called to serve Calgary: July 6, 2010

Hello everyone! How are you doing? I hope you guys all had a great week! I had a pretty good one! It was nice and busy! Last Monday after we emailed we went back and had some lessons and skipped the rest of Pday so we could go to the temple on Thursday. Then Tuesday we had district meetings all morning and then some lessons that night. That night we taught Heather Halstead. She is a young woman who is basically a member of the church but isn't. She teaches primary and everything and has a huge testimony but she doesn't want to disappoint her dad who isn't a member. She was taught about four years ago along with the rest of her family and her sister Heidi joined then because she didn't like her dad but Heather was more worried about what her dad would think. But we had a really good lesson with her about the plan of salvation and really focused on our life on earth and what we need to do here. Then Bro Wolff , our ward mission leader, was there as well and he was very blunt with her and told her that she needed to be baptized to have the full blessings of the gospel in her life and that if she got baptized and bore her testimony to her father that it would help soften his heart. So she promised she would pray again. We are meeting with her on Tuesday so hopefully then she will accept a baptismal date.

Then Wednesday we had interviews with President. Those went really well. I enjoyed them. They took forever though! We got there at ten thirty and weren't out until four. It was ridiculous. then we had some more lessons that night. then Thursday was our temple trip day! It was so sweet! We woke up and then went to the Pitchers house at seven in the morning. They fed us breakfast and then we took the three hour drive down to Cardston. It was really fun to get out of the city finally. It was nice to see some open fields instead of just neighborhoods. There has been a lot of flooding down there recently too so the rivers were pretty high and the fields had giant lakes in them which was apparently unheard of down there. It was so cool though because we saw Chief Mountain which everyone in southern Alberta knows as a landmark of where home is. It's crumbling though so it might not be there too much longer. Then we saw the little town of Cardston with a huge white building to the side of it and we knew we were close. The Cardston temple was beautiful! It was amazing to think what a huge job it would have been to build such a huge building in a little time when it was built. And it was awesome because Bro Pitcher knew some people in the temple and we met the temple president and he took us in to go see the baptismal font. That was amazing. It was my favorite one I have seen. And the rest of the temple was great as well. But I think I like the Mesa one better... maybe im just a little bias though. haha. But it was really great to go to the temple again. It was a great experience to remember those things and to feel the Spirit there again. I'm so grateful for the Pitchers for taking us all the way there. Then they took us to the bookstore afterwards too. That was a big bookstore. haha. Then we took the three hour drive back to Calgary and were home in time for dinner. It really was a great day and a great experience. Too bad I only get to do it once every six months...

Then the rest of the day was pretty good too. Pretty average. We taught some lessons. Did some service. We were able to go to a baptism from the Royal Oak Ward, unfortunately we weren't able to get any of our investigators there though. It was good though. Baptisms always have a great Spirit about them. And we had a good day at church as well. We had a non member family show up at church. That was sweet. We are meeting with them tonight so hopefully that goes well. It looks like its going to be a pretty good week coming up. I'll let you guys know how it went!
Love,
Elder Townsend

I've got a giant name tag! haha