Nothing Better Than the Temple With My Zone

It's a long post this time...3 weeks worth!

We work in such an amazing building! It was originally the École des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (School of Commercial High Studies...for you non-French speakers) founded in 1907. It was the first school of management in Canada.

Our work site is now a complex of what was originally two buildings that have  been connected with an annex and houses the BAnQ Vieux-Montreal – Bibliothèque et Québec, or the Library and National Archives of Québec. The original building for the school was called the Gilles Hocquart building.

The second building, the Jodoin House built in 1871, was the residence of a wealthy couple. During that time period, our part of town was where the bourgeoisie lived. This is one of the only houses of its kind that still exists in this neighborhood.

Here's what it looks like today.

But when I look at this historical picture of the same room, the history of the house seems to come alive for me and I imagine what it was like in its glory days. It's so great having an employee  access badge that can get me almost anywhere in the building! And no one seems to mind that I explore. I've run into several employees while exploring and they just greet me and go on with their work. 

One evening when I was leaving a little later than most of the employees, I got off the elevator and found two teenage girls in the safe! They said they turned the handle and it just opened. Why didn't I think of that?? There wasn't really anything interesting in there. Only boxes.

On July 13th, Sister C and I were working at the archives and she got a text from her sister in Utah saying there was a threat of a tornado in Montréal. It always cracks me up when we get our information from people in other parts of the world. Soon after, both of our phones started going off with alerts of a possible tornado along with a huge storm headed our way. A tornado had touched down in Ottawa which is about 2 hours from us. We started dashing around the building so we could see out the windows from all four directions. The rain was torrential! I checked a radar app that Elder F. had told me about and saw that there was a very short break in the thunderstorms. We decided to wait by the front door and as soon as we saw the rain letting up, we made a dash to the metro station which is 3 blocks away. We hurried along in very light rain to the metro and just before we arrived, the rain started picking up again. Check out this link to see how heavy the storm was.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/LUgY7toobzQygajp7 

We had 90 cm (3.5 inches) of rain in 2 hours! But no tornadoes ever developed in Montréal. When I got home, I just pulled my recliner up to the sliding glass door to watch the fantastic show put on by Mother Nature! And, yes, it was very dark as the picture shows.

But as in life, after the storm passes, there is beauty and peace again...the law of opposition at play.

The senior ("seasoned" as Pres. Harkness likes to call us) missionaries in our apartment building like to get together a lot. We recently had a progressive dinner with 12 missionaries where we moved from apartment to apartment for each course of the dinner. While we were together, I had the idea that we should do "relatives around me." Guess what? We're all related! Even the Canadians! I love serving with these people. They are the covenant keepers. They have all made covenants with God to consecrate themselves to God and to sacrifice to serve Him. And they are DOING IT! They don't just SAY they will, they DO it! They are fun, pleasant, hard-working servants of God and I truly enjoy being with them.

If you lived here, wouldn't you just want to have breakfast every morning out on the balcony at 9 am?

I had to take myself for an excursion out of the big city. I find that I have to do that from time to time up here. I just need a little "country peace" and the countryside of Canada is absolutely beautiful!

My greatest moment BY FAR in the past 3 weeks was being with these people in the temple. Our young missionaries all had a chance to go to the temple during the month of July. This is my zone and they were the last to attend the temple. Some of these missionaries cried when they heard they would have the privilege of attending the temple because it's been so long since they've been inside a temple. 

While I don't have many interactions with the young missionaries in my zone at all because my assignment at the archives doesn't cross over with theirs hardly at all, I am working my way into this zone because I love young people so much. I am finding ways to be with them. I asked for special permission to be at the temple with them because "my Mandarin elders", who I attend church with every week would be there. I knew it would be a very special experience for me to be inside the temple with them. I was right. The entire experience, with its many facets, was among my top 10 experiences in the temple during my lifetime. There were many special moments for me. And I had chance to ask my Mandarin elders at church today what that temple experience meant to them. Their answers were beautiful. The future of the Church is in good hands!

I challenge you to find THIS flavor in the lower 48!  HAHA!

I invited our former security guard to come and see what our church is like. He didn't say yes. But he also didn't say no. He's working for the next 3 weekends. Stay tuned! My goal is to find ONE PERSON for the young missionaries to teach. I know, it's a tiny goal. And if I achieve it, I may branch out to something bigger. 

Running total of captures:  58,032

A HUGE Acte, A Happy Cookie, and a Happy Story

A picture is worth a thousand words...unless it takes a thousand words to explain the picture.  This is one of those pictures. Here's one of the missionaries I work with at the national archives and she is an absolute hoot! Her role is to prep the documents that we will be photographing.

The legal profession in Canada is divided into lawyers, who handle legal disputes, and notaries, who prepare acts and contracts such as marriages, wills, division of property among heirs, and lists of household assets after someone dies. We've been capturing thousands of "actes" created by notaries mainly from the late 1800s. An acte can be anywhere from one to several pages. The large ones have around 50 pages. Sister F. ran across this 200+ page acte last week and we were all dumbfounded at the size of it. You can see that it is bound by a ribbon at the corner to hold it all together. As soon as she cuts the ribbon, we'll be able to handle the pages one by one which makes it a LOT easier for captures. The three of us working on the cameras really appreciate what Sister F. does to get things ready for us!

My setup in our "new home".  I love that I get to work next to a window considering that the last room I worked in for the first 2 months of my mission had no windows at all. I never knew what the weather was like until I walked out the door to go home.

Click on the link below to see how we celebrated the 4th of July in Montreal.

One Heck of a Rainstorm!

Guess where I was last Thursday...and every Thursday?

Try as I might, this was the lowest temperature I could achieve in my tiny home for a few days last week. And the humidity! Ohhhh, the humidity! I picked up a new vocabulary word, and no, it wasn't a French one. Humidex. I'm assuming it means the humidity index and is comparable to a wind chill factor. Think "feels like" temperature. July 6 was 90.5° with a humidex number around 104°! This desert girl does NOT do well with this extreme humidity! It was pretty miserable all week long, but we lived to tell about it. So no harm, no foul.

A Canadian bonus

Sometimes at church I ask the young elders to tell me about a time during the week that they have been led by the Spirit because I think of my mission as devoid of those kinds of experiences. But after thinking about it, I had a very spiritual experience this week. I was talking to one of my friends who was very discouraged about a current situation in his/her life. All of a sudden, ideas started popping around in my head. I knew exactly what to do! I needed to find specific scriptures and read them aloud to my friend. As I read the verses aloud, the feeling of our conversation became one of hope and faith in the future instead of despair and discouragement. The Spirit was strong and I knew that I had had the privilege of being used as an instrument in God's hand to bless my friend's life!

Running total of captures: 39,283

BEST DAY OF MY MISSION!!

If Heavenly Father let me design a perfect day while on this mission I probably would have chosen to do the things I got to do last Friday. One of the office couples went to their son's wedding this week so the office was short-handed. Sister C and I offered to go help (even though we have no idea what we're doing) because the archives was closed on Friday in observance of the Canada Day holiday.

I was in charge of checking in the departing missionaries for their flights home and getting boarding passes for them. Pressure! You can't really mess up something this big! It turned out the other senior couple who usually works in the office had to leave to set up a new apartment. Thank heavens for the technology elders! They saved my bacon! They were so helpful and patient. They never seemed bothered by my myriad of pleas for help, starting with, "What's the PIN to unlock the computer?" And I loved getting to know both of them better. We saw a fair amount of the assistants to the president that day as well. There are some stellar young missionaries in the Canada Montreal Mission!!

My favorite part of the day was the afternoon when the departing missionaries arrived for their final interviews with president. I loved talking with them as we worked together in the office and finding out about how their missions have affected them. I loved hearing about the growth they have experienced and their plans of maintaining their spiritual growth when they return home.

One unassuming elder asked after lunch if he could help do anything in the office. What an incredible young man! The other departing missionaries followed suit and all of a sudden we had 8 helpers that we put to work. I told the elder who started all of this that there is some young lady out there who is going to be excited to meet a kind, thoughtful man like him. This elder is not the kind of man that the world admires or holds in esteem, but in God's kingdom, he is a giant! He reminded me of what was said of the Savior: ...He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. (Isaiah 53:2)

It was SO great to be around young missionaries all day long! And it was transfer day so not only were there lots of young missionaries in the office, but it was also the first day for new missionaries coming to our mission and I got to meet some of them! I met a Sister Jones from Rexburg, Idaho. I also found out later that there is an Elder Jones who just arrived too. In talking to my brother, I found out that Elder Jones is from my brother's stake in San Antonio and my brother met him at his interview with the stake president. I wanted to track down those two Joneses at lunch and do "relatives around me" on the Family Search app to see if we are related but my app wasn't cooperating.

My one sadness from the day is that I forgot to take any photos at the mission office. 😔

I work with these two fabulous missionaries in the Mount Royal Branch which is the Mandarin Chinese speaking branch and yesterday they texted me asking if I wanted to meet them to help teach a friend of the Church. Oh my! YEEEEES, please!!! It was such a pleasure to be teaching and inviting our friend to come unto Christ. I wasn't sure I'd ever have the chance to do that on this mission because of my records preservation assignment. I hope it happens again in the future! By the way, these two hard-working missionaries had ELEVEN friends at church today!!

I went home exhausted (a 12 hour day) and sweating like crazy because the humidity was off the charts on Friday, but so, SO happy! If Heavenly Father has a better day in store for me on the mission than this one, He'd better be planning a humdinger because I was so INCREDIBLY HAPPY all day long!

We also moved to a new room at the national archives this week. I've been working on the 3rd floor in a room by myself with no windows and a very loud ventilation fan and the other 3 missionaries have been working on the 5th floor. We were all moved into a new room on the 3rd floor. It's a spacious room with large windows. I'm so happy about our new setup!

I've gotten to know two of our security guards pretty well and am sad they have been transferred to other locations. This was their last week with us at the archives. Here's one of them that I played a joke on.

One day I was walking down these stairs. His desk is just at the bottom of the stairs so he saw me coming. I said, "These are Cinderella stairs!" I jokingly told him that I was going to leave a shoe on the stairs one day for him to find. Well...guess what I did? He thought it was hilarious.

Running total of captures: ?? (the internet isn't set up in our new room yet so we couldn't send in our reports this week)