WE WENT TO A HOCKEY GAME! it was soo sick! hockey is so fun to watch! it was a minor leauge team called the steinbach pistons, we went with a guy we did service for. I have some pictures of it.

 

 Yeah my week was pretty boring too, not that much happened. Except we got transfer calls this week........im staying! and im staying with elder cahoon, we'll be 3 transfers together which is really unheard of but its really good, i like elder cahoon. And elder simister is training a new guy, and elder cox is going to thompson! which is the farthest north you can go. Im jealous of him cause it sounds fun. But other than that not that much happened. Except on saturday we seriously spent a whole day building this deer shelter for this guy to hunt in, it was huge! it could fit like 5 people. We like framed it and stuff. I have some pictures but i left my camera again ;) but yeah, has cooled down for good there? oh, can you believe that i opened my mission call a year ago? yeah i know its crazy! but anyways sorry i didnt have much else happen. 

 

Sorry not a lot went on here, we did crazy amounts of service. We framed this garage which was pretty fun and we had to tear out this ceiling for this guy. This piece of drywall like stabbed my shoulder and cut my arm really bad. but it was fun. We had like crazy amounts of people at sacrement meeting, We had 7 people show up that we invited! which was just fantastic. and we were in 7-11 yesterday and this guy that we knew called and said that he wants to meet with us, his son is getting baptized in Edmonton and he wants to know more about us, it was super good. We're meeting with him on saturday andwe're excited for that. Hopefully we'll get some good people through this. 

 haha 9 o'clock church is the best, i miss 9'oclock church, the meetings are always at 10 here and its literally the worst time ever to have church. 

 No we dont have any zone conference type things until like mid september, and then one in like october. The mission has just been kinda relaxed lately everywhere, like 1 missionary came in this last transfer and no one really changed companions. But yeah things have been good.

Hey mom, things have been going good here. I got the package last thursday. Thank you so much for everything!! all the stuff in it is so good! i love the ties especially, where did you get those? The boots are wonderful too, there has been lots of rain and we've been doing lots of service so they saved my feet from getting wet. And they look good too. Just thanks for everything. Its ok if they dont get sent immediately, i probably wont get them until like october anyway. . . .

 this week has been really nice though. Today has been cold! Its a low of 44 today and a high of 55!! im wearing a sweater. Its been crazy weather here too. We were driving to winnipeg and there was a flash flood, luckily we were ok but it was scary. And we were taking down this green house and it was just super cold. We could see our breath. but it felt good. It was "misting". its not rain, its literally mist falling from the sky. its nice to be out in cause you dont get wet. And its been really foggy too. Like foggy all day tuesday. Just strange weather.  

Our sunday was so stressful. we got this family of 5 that we've been teaching to Winnipeg to attend church, and we show up there and BOOM. President thomas is there and it felt so good to have that family there and show him that we've been working hard cause other than the other steinbach elders we were the only companionship to have investigators to sacrement. He told me that he really appreciates all the work that we've been showing cause its an hour drive to church from steinbach and the family didnt have a car. but we did it.

 

hey mom how are things going? this week has been alright, not that much happened new. Yesterday we went to the Mennonite heritage museum, they settled the area around here, they were pioneers. but it was really fun. I got a harmonica there and me and elder cahoon are learning hymns on them. I took lots of pictures and good stuff. Oh yeah and we were in the pioneer day parade here! we volunteer at a senior center and they asked us to be on their float. They love the missionaries tons. So we were in this covered wagon float and we got to walk down main street waving at people and stuff. It was lots of fun.

hey mom, sorry the letters a little later than usual, weve been doing things today and we just got on. Haha thats funny that you know who elder Richins is, i went on an exchange with him like 3 weeks ago probably. He was my zone leader. Hes such a great guy. I would love to serve with him one day. So my companion is elder cahoon and hes lives right by mountain ridge jr high in Highland. he went to Lone Peak just like half of all the missionaries here. haha jk. But Steinbach has been Amazing! I got here the first day and just fell in love with the area, its so good. theres like 13,000 people here and theyre all so nice. its very religious, all the people we teach are very good. haha but its super flat out here. its definitely in the plains, but i think its so beautiful. weve met tons of french canadians. there are 2 french communities just right by us. And weve been doing lots of farm work type things, its honestly been so good lately. Im not gonna lie, this place is the best. Oh and we have to drive into winnipeg to go to church cause the ward that steinbach is a part of in winnipeg would die if they were taken out of it. The whole bishopric lives in Steinbach. But we have church in the other elders apartment for our investigators. we have this family from the congo that are such good people and they love us and the church alot, haha he looks like Kanye West too! its fun, the two other elders in Steinbach are both from st george. Elder simister went to Desert Hills and says that he knows who Clay is, but hes 2 years older. 

Hey everyone, its been kind of a crazy week, but ive got some news

Im getting transferred to Steinbach, Manitoba!!

Its like an hour south of winnipeg, its  a farming community, and there are tons of mennonites and huddarites (theyre similar to amish, but they use electricity) so it will be a great experience and im so excited, ill send you guys  a picture when i get there cause it is SO FLAT!! I'm going to miss kenora but i'm excited for new experiences. Steinbach is super religious and the people there are very passionate about their religion. So im leaving to Winnipeg on thursday and ill be in steinbach the same day.

 4th of july sounded really fun, we didnt do much for the 4th, i misss doing all of those fun things for the 4th, its ok we'll do them when i get back. Im just glad you guys had a fun time, i wore my american flag tie for the 4th and repped it proudly. it was good doing my prideful american thing.

So this week has already been ridiculous. My mission president called us sunday night and told us we had to go to Minnesota to help people with the flooding down there. So for 3 days we sand bagged forever. But it was a super fun experience. Plus. . . . . I got to to America!!!!  We got the call sunday night to go and help out in international falls, minnesota cause there was tons of flooding,  But im back now so I im good now. The flooding was crazy, the water was up to our waist! it was so tiring! But it was fun, we got to hang out with a ton of missionaries and have fun while we were doing it. We filled sandbags for like 12 hours everyday and stacked them.

 

  We were able to have a baptism this past saturday! IT WAS TRULY AMAZING!! Its been so good seeing him make this progress and to continue to make progress. Other than that this week has been pretty slow

 

 So this has been a pretty busy week, we did tons of stuff. On wednesday we had ZTM in International Falls, Minnesota. So I got to go to America this week, It was awesome, it was like 10 degrees warmer and we went to K-Mart and bought all American food, and its warmed up like crazy this week, it got up to 20 celsius which is like 70 and it was so nice, we chopped wood for this guy and I was wearing shorts, Oh and I seriously cut this huge stump in half, i have a video to prove it

I met an Apostle!!!

So this week was Crazy. I got to meet D. Todd Christofferson!!! I shook his hand and  i told him I was from Pleasant Grove, He said "I lived in Pleasant Grove, Its a really nice place" In my head i was like "thats for darn sure" haha jk but just so you know, an apostle of the lord told me first hand that Pleasant Grove is a really nice Place.

So to get to the apostle we had to drive 10 hours to Regina, Saskatchewan (the promised land of our mission) to hear him, it was also our transfer meeting, and im still staying in Kenora till may 30th. So the drive was awful but it was so worth it! 

We got home in time to make it to church, my companion spoke in sacrament, it was also his birthday, so the branch president had us over for cake and Ice cream. I guess you could say it was a good week.

 And heres a picture of our entire mission, if you can find me then youre down

Not to much to say for this week, its warmed up quite a bit so weve been able to walk around much more. the daylight is already going to about 8:30. Ive heard in the summer the sun stays up until about 10 so that will be nice, but alot of the snow has melted and there not too much left, we met this guy from layton that lives in this super nice house, his just moved and hes planning on coming to church soon. And we also met this kid who is interested and were teaching him today, which is good. But other than that not too much this past week,

This week we're going to Regina to hear from D. Todd Christofferson, which is going to be an awesome experience, but we have to drive like 13 hours to get there so hopefully ill survive that!

Letter from April 7, 2014

 So God has a sense of humor cause on April fools it snowed 2 and a half feet! it was so deep that school was canceled. We spent the entire day shoveling people out of their house, but the day after it was so hot (40) that all the snow melted and there were seriously lakes on the road, the rest of this week has been so hot. And im definitely getting used to the cold cause 45 is freakin hot now. Its supposed to get to 50 today and im going to die of heat.

Hey everyone how's it going? Ive been having alot of fun up here in Ontario, there has been alot going on this week that I cant remember but ill try to remember as much as I can. So this week has been very cold, saturday got down to -30 C and we were outside walking and it was really cold, The people here told me that they've never seen the winter go this long so its given me a little more reassurance that it will warm up here one day. And they all say that it gets "hot" but its hard to believe them sometimes haha jk.

Ive done alot of fun things this week, we went snowshoeing for a little while which was fun, and we visited a family that lives about an hour away in a native reservation and they had the nicest house (for kenora standards) they had tons of stuffed bald eagles, which was a little shocking but its Canada. . .  anything goes up here. But they live right on a lake and have lots of nice toys. 

There are so many bald eagles and deer that just hang out here, ive seen probably like 25 bald eagles since ive been here, and hundreds of deer, the deer are everywhere here, they walk around the city on the sidewalks and stuff, i got a picture of one like 5 feet from me. 

And I finally got to try poutine, poutine is and extremely canadian food, its fries and gravy and cheese curds and its amazing. 

Weve done lots of teaching this week and have some really strong investigators.

thanks everyone for the support, I'd love to hear from you.:)

Hey everyone hows it going? this week has been really good! Canada is being really good to me. We taught alot of good lessons this week, alot of the people we teach are Natives (native americans) there are tons of them up here! But theyre always very nice people. Everyone weve met have been really nice, iguess its a Canadian thing. Oh yeah im on Facebook now! Im not really sure what im supposed to do on it other than share nice things to the members of my branch, apparently you can teach 2 gospel principles and it counts a lesson on it which is just weird to me. It seems like an easy way to get good indicators, but who am i to say anything. 

So this past friday we had a baptism for a lady named raquel. The sister taught but we did help on a couple of lessons, we also have another investigator named tyson who has a date but he just needs to quit smoking. We have many investigators that were working on right now.

Haha Im in a Choir! its called Kenora G-Clef. and we're the only people in the choir who are younger than probably 60 years, its been really fun though, they are all super nice and funny and are fairly open to our church. 

The weather here has been really up and down this past week, at the beginning of the week it was really warm, it got up to like 40 degrees fahrenheit and all the snow was melting really fast, but then it starting getting cold again and sunday morning it was -22 degrees fahrenheit. and a word of wisdom, dont breathe through your nose at that temperature cause your nostrils freeze and they dont thaw out that fast! and it snowed last night 8 CM. So I hope everyone is a little more grateful for their weather right now. but anyways i love you all and let me know how youre doing :) 

Hey everyone I made it to the great white north!! And ill tell you one thing it is definitely white!! There is literally about 5 feet of snow on the ground right now. And it is cold. Saturday morning we were our at a winter carnival it was -25 celsius which is about -13 fahrenheit. but its not too bad. They said just last week it was -40. So My first area that ive been assigned is Kenora Ontario. Its about 2 hours east of winnipeg, its very different though. There are lots of hills and lakes, its a resort town. But not in the winter, its famous for boating and stuff. And my companion is named Elder Jones. Hes from Sandy and went to Brighton High School. Hes super cool and im probably gonna be his last companion cause he leaves in may. Canada has been super cool so far though. Its not too much different but there are definitely some differences. I love it so far, the people are super nice and they all have really thick accents too. Like it sounds like a different language sometimes.

Week 2 at the MTC is underway! It felt just like yesterday that I got and now im already leaving. I leave this wednesday at 2:30 AM!!! thats the time we have to report to the travel office at the MTC. Then we go to the airport. We have a 6:30 flight from SLC to Minneapolis, We have half an hour on layover to our flight to Winnipeg so hopefully we'll make the flight. the weather for when we get there is extremely warm for what is has been. Its supposed to get to 9° F which is good cause its -17°F right now as we speak. Oh and from now on ill probably be saying the temperatures in celsius so how this is how you convert it.    (temperature in celsius) X 1.88 + 32 = temperature in fahrenheit        this is very handy when you have lots of Canadians around you all the time. 

This week at the MTC has been really fast! Weve done lots of teaching and I have learned so much. we had to teach this investigator named Christian and he had the worst Studder on the face of the earth. It took like 15 minutes for him to tell us about his job as a photographer. But it was really good to learn from him and know how to teach different people. Ive been getting along super well with my district. We added two more people to our district that were supposed to go to Halifax but they had to stay for medical reasons. We talk to each other and hang out alot. sometimes we get distracted and talk a little too much.

Hopefully ill be able to Email everyone once i get in Canada, and ill make sure to send pictures of the all the cool canadian things.

Wow being a missionary is seriously crazy!! and the MTC is crazy! I love it but it definitely takes alot of getting used to. The days seem so long but theyve been getting shorter every day. and looking back it doesnt seem long at all. 5 days has felt like the blink of an eye. Im a district leader and my companions are zone leaders (im in a trio companionship) and one job we have is to help the new incoming missionaries get oriented, but it seemed just like yesterday that i was that same missionary trying to get oriented!

This week has been really busy though. wednesday they showed us around a little and we went straight to learning and the very next day we had to teach already! Learning about all the gospel and the lessons are super easy. its just trying to make them easy to understand for people who dont know it whatsoever. My companions are elder Coombs and Elder Gutierrez, elder coombs is from Salina and elder gutierrez is originally form the phillippines but has been living in calgary for quite some time. So many people in my district and zone are canadian. The other people in my zone are going to Halifax, Nova Scotia (also in Canada) so were all asking them about canadian stuff. One of them has a super thick canadian accent and its funny sometimes. But i have heard all of them say "eh" about 50 times.

 Im really looking forward to being able to serve in the field but i know that im not quite ready. I know ill never be ready enough but im just excited to be able to get out there and serve

love you all

Elder Merrell