The Farewells Begin

It has been REALLY difficult to move around this city on foot this week because of all of the snow. Driving is fine because the city has cleared the streets, but they just haven't had time to get to the sidewalks yet because the volume of snow is so huge.

This is the sidewalk in front of the building where I serve each day. At the beginning of the week we were walking on tromped down snow from other pedestrians. Thursday started to warm up a little so the snow started melting. Well, that made navigating the snow treacherous! After walking a short distance to the corner, I decided to walk in the street. I also decided that I can't return to the archives building until they clear the snow in front of the building because it's just too dangerous so I missed "work" on Friday. 

But luckily over the weekend, I came up with a way to get into the building another way which circumvents the walk in front of the building.

This is me waiting one night for a bus which was a half hour late . Then when it finally arrived, it just drove right past me. Sheesh!

I'm seeing these trucks ALL OVER TOWN, hauling snow out of the city.

I also see these little yellow signs all over stuck into mountains of snow. My guess is that the plan is to clear that section of street next so they don't want anyone parking there overnight.

The members of the Mount Royal Branch, the Chinese speaking branch where I've attended church for nearly two years, showered me with love on Sunday. I knew we were having a potluck after church, but I didn't know we were also having the "Sister Jones hour." I was uncomfortable with all of that attention, but they really did make me feel special. 

They had an "open mic" where people shared very kind words about me. And they also showered me with gifts. One person created a beautiful memory book. I received a gorgeous  bouquet of flowers. And one of the members who is a very talented artist drew a portrait of me.

A few of my former piano students returned to share their musical talents with all of us. Oh wow! I felt so loved and so honored by all of them!

I've been thinking a lot during the past few weeks about "each life that touches ours for good." We really are  meant to help each other along the way as we travel through this journey of life. 

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Lovely People and SNOW

I had the time of my life with these three lovely humans this week. We all went to a Moroccan restaurant. One of them is a security guard at the archives and the other two are the custodians who keep everything neat and tidy. One is from Morocco, one from Tunisia, and one from Senegal. I delight in having friends from other countries. All of God's children who live on this globe are much more similar than we are different. It's going to be painful for me to leave these three.

The company was by FAR the best part of the night, but the food was pretty fabulous too.

That night will be one of my most treasured moments in Montreal. 💖

Two of my Mandarin elders on the metro...looks like they're in jail 😂  I love my Mandarin elders. I probably know them the best of all the young missionaries because we end up serving in the same branch together for so long. 

On Thursday, February 13, 2025 Montreal got over 13 inches of snow. It all gets piled up. Note the mountain of snow in the church parking lot is nearly as tall as my car.

Frozen hair does not obey the law of gravity 😂

This is the second big whammy this week. We don't yet know how many inches it will end up being but it's been snowing all day long (Sunday, February 16, 2025.) The predicted snowfall is close to two feet. I'm not really sure where all of that snow will be plowed to. Church was cancelled for our entire stake and 3/4 of the wards and branches in our mission did not hold any church meetings today.

It never really dumped snow today. It was just a steady snowfall all day long, probaby exceeding 24 hours of snowfall. I thought about how small and simple things bring about great things. An average amount of snowfall extended hour after hour after hour can shut down an entire city. God usually works in small and simple ways in our lives. And we can each do small and simple things that will make a big difference over time.

One of those things is reading the Book of Mormon. If you read for 15 minutes, you'll notice nothing different in your life. But if you read for 15 minutes, or even 30 minutes, each day for a year, you'll notice a BIG change in yourself and in your life. You'll learn about the power of the book and the influence it has when you begin a serious study of it. If you haven't yet, TRY IT!

Anyone who reads this before Monday morning (Feb. 17), PRAY for us! I'm driving a senior couple to a surgery. One of our elders needs a hip replacement and has been in SO much pain this past week. They don't think their car will make it so we're going to try my SUV. We're allowing 2 hours for a 20 minute drive...that's how bad things are right now. Hopefully they'll be much improved by morning!

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I'm Clicking Again!!

My computer is working again!!!!!

The law of opposition is real. When I'm denied the opportunity to click for over a month and then that opportunity opens up again, it is JOYFUL!  Wednesday morning felt like Christmas morning to me!! I was so happy! It felt sooooooooo good to be about God's business again!

By Friday all four of our computers were finally working again. I only have one word for that...HALLELUJAH! It took an act of God--calling the North America operations manager at Family Search--so that we could FINALLY get some help!

It dawned on me how funny it feels to say that my BIG NEWS of the week is that I'm clicking. Usually I have other news, and by the way, I also captured some documents.

Everything feels brand new again! When we finish capturing a box, we put a green dot on it. This is my first green dot in a very, very long time. 

We got our first snow this past week, only about 2 inches.

This little girl was very proud of her snowball. She looked at me and held it up for me to see her prize. 

Update on my two friends "on date". . .

Our one friend won't make her original baptismal date but I'm not worried about that. She'll keep progressing until she gets there because her desire is so pure. And she's already made a TON of progress! I'm really proud of her and admire her as I watch her steep uphill climb.

C astounded me this week! He was very tentative when the sisters first invited him to be baptized. Then two weeks later, he's VERY committed to being baptized. I asked him why the change. He essentially said that all of the truth of Christ's gospel can be found here in this church. Other churches are good and have some of the truth, but the fullness can be found in the Book of Mormon. He has a strong testimony of that book and will finish reading it in its entirety before his baptism on the 28th of December.

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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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A Beautiful Snowstorm

I got to spend a lot of time with these lovely, lovely people this past week between church, district council, and a district P-day. I truly love being with young missionaries. They inspire and energize me. I'm so glad that I've found ways to be where they are because the first few months of my mission, it was extremely rare for me to see a young missionary...at all!

District Council

La Plateau District

I got to know these two missionaries much better at lunch on district P-day. They are stellar young men.

We had different plans for district P-day but because we woke up to over a foot of snow, we decided to go with plan B and go to lunch. This seemed to be the perfect restaurant for our "plan B". 

 

After lunch we went to a nearby chapel and played pickleball, volleyball, hockey, and whatever the elders and sisters could find to play with. It was so fun to see the kid in each of them as they played together. We could only find 3 paddles for pickleball, so I went to the kitchen and found a jelly roll pan for the 4th player. It was a challenge to play with such an awkward implement! But a fun one! We laughed a lot.

The Utah missionaries know what to do with snow! Snow angels.

I absolutely LOVE snow!! So I was very excited that our first real snowstorm in Montreal left us with a serious accumulation of white powder...at least a foot. It's been interesting to watch the progression of the city this week after the big dump. 
 
Other missionaries who were here last winter have told me fascinating stories about snow removal so I was excited to see it. They told me that snow plows move the snow to the side of the road first. Then a series of vehicles come to remove it from the street. I was told that a "Dr. Seuss-like" vehicle blows the snow into the back of huge trucks. Then the trucks take the snow to the St. Lawerence River and dump it in. Sadly, this is the only snow removal vehicle I saw this storm. But never fear! There will be many more snowstorms! I'm sure to see the process at some point.

My walk to the archives...

Back in the summer, someone gave us a ride in a rental car and I noticed a shovel in the car. I asked why there was a shovel and they laughed and said, "You haven't been here during the winter, have you." You can see in this photo that the snowplows bury parked cars and they have to dig out.

These are the stairs going down to the metro. Do you see the salt dripping down the stairs that is brought in from outside?

From what I've been able to observe, the city also clears the sidewalks but, of course, they can't get to all of them at once. So from Monday-Friday, I mostly walked on top of a thick layer of ice. They throw a mix of sand and gravel on top of that so that you don't fall. In the next photo, you can see the slush that can be created with sand and snow.

On my walk to the archives, the sidewalks became more and more cleared as each day went on and the city cleared different parts of my nearly mile-long walk. The final strip to be cleared was the block where the arcives building is. This is the shot from Friday. You can see the national archives building on the right.

Though I'm used to snow in Salt Lake City, we usually have a snowstorm and then a few days later the weather warms up and the snow begins to melt. Not in Montreal. No melting going on here all week. In fact, when I left home one morning the "feels like" temperature was -2 F. And yes, I walked to the archives that day. 

Here are two shots of the same street from close to the same place. The first picture is Monday right after the snow stopped.

And here's the same place on Friday after the snow has been cleared by the city on both the street and the sidewalk. And once again, none of the clear street or sidewalk can be attributed to melting. We haven't been above 0 degrees all week.

A frozen shot of my beloved Mount Royal.

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