T1-W5

Dear family,

Wow, Time is flying by! A month already! and yet so slowly too :) This week felt extra long. Probably because of the many things that happened.

The highlights were that we had a leadership training on Thursday. All of those in the 12-week training program were invited to come as well. It was so good! We went to the Toronto Stake Center (one of the biggest meeting houses in the church, actually--has 3 or more floors!) and had a day full of meetings. We role-played and were fed by the good word. We also had an open forum on the training program--the good and bad of it. Well, we only came up with one or two bads :). The main one was the amount of time we spend in the apartment watching paint peel...With the training program we add an hour to our companionship study, Which if you include language study and personal study adds up to 4 hours just studying. But it is so worth it! The whole point, even though we may feel like we're wasting time now, is to get us up to speed faster for later. Go slow now, so we can go faster later! And I love everything I am learning from it. I'm so grateful to get to use it! It helps me know where to improve and how! And it helps us focus the training so I get the stuff I need to know to be effective.

Anyway, That night it got pretty down right cold for the next two days, but it warmed up again yesterday. No real snow yet, but I'm kind of glad for that since I don't have boots yet.

Friday, the sisters did an exchange. So I went with Sister Petty and Hna. Brown went with Sister Petty's companion, Sis. Woo. It was different doing English work for a day! But it was good. Sis. Petty is awesome! She is so friendly and upbeat with everyone. You can see that she loves everyone. We taught two lessons and did some door contacting. I've been waiting to work with her to let some of her cheerfulness rub off on me. And it did :). OYM's are a little easier now, because I just try to be happy and interested in the person.

Yesterday we had our first ward council with the new bishop. He is so missionary minded! The Elders who also serve in our ward got to meet with him earlier that day and discuss some things. We are really starting to focus on getting the members more involved. This last week in our studies, that was one of the topics, and I can see how having members more involved would help us in the work. Then the investigators (and new members!) would have someone else to also encourage them and to support them through these hard changes.

One of our investigators wants to be baptized!!! We don't have a date set, but he realized in the last lesson that baptism is key. I'm excited for him! I hope he keeps progressing. With him, it's kind of hard to tell where it's going to end up, but people can surprise you :)

have a great week!

Hna. Cottam