Serenity with God

Nine people gathered at my apartment for Canadian Thanksgiving on October 14th. Everyone helped cook. The senior missionaries who work at the archives, invited two people who work in our building to join us: the secretary at the front desk who is Canadian, and one of the maintenance men who is from Algeria and has only been in Canada for a few months. It was fun having new faces!

Last year I celebrated and helped in the cooking of two Thanksgivings. I've decided that there will only be one for me this year. Two of them about a month apart was too much for me. It felt like overkill.

I have a new tradition surrounding Thanksgiving. You know how everyone says you can't put up Christmas decorations until AFTER Thanksgiving? Well, I'm going to start using Canadian Thanksgiving to apply to that rule instead of the one in November. I adore Christmas! And one of my Christmas decorations may have snuck out of the closet last Friday. Hehe. Nothing drastic yet, just a small beginning.

One of the missionary couples who was working at the Montreal archives moved to Ottawa because they were reassigned. They left the day after Thanksgiving. They will be missed and things won't be the same without them.

Canada culture: these potato chips are "all dressed". . . that's the name of the flavor, not to be confused with all of the other flavors which apparently are half naked!

I had the MOST GLORIOUS WEEKEND!! I spent two and a half days in a tiny town in the mountains. Yes! I found mountains! It made me very aware of how much I'm missing my Utah mountains.

I stayed in a tiny town called Saint Côme which is 2 hours north of Montreal. The place where I stayed had two dogs, so THAT was a bonus!

I spent several serene hours alone in the mountains. It felt so good to be out of the big city. It provided time for pondering, praying, and meditating. President David O. McKay was quoted in the most recent general conference as saying, "Meditation is one of the … most sacred doors through which we pass into the presence of the Lord.” It was good to spend some quiet time alone with God.

I was SO surprised by this tree! It looked almost furry. 

Upon closer inspection, I discovered that it has soft needles. They turn yellow in Autumn and fall off the tree! A quick Google search taught me that they are in the pine family. This type of tree is called a larch.

There was no Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints near where I stayed, so I worshipped with my Catholic brothers and sisters on Sunday. You'll notice I sat way in the back. 

When very young children play, they don't interact with each other so they're not really playing "together", just in a nearby space. It's called "parallel play." That's kind of what I thought of my worship on Sunday. I was "parallel worshipping." I worshipped in my way and they worshipped in their way. I'm grateful they were kind enough to share their space with me. And they didn't bother me because everything was in French so it didn't distract me at all from what I was doing. 😊 

I met up with this lovely lady later in the day. She lives in a chalet in the woods, what we'd call a cabin. She is the liaison at the archives building between Family Search and the National Archives of Quebec. She brings our projects to us and helps us when we get stuck with questions. She is one of the kindest, sweetest, most patient people I have ever met. Her demeanor lends a very calming influence to every conversation. It is such a joy to work with her!

Someday soon I hope to live in a similar setting. This is her driveway, for crying out loud! Wouldn't it be great to drive home to this every day?!? I told her if I lived where she lives I'd never come to the city, strictly work from home!

She and I spent a few hours walking beside a river together. I really enjoyed getting to know her better.

And lest you think that all I did was play this week, I did capture a few documents too.

Running total of captures: 429,602

Running total of docs prepped: 12,859

Fall is Upon Us

I was in the mountains yesterday. I went to see the Fall leaves. They are pretty muted but I found this lovely little waterfall scene which was absolutly gorgeous. And even if the leaves were a little disappointing, being out of the city is NEVER disappointing...especially if I'm in the mountains! I had to drive nearly 2 hours from Montreal to get to the Laurentian Mountains, more specifically, Mount Tremblant.

Mount Royal is beginning to show her colors as well as the nearby neighborhood.

And I'm becoming obsessed with red maple leaves. I'm pretty sure that they'll always hold a special spot in my heart after this mission.

My birthday was last week and the other archive missionaries surprised me by decorating our room at the national archives. They brought me flowers and a card as well. I was very surprised!

The birthday shenanigans even extended to my car. 

October 9 was Canadian Thanksgiving. Everyone pitched in to create a scrumptious meal. 

One of the Canadian sisters made this traditionally Canadian cake. It has maple syrup on the bottom. Ohhhh, so yummy! I barely remembered to take a photo before I gobbled down the last bite!

Sister L made me a birthday cake which we were all too full to eat. So I took it to the archives the next day to share with the other 3 missionaries, our 2 security guards, and the janitor.

I joked on Facebook how I can legally start decorating for Christmas now that Thanksgiving is over. I think everyone thought I was kidding. But look what happened. . .

At District Council, our district leader always puts every companionship's key indicators (basically the weekly goals) on the board. This week he put mine and Sister C's names in the table with smiley faces in the squares where everyone else had goals listed. I think he did this because last week I told him that I've been so inspired at the incredible work done by the missionaries of the Canada Montreal Mission that I've started setting my own goals. They are different than the young missionaries' goals, of course. But one of them is to find one person for our young missionaries to teach. 

When I saw my name, I jumped up and wrote in my goals and how far along I was in accomplishing them. I like being accountable to someone else besides myself with my goals. And having someone else know about them will creat that accountability.

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