, just like Utah. It has a lot of LDS churches, and the members hand out money. I did not get any money but that is okay. We got to Cardston at around 7;00 and we checked into the hotel with all of the other missionaries that were there. After we checked in, the Nelson elders and us, we cleaned out our cars because car inspections were the next day eh. But all of the washes that we knew of were closed and it was getting late so we had to head back to the hotel and go to bed. That next morning we woke up early because we had to wash the cars. Our cars were hit by thousands of bugs because of the drive. When we headed out it was raining and it was kinda cold so we drove to the car wash, and vacuumed the cars and washed and waxed them so they looked super good. When we got done we drove back to the hotel and changed and headed to the church which was right across from the temple. All of the missionaries in the Western or Eastern zone were there so we had like 40-50 missionaries.

After the temple worker talked to us, President Nicholas talked to us and we all ran to the temple because it was pouring rain. That temple is SO SO SO SO NICE inside! We all got to do a session and they have a new film that we got to see. It was good. They were telling us before we went in about the temple and how neat it is and how it is built, and how people come to see it to get ideas on how to build new temples. There is a lot of wood work in there and all hand done because they did not have power tools back then. Most of that wood is extremely expensive because of the type of wood that they used.

After the session we ate lunch there. That was way good. we ate roast beef (beast) (haha) and potatoes. Then we went to the church. the Mission President talked to us for like 6 minutes. then we had a testimony meeting, and then we all went home. We got to drive another 6-8 hours back home in Trail! :) We got home around 11;00 or 11:30 haha 

So we did not have a baptism on Friday. She cancelled it again. she has a mental condition so that could be one of the factors. But she digs deep. she digs so deep into the doctrine and wants to know everything before she gets baptized. She is asking questions like "Why is Lord capitalized it?" and "Why cant I pray to Jesus?" stuff like that. She knows the answers and we have taught her everything. She knows that is church is true and she has received an answer. So we are still working on that. Also we have been working on a member that had some problems. his wife kicked him out because of the choices he’s made. They do not want to file for divorce  because they want to work things out.  He had smoking, and drinking problems. We worked with him and yesterday he had a steak dinner with his wife and he is now moving back with her. They are older but not super old, they have a pretty nice house, but he looks so much happier now!  

READ THIS BELOW FIRST AND TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK!! 

So there is a new challenge that has been going around called the "Ice Bucket Challenge"  for the support of MLS Mitt Romney did it, George Bush did it, and people every where did it. So guess what?! Me and Elder Lybe are going to do it!!! :) And then we are going to challenge the mission President to do it! We are going to hike a short mountain so you have a good view and we are going to do the Ice bucket challenge. We will film it and send it to you and we will put it on Facebook! maybe we will get lots of shares and views that it will go viral and other missionaries will do it too. Maybe we will be on the news, they might show it. But yeah that's the plan for today!:)  

  

Love you all thanks for the prayers and support. :) 

--

-Elder Condie

August 2014

Hey everyone!

So sorry that the last two weeks have been kinda crazy. Last week the church internet did not work at all! So when we were there trying to get it to work one of the members invited us to lunch at McDonald's so we left right away. At lunch we told her that the internet was not working, so she said that we can use her computer. That was why there was not 'long' or 'detailed' letters because we had like an hour of email. So last week we drove to Calgary. BC to Calgary is a LONG drive! Its like 8 hours! We went to Calgary to the mission home because it was "New Trainers meeting" so all of the new elders and sister were there. That meeting lasted only 30 minutes to 60 minutes haha so we drove back 8 hours to BC.

Last week we taught Nina she has not been baptized yet, but she is set and on track to be this week and she wants to go to the temple! She told the JW that she will never become a JW and she stopped studying with them. 

Yesterday she went to church for all three hours! She loved it. The temple President came and spoke with his wife in Sacrament. That was really good. We visited some less-actives that the bishop asked us to go see. After that we had dinner at a members house and we took off for Nelson, because we are spending P day here with 2 other elders. One of them is DL and he’s from UTAH! He went to Sky View! he’s a cool kid. 

That week we went street contacting at Gyro Park and I almost placed my first book of Mormon. I gave the guy the book after talking with him. We kinda talked about the 1st lesson. He heard and thought about some crazy things about Joseph Smith and of the church. We cleared that all up. He thought that he was god, the sky is god, the ground is god, the water is god and so on. He thought that religion was like a back-bone and it was like a cop-out and that it was not needed. He looked and seemed interested when I gave him the Book of Mormon, but he gave it back. But he kept our mormon.org card with our number on it that was in the book.

When we visited one of the less-actives, her friend comes to her home who is not a member. She is Baptist. She got there right before we shared the message. We share a message from the BoM and I had a BoM on me that I told myself that I was going to carry around just in case ("like be prepared") so I took the BoM out and turned to the scripture that we were on and gave it to her to follow along. She was like “thats from the bible. I read that all the time.” (Because the Bible and the BoM go hand-in-hand) And she agreed with everything we said. We told her (shes like 60 or 70) that she can keep the BoM and she did and I gave her a Mormon.org card with our number on it. Then we left.   

So this week we are going to Cardston to go to the temple as a mission or as a zone. I’m looking forward to that. it should be good. And this week we have a baptism. it is Nina's baptism. And that’s about all for last week and this week to come. This week we have the temple and the baptism. Ill let  y'all know how that goes next week!:) 

So we live right across the street from a JW. every Wednesday at 9:00 there are like 30-40 of them that meet there and its crazy because there are like 2 of them that are 7-9 years of age! So anyway we go service tracking in our service clothes and they are knocking in the same neighborhood as we are. A lady and I think its her son, she comes up to us and gives us this pamphlet about their website. she told us that their web site is translated in over 700 different languages. Then she sees our name tags and she backs up a little bit and says  "oh you boys are doing the same thing we are doing" and Elder Lybe is like “yep we are going around seeing if anyone needs help with anything because we like to do service and help serve the community" (he said something along the lines of that). the jw’s like to do service too because they HAVE to. If they do not reach a certain amount of hours then they get disfellowshiped  and they are disfellowshiped in front of everyone in church. So after he says that shes like “oh okay you guys have a nice day.” And then walks off.  

Thats good to hear that the USU stuff worked out. :) So am I registered and admitted to go to USU for sure then?! And is the Leave if Absence set for 2.5 years as of today? If so then can you call Dixie State and tell them that I will not be attending Dixie? If they need some username or password I don't remember it. Maybe Nancy will be able to help if it does not work. How is my dog doing?  Sorry that the first emails have been bleh. I hope this email makes up for that and that I get extra brownie points hahaha     Love you all thanks for all the support and everything. 

Elder Condie      

…also. Im giving a talk in church this Sunday! haha

Jaden's First Letter From Canada

August 4 2014                                   

Hello everyone!                                                                                           

So I’ll start from the beginning.  I woke up from the MTC at like 1:45 in the morning. I got like 35 minutes of sleep that night.  All the people going to Calgary met at the spot on campus.  We waited for a while and then got on the big bus. The bus took us to the airport in SLC.  I went through the airport security and they scanned my big bag. They took it off and put it on a table and opened it up. I saw this happen by the way! They took out the Jesus the Christ book and all of those books were still in the package. Anyway they took that out, brushed it off as if there was something on it, and they put it back in with this little paper and sent it off to the plane! haha so then I went through airport security, got through that with no troubles. Then we got on the plane that flew to Denver. Then we had like 30 minutes to kill. That was when i called home!:) Then they called my flight. I got on the plane. I slept most of the time on both flights. When we landed in Calgary we had to go through customs and immigration. (so you give them your passport stand and wait there and they print off a paper and staple it into your passport). then I went to find my bags. I sat there with the other missionaries and waited for the other missionaries. Then we all went out and saw the mission president and his assistants eh. So after that we went through all of our bags in to the trailer and headed off to the mission home. We get to the mission home, have lunch and some training and then some free time. I took a nap haha. Then we had dinner and then some more training. All the new missionaries spent the night at this hotel eh. The president bought a bunch of rooms for each companionship. Morning comes we eat breakfast and then they take us to the mission home. We had more training, then we hopped v on a bus that took us to this church for zone transfers. That's where I find out my new companion and my 1st area. My new companion is Elder Josh Lybe. He’s super cool and a good trainer. Before I tell y'all my first area, have everyone guess................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................so my first area is.....!!!! British Columbia Trail/Castlegard!!!! So it has nice mountains everywhere and it is the farthest place you can get in Alberta. We have a car. Its nice but we are getting a new one soon. Its an SUV. Haha. Anyway we have a baptism coming up this Saturday! I have only been to one lesson so far. Her name is Nina. She referred herself on mormon.org. but one bad thing is that she is having some discussions with Jehovah's Whiteness but she still wants to be baptized. Anyways things are going good good. We are fed like every night. Ill send some pictures some time this week. Did you all get the shirts? Sorry there was not one for every one. The MTC did not have enough eh. Love you all. Ill prob. send another email tomorrow because its zone p day so we drove a long time to get here so we kinda have 2 p days! Haha. Also I saw another Elder Condie and Sister Condie eh!!!!! That was so cool. Ill send the pictures! Love you all. Elder Condie

Elder Condie, Elder Condie, and Sister Condie.....Same mission!

    

Elder Condie's first area, Castlegar- (photo from www-hellobc.com)

First companion/trainer in Canada Elder Lybe in British Columbia