John and Karen in the Canada Montreal Mission

The Montréal Temple reopened after a 10 week closure for cleaning and minor renovations.  We went Saturday morning to complete initiatory work for eight of our ancestors.  Our ward temple day is in three weeks and we will share some of our family names with the youth to complete the baptisms for us.  We have been visiting with an older member of our ward recently.  She is cranky, argumentative and often a little hostile.  She has refused our invitations for several months.  Her husband passed away ten years ago; she is estranged from all three of her children.  She was upset with her ministering sister, who has lovingly endured her for many years.  I think she ran out of options so decided to give us a try.  The first visit lasted two hours while she told us all her woes and complained about everything from the landlord raising her rent to how badly her children treat her.  We told her she was delightful and asked if we could come again....

Last week was transfer week and we lost all our young missionaries except Sister Larsen and Sister Day.  The Elders were teaching several men that have been turned over to the Sisters now.  They can't teach men without a family or at least one additional sister with them so we will probably be spending more teaching time with them.  They are a little stressed with the responsibility but it will all work out.  We always have a district P-day before transfers.  We did pumpkin carving at the chapel.  We didn't actually carve - a couple of the Elders came without pumpkins so we donated ours and watched. Sisters Larsen and Day Elders Verdon and Huffman Elders Huffman and Johnson, Sister Larsen We have some pretty talented carvers During our visit with Sister Smith on Thursday, I asked what else she would like us to do to make her day better.  She asked if we could sing a song.  I really wanted to say no.  She wanted to sing a Primary song and deci...

I have to repent of blaming the Chinese restaurant for causing food poisoning and making John ill.  Last Sunday evening I started throwing up and having the same symptoms.  We know that food poisoning doesn't wait that long to attack so we have to assume it was a bug we both caught somewhere.  Except for running to the corner store for more Pepto and ginger-ale, we were pretty much confined to the apartment most of the week.  We felt well enough to go back to work on Thursday but neither of us feel like our energy level is back to normal yet. On our walk to Sister Smith's nursing home, I tried to get a good photo of the Jacques Cartier bridge.  We walk under the beams and bridge supports - it's kind of fascinating to see all that at street level while the bridge is so high over the river.  It was a very rainy day and the shot I wanted would require me standing in the middle of traffic on a busy road, so decided it wasn't worth the risk. The Jacques Cartier ...

We spoke in Sacrament meeting this morning.  Our mission medical director serves on the Stake High Counsel and is the Stake Young Men's President.   He was visiting our ward this morning to meet with the Young Men during the second hour.  He sat on the second row and had the grumpiest face all during my talk.  After the meeting he was so complimentary and said the kindest things.  I guess he wasn't really grumpy; maybe he was just concentrating!  I used Elder Joseph Sitati's talk The Patterns of Discipleship and Elder Steven J Lund's talk Lasting Discipleship for my remarks.  John spoke about Elder Renlund's A Framework for Personal Revelation. We were sad to see Elder Sitati released.  He was a counselor in the Africa West Area Presidency when we first arrived in Ghana in 2012.  We grew to love him and his wife Gladys.  I don't want to sound like we became best friends, but we do consider them our friends and have had contact ove...

After feeling uplifted and inspired, I always feel such a let down Sunday evening after conference weekend.  How can it be over so quickly?  We tried to listen carefully, as we have been asked to speak in Sacrament meeting (again!) next Sunday and to choose a topic from one of the conference talks.  How to you choose from such a delicious smorgasbord? It's been a fairly routine week.  Tuesday morning we helped an 88-year old sister pack her apartment.  She is moving into an independent living high rise that provides some meals and has medical personnel on site.  She has been stressing over this move since April.  Her daughter and granddaughter were here over the weekend to help with the actual move. All of our district attended Thursday district council in person.  The Cornwall Elders are about 90 minutes away but were in town on exchanges. LaSalle District on October 29 Last week I posted a picture of the lovely path we walk on our way to service...