Our Mission is Popping

God has surely created some beautiful things on this earth to gladden our hearts and our eyes, like these  flowers along the road. Except He didn't create the "orange trees" further down the street.

 We had a spectacular day this week, one that called to me to eat lunch in the park across the street from our archives building.

My archives team showered me with love after Elder Gong encouraged us to tell our companions something that we appreciate about them.

Look at this humongous marriage contract we found this week! I didn't take the time to stop and read it but we assume it was for some people of great prominence! Look at the scalloped upper edge of the paper!

Our mission has an incredibly lofty goal for baptisms this year! Last year our goal was 248 and we went over that by about 100. The young mission leaders along with president and his wife carefully petitioned the Lord to know what our goal should be for this year. After wrestling with it for some time they came up with 691! 😮 Because this is God's work and He is actively involved in it and because we have obedient, diligent missionaries, I think we're going to make it! Our mission leaders say that God is gathering His children to this part of the world so they can make covenants with Him. And we are just the lucky ones that get to participate in His magnificent work!!

Do you see the "1" on the end of that 690? That's going to be the man on the street who is from Ghana that spoke to me. We had 2 lessons with him this week. The sister missionaries who are teaching him are allowing me to be in the lessons with them and it is SUCH A JOY! He accepted an invitation to be baptized on May 25!

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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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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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Filming

There's been a bit of filming at the archives building this week. One day I walked in the front door to find this. Apparently it's for a TV show.

We also happened across this one day in the consultation room.

We're back to the cold version of Spring. Can you tell from the ice on the windows at the archives building?

We had another fabulous zone conference this week about enduring to the end. By the end of the meeting, I'm sure that Sister Harkness had everyone in the room convinced that we ARE going to make it to the Celestial Kingdom! And every time we meet, I love watching our young missionaries practice teaching with each other. It's so powerful!

These two are leaving very soon and I'm not looking forward to that at all. She has become a dear friend and he is like a little brother to me. Can you tell? The two of us tease each other incessantly.

Found this surprise gem on my phone after he helped us take the above shot. Oh, how I love young people and their flair for fun!!

I got some new shelving this week so that my cubicle can handle the storage of larger projects. This big project has such beautiful boxes! It's pathetic the things that we get excited about at the archives. 🤣

We went and did apartment checks at young missionaries' aparements. Wouldn't it have been great if I had remembered to take photos of the missionaries?!? But no, this salt drenched car is all I have to show for our one hour drive to Mascouche during a snowstorm.

And I have nothing to show for a fun Friday afternoon where the archive missionaries played hookie and went to lunch together.

I'm ready for Holy Week. I love how our church leaders are asking us to put more emphasis on our Easter celebrations. I absolutely adore Christmas and spend a lot of effort decorating, preparing for, and celebrating that season. I want to do better at my Easter celebration. Inside every egg is songs and scriptures to read each day this week. I'm using this simple wreath to symbolize Christ's crown of thorns. I found this awesome Easter study plan on the Church's website! I'm going to have an Easter devotional every night this week.

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Fake Spring

I feel like Spring is slowly coming to Eastern Canada but the locals tell me to put that foolish thought out of my head. The law of opposition has been at work in Montreal this week. One day we made it up to 55 F and the next day it was 18 F! You can't appreciate the 55 if you haven't had to endure the 18.

Here's a darling fish pond I used to stop by every day last summer on my walk home. Look at the difference from one day to the next!

We took these two cute sisters to dinner because the one in white finishes her mission very soon. They are in our district. 

After district council, the young sisters were telling us how frustrated they were. They've been working hard to find new people to teach but they've turned up nothing for two whole weeks. I reminded them that president told us at last zone conference that the success of your mission is not based on your numbers, but on your daily diligence. They are assigned to work in a Young Single Adult ward so they only teach people in that age range. But this week has been mid-terms at all of the universitites here in town so it makes sense that students are not being responsive to missionaries' invitations.

That conversation was a tender mercy for me later in the week when I was feeling very frustrated about not being able to reach my goals for the week because of unforeseen circumstances. Last week I hit a new personal weekly high so I thought if I hit that number last week, why couldn't I do it again? I had some bizarre exhaustion one morning and needed extra rest so I was nearly 3 hours late to the archives. A new archives couple arrived in Montreal this week. Elder and Sister W had arranged to meet them and help them settle into their apartment but Elder W hurt his knee. Sister C and I ended up helping out the new couple. We lost a whole day at the archives due to that. Then on Friday I was thinking, "Great! I'll get in a full day of clicking!" But the project I was working on wasn't prepped properly and it caused me all sorts of problems that took a lot time to fix.

I only reached 2/3 of my clicking goal this week. The advice I'd given to the young sisters was uselful for ME to remember. In the end I just had to remind myself that I did my best this week and that's all I can ask of myself.

I visited a different district this week. One of my Mandarin elders was called as a district leader this transfer and I wanted to see him in action. He's doing awesome! It has been really fun to see him rise to the responsibility that has been placed on his shoulders!

Being in that council gave me the opportunity to hear the departing testimony of one of our stunning sister teacher leaders. She'll be finishing her mission on March 9. Her testimony and thoughts were so powerful and I was grateful I got to be there to hear it.

Just in case you lose your way in Montreal. . .   😂

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