Email from May 9th, 2011

Family.

It was so good to hear every body's voice yesterday. Even if it was all at the same time. Once again mom, happy Mothers day yesterday! You are the best mom ever. Definitely. I can't believe that, that was my last call home. Next time I will be hearing any of you, it will be in the Salt Lake Air Port... Weird. But now it is my goal to not think about home. I still have a lot of work to do while I am here. I don't want to go home regretting anything so I might as well work hard while I am still here eh?

Elder Spurlock and I are working well together. This is our last week of the transfer, and he has a suspicion that he is getting transferred. So we have set some goals to really work hard and find some new investigators, We set a goal for 4. So that we can be running by the time next transfer starts. So next week I will be emailing on TUESDAY so don't forget.

BC is starting to warm up.. It is going to be about 20 degrees celcius all week which is probably in the high 60's and low 70's.. So hopefully we will be able to take our coats off. It has to be 22 in the forcast for 3 consecutive days. At that point, we are good to go. Starting in June it doesn't matter the temperature, we can just wear short sleeves everyday. I can not wait for that. It is turning super green out here. It is awesome. Today we are going golfing. A member of our branch owns a course and he lets us play for free. Gonna be soakin up the sun in Canada. So not much sun..

This last weekend was awesome. The mandarin Elders came down and baptized a man named Alex. They have been teaching him over Skype for a couple weeks now. The whole program was in Mandarin and English. It was a cool experience. All the sudden my companion and I notice a whole lot more asians. We are definitely going to start looking for more oppertunnities to have people taught over skype. Get their work going down here!

We were also supposed to have three new investigators this weekend. 1 lesson, with 2 of the new investigators got rushed, and they ended up just telling us that they just weren't ready to meet with us. We feel like they have so much potential, so we are just going to keep working with their fellow shippers to soften their hearts. And then our other new investigator lesson that was supposed to be last night, got moved to thursday, she had some work stuff come up. So we just keep praying that things will work out. It is definitely a trying area, but the Lord has people for us to teach. We just have to find them...

Well since I guess I told you everything over the phone yesterday. I love you all and miss you all a ton. I will talk to you next week after we pick up a handful of new investigators!! Love you all

Love Elder Dastrup

Email from May 3, 2011

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

The big 6-4.. Now just if that was your height!! I bet you are already feeling wiser as well.. I was going to get a card out to you, but I forgot last p-day, now it is to late. But I was thinking about you! I heard a rumor that once you hit 60, you actually don't get wiser anymore, you just hit your peak at 60. right?? hmmm

Well 6 months from today, I will be walking off the plane. So you better start getting the party planned. Haha just kidding. I still got plenty of time to do work up here. I am loving it in BC. It is so sweet. Lots of driving. Every day. But we are still working hard.

Joyce, one of our investigators called us on Wednesday, and told us she isn't interested in meeting with us any more. It was kind of frustrating, because we had a lesson with her just a couple nights before, and everything she is looking for, is the church. She was asking Golden questions and we were able to help her answer those and she was feeling good about everything. We think that she possibly told her church that she was meeting with us, and just anti came from that. That was annoying.. But hopefully we were able to water that seed a little bit more for the future contacts...

We had another lesson with Jimmy this week. It was a good lesson but very frustrating. His friend sat in on the lesson and she is super anti. She didn't say much while we were there, but you could just feel the tension that she had for the church. He still didn't commit to church. But he will read. We are going to give him a call today, but he has family in that will be pretty difficult to meet with him. We do have a promising referral for this Saturday. We are really excited to teach them .They are just a young couple. But we have heard nothing but good things about them.. I am excited for it. I will let you know how it goes. We were supposed to teach them before I got here, but unfortunately the Elders crashed the car on the way to the lesson. So lame... But now we are able to press on.

We had zone conference yesterday, it was really good. We focused a lot on using and applying the tools that we have to plan effectively. The mission has every thing it needs to reach the goals that we have set. Now it is just applying what we know and having the faith to do so..

Well since I am going to talk to you in a few days, I am going to get going. but I love all of you and miss you a ton. Can't wait to talk to you all..

Love Elder Dastrup