Arrival - Safe and Sound

We got a fun surprise on Tuesday morning.

Tommy gave us a call from the airport in Salt Lake. His district was one of the lucky ones that were able to get their flights back on track. Only one of the Sisters in his missions wasn't able to go due to swine flu. She was put in quarantine the night before they left. Sad. He said it is pretty crazy. He wished he had bought a face mask just to take pictures out by the MTC sign.

But off to Toronto he went.

We got a phone call from President Middleton Tuesday evening. Jack took the call and the message that Elder Dudley had arrived - safe and sound. I was sad to have missed his call. And anxiously awaited the letter below.

I am posting these like they come - spelling, punctuation, capitalization, or lack there-of!

SO good to hear from him.

"i dont have tons of time..so im just gonna pretty much write you guys, and you can send them to any relatives or woodburys or whoever you want.i arrived in canada. it went well. we were all nervous about the flight, having to sit next to real people and talk about religion. i ended up sitting between two other missionaries hahaha so no talking for me! i tried my hardest to stay awake during the flight..but no luck..i was zonked. um we landed in toronto and had to go through customs and junk, im still not exactly sure what im supposed to do with this citizenship information. the first lady said that if i dont get my canadian passport within 6 months then i have to leave the country, then this other guy i talked to at immigration said no, because i was born in canada i have right to citizenship and can stay and do whatever i want. so i now im confused and not exactly sure. um well anyways, we landed and got to president middletons house at about 5pm local time. there we kinda hung out in the living room and talked to sister middleton while president middleton went through and interviewed each one of us. he is an AWESOME guy. he is gonnna be like a general authority one day hahaha. um we ate dinner there, had a little testimony meeting, and then we met our trainers. my companion is elder beanziger (pronounced ben-z-ger)from west palm beach florida. he is a way good missionary. he has only been out on his mission for 9 months..all the other trainers have been out for about 20 or more. i dont know if that means that the president trusts us to do well, or that my comp is amazing and can whip me into shape haha. we stayed the the night at the "mission mansion" and then went back to the middletons for breakfast. we then had our orientation and all that good stuff. after that the middletons took us all to this chinese buffet for lunch called the Mandarin. it was pretty good. i nice change up from the mtc at least haha. um we then broke off and headed out to our separate areas. me and elder beanziger are in one of the bigger areas. we are in a town called Guelph (pronounce gwelf) its umm interesting. its about an hour West of Toronto and it has a population of like 120,000 i think and we are the only 2 missionaries in the town. so a lot of work to do! there is only one ward here though. we have our own car and cell phone. we drive a chevy cobalt haha. our apartment is big, not very nice but big. i have my own bathroom haha. we also have a treadmill and a workout bench. last night we ate at sister ouletts house with her friend stephanie. stephanie is an investigator who is addicted to pain killers, she asked last night for some time off from meeting with us so im not sure what we are gonna do from here on out. sister oulette is CRAZZYYYY though. we were in this tiny tiny apartment and she seriuosly made SO much food for me and elder beanziger, we also brought a kid named mirco who is from sweden..or something.. today was also really busy. we had an appointment with a girl named megan. she is also addicted to a lot of different drugs, and believes in Christ and Existentialism. its a weird combo and im not sure we were able to break into her. we taught her at the park for about an hour and tried to answer and offer insight to a lot of her questions she was having with the plan of salvation. she pretty much doesnt believe in satan, doesnt like the 3 degrees of glory, doesnt understand why the atonement was a big deal, and believes that none of the stuff around us is real, that we are all dreaming. she is a really nice girl though and we actually got her to give the closing prayer. she also tentatively agreed to come to church on sunday, well...we're supposed to call her again tomorrow so we'll see. what else happened today, umm we met briefly with a man named wilbur, he is RLDS which was interesting. i wouldnt really say that we taught him though, i think he has a little bit of a mental disorder and hes partially deaf. he pretty much just talked straight for 20 minutes, asked us a question, and then cut us off before we could answer. it was weird but nice. we had an appointment with a girl named lisa. she is a wicken, which from what i understand is like witchcraft. we showed up to her house but she got called into work. hopefully we can meet up with her again soon. a wicken though, im not exactly sure how i will be able to handle that. its been pouring rain for most the day. my socks are soaked! we went door to door for about an hour. heard a lot of get off my property and bad words haha. its hard not to be discouraged when i walked around outside for an hour in the pouring rain only to have nobody listen to a single part of our message. tonight we are mainly going around to less active members. i havent even been in this town for a full 24 hours. its crazy. we are goin shopping though after this so i can buy food and other necessities i need. yesterday was pday but because of the training and driving we didnt have time to do anything so the president gave us permission to use part of today. well overall things are going well. its weird, i was so much more afraid to talk to people in the mtc..fake people! here though im doing pretty well, i guess the lord is helping me overcome that fear of preaching to strangers. its not completely gone but im feeling much more confident than i thought i would be. well i gotta go! but i love you all, i enjoyed the pictures as well. have fun.
love elder dudley"

Can you believe this was one day? Wow.