I Love Missionaries!

This is one of our security guards. He's from Senegal and I stop by to chat with him every day. He's practicing English with me and I'm practicing French with him.

I'm so glad I remembered to get this photo a week ago before transfers. I was afraid some of my Mandarin elders would be leaving...and they did. Two of them are gone now. But I'm really excited about the two who have been transferred BACK to the Mandarin branch!

We got TWENTY-EIGHT new missionaries this past week! That's a HUGE incoming group! It takes a lot of work to process that many. And poor Sister Sorensen was cooking for this small army for a few days.

I love being with the new missionaries on transfer day! I also love being there to say goodbye to our departing missionaries. One of the departing missionaries is from Star Valley and he knows I want to move there when I go home so his last words to me were, "See you in Star Valley!" He's such a good young man. He finished his mission as an AP.

And we discovered on the very last day of his mission that this missionary's grandparents lived in my ward! How did it take us THAT long to figure that out?!?

At the lunch on transfer day, one of our APs, Elder Jones, was introducing the senior missionaries. When he introduced me, he said, "Sister Jones loves missionaries!" I'm glad he knows that because it's true! I feel such a strong love for these amazing young people that I get to work with during this season of my life. I feel like they are the cream of the crop of all the young people in the world.

THIS! This is why Salt Lake says we're a "complicated mission." One of the senior misisonaries made this graphic.

OK, this will seem strange to many, but I find it fascinating. One day the edge of a paper sliced across my finger. I quickly looked at it to see if the paper cut was going to bleed. NO PAPER CUT! Then I started thinking that with the hundreds of thousands of papers that I've touched, how is it possible that I haven't had a single paper cut? When I was a teacher I got paper cuts all the time. I asked the other archive missionarie and they said they haven't had any either.

We googled it and found that because we are living in a humid climate, we're less likely to get paper cuts. Our hands aren't as dry. Dry hands get paper cuts easier. And the paper is more supple because of the humidity. On really humid days, I can feel the difference in the paper. Hence, no paper cuts for archive missionaries in Montreal!

I noticed this loose piece of skin on my thumb the other day and figured that must be the Montreal version of a paper cut. No pain. No blood. Just a hanging piece of skin.

There you go. A useless piece of information about paper cuts for you!

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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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General Conference! Oh My!

This darling young lady was baptized last Sunday and is now a member of our Mandarin speaking branch. Her boyfriend is the 2nd counselor in the branch. Elder E on the left, just arrived in the mission 2 days before the baptism. What a way to start your mission!

The fall colors are starting to come on in Montréal. The missionaries who were here last Fall tell me that the whole mountain turns beautful colors. I can't wait to see that!

These are our 2 security guards at the archives currently. The one of the left, P, is a native of Montréal and the one on the right, A, is from Haiti. When A smiles, I feel like there is sunshine shooting from his face! He and I have become good friends even though we share no common language. He speaks French and Creole and I speak English. I do practice the tiny bit of French I've learned when speaking to him. But I also have a handy little app that I can speak into and it will translate my words and speak them to A. Then he speaks into the app and the translation comes back to me. I love our friendship! He has a beautiful wife with him here in Montreal and a 10 year old daughter back in Haiti. He wrote a poem for me last week! I'm so touched that he would do that. He spent a long time translating it into English for me. That poem is a treasure for me that I intend to keep for the rest of my life.

I finished another project this week.

But after digitizing box 10, I discovered that box 11 was missing. I informed the archives staff and the next day when I arrived, this is what I found. So cute! It made me laugh.

But the best part of this week, by far, was General Conference! I don't remember such a spectacular experience with conference for a long time. I was pondering about why that might be and wondered if it's because I'm a missionary. I have consecrated this time of my life to God and so He is pouring out rich blessings on me.

One of the beautiful things that happened to me at conference was because of 2 young sister missionaries. I thought Elder Rasband's talk about the importance of seniors serving missions was great. But it wasn't until these 2 sisters texted me after he finished his talk that the full impact hit. They told me that they love me, are grateful for me, and that I have changed their lives and set a beautiful example. I began crying and also received a powerful answer to a prayer I had offered this week. I find it very interesting that I needed those 2 sisters as the catalyst for the revelation to flow. I'm very grateful that they followed a prompting. And I told them so. Young missionaries are SUCH a blessing in my life!

. . . and seasoned missionaries are SUCH a blessing in every mission president's, young missionary's, and members' lives! Come join us if you can!!

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