I FINALLY Feel Like a Missionary

My BEST news this week is an amazing miracle! I GOT TO DO SOME MISSIONARY WORK!! Here's the scoop. I was walking home from the archives on Monday and I see someone catching up to me from behind. He says to me, "Are you going for a walk?" I'm thinking, "Who wants to know? And what's your motive for asking this question?" I cautiously told him that yes, I'm going for a walk. Then he saw my nametag and asked if I was a latter-day saint. He said that he came to our church for about 3 months in Ghana and because of the help of the missionaries he stopped smoking and improved other things in his life. I got a lot more friendly in the conversation after that. 😂

We talked for a while and I learned that he came to Montreal for a professional conference last week and stayed on because he has a 6 month visa. He is hoping to immigrate to Canada. I was able to TESTIFY to him that his life is already better because of the knowledge he gained from the missionaries in Ghana and the changes he chose to make. I TAUGHT HIM A PRINCIPLE that this is God's church on the earth. Other churches are good but they were started by men. This church was restored to the earth by our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. I INVITED him to come to church on Sunday and he said he'd come! It turns out he couldn't come today because of some unpredictable circumstances, but he's coming next week. I also sent him an electronic copy of the Book of Mormon and INVITED him to read it along with the Bible.

After we had been talking for a bit, I asked why he even spoke to me on the street. I asked if it was because he saw my nametag. He said that he couldn't see it because he was behind me. He just had this thought that he should talk to that lady. I TESTIFIED to him that that was a message from God in his thoughts. 

The young elders in my district, the elders in my  branch, and my missionary son would be so proud of me! I testified, taught a principle, and gave an invitation! What a huge blessing it was to me that this man stopped me. I yearn to have chances as I serve a mission to be able to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ!  This was a cherished tender mercy for me. We'll see what the future brings for him. I have a goal to find one person for the missionaries to teach. I don't even have an expectation of baptism for that person, just that they will be willing to listen to lessons. I wonder if he will be the one. And then if I ever achieve that goal, maybe I'll go for something bigger.

This is the beautiful chapel where I go to church, right across the street from the Villa-Maria metro stop. And, yes, it's very common for a Montreal sky to look like it did that day.

The National Archives of Quebec where we work installed a new sign outside of our room! The last one we had said The Genealogical Society of Utah...a little outdated.

I have to get out of my chair every hour at the archives and take a walk or my legs stiffen up and I get too bored sitting in one spot. On one of my excursions, I found this great book with historical photos of places around Montreal. It has "then and now" shots. This park is across the street from the archives building.

We had a little outing on the weekend with the senior missionaries to Old Port.

This is so cool! You could squat down and look through these huge glasses at the sun on the day of the eclipse if you didn't have a pair of your own protective glasses! Brilliant!

At one point I was walking past this funny lady hoping to get ahead of everyone so I could have a clear shot of the cityscape. She, at the same time, had other plans for the group and wanted to get a casual shot of everyone walking along. As I tried to pass her up, she stuck out her palm and planted it on my chin to stop me. 🤣 We took this hilarious photo to commemorate that moment.

As I finished another reading of the Book of Mormon today, I was struck with a profoundly deep gratitude for all of the men and women who have labored, protected, cared for, translated, scribed, printed, donated money for, and put their lives at risk so that it could be safely brought down to our day where we SO DESPERATELEY need it! I LOOOOOOVE this book! I love the teachings of Jesus Christ that I find inside. They make my life better. I love the peace and the power that I find from this book. I need the hope that this book teaches me about my Savior. I need the healing and comfort that come from this book. I need the peace that I find in this book. I love how this book compels me to continuously strive to be a better person. Where would I be without this book?!? I NEED this book!!

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Signs of Spring

 Look at these blue skies!

Daffodils are popping out!

And forsythias too! These are nostalgic for me since we had one in our backyard when I was young.

The mail carriers are using their little carts again.

And the construction workers who abandoned an unfinished job at the entry of our archives building when the cold weather hit have returned. This can mean only one thing...it's REAL Spring, not fake Spring!

I escaped Montreal again for a few hours on Saturday. It always amazes me the size of the huge churches that I find in these small towns!

I was in the St. Jerome at lunchtime so thought I'd go for something predictable. Apparently Big Mac is the same in any language. Notice every other item on the menu is in French.

A simple flat tire...

turned into a much bigger ordeal. Who would have dreamed that my car has no spare tire?!? It didn't come with one!! But all's well that ends well.

We've been waiting several months for these keyboards to be shipped from Salt Lake City so that we can start a keyboarding class in the Mandarin branch. They finally arrived this week. Let the fun begin! How do you teach piano lessons in Mandarin?!? I guess we'll figure it out.

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Majesty in the Heavens

The highlight of our week HAS to be the total eclipse that we experienced here in Montreal on April 8th. We were right on the edge of the totality zone so our view of totality was only just over a minute, but it was still spectacluar! Last week we had debated about where to view the eclipse, maybe across the river, maybe in the park across the street from where we work. But in the end we realized we could see it from our own balconies. We opted for that since we knew that traffice would be awful that day. As I walked home from the archives shortly before the eclipse, I crossed two streets that are main arteries in Montreal, Rue Ontario and Rue Sherbrooke. They were both parking lots jam-packed with vehicles. The home viewing also allowed one of our senior sisters THREE wardrobe changes during the eclipse since the temperature changed so drastically. She started with long sleeves, got too hot sitting in full sun and changed to short sleeves, added a sweater shortly after totality because the temperature had cooled off so much.

Here's a cool photo that I found online taken from the International Space Station. The red dot is where Montreal is. The orientation is looking east toward the Atlantic Ocean. We had high, thin clouds during the eclipse. It's quite a miracle that those were the only clouds we had because Montreal is cloudy quite a bit of the time.

The next two photos are compliments of Hal Morris, one of the other senior missionaries that I serve with.

One of our senior missionaries said that it made her think of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, with everyone outside, looking up, shielding their eyes because the light is so bright...just like the glory of Jesus Christ is so bright that He is difficult to look on because of the brillance of His being. The awe, the wonder, the clapping, the ooohing and ahhhhing. Perhaps these elements will also be present when He descends from the clouds.

To me, this event felt like a reminder of God's majesty. I loved this quote that I saw online. (Except I don't love the grammatical error.)

This is the security guard that has stayed at the archives by far the longest and so we know him the best. He's been working at the archives since last July. We usually only have security guards for about 3 months and then they get assigned to other sites. We said goodbye to this one this week. I'm going to miss stopping by the front desk every morning to chat with him. He is such a good and kind man. He's also been a great source of someone who can answer questions about my French language learning and Canadian culture. It's a sad loss for us. He will truly be missed.

These are my people! They probaby get tired of me taking these pictures with them every time I happen to run into them. This guy is one of our new APs.

And I always joke with this one that she's my niece.

These trainers and greenies are making plans of which metro stop they'll go to for finding and making a goal of how many people they'll find in two hours. It's such a terrifying and great way to start the first day of your mission in the field!

I love being in the office on transfer day when the new missionaries arrive. There are lots of deer-in-the-headlight looks when they first walk in. But my days in the office may be numbered and it makes me sad. The former secretary and her husband were in the kitchen on the morning of transfers getting lunch ready for all of the missionaries after their morning of training. And I was upstairs in the office copying passports and visas as well as checking in the departing missionaries for their flights the next day. Now that we have a new secretary, I'll probably show her the ropes a few times and then the need for my help will become obsolete.

Way back in July of last year they moved us out of the rooms we were working in at the archives because they said they were renting those rooms out to an outside entity. Well, this week they built the wall on the left blocking off the cubicle space where they said our new neighbors were moving in. It seems like the move will actually happen now. We met a man who was bringing in desks who told us that it will be a new section of the Ministry of Education and will be focused on the protection of children. The bathrooms are at the end of this hall. Originally they told us that there would be a wall built right where I'm standing to take the picture and so we'd need to use bathrooms on another floor. Thankfully, this will not be happening.

Too bad this isn't a great shot. There is a guy with a power sprayer who is spraying the road with water. I've been wondering what happens to the tons of salt and gravel that have been spread on the streets and sidewalks all winter long. After googling it, I found out that they spray the roads and sidewalks with water to loosen the grime and then a Hoover-like truck comes by to suck up all of the debris. Here's a link to an article in the Montreal Gazette if you want to read more about it. The Jacques Cartier Bridge is the blue structure lit up in the background.

More Canadian culture: One of the new senior missionaries googled how to handle the milk-in-a-bag-challenge. Here's the answer! You just drop the bag into this perfectly sized pitcher and snip the corner of the bag. Voila! No messy transferring the milk to another container.

I've been missing this guy a LOT this week. He's been at the mission office in Benin City, Nigeria since Thursday because he went to pick up his greenie! Prempeh has been called to be a trainer after 3 months in his mission! I hope he will do all he can to teach his new companion how to be an obedient, hard-working missionary.

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Cheap Thrills

This cute little thing popped onto the screen while I was talking to my missionary son last Monday. It was fun to see him interact with her. Makes me think he's going to be a great dad.

We had a changing of the guards in the secretary chair this week. My dear, dear sister/friend (pictured on the left) has gone home. I have so many lovely memories with her. And her husband and I love to swap teasing remarks, so he feels like a little brother to me. I wish them the best in the next chapter of their lives. There could not be a senior couple anywhere in the world that has served with more love and zeal than these two. Though I will miss them terribly, I already love our new secretary. After talking for 10 minutes the first time we met, we already knew we were kindred spirits. And her husband grew up in the same ward as me, just a block away, though we didn't know each other then. But we can both name a plethora of Yale Ward members that both of us know!

The archives was closed on Monday for the Easter holiday so I had lots of fun playing pickleball with these lovelies and going to lunch with our district. Young missionaries bring so much light and joy to my otherwise mundane mission!!

If you're going to have poutine in Montreal, you MUST go to La Banquise. It's known for having the best poutine in town. You can verify this by the crowds in the restaurant and the line of people waiting outside to get in. We thought we'd outsmart them by showing up in the middle of the afternoon, but we had to wait even at THAT time of day!

Poutine is a dish invented in Montreal. It's a bed of fries topped with curd cheese and gravy. Then you can have different kinds of meat and vegetables on top if you like.

We're sad that our cute, pregnant janitor had her last day of work this week. Her baby arrives in August but it's getting a little hard to perform all of her duties.

The sister missionary who arrived the same day that I did will finish her mission next week so we took her to dinner to celebrate her mission.

Then we went for a beaver's tail after dinner. This is an Ottawa invention, fried bread with several different choices of toppings.

Know what this is called? A booter. It's when you step in a puddle that is deeper than you think and it gets your boot and your sock all wet. I love it when I run into "Candaian culture" because the U.S. and Canada have very similar cultures. It's fun to ferret out the small differences.

We had 10 inches of snow Wednesday night into Thursday! It was wet, heavy snow, hence the possibility of a "booter" unless you watched where you stepped. There were lots of large puddles due to the heavy water content of the snow. Though I did not take this photo, I've seen Montreal parents transporting their kids around town this way. It works SO much better than a stoller in the snow! And I've seen people trying to do that too! This is a photo of our storm this past week.

And then 3 days later it's sunny and in the mid 50s. I had to get outside a few times this weekend to counteract all of the hours on the couch watching general conference.

My conference breakfast was extra special thanks to one of our friends at the archives who gifted us some homemade maple syrup. She lives over an hour away from Montreal in a lovely wooded community. She and her husband tap the maple trees on their property and make their own maple syrup. She's explained the process to us and it's pretty labor intensive. I felt like I was pouring "warm friendship" on my French toast this morning.

Have you ever wondered, "Why does this missionary only talk about fun things in her blog? Where's the missionary work?!?!?" Well, if I documented my missionary work in this blog it would go something like this. . .
Week 1-- I took pictures of documents

Week 2-- I took some more pictures

Week 3-- I didn't take quite as many pictures as last week

Week 4-- Wow! It was a really good week of taking pictures! Ten thousand of them!

Week 5-- Well, I took some more pictures this week

The archives missionaries joke about what we call our "cheap thrills." We look for tiny things that are different in our daily grind to keep us amused. Some of the missionaries like to stop and read the documents. I don't do that because most of the documents are in French. And also, my goal is to hasten God's work so I don't take time to stop. 

The senior missionaries in our mission gather every Monday morning for a meeting, some on Zoom and some in person. One of the elements of that meeting is "Joy & Success" and I've been asked to share next Monday for that portion of the meeting. MLS missionaries usually talk about a less active member they've loved back into the church or a member who received their endowment for the first time who they were instrumental in helping. Honestly, it's a tough assignment for me whenever I'm assigned to share about my joys and success. I really have to dig deep. 

But while I do not have many joys in my work, I'm eternally grateful to a loving Heavenly Father who has performed a great miracle in my life in connection with my mission. I fretted for months after receiving my mission call that I would be bored every single day for 2 years. I imagined myself clawing my way through every day and forcing myself to do the work. But I have been content working in the archives. No, it's not thrilling. Nor does it produce great stories to share in the senior district council. But I'm so grateful that I'm not miserable like I thought I might be. 

A few weeks ago on a relatively warm afternoon, an hour before the time I normally leave, I got very antsy and did NOT want to stay in that chair taking pictures! But that has been only one single hour that I had to claw my way through in an entire year. That, to me, is a miracle.

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Easter Week

I think I just had the best Easter in my memory! My focused scripture study and simple Easter decorations kept my thoughts focused on Christ all week. I loved the songs, videos, and scripture suggestions from the Church's "Easter Study Plan." The videos were especially poignant for me. Here are some of my favorite decorations this week. . .

I hope my Easter celebrations become better and better every year!

One of my favorite senior missionary couples is finishing their mission in a few days. I'm going to miss them terribly. But the only constant thing in a mission is the coming and going of missionaries in and out of your life. I wrote on their car last week "Don't go!" Here was their response on my car. . .

There are many things I love about these two but I think my favorite thing is how they love our young missionaries. They have both made the office such a welcoming and comfortable place to be! They will be sorely missed by everyone, not just by me.

We had a TON of time off this weekend for the Easter celebration so we took full advantage of it. The archives were closed on Friday and Monday. On Friday, fourteen of us seniors went to the temple and then out to lunch. It was a beautiful experience to be in the temple on Good Friday after studying about the Savior all week. I love the focus on the Savior in the endowment session as well.

Saturday we drove out to the country for a "sugar shack" experience. We were too late in the season to see the maple sugar dripping from the trees but we did roll maple syrup poured on top of "snow" to make maple taffy.

We visited some farm animals on the property. This little lamb fit in perfect with my focus on Easter this week.

We went on a horse drawn carriage ride.

And ended with a lunch doused in maple syrup with some entertainment and dancing. I really do serve with some lovely people. What a fun day!

. . . remains of the day, syrup dribbles all down the front of my shirt. 

The festivities continued on into Monday with a district P-day starting with pickleball and ending with poutine for lunch. Google poutine if you don't know what it is...a famous meal created in Montreal. I love being with my young missionaries!!

HE IS RISEN! What a great Easter week I've had. What a great life and eternity I have BECAUSE OF THE SAVIOR!

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