February 14-20, 2022
Can you believe that we have been in Montréal one month already? It just occurred to us that we haven't shared our address and phone numbers yet. My number is 450-801-3500, John's is 450-801-9860. Our mailing address is:
229-400 Boulevard Saint-Francis
Châteauguay, QC J6J0E2
Canada
Here is the photo I promised from the Senior Valentine's Dinner last week. President Harkness took the picture and said the young missionaries taught him how to do selfies.
It wasn't a large group. Only the seniors in the Montréal area attended. We have a senior council via zoom every Monday morning so we can see and talk to couples in other areas. Last Monday it was our turn to introduce ourselves.
Since Covid restrictions have eased a little, we have started to visit some of the older ward members. Sister I is an 87-year old widow and lives with her 53-year old single daughter in an apartment in Châteauguay. French is her first language but she speaks English very well. She joined the church in the 1970's and has been an active member since then, Unfortunately, only one of her children has remained active in the church.
The other sister we visited is 81 and lives with her husband in a lovely 4-plex not far from the chapel in LaSalle. She speaks four languages: French, Spanish, Italian and English. When she married her husband 50 years ago, he had 3 children. They had two children together. She also joined the church in the 1970's but her husband never joined. We had a very interesting visit with her - I will call her Gigi. She uses a walker and has some health issues but was quite alert and seemed to have all her mental faculties but the longer we were there, we started to wonder. When she answered the door she was nicely dressed except the bottom half was missing something. A few minutes into the visit she noticed and apologized for not putting her skirt on. Gigi is such a grand lady and we fell in love with her immediately. She said she missed hearing the hymns and asked us to sing I Know That My Redeemer Lives with her. Neither of us are great singers but we found the hymn on our phones and cranked the volume up and we all sang together. There was a sweet spirit in the room and we all got a little teary. She stopped in the middle of our conversation and asked if she could 'make a prayer.' She offered the sweetest, most simple childlike prayer I have heard. She then told us that when we called to make the appointment, she knew before she answered that it was a missionary calling. She had been praying for the missionaries to come visit with her and was expecting the young sister missionaries but said a senior couple was so much better! She likes speaking to someone closer to her age that can understand her better. We love it when we are prayed somewhere!
I have two huge oven mitts that were in our apartment when we arrived. My hands get lost in them and I cannot get a good grip on a hot pan using the mitts. I have looked for hot pads in every store we go in to, but no luck (which is a puzzle to me; lots of mitts but no hot pads). Since I brought my sewing machine I decided to make some hot pads. I finally found a fabric store that was open for in-store shopping. We stopped on our way home from District Council. The store was okay but I nearly fainted from sticker shock!
I bought one yard of batting and four fat quarters. The cotton fabrics were running between $15-$16 dollars per yard. Those of you not into sewing or quilting may not appreciate this but that is expensive. I believe these will be the priciest hot pads I have owned!
On Thursday it poured rain all day. We were a couple miles outside Châteauguay, on our way home. The windshield wipers were on top speed when we heard a loud bang and the right wiper flies off. John pulled over and gets out to look for the wiper blade. We're on a busy highway with lots of traffic and I'm thinking he's nuts to even go out in the rain. He came back a couple minutes later and says he found it - already run over by many vehicles. We drove straight to the Nissan dealer for a new one.
Saturday was Bishop's Storehouse again. We celebrated three years to the day since they started the storehouse in this Stake. As of yesterday, they have filled 2100 orders for the members in need. It is pretty amazing. The young Sisters selected a large beef roast among the leftover items. They have been telling me we're having a special dinner for my birthday next Sunday. They showed the Elders and excitedly told me the roast was for my birthday dinner. I asked if they were going to cook it for me. They all looked at each other and said, "umm, no." So it's in our freezer and I'll be cooking the special birthday dinner. Being around the young missionaries is a joy and one of the nicer things about serving a mission.
When we stopped for gas, we noticed this store. We didn't go in, but it looks like John's kind of store.
Yesterday was a miserable weather day. Winds at 20 mph and snowing heavily all day. This was the view out our window most of the day.
And here we are by one of the mountains of snow in the church parking lot. The parking lot is surrounded with similar hills of snow. It doesn't warm up enough to melt the snow so it just continues to pile up. Some of the streets are difficult to navigate with so much snow on the sides.
We are standing about a quarter of the way up the hill. We had to have a photo with Sister Pollock and Sister Bly also.
"We are either for the Church or we are against it. We either take its part or take the consequences. We cannot survive spiritually with one foot in the Church and the other in the world. We must make the choice. There is no middle ground. And the Lord loves a courageous man who fights openly and boldly in his army." (Elder Bruce R McConkie)
This is the Lord's work and we see his hand in it. Nothing in this world is as important as the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we will walk and live and move and breathe and think the gospel always, we can have peace and happiness in this life and eternal glory in the life to come.
Thank you for the laughter and especially the inspiration.
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