Millionares

This email is going to be a bit shorter because I want to send more pictures this week so just hang with me. 

For those of you wondering: Yoked: adj sl in the state of being physically strong to the point of immense size of muscles; strong excitement, usually accompanied by so e.g. That huge man walking that tiny dog is so yoked. That game got me so yoked.

I think I talked about Melvilles home team called the Millionares before. At least I've talked about the building and the name. But for a less actives birthday we went to another Mill's game and we were in for a treat. Even though we lost, it was quite the game. We could tell from the start that the teams were just getting rowdy. But in the second part (there are three parts to a hockey game) it was getting real bad. Right towards the end of it this guy on the Mill's team came and blind sided this dude to the ground. When he hit the ground he started seizing and a bunch of bad stuff but the refs didn't call it. So this other guy on the other team got pissed and attacked the guy who blindsided they guy who's still seizing on the ground. A punchout ensued with pieces of uniforms and hockey sticks laying all over the ice and eventually the player for the Mill's grounded his attacker and they got pulled apart with the guy from the other team getting escorted out of the rink. Just good Missionary entertainment don't yah think? In the end the other team just dropped three goals in a row and humiliated the Mill's but it's all chill in the ville.

Another good thing that happened this week was we were able to help a member move just a truck load of horse riding supplies across the street. To the store that he's moving to. It was some good work and some good stories cause Elder Lee got about 50 to 75 bridles put on him each time he went across the street. It looked hilarious. I don't have any pictures of it but if you try facebook stalking Elder Triton Lee you'll probably see the beauty.

One last thing for all of you worried about us not being able to get out to the reserve we were able to make it this week. It was interesting and dogs out there breed like rabbits. It was all good and we got a lesson out of it. We also were able to get out to Neudorf or as a lot of people here in the ville call it: Noodledorf. I think they call it that cause there is a lot of "interesting" people out there. One of them, the king of all beauties, Gage, was the best. If you just take your mind to a lot of movies how they have that kid who's like 10 and knows the whole town like the back of his hand if you toss him a coin. I imagine the kid from Les Mis. I can't remember his name though... But this kid Gage just roams Neudorf and just goes and visits anyone there. Pretty much everyone takes him in and claims him. Anyway this kid, who's about 10, we see him walking his dog on his bike. So we stop to talk to him and the first thing that comes out of his mouth, while grinning, is "What the hell are you guys doing round here"  I just about lost it right there so us while hiding laughter ask him where this family is and he just tells us right where they are. It was one of the funniest exchanges I've had with anyone so far.

Welp, I've got to have time to send pictures so that's all for today.

 

lots of love,

Elder Mikesell

 

I just remembered another crazy thing. Thanksgiving isn't only a U.S. Holiday. But, Canadians celebrate it the second week in October on a Monday so they can get a long weekend and so they can celebrate it without snow on the ground. Just another crazy thing about Canada.

 

 

Acts 2:20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come:

"When the lights go down in the city"

 

Pile out

Pile out: sl when missionaries just don't want to work pile. So this week we (Elder Lee and I) got the closest we ever have to just being piles. We had a plan to go to the reserve Peepeekisis (no it's not pee pee kisses) and everyone there decided to get on their horses and go to another town. Dead serious. We at least got told that they were going to have to cancel our lessons but They All Got On THeir Horses ANd Left. Haha it wouldn't have been so bad if we hadn't done everything else we could've that day in preparation for going there but we literally had nothing to do. So that was the closest we ever got to piling out thus far.

That being said we also had some excellent days this week. The first part of the week we had our first exchanges and I went with the district leader, Elder Baker, and Elder Lee went with Elder Spell. It was an interesting experience and I was able to learn some stuff from a missionary who this week hit his hump day (year mark). One of those things was the missionary genealogy it goes as thus: The trainer is the father the trainee the son. The trainers trainer is the sons grandfather. pretty simple My dad is Elder Lee and my Grandfather Elder Martens. I wasn't able to find out any further than that but I also have an uncle (forgot his name) and My grandfather died as soon as I entered the mission field. Another thing is the Elder you go on your first exchange with is your Godfather. So Elder Baker became my Godfather. It's just interesting when you get a whole bunch of LDS guys together they start relating more and more stuff to the gospel.

Another amazing thing that happened this week was I was able to give out my first Book of Mormon. I was so yoked just so yoked. Also I was able to go to a hockey game with a Non Active which was a lot of fun. In Melville we have a building that is nicer than any other building which apparently cost 10 million. This is our hockey rink and the team that plays there is called the Melville Millionaires. I was so impressed by it that I went and bought me some roller blades and I now have a goal to by the end of my mission become decent at skating. When I got them and first tried them on I could barely move around :D.

That was my week. I'd like to thank everyone who's emailed me and helped me out with those emails. I wish I could email each one of you specifically but you'll have to wait ;) I'll get to you sometime but for now I don't have much time. Keep on Keeping on. I have a firm testimony that everything will work out if you're patient and diligent. It may be hard right now but you can make it.

*The following came in an email to me.*

 To answer your questions first of all. We go to church in Yorkton which is 30-45 minutes away. This church is not like any other church I've been to it's centered between two shops and is something similar to adornit that brady and I worked on for a while. Since we're just a branch and haven't had 80 people come consistently for a while we don't have a church building. We have two other missionaries that come to our same branch. One of them, Elder Baker, is our district leader and the other has been in Yorkton since before us, Elder Spell. There is one other companionship in our district but they are over an hour away on a reserve called Carry the Kettle. We skype them for our District meetings but they also bring in all of the indicators for our district... (indicators: numbers signifying baptisms, lessons, referrals, etc.) We do have a car. Not only that but our cars are called The Fleet because I'm almost positive our mission has the most cars out of any other mission. I've only heard of a few companionships that do not have cars out of 120 missionaries. All of these cars are pretty much new so they're pretty nice and have a lot of new technology (per everyone using flash drives for music). Transfers are every 6 weeks. I'm in training right now which lasts two transfers, 12 weeks, 3 months. I highly doubt I'll be part of any transfers for a long time so you won't need to worry about me moving for a while.

More Pictures

The first exchange

 Elder Blommeart (MTC companion)

 Elder Lee

Bit o' Fun

 

Finally a bit of culture for you. Around these parts and by these parts I mean most of Canada. There are places called Tim Horton's. The only thing I can compare them to is a combination of Starbucks and LDS churches in Utah. They're like starbucks because they're the coffee and donut shop that EVERYONE goes to. They're just about as numerous as starbucks in the US as well. The thing that makes them like churches in Utah is that they're used as landmarks. So say you were giving someone directions you'd say something like "Just past the Tim Horton's by the Extra foods you take a left." That's my culture for today

p.s. their white hot chocolate isn't too bad :D

Tracting for Days

So first of all for this mass email I'd like to say that in my area there is like 2 members. So I've had a few days where all we did was tracting and almost every day we have time planned for tracting in case nothing else pops up (which we always pray that something will pop up). The one problem with tracting here is the town has about 4500 people in it so we've almost tracted every house we can within walking distance (walking time from one side of town to the other is around 30-45 minutes in case you were wondering). So yah lotsa fun. Also out of all that time tracting we bumped into two people who would let us come back :D. One of those I did the door approach and I was so psyched. I was expecting him to say something like I've got my own church( which there is about 20 different churches just in this town of 45 hundred people I swear...) or not interested but instead he said sure but i'm busy right now. That's another excuse but when we asked if we could come back later he said we could which was great.

One of the highlights of this last week was the Regina Zone zone conference. We had Elder Renlund of the seventy (if you have any time check out his talk from general conference he has so many quotable things in that talk) anywho he comes and we had just a wonderful time discussing stuff with him and getting knowledge from him. It was a very uplifting experience and hopefully will lead to us finding more people. Overall 10/10 would go again.

Finally I'm thinking I'm going to get sick of eating rice for dinner every night because that's all I can think to make. So if you could send one or two easy and cheap recipes that would be awesome. We have a recipe thing in our house but I don't know or trust any of the recipes yet and I think I would trust recipes you send me instead. I will be eternally grateful for having those and I might know a few more things to get at the grocery store then as well.

p.s. don't worry about me starving I've got some wonderful member families here that make sure we don't it's just there is only two of them so we end up making dinner 5-6 times out of 7

lots of love


*From an email to Mom*
 I have two great member families here in Melville. Actually they're the only member families in Melville if you can count 30 minutes outside of Melville as Melville for one of them. The Hs (the ones who live 30 minutes outside of Melville) have dinners for us every Sunday night which is great. Brother H also feeds us whenever we do service for him. He's an awesome guy and also lets us use his office here in Melville for, his printing shop and store, online and emailing which has been invaluable.

The Bs are the second family who live just a block away from our house. They feed us a lot as well and are kinda like grandparent figures to us, with the Hs like family. They kinda spoil us a lot and the other night we went golfing with Brother B. shhhhhhh ;) They've been great to us but a lot of the time we just make food for ourselves.

 MTC pictures:

The first one from Canada

Welp. I'm here. It's for real now. Canada has treated me nice so far. I was able to stay at the mission home for a few days and then I had a 8 hour drive out to where I am right now. Which is the beautiful town of Melville in Saskatchewan. My companion is Elder Lee and he's from Alberta so so far I've had companions from Canada and more specifically Alberta. I've already done street contacting, tracting, teaching member families, and teaching less actives. I think i'm doing well for only being out for less than a week. My branch, the Yorkton branch, is a nice little branch with a lot of good people. I think I've already picked up how to say Eh but I have not incorporated it into my speech yet. However a lot of canadians say Oh yah like OOhhh YAaahh and I've started saying that a lot. Something else I've kind of started saying is Give 'er which is similar to me saying go ape or something like that. I'd like to thank y'all for all your good thoughts and prayers. I've been doing pretty well out hear and hopefully it'll get even better. I hope y'all are doing great and if you have any questions I'd love to answer them but till then keep on keeping on.


p.s. I forgot to include this but I've got to say the hardest thing for me so far. It's been learning to change my vocabulary. Between tracting these massive houses and trying not to say stuff like cool or awesome changing my vocab is harder for me. So if any of you have some good synonyms for awesome that would be great. and neat doesn't cut it. neat is used way too much out here and it doesn't even make sense. All I want to do is say stuff like "how neat is that?" "It's pretty neat" ugh I now know how hard it is for someone to stop swearing...


*This information came in an email to me*
My companion is Elder Lee. For some reason he reminds me of Connor a bit so that's weird. Also I'm in Melville which is near Yorkton in Saskatchewan. There is some great members here but very few of them. The branch we go to generally has 40 people go to it of which only one family is from Melville. Another is about 15 minutes away from Melville with the rest from Yorkton. That leaves a lot of room for improvement.

Arrival in Winnipeg

Calvin with the mission president and his wife along with the 17 missionaries that arrived with Calvin in Winnipeg on Wednesday. (18 missionaries in all)  We received a message from the mission office along with it. Calvin met his companion last night and should be in his new area today.