Elder Wesley Holt: Week 61

Well, this is one of the saddest days of the mission... transfers. After 4 transfers here, they are shipping me out to Barrie so that I can experience some more real Canadian winter, haha. My new companion is Elder Turner. Apparently he was Elder Stowell's zone leader in Hamilton, so I am excited to serve with him! I will be in English work for at least the next transfer :/ so hopefully I don't lose all my Chinese! I'll have to be extra diligent in studying Chinese during my free time.

Unfortunately I don't have much time to email, because we have to drive to Brampton tonight. I attached a recording, but I wasn't really sure what to say in it, haha. Hope everyone is having a safe and happy winter!

Elder Holt

洪长老

Excerpts from the recording:

Hello!! It’s Elder Holt and Elder Stowell here in Windsor.

Umm…so…first news, last night we got our transfer calls, and Elder Stowell is staying here in Windsor, and I’m leaving. So sad. I don’t want to leave Windsor, but unfortunately I’ll be leaving tonight and I’ll be going to Barrie, which is north of Toronto, probably a lot colder than Windsor, and I’ll be a zone leader in Barrie. I’m so nervous for it. And I’ll also be in English work. They pulled me out of Chinese work which is kind of sad. I hope I don’t lose all my Chinese in the next few transfers, haha. But yea, I’m going to Barrie. My new companion’s name is Elder Turner and I don’t know him very well, but apparently Elder Stowell knows him. He was Elder Stowell’s zone leader before. So that’s the transfer news.

Today was just full of packing and saying goodbye. We just had lunch with Alicia and said goodbye to her and we also said goodbye to our investigator, Nill, and he wrote me the funniest little note. I’ll put a picture of it in an email. I’ll really miss the people here in Windsor. They’ve really helped me grow a lot here in this area and it’s really sad to leave, but I know the Lord needs me elsewhere now, and so I’m excited to go to Barrie! Wooo!!! Haha

It’s hard to believe how much stuff you accumulate in 5 or 6 months. It took me forever to pack it all up. Oh man, I’m so tired and we have a 4 hour drive ahead of us to Brampton tonight, so I’m not looking forward to that.

And…my mind is kind of a mess now because we just said goodbye to people and I don’t know…I have a lot of mixed feelings right now. Just sad about leaving, excited about a new area… Every time you leave an area it’s like leaving family to go on your mission all over again. It’s the same feeling. But, it’s exciting. I don’t really know what I’m going to be doing as a zone leader, yet, haha. It’ll be exciting and probably a little overwhelming at first, but we’ll see how it goes.

Other things that happened this week… Had exchanges, went to Leamington, taught a lesson in Spanish, which was kind of difficult, actually. They have a Spanish investigator, but they can’t teach him because they don’t know Spanish, haha. We found this pretty solid investigator named Tracy, I could totally see her getting baptized. We met her at the beginning of the transfer, but she wrote down her phone number wrong. But she was super interested. We saw her again on the street and we were like, “Hey, what happened. You gave us the wrong number”, and she said, “No I didn’t”, and so she checked and realized she did. So, we got the right number and met with her. She actually had a lot of cool experiences. She felt like God has been guiding her during her life, so she came to church and I think she liked it. It seemed like she enjoyed it.

We ate tofu this week. Elder Stowell and I are masters at making tofu now. We’ve done it twice and it’s pretty dang good. Last P-day we played ping pong and Elder Stowell beat me; he’s too good. I got rusty; I have to practice again. We had three investigators at church on Sunday. It was pretty exciting! It’s been hard to get people to church but we ended off the transfer on a good note!

So, how is everything going there? I look forward to reading your emails and hearing from you all.

So…here’s my recording.

Bye bye 再见 (Zàijiàn)

Found a "Buddha board" on exchanges! So I started messing around with it. They are so cool! :)