First week in Kenora

Ah! I'm emailing on Tuesday, what is wrong?! Eh, Canadians love their holidays and it seems like once every few days there is a "holiday". Nah, I think it's once a month I will be emailing on Tuesdays because the library is closed on the long weekend's Monday. Of course I forgot the little notes of all the things I was going to write...bear with me.

This past week was pretty good. Almost went fishing for the first time yesterday! We got the poles and tacklebox from a member, and he advised us to get some fishing licenses (they seriously have licenses to fish? Ridiculous...shows how much I know, right?) so we went down to get some and they were out of the day-liceneses...those were $12! Yikes! The year-long ones were $40. Ouch...stupid prices! I think Elder O'Driscoll and I are going to bite the bullet early next P-Day and go get a day license and then I will have GONE FISHING. Instead of fishing, we cruised downtown Kenora and spent a good amount of time going through the town museum which happened to have a special exhibit for the history of video games. It was pretty neat! I took some pictures there. I will attach them...I had a face to face confrontation with a wolf, but you will just have to see the pictures...

Elder Galbraith and the wolf

So you asked about the branch. Because Kenora is a big tourist town, the summer attendance at church is higher than the year-round attendance. In the summer there are usually about 60-80 people. The Branch has been told that if they can get 70 people to church every week for 2 months, the Church will build them a new, bigger building. Apparently last Sunday was close to a record attendance with a visiting family's reunion, and we ran out of seats. It was pretty neat. I think there were about 100 people at church! I haven't seen that since Saskatoon! Our baptismal dates Nick and Crystal hadn't come by 10:30 (church starts at 10), even with us stopping by their place 30 minutes before church, so we called them and coaxed them to still come out for the last part of Sacrament Meeting. Phew...they came, and it was a huge relief to see them there. We also had another younger girl with her 2 very young girls, and she looked very uncomfortable the entire time. I felt so bad for her because her kids were very active and she often would take them outside alone. Luckily we had aske a member with similar needs to help her out, so I think she felt welcome, I am just not sure how much she got out of it. Oh, I was stressing over that bigtime...Everything went well though. Elder O'Driscoll and I taught the 3rd hour discussion on member-missionary work, using a missionary DVD, Preach My Gospel and using Luke 5. I think the members know that we mean business when it comes to missionary work, because former missionaries way back when were not...overly excited to be missionaries. You get to hear all my REALLY interesting stories about all my areas and their backgrounds AFTER my mission. Aren't you excited for that? Which reminds me, that I hit my year mark this past week, so I am closer to seeing you in person when I come home than when I left Seatac. Pretty neat, eh?

We went to Waterton 2 years ago? What the?! Where did the time go? I still remember all of that distinctly. I would love to be there with all my nieces and nephews next time though. Which reminds me of another thing: you mentioned driving up and picking me up in a year and driving back. I have mixed feelings about that. There is not much better than having my parents see me in my mission with my mission friends, in the mission atmosphere and all that. However, I am pretty certain that when the time comes for my release I will want to be a normal person doing normal things. If you picked me up, I would still be a missionary having to obey all mission rules until we got home and I was released. That means getting up at 6:30 and hitting the sack at 10:30, always wearing my missionary proselyting clothing, no swimming, etc. I think I would really like the experience meeting my family (whoever would be there) at the airport. Maybe you can share your thoughts on the matter, but that is what I think. Please, I want to hear your opinion, and there is still another year to sort those plans out. (We will check with our Stake President to see what the official policy is, and make plans from there.)

I sure love you all, Elder Galbraith, over and out.

Elder Galbraith

Elder Mitton and I holding our 1 year birthday cake (at a District meeting in Dryden, Ontario), courtesy of Elder Bodily. The neat thing is that Elder Mitton and I were MTC companions. (Elder Mitton is now Elder Bodily's companion.)