Changing of the Guards

The big news this week is that our mission leadership is changing. President David Harkness and his wife, Lisa Harkness, returned home on Friday, June 28th, the same day that President Craig Sorensen and his wife, Melanie Sorensen, arrived in Montreal. The Harknesses have been amazing leaders for this mission. They lead with very high expectations and much love. And the young missionaries respond in a powerful way because of the great love that they feel from the Harknesses.

The senior missionaries pitched in and one of the senior sisters quilted this wall hanging for them. It represents all (as nearly as we could guess) of the countries that have been gathered into our mission so that people could learn of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

We had a tearful farewell last Sunday night at our mission-wide meeting held on Zoom. The Harknesses left us with beautiful words of encouragement and love. And one of our APs sent us all off with a beautiful, heartfelt benediction on the meeting and the Harknesses' mission. These two stalwart servants of God have made a huge difference in this mission!

We're excited to meet and welcome the Sorensens. They have a gargantuan task ahead of them. Salt Lake calls us "a complicated mission", and we are! President Sorensen will not only be the mission president, he will also be the district president for two districts of church units. The Sorensens will be traveling by plane or car for 2 weeks out of every month in the mission. 

These are some of my favorite people on the planet. I get to see these elders every Sunday because we worship together in the Mandarin branch. They have been given a very difficult task. Not only are they asked to learn a complex language on their mission, but they only get to teach a small portion of the population here in Montreal. While other missionaries log huge numbers of friends they are finding and teaching, these patient elders work and work but only have few friends to teach. That doesn't seem to bother them. They continue baptizing anyway. I admire the way they deal with the challenging task they have been given.

Ah! It's already shoulder-high dandelion season!

And how about this coffee can garden? Kinda fun!

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Playing with My Sister

This is what my cute missionary son does on our Monday calls...he reads me scriptures! He also inevitably ends up teaching me part of a lesson in each video call. He's SUCH a missionary! And I love what his mission is doing for him. It is deepening his conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ and he is understanding the doctrines of Christ MUCH more clearly than he ever has before. 

I was a bit worried about him last week because he had malaria. That is ONE. TOUGH. ILLNESS. I've never experienced it but I've watched many of my African friends suffer through it. Thankfully, Prempeh has returned to full health.

My sister and her friend came to visit for 10 days! I played and played and played with them. It has been a lot of fun to take a break from the scanning day in and day out.

In Montreal we...

visited the archives building where I serve every day,

had lunch in Chinatown,

and saw the Notre Dame Bascilica.

This painting in the basilica always makes me smile. Look at the focus on the maple leaf! Both mother and child are looking at THE leaf. 

In and around Quebec City we...

visited the stunning Montmorency Falls,

drove around the Island of Orleans where they have six teeny, tiny chapels as well as a few churches. They were built before transportation was simple so that people would have a nearby place to pray without traveling a long distance to a church.

This is one of the tiny churches that has been turned into a boutique.

Here's my yellow dream home on the island.

My sister...

a very old and tipping cross to mark a grave...

Of COURSE we had to stop for some of the chocolate dipped ice cream that the island is famous for!

I found the Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac Hotel that Quebec City is famous for! Last time I went to Quebec City, we never found it. This trip I realized that we had parked the car 1 block away from this famous icon. Duh!

We met these two fabulous people in a Christmas store. When she saw my nametag, she threw her hands in the air with a loud gasp. I knew that they were members of the church. We have this huge church family wherever we go. She gave me a huge hug. When I introduced my sister she said, "Well then SHE gets a hug too!" 

They told me they had given their driver a Book of Mormon and he said he'd read it. They shared his email with me and asked that missionaries contact him to see if he's interested in finding out more. I promised I'd follow through with that.

A few minutes later we ended up at the checkout counter together. She insisted on paying for the Christmas ornament I was buying. What amazing and kind people! I will think of them every Christmas when I decorate my tree.

We flew to Prince Edward Island where we...
visited the house where Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote "Anne of Green Gables",

saw the kitchen where the book was actually written,

saw an upstairs bedroom that looked like it could have belonged to Anne Shirley,

walked through the "Haunted Woods",

and down "Lovers Lane".

We also visited a lighthouse on the island and went to church. Sadly, none of my missionaries attended the ward that I did. They had gone out to worship with the smaller branches on the island that day.

And then back home to Montreal.

I actually DID spend two days at the archives in the past two weeks! Our supervisor drove up from Pennsylvania to help us launch the new project of capturing vital records. Those were two frustrating days as we tried to figure things out, make adjustments to our workstations, and iron out the details. We'll get there. But I knew the beginning wouldn't be smooth. Better luck next week!

This week was our final zone conference with our mission leaders, the Harknesses. They will complete their mission at the end of June and the Sorensens will take the helm. There were some very tender moments at zone conference. They have been fabulous leaders. They love our young missionaries and pour their hearts and souls into helping them grow spiritually. They care for and love our young missionaries.

We had the opportunity to attend the temple with one of the zones in our mission. We couldn't attend with our own zone because it's a very large zone so they didn't have room for the senior missionaries in that session. I loved thinking about all of the consecrated lives in that room at the same time. We seniors sure do think a lot of our young missionary friends. They are stellar! I wish every young person in the world equaled their goodness and devotion.

A bit of sad news, the man who spoke to me on the street and who has been taught by the missionaries had to be dropped because he was no longer making progress. I accept that, because it's certainly his choice whether he wants to draw closer to Christ or not. Maybe the time is not right for him and he will make that choice later on. Even though the young sister missionaries need to move on, I will continue to text him to see how he's doing and pray for him. That's one of the luxuries of senior missionaries. We function more like a member of the ward than the young missionaries. We have different roles than they do.

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Would You Go For a Four Hour Church Experience?

We had a bit of an adventure at 4:45 am this morning...the fire alarm went off. I dutifully put on some clothes and went outside into the rain. All of the missionaries from the building meet on the corner whenever we evacuate the building. There are 11 senior missionaries and 6 young elders in our building. Only 4 of us met on the corner. Wonder what happened to the rest of them?

Mount Royal...again. I know you've seen a bunch of pictures of this "mountain" but it changes all the time!

Missionary shoes...the top two are the exact same kind of shoe. Can you tell which is the seasoned missionary and which one is his greenie?

What on earth is this mess on my sliding glass door, you ask? Self preservation. That's what it is. Our building management in all their wisdom shut off the AC about a month ago. This week we had a 3 day streak of tempteratures in the 80s. This was my attempt to keep my apartment cooler by blocking the direct sun. I also hung a gray sheet in the window and pulled the curtains.I'd leave the door open all night and then trap the cool air in the morning. All to no avail. Every day when I arrived home, it was 80 degrees inside and there was no way to cool it down. On top of that, my fan broke the 2nd day. I had to resort to evaporation techniques that I learned while living in Africa in order to sleep. I put on a t-shirt and shorts to sleep in then got in the shower to get them drenched. All night as they evaporated, it cooled me off. And then the GLORIOUS rain came on Saturday and saved me!

See the yellow note on the bathroom mirror? It's a quote from Elder Gary E. Stevenson's conference talk. I decided every missionary in my zone needed one on their bathroom mirror so I printed it for them. You should have seen their faces when I told them that Elder Stevenson of the Quorum of the Twelve wanted them to put it on their mirror and say it every day. 

Here's the quote in case you don't have it on YOUR mirror yet: “Wow, look at me! I am awesome! I am a child of God! He knows me! He loves me! I am gifted—gifted with the Holy Ghost as my constant companion!”

Here's a lovely fish pond that I stop by twice a day, to and from my walk to the national archives. It's such a peaceful setting. I've noticed as it's getting colder that the fish are sticking to the bottom of the tank. It's probably warmer down there. This week on one of my visits, a man stopped to talk to me. It gave me a chance to ask him where HE finds peace. He said he finds it because he is an artist. I asked him if he'd like to find even more peace by learning more about Jesus Christ. He declined, but I have a new friend. We even walked several blocks down the street together after our chat at the fish pond.

These lovely people visited us at the national archives this week. The two on the left are office missionaries and the others are their friends who came to visit them.

We had another stunning zone conference with the Harknesses this past week. I've been to two now and I'm pretty sure that every single one is going to be a spiritual feast. Sister Harkness teaches like a professionally trained educator. What a gift!

I love that some archivist, somewhere, put a little human touch on this label by making a flower out of the "i" in Mai (May.) It's the little things that amuse us at the archives. The really little things.

I finished a project that Elder F started before he was asked to work on a special project building a contraption for capturing books.

These are the boxes that I captured in the project.

Look at this charming streetlamp in front of the archives building. I've been listening to The Chronicles of Narnia as I capture documents and this lampost feels like it could come right out of Narnia itself.

Our tech elders love to Prank Sister C who works in the office because she's so fun. Here she is featured over and over again in a brochure.

I knew about this charming little park which is a block from our apartment but only visited it for the first time on conference Sunday. I needed to get out of the house after so much indoor time.

A new group was formed in our mission today in a small town called Thetford Mines! The members are on FIRE! After the meeting they swarmed the missionaries telling them of friends they have that they want to introduce to the missionaries so they can be taught. The missionaries also received several invitations to dinner so that they can meet other friends to be taught. They're so excited to grow this group into a branch! I was so touched when I learned of the faithfulness of these members of the Church. Many of them have been traveling one hour to church each week and then another hour home. Several don't have cars so they'd carpool. It's just too easy for me to go to church in Salt Lake City. Would I go if it would cost me 2 hours of travel time and 2 hours at church? Here's a photo of the group that met in Thetford Mines for the first time today.

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