Tales of a Freckle-Faced Ginger: Our New Little Canadian Missionary!

Hello!

My new address is:

(Leave a comment and Sister Messer's family will get it to you!)

Mississauga, ON

Canada

Alright, sooo i feel like i've been gone for a year already. Staying awake during personal study is a beast! Gah We live in Mississauga but it's actually outside of our area. our area is the Oakville area and it has Milton, oakville and part of mississauga in it...maybe. i'm still confused. it's big.

First night here we had a dinner apt that the elders set up. Elders have been living in our apt for like 10 years...that's a whole other story. haha It was with sister Radke. Her and her husband Slade are super sweet. She's pregnant and is having a rough time but made us dinner...plus they just moved so there were boxes everywhere. and her cat barfed on the carpet. haha Sister Wirthlin (yes, her great uncle is elder wirthlin) is allergic to cats so she was sneezing constantly. it was a good appointment. haha But we met the rest of our ward yesterday and it's a GREAT ward! We got invited to lunch at the Christensens house afterwards (the son, Aiden was baptized after the block and we had to fill the font) So we talked to members and ate lunch and she sent us home with a ton of food.

The ward is ecstatic to have sister missionaries, we're "whitewashing" oakville which means we're both new to the area & know nothing. The only info we have is what the elders left us. OH! we were sitting in church yesterday and 2 guys in jeans walk in. after sac meeting we went up and talked to them- they're from Macedonia and learned about the church in New Jersey and moved to Canada 8 months ago, googled the nearest church and just showed up. Hallelujah. Its crazy! we're setting up an appt with them tonight. they're brothers and they have super thick accents (kind of like greek accents) their names are Gotse & Gordon.

alright, next item of business...like i said, our area is very large. w/out a car would be impossible. When we're on the 401 going to Oakville i can see the CN tower in the distance! and lake ontario. I'm like say whaaaat! its pretty neat. The pic i sent of the tall towers i took on our way to the mississauga library (where i'm at now) It's a pretty city.

The new District is pretty cool. there are 6 elders and us. 2 mandarin speaking elders, 2 spanish elders and another pair of english elders. We cover mississauga & oakville i believe. The houses in Oakville are absolutely beautiful! Theyre high-pitched roofs and brick and the architecture is just super pretty. They're unlike houses i've seen before & super duper schmancy. Lots of town houses as well. super classy area! Pretty wealthy area as well. the neighborhood I live in is really nice, not as fancy as oakville but a great apt for missionaries. The elders left a bunch of stuff...i'm currently using someones old bedspread...ya. that's changing today. For the toilet paper roller they screwed a piece of fabric in the wall and hung it on that. hahaha we laugh at it and continue to use it. There are a lot of tall appartment building where we have to buzz them from the bottom floor to get in. I've only seen that in movies. lol

So like i told you on the phone, there were 15 missionaries that flew out to Toronto the same day as me. we all went to different places and I forgot to tell you! Sis Wirthlin, my trainer, has only been out 6 weeks. YA. 6 weeks! She's good though. Basically there are 2 newbies covering Oakville. president must see something in us. haha we'll see about that. Oh, crazy thing--elder bybee, i told you about him, we got out and Pres was like, oh, you're speaking farce (i dunno how to spell that but it's what people from iran speak) They don't teach it in the MTC.

Flying into Toronto was crazy. we had to go through customs and immigration, it's SOOO racially diverse around here. Everyone has an accent and it's hard to understand them sometimes. We visited 2 older ladies my first night here, one was from jamaica & the other from Nigeria. See? everyone is just so diverse. haha then we had dinner with the Galletly's (who feed us a lot) and she's from China & he's from England and she cooks super delicious chinese food.

Our district teaches an ESL class twice a week, maybe we can get Gotse & Gordon to come to that! haha but it's fun, it's an English as Second language class. mostly asian people come to it. Should be fun though.

We have a cmas tree! it's so festive. haha The weather here hasn't been bad. the locals say it's really mild and will get worse but it's rainy a lot. It's snowed but hasn't stuck and it feels colder than 45 cuz of the humidity but its really not that bad!

Flying into Detroit was really pretty. Michigan is beautiful! Super green and kinda swampy looking from the plane. It was quick, all 15 of us were rushing to meet our connection and the flight to Toronto after that was only like 45 min. tops. It was a tiny plane...i was just glad to get here.

Sounds like everything is going good, can't wait to get your packages :) Hopefully the mail system will work well and I can get everything you send me!

That's about it...got lots to do today! ah!

love sis messer