September 5th, 2011

Hello Family.

Life in Montreal is fantastic. It's incredible to finally be working in the big city, I love it! Truly an amazing experience. I've had some interesting encounters on the metros, but none of the them have been negative yet, so we will keep going strong! There was this one time when I contacted this lady and she mumbled in broken french while signaling to her ears and such, and making another funny sign with her hand. I, assuming she was deaf, leaped at the occasion to practice my sign language contact and promptly signed to her "Jesus Christ." (That's all I know so far.) After about 5 seconds of awkward silence, She looked at her boyfriend and he turned to me and said, "She speaks spanish man." Ah. Okay, not deaf. gah... So I stuttered out a spanish contact and she gave me a look like "ah...that's a nice trick..." And as she started to respond the doors opened and she had to leave. Terrible. But you know it worked to my advantage, because after they left, everyone was looking at me, I just gave the next person a look that says "that was awkward, wasn't it?" and then contact them. It's a blast really.

We had a really rough week, when looking at lessons taught, but fortunately we had 8 investigators at church. I'm always nervous about inviting investigators to church on fast sundays because, sometimes I don't trust the members. But nothing too terrible went down, and the investigators really liked it. We had 2 african families there. Missionaries are here in this mission to teach the immigrants, I fully believe that. The native quebecois people have very hard hearts in comparison.

I am the district leader of the french district of Montreal. That means my district covers all the french speakers of Montreal City, Elder Dalton and I cover the West half of the island and another team of elders and a team of Sisters cover the East half. It's crazy crazy. There is a spanish District here and an english District and a Chinese district as well. It's just too much fun here on the Island, I love it, although those sister missionaries in my district stress me out of my mind sometimes.

Well, I'm glad to hear that everyone had a good time in Zermatt and that Hayden is getting better! I bet you he'll be teaching the scenario for all the new incoming elders soon. That'll come. I wish him luck being P1, it's...a good thing, it is.

I hope everyone has a good week! And if Mom and dad could send me that driving report as soon as possible, that would be incredibly helpful. We have a lot of investigators we can't see, because neither elder Dalton or I can drive. Thank you so much! The Island is where the office is.

Peace be the Journey,

Elder Holm (1)