In Patience Possess Your Soul

My computer at the archives has now been down for three full weeks. A week ago, we lost another computer. And as of last Friday, our operation in Montreal has completely shut down. There are no documents being captured. It's a continuing test in patience. A lot of my scripture study this past week has been about topics like patience and long-suffering.

Wednesday morning I happened to glance outside at my balcony and saw these red buds on my nearly-dead geranium. I was SHOCKED!! I stopped watering it when it started getting cold about a month ago. We've even had a mild freeze since then, although it has been a much warmer November than usual in Montreal. 

I took this as a symbol of thriving in adversity. I've since named the plant Penelope and she gets to come inside at night now. If she can be this tough for the past month then I can too! Both of us have had a rough month.

I'm so impressed with this missionary! He translated the majority of stake conference into Chinese for our branch members. It's SOOOO hard to do simultaneous translation! You're listening and speaking at the same time.

We had a visiting general authority for stake conference last weekend. His name is Robert M. Daines. I loved the Saturday evening session. He projected a lot of questions onto a screen and had us think about them. Essentially, he let the Spirit teach us instead of him teaching us. Brilliant!

We also had a mission tour this past week from our area president, Elder Allen D. Haynie. The seniors got to spend an hour with him and his wife. They are so personable! 

We learned so many valuable tools and skills from Elder Haynie! A few points from his presentation:
* Scattered Israel is drawn to Israel (like a magnet)
* Invite people to come to church as soon as you find them. It's a way to tell how serious they are about learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ...a way to sift, those who don't come to church aren't ready
* Find a need in their lives in the first contact and promise them that that need will be met if they come to church
* Use a dozen different ways to find people to teach, not just street contacting and knocking
* Our mission is really good at digital contacting, 20% of our baptisms come from it

This would be my least favorite part of mission tours...standing for 45 minutes to wait for "the picture".

But I love being with the missionaries. 

My African cowboy missionary. . .

Another GREAT part of my week was that I got to be in lessons with two different friends that the young missionaries are teaching. One is the secretary of our apartment building. All of the missionaries who live in our building have become friends with her, but particularly one couple in the beginning. The secretary started lessons with the missionaries after that couple moved to another city. I asked her how the lessons were going then kind of invited myself to attend the lessons as well. 

The first lesson I was in with her this past week was incredible! She felt the Spirit so strongly! She grabbed her chest and said, "It feels like fire in here." I whipped out D&C 9 and told her that's EXACTLY how God says it will feel when He is communicating with us!

Another set of sisters invited me to teach with them. A man responded to an ad from the church on social media. He's been looking at lots of churches and religions for years. He's been having Bible study with the Jehovah's Witnesses for two years and is about to be baptized into that church. But curiously, he decided to look into this church. He's responding very well to the Book of Mormon.

What a huge blessing for me to watch changes in these two friends! I was thinking about how lucky our young missionaries are because they get to see this ALL THE TIME! But as a records preservation missionary, it's extremely rare for me.

Running total of captures: 441,312

Running total of docs prepped: 12,859

BEST DAY OF MY MISSION!!

If Heavenly Father let me design a perfect day while on this mission I probably would have chosen to do the things I got to do last Friday. One of the office couples went to their son's wedding this week so the office was short-handed. Sister C and I offered to go help (even though we have no idea what we're doing) because the archives was closed on Friday in observance of the Canada Day holiday.

I was in charge of checking in the departing missionaries for their flights home and getting boarding passes for them. Pressure! You can't really mess up something this big! It turned out the other senior couple who usually works in the office had to leave to set up a new apartment. Thank heavens for the technology elders! They saved my bacon! They were so helpful and patient. They never seemed bothered by my myriad of pleas for help, starting with, "What's the PIN to unlock the computer?" And I loved getting to know both of them better. We saw a fair amount of the assistants to the president that day as well. There are some stellar young missionaries in the Canada Montreal Mission!!

My favorite part of the day was the afternoon when the departing missionaries arrived for their final interviews with president. I loved talking with them as we worked together in the office and finding out about how their missions have affected them. I loved hearing about the growth they have experienced and their plans of maintaining their spiritual growth when they return home.

One unassuming elder asked after lunch if he could help do anything in the office. What an incredible young man! The other departing missionaries followed suit and all of a sudden we had 8 helpers that we put to work. I told the elder who started all of this that there is some young lady out there who is going to be excited to meet a kind, thoughtful man like him. This elder is not the kind of man that the world admires or holds in esteem, but in God's kingdom, he is a giant! He reminded me of what was said of the Savior: ...He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. (Isaiah 53:2)

It was SO great to be around young missionaries all day long! And it was transfer day so not only were there lots of young missionaries in the office, but it was also the first day for new missionaries coming to our mission and I got to meet some of them! I met a Sister Jones from Rexburg, Idaho. I also found out later that there is an Elder Jones who just arrived too. In talking to my brother, I found out that Elder Jones is from my brother's stake in San Antonio and my brother met him at his interview with the stake president. I wanted to track down those two Joneses at lunch and do "relatives around me" on the Family Search app to see if we are related but my app wasn't cooperating.

My one sadness from the day is that I forgot to take any photos at the mission office. 😔

I work with these two fabulous missionaries in the Mount Royal Branch which is the Mandarin Chinese speaking branch and yesterday they texted me asking if I wanted to meet them to help teach a friend of the Church. Oh my! YEEEEES, please!!! It was such a pleasure to be teaching and inviting our friend to come unto Christ. I wasn't sure I'd ever have the chance to do that on this mission because of my records preservation assignment. I hope it happens again in the future! By the way, these two hard-working missionaries had ELEVEN friends at church today!!

I went home exhausted (a 12 hour day) and sweating like crazy because the humidity was off the charts on Friday, but so, SO happy! If Heavenly Father has a better day in store for me on the mission than this one, He'd better be planning a humdinger because I was so INCREDIBLY HAPPY all day long!

We also moved to a new room at the national archives this week. I've been working on the 3rd floor in a room by myself with no windows and a very loud ventilation fan and the other 3 missionaries have been working on the 5th floor. We were all moved into a new room on the 3rd floor. It's a spacious room with large windows. I'm so happy about our new setup!

I've gotten to know two of our security guards pretty well and am sad they have been transferred to other locations. This was their last week with us at the archives. Here's one of them that I played a joke on.

One day I was walking down these stairs. His desk is just at the bottom of the stairs so he saw me coming. I said, "These are Cinderella stairs!" I jokingly told him that I was going to leave a shoe on the stairs one day for him to find. Well...guess what I did? He thought it was hilarious.

Running total of captures: ?? (the internet isn't set up in our new room yet so we couldn't send in our reports this week)