Transfers

Well another week has come and gone, and with it another transfer call which let me know that this would be mine and Elder Leon's last week together. :( It was a good week though. We worked hard and saw a lot of success. We met almost all of our goals for the week too. It always feels good to end the transfer with a good week. Our miracle investigator Mireille accepted a baptism date, as well as Sada one of our other investigators from Nepal.

Saturday was a big farewell dinner for one of the guys in our ward who's going into the MTC on Wednesday. We went to that, but had to leave a lit early for transfer calls. We had to be in our apartment at 8 but the call didn't come until 9. I found out I'm being transferred back to the Ottawa zone haha. The area is called Petawawa and it's purely English. It's the furthest West area in our mission. My companion is going to be Elder Boehme and he's from the same transfer as me (3rd time!). I'm excited to go back but I'm worried I'm going to lose some of my French. I'll have to make sure to always speak French with Elder Boehme.

Sunday after church I took some pictures and said goodbye to the members of the branch. That night we stopped by Shun (recent convert) and Bin (his dad who is an investigator) to say goodbye, then we stopped by a former investigator and he ended up feeding his snake a live mouse while we were there and he let us record it. It was pretty crazy but it ate up all the memory on my camera haha. He also has like 3 mountain bikes, one of them is worth like $9,000. He let me take some pictures of those too.

Today Elder Leon and I are planning to visit some of the shops in Old Quebec that we've been wanting to visit for a while. I hope you're all still alive and doing well! Happy birthday to three of my grandmas!

Love, Elder Oxborrow

< 3

hi mom! Hey I heard Ashley Warburton is going to serve in Canada. Do you know which mission? Also, Just thought I'd tell you my companion and I have been cooking our meals out of the snow cookbook :)

Love Brenden

April 22

Hey everyone!

We had a really awesome week this week with a couple cool miracles. On Tuesday we didn't have any lessons planned for the afternoon so we decided to go tracting, even though afternoons aren't always the best time to knock. We knocked a building of eight apartments and no one was home in the whole building. We stepped outside and started discussing what we could do instead to be more effective with our time. We were about fresh out of ideas when suddenly a guy walked approached us and in English asked if we were from Utah haha. I told him I was, but Elder Leon was from California. He said "Well I'm not Mormon, but I like Mormons, could you guys come by sometime?" Turns out he used to live in Western Canada so he speaks good English and teaches at one of the few English schools here in Quebec. He's really into camping so he's been through Utah a lot to visit the national parks and stuff, so he's met a lot of members in his travels. He knows a lot about the church and is very open to learning more, so that was one of our cool stories from this week. The next one was Mireille. Last Monday we were just wrapping up our p-day at the institute center when a lady walked in the front door and started asking us what we were all about. We gave her a tour of the chapel which she really enjoyed and we set up an appointment with her for the next day so we could teach her more. The next day we taught her with the St. Onges, the senior couple here, and it went really well. She was very open to our message and seemed very excited about the Book of Mormon and the pamphlets we gave her. We invited her to come to church on Sunday. She showed up early and stayed nearly for all three hours. She's planning on coming to English class this week as well so we have high hopes for her.

The missionary work is going well here and the weather has been more bearable although the wind is still pretty chilly usually. Today we're going to check out a waterfall so I'll include those pictures in next weeks e-mail. Love you all and hope you're doing well!

Elder Oxborrow

P.S. Tell Nathan Eggli hi from me! I'd love to hear from him!

April 15

Hey everyone!

I loved hearing about Morgan's baby blessing! Wish I could have been there but it was good to see a lot of the family was able to make it.

It was a bit of a slow week accompanied by two days of snow storms. It's quite a bit warmer today though which is good. I've decided it's just a bad idea altogether to guess when the last snowfall is, because you're always wrong haha. We had a hard time seeing our investigators this week due to finals coming up and stuff.

On Friday we gave blood which was fun. It's a good way to do service while still having opportunities to talk with people. Saturday we didn't have a lot planned so we had a good three hour chunk of knocking time. This morning we played some Risk at the Elders quorum president's house and then he took us to lunch at the restaurant at the army base. It was pretty cool. Not too much to report this week and I don't have much time but I'm doing well and love you all!

Love, Elder Oxborrow

Happy Conference!

Dear family and friends,

Hope you all enjoyed conference as much as I did! It's great to have men leading this church who are so close to the Lord. Plus, I hear a got some airtime during a program in between sessions. I though that was pretty cool. Our district watched the clip this morning, and I think Sister Landeen is probably feeling like a celebrity by now haha. She's an awesome missionary who likes to have fun and work hard. It's awesome they showed the story of her and her family.

Last Monday some members in the Quebec ward took us all to a Cabane à Sucre which means "Sugar Cabin" and basically it's a place where you go to eat an unlimited amount of food with an unlimited amount of homegrown Canada maple syrup! It was delicious. It's pretty cool the way they harvest the maple syrup. They tap into the trees and hook up hoses between them all (see photos), then boil down the liquid so it thickens to the point where it's syrup. Delicious all natural syrup that I never even knew existed before I got here haha. The rest of the week also went well. On Tuesday our English class students brought us donuts as a thank you which was super cool. Most of them are at least in their 50s and very kind. We also had splits this week with the zone leaders which went well. I worked in their area for about a day and a half. Friday was Zone Study which means there were some other missionaries staying at our aparment Thursday night. We also had interviews with president as part of Zone Study. We didn't talk about too much other than him giving me some stretching ideas to help out with sore feet. I feel like I'm probably not the funnest person to interview since I don't always have too much to say haha.

Today we hit up Costco for our groceries and stocked up. We don't have too much money left for the month but we're hoping the masses of food we got will carry us through haha. Doing well and having fun!

Love, Elder Oxborrow

P.S. Here's the link to the clip that showed after conference in case anyone missed it:

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=24703772&nid=295&title=a-mighty-band-of-youth#ooid=BrbWdzYTqRgAX_72ObMv7bnqBuvTT1sA

Happy Easter!

Happy birthday Dad! Happy Easter everyone! Other than that, this week wasn't too out of the ordinary. One big event this week was I switched from my big coat to my lighter jacket. That's always a good sign. Today I'm back to the coat though since it's gotten a little colder outside. It's warm enough to be raining today though. We had a beautiful day for Easter, and good church meetings as well. The family we usually eat with on Sundays wasn't at church so we weren't going to have anywhere to eat (which isn't a problem except for the fact that our fridge is empty), but one of the single brothers in the branch happened to invite us over for dinner so we had a great easter dinner with him. The biggest miracle we saw this week was from one of our less active brothers. He has been struggling for a while with smoking, drinking, and some emotional problems. In the past he has only accepted visits from the missionaries, and turned away a lot of the members. The miracle was that this week two members stopped by and he let them in. Their visit with him changed his whole perspective on things and helped him gain a desire to quit smoking and drinking for good. He was reminded of the great spirit that was in his life while he was active in the church, and he realized he needs to do whatever he can to get that feeling back again. We taught him about applying the scriptures and taking things from what he reads. The spirit was strong there.

Happy Easter again! At this time I've had opportunities to reflect on the resurrection of our Savior, and remember all that he has done for us because of his love for us. Our goal should be to share that love with those around us in any way that we can. Love you all!

Love, Elder Oxborrow

P.S. The photos are from a couple weeks ago when we took the boat across the St. Laurent on p-day.