3rd Week in Canada

Hola. Como estan?

Hello from cold Edmonton Canada! It has started getting cold in the city these past couple of days. It hit negative 2 degrees yesterday. But don't worry - that's in Celsius. So probably only about 30 farenheit. It is still cold and people keep telling me that it is going to continue to get colder. Last year they had the coldest winter they have had in about 10 years. So hopefully it isn't as bad this year. But I am actually excited to see how much it is going to change in the next few weeks. I will send you pictures of how much snow there is when it comes.

It has taken a little while to get things situated. It is difficult because our area is so big and we have so many wards to look over. But I am meeting a lot of members that speak Spanish and have been teaching some people as well. I have been learning a lot about the logistics of the mission and how things work. We are just so different than the other missionaries because we do not have a centralized ward and no ward mission leader. So we are kind of on our own. But we are getting things going and I know that we can make a difference and help people out.

We met a young man named Vianney from Mexico the other day. We started talking to him over the phone and seeing if he was interested. We found out that he had been going to the church for three weeks and he is dating a member. We met with him for the first time yesterday and taught hime the first lesson. He had so many great questions and was very interested. He just seems like the Lord has prepared him and he is ready to change his life. He is Catholic and shares many of our beliefs. But when we started to talk about prophets and Heavenly Father's authority on the earth again, you could just see a light turn on in his eyes. We are going to keep meeting with him every Sunday and hopefully he can progress.

We are also meeting with another man named Eric. He is unfortunately moving back to Mexico in a couple of weeks but we want to get him comfortable with the gospel and hopefully he can find the missionaries down there. He has been going to the English classes provided by some other elders and loves doing that. I hope that he can keep progressing and he can find the joy in the gospel that I have found.

Elder EZ and I also have been trying to meet with a lot of less active members. There are a lot of Spanish speaking less active members and we realize that it will be a great benefit to start getting them to chuch. My testimony has grown in the aspect that the Lord puts people in your path to talk to. We sometimes go tracting near our apartment and see if we can get things called QGC's (quality gospel converation). It is a really good way to introduce people to the church and we believe that if we can find people in English, than other missionaries will find people in Spanish.

Spirital Thought: I have been reading in Ether and the account of the Jaredites. I love the story when the brother of Jared sees the finger of the Lord. Because he has so much faith in the workings of the Lord, the veil is taken from him and he can see the Lord and many other things that we are not permitted to see because of the veil. I hope someday to have faith like this.

I send my love to all and hope everything is going well.

Cuidense mucho y tenga una buen dia!

Mucho amor,

Elder Kipp