October 23rd, 2017- MOVIN' RIGHT ALONG

Greetings one and all!

This week I have three noteworthy things to share with you...

1. Elder Lee, a Korean Elder who is in the Sudbury Downtown area (they live in the same house as us) discovered what a ginger is. We started talking about hair color and how my hair is red (ish) and that I'm a ginger. "What this?" he asked. Well, Elder Lee, it means you have freckles. He looked at my arm and said "ooooooh. I thought you had disease". So Elder Lee just thought I was a sicko for the last 8 weeks haha. He was so astounded I had freckles all over my body and the sun is harsher for me than others so that was fun to see his discovery of my people ;)

2. We're moving this Saturday. The legendary ice castle is having its final days!!! Fortunately, we're moving to a great place in a MUCH better neighborhood and we'll have more room. So we lovingly named our new abode: Ice Castle 2.0

3. Some weeks ago we met a guy in the hospital. Some members had met his wife, who said that he was sort of mean/abusive, but just had a stroke and was in the Sudbury hospital. I didn't really want to see him too much, but Elder Morris reminded me and we decided to go visit him because the members mentioned and at least we could brighten his day. Well I don't know why his wife said what she did, because he is the most soft-spoken, kind man ever. He met with us a few times in the hospital, and since he's been home he really wants to join our church, turn his life around, and really follow the gospel. I love him a lot and I'm so happy we didn't judge him too much to not visit him in the hospital. Remember God sees all of us perfectly, and He has us help His other children for a reason. No one is undeserving of your love and help.

Other than that, we drove to North Bay for interviews with President Shields, which were wonderful as usual. We'll go back again this week for an exchange. But the week of my birthday, we have a zone conference where there will be a general authority (Kevin B. Pearson) in Brampton, and then I have exchanges with the AP's in Brampton, so I won't be in Sudbury for almost 5 days! So wish me luck and pray I don't get home-sick for Sudbury haha.

I love you all and appreciate so much your support. Jesus lives, He loves you. Don't forget him while you party for this Halloween season... and stay safe!

Love,

Elder Callor

October 16th, 2017- RIP LITTLE BLUE

Helloooooooooo family and friends!

This week I don't have much to report on because I emailed y'all on Wednesday haha. We went to Brampton for our Mission Leadership Conference, so that was a 5 hour drive down Wednesday night, an 8 hour meeting the next day, and then the 5 hour drive back. Unfortunately, we had to trade in our Subaru Legacy :(. His name was Little Blue and we loved him. We got to drive it because it was one of the older cars so they sent it up to Sudbury to use all the kilometers it had left to sell it soon. Well they took it sooner than we expected. Although we traded in for a red Toyota Rav-4 which if you remember was the same car I got on my birthday last year so I guess that's alright haha. We traded in Little Blue for Big Red haha. So that's my driving life right now. The nice thing about Big Red is that it can go over all the terrible road conditions in Sudbury. I have no idea why the roads are so bad here, but they are.

We went on a hike to some waterfalls so that was pretty cool. I'll be sending pictures of that so enjoy :)

To answer everyone's questions, yes, it has gotten cold here now. As of yesterday it's been around freezing so we finally got hit with the cold. Fall started with a few hiccups but I think we are finally here haha.

That's really all I can think of with the past few days. I am grateful for all of you sending me your emails and keeping me up on your lives :) Be safe, stay warm, and enjoy the wonderful fall season!

Love,

Elder Callor

October 10th, 2017- THE GOLDEN PLATES

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving everyone!

So as you can tell, it's wednesday. Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving, and yesterday was transfers, so this week Pday is today. Hooray!

So transfers happened, and all 4 of us Elders here in the Ice Castle all got to stay! Just about everyone else in our zone had some movement except for the French Sisters in Quebec so that's a lot of movement for our zone. Yesterday, since we are the central point, we had everyone coming and going to our house in between all their 5 hours+ drives to and from the north. We did mini exchanges with a bunch of different Elders and found some new investigators and made the most of our time. It was really good for Elder Morris and I to meet more of the Elders in our zone since we don't see them very much. It's hard to help and lead people you don't know haha.

I'm sort of going backward chronologically, but earlier this week we went to a live District Meeting three hours away in Temiskaming and we had Chinese food afterwards. So the 10 of us all had this buffet, and as we were getting ready to leave, we were told someone payed for all of us. There is no way it was a member unless they were travelling really far because there weren't any in the area we were at, and whoever paid for us would have had to pay over $120. We were really surprised, and really grateful.

There is an Elder who just left the Temiskaming area who is really good at hunting and trapping. He just left the zone, but not before he gave me a planner for this transfer... made from the pelt of a chipmunk he caught :) It looks pretty cool so I'll send a picture of it haha.

Another fun story: Elder Morris and I starting teaching a young couple in the Elliot Lake Branch. They are sort of out of place because it's a retirement community two hours away so they are much younger than everyone else in the Branch, but they are really interested in the gospel. They are sort of interesting, they like different things haha. But nevertheless they are really pure in heart and like what we teach. Anyway, after our first lesson, we went back to Sudbury for a week or so. When we came back to teach them the next lesson, they told us they were reading the Book of Mormon and they wanted to make some crafts... So they made their own golden plates! Well Elder Morris and I were really excited to see what they made. Little did we know they took actual paper plates, and then spray painted them gold, and put their names on them haha. Elder Morris and I were so pleased to see them excited about the gospel :) we had to take pictures for that magical moment, so I'll send those too. :)

Finally, we went fishing earlier this week which was really fun! We all caught a fish, and even though mine was the smallest, I did catch the first one so I take credit for that haha. We didn't get a picture of me with the fish, but I have some pictures of everyone else so I'll send those too.

That's all I have to say, other than I love and appreciate you all. The gospel is true, and if you live it, you couldn't be happier. 

Love,

Elder Callor

October 2nd, 2017- THIS WEEK IN GENERAL...CONFERENCE

Salutations friends :)

This week I again have that feeling that so much happened and yet I have nothing that I can remember to say. We had an exchange with the AP's, and I stayed here in Sudbury so that was nice to finally be just working in my own area because we've been travelling the whole wide world haha. Right after that we did an exchange and I went to North Bay, so luckily I got to stay in Sudbury first or else I would have had to go to Brampton and North Bay all in one week. :P

We've still been teaching that guy in the hospital and things are working out. Another guy who lives in Elliot Lake that has been an investigator for about two years has finally saved enough money to finalize a divorce for the woman he is living with who is a member, so he's gonna be ready to be baptized probably next month. We're crossing our fingers! Basically all the missionaries have been waiting on him to get this money and he finally did so wahoo! Conference brings miracles, people. Speaking of General Conference.... WOW. Oh my goodness it gets better and better. I don't know how I missed getting so much out of it before my mission. I just didin't pay enough attention I suppose. So, all you out there who haven't been getting much out of Conference... Just LISTEN! It actually works haha. I have to say, Elder Andersen has never been one of my favorite speakers. None of his talks ever really hit me, but this time I was just so enthralled and captivated by his talk that I couldn't even write any notes. And he didn't even really say anything that taught me new profound spiritual truth, but just the Spirit that I felt while he spoke was incredible. I am grateful for the President Monson and the Apostles. I don't think any of us can fully understand the gift it is to have ordained prophets, seers, and revelators on the earth. I could go on and on about all the other talks I liked, but I'll just suggest to you all that you should go and watch/study them. They will be what gets us through the next 6 months!

I know sometimes not everyone sees the emails or gets to read them sometimes, and so if any of you have questions about life, the gospel, what's going on with me, or anything at all this week, just email me and ask away :)

Love,

Elder Callor

September 25th, 2017- HOSPITALIZATION SENSATION & THE FASTEST SUNDAY

Hellooooooooooooooo everyone :)

Guess what?

I love all of you. A whole lot.

Seriously I just read all the emails from everyone and I just wanted to say hearing from each of you individually is so uplifting. All of you are living such wonderful lives and being able to hear from each of you about them and know that I'm somewhat included in your lives is so heartwarming to me. Anyway, I'm in danger of becoming a sentimental mess, so I'll stop there. :)

This week, we spent 4 of the 7 days  in the hospital. Yep. 4 days. So one of the Elders an hour away from us in North Bay had stomach pain and went to the hospital. He ended up getting his appendix removed, so Elder Morris and I had to drive to North Bay early that morning to be with him and his companion. We took shifts at the hospital, and alternatively went outside to help one of the companions go home and freshen up because he had been there forever. Elder Morris and I had some time together in their area and found some new investigators for them which was really great since they haven't had any for a while. I almost had the shift to spend the night in the hospital with him, but they actually wouldn't allow us to say so we got permission from President to leave him alone at the hospital that night. It's been a few days since then and he has recovered pretty well, so no worrying about our fearless Elders in North Bay :)

So why else would I spend time in a hospital? Well we met this woman in the Elliot Lake who has a husband in the Sudbury hospital. She isn't a member but new some members in the Branch there. Well she said we could go visit him but made him seem like a pretty mean guy. We weren't sure about going but we went anyway, and he is the best guy in the whole world. He's had a stroke, and it really woke him up to the fact he wants to turn his life around. We gave him the Book of Mormon and he's gotten to about the book of Jacob this week. Each time we meet with him we all just cry and laugh together and talk about Christ and how we all  need Him and life is good. Last night we dropped off some Perrier water (carbonated water) so that he had something that he liked more than the crummy hospital food. So anyway that's why I've been in a hospital all week.

I know I said that missionary work had a lot going on in Toronto, but I have to be honest.... I have been finding, teaching, and working with more investigators in Sudbury than anywhere else in my mission. The baptism here and everything else just seems to carry this inertia and I hope it isn't stopping anytime soon! Elder Morris and I had a goal to have two people at church, but couldn't quite make it since we were away for most of the week. We were fasting since it was fast Sunday yesterday, and really just left it up to faith. (now, if you know me, you may know I've always struggled believing miraculous things with faith and such would ever happen to me, well, I don't anymore haha). On our way to the Elliot Lake Branch for the confirmation of the woman we baptized last week, we got a text from the Branch Second Counsellor saying that he met two young people and he invited them to church and they would like to investigate. Elder Morris read the text to me and I just said, "no way, there is no way, that's not real" We both were pretty darn ecstatic.

To top it all off, last night we were at a less active member's house and a young woman who is his neighbor's daughter arrived, and was pretty distraught. Elder Morris was speaking with the member, and I struck up a conversation with this young lady. Well, I don't know how but it really quickly came up that she just left from a physical fight with her boyfriend and that she's had a pretty destructive relationship for 3 years and doesn't feel like she's worth anything and all other kinds of sad things that follow that type of situation. I just talked her through it and we both felt the Spirit and we didn't really set up appointments with her or anything, but she left feeling like she had a God that loved her which is a pretty beautiful thing.

So, you all have a God that loves you. How wonderful is that? I hope this email had some more spiritual insight that my others usually do. I'll try and be better about that. I hope you all have the best of weeks in this, the best of seasons!

Love,

Elder Callor

September 18th, 2017- RUNNING WATER

Hello everybody!

I'm emailing a little earlier than usual this week since we'll be going on a hike later...

I feel like so much has happened and yet I have few ways to describe or express it all haha. So our prestigious and stately  home that we live in, the Ice Castle, is up for sale. Elder Morris and I are in charge of finding a new home for four missionaries to live in. I never thought I'd be spending time looking for houses in northern Ontario, and yet here I am. We are going to check out a little place that fits our budget, and it is in a better neighborhood than we currently live in so that's a plus. The 'hood we live in now is called the Donovan... Let's just say it has a bit of a nasty reputation haha. This morning we saw two cops start investigating this house across the street from us so that's pretty fun.

Apart from that, Elder Morris and I have had the responsibility to coordinate travel plans for our Zone. If you want, you can follow along all the crazy I'm about to describe on a map, but I'm sure most of you don't have that much time haha. Anyway, this Friday is zone conference in Barrie, so we need to get people to drive and carpool and stay at various apartments in the northern part of the mission to be close enough to Barrie to get there in the morning for the meeting. That night, they'll need to travel to stay with us here in Sudbury, so that the following morning they can be here to have interviews with President and see Stake Conference. Saturday night all of the Elders in our zone will be staying with us here in the Ice Castle, so we'll have 14 Elders in our house for that night, and just a few less the night previous. We have bunkbeds and mattresses we need to set up this week for all that. Needless to say we made a typed four page travel plan paper to email to our zone this week, and I must say, it is quite beautiful. Elder Morris and I are proud of ourselves.

So we are most likely going to baptize a woman this Saturday in the midst of all the craziness!!! She lives in Elliot Lake and was found by a member at a bus stop. Elliot Lake is not the kind of place to have bus stops but apparently they met regardless haha. Since then she has just been the epitome of "golden". She will likely be baptized on Saturday, but we are waiting on permission from her separated husband... we are praying hard! Elliot Lake is two hours away from Sudbury so we've been doing lots of driving back and forth to teach her everything. The members that live there are great and help out a ton.

I didn't mention in my last email that because of the distance in our zone all of the district meetings are held via skype, which is pretty interesting. The missionaries out here are so strong and diligent, even though they don't see human life all too much, the poor things. We will likely have at least one live district meeting for the two districts in our zone, so that will be good for everyone.

Well, other than that, I don't have much else left to say. But last night, as I was looking out into the Donovan enjoying the evening, I had a lot of fond memories of a lot of wonderful people I am very close to. The Superstack billowed out it's nickel flack into the air and I could see the lights of Sudbury reflect in it's powerful smoke; and with the smoke rose my thoughts and feelings of gratitude to God for all He's given me. Thank you all for being dear to me and loving  me, you help me feel the love of God in so many ways.

Love,

Elder Callor