watercolours and more!

Today is Sunday, February 24, 2019 and it is Aaron’s 41st Birthday!!! 

Happy Birthday to Aaron, and on Wednesday, February 27th we wish Mom Low Happy 92nd!!

February is definitely the big Birthday month in the Low family!!

Week 1 is a welcome breather after surviving Week 6 - (transfer week!!) and so the marathon pace of transfers,  slows to a fast jog!! 

My nursing responsibilities have kept me busy…I have to document every phonecall or conversation with regards to any missionary with any ailment! Thanks to Michael and his ‘Coke’ remedy for any gastro problems; that has been my go to suggestion.  I did have to add little caveat to my Elder Gatrell report, because it seemed like every other missionary I reported on I suggested drinking a can of coke. I told Elder Gatrell that we were not Coke drinkers…and yes….I told him the whole story..

French tutorials, visiting and visiting with missionaries, writing notes, baking cookies, and more cookies, and banana bread kept the oven warm almost every day! I feel it is my responsibility to have  buns and treats always available for missionaries, and folks who stop by…so it seems like I am always baking…my goal is to stop tasting!!

My ears are still not adjusting to the humidity, and the sea level pressure. The several Dr. appointments, I have made keep getting cancelled; hopefully this week??

Mission Leadership Council which includes all our Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders, and our assistants was Thursday from 10-3. Dad and I, do a lot of the training assisted by Elders Olsen and Benson. Of course we are training on effective leadership principles., and every one in attendance participates. Without fail, after every meeting whether it is District Council, Zone Conference or MLC,  we comment on the wisdom, and testimonies of these young missionaries (who are just kids!! )They teach us so much.. In the few short months they have served, they have gleaned so much from their gospel study. There is a lesson for you….read and study the scriptures, and your testimonies will grow. 

Friday morning was our new missionary Zoom call and it was so great to see our new group all in one piece! Mostly them seem happy and doing ok adjusting to missionary life. We visit with them for an hour and a half, and talk about strategies to help them adjust to the rigors of their new lives!  One of my suggestions for adjusting to missionary life is to find time…probably at 9pm to relax, and unwind. I think I mentioned that Sister Wood and Sister Edwards started painting with watercolors…so you can just imagine what Dad and I have taken up?! You are right…we have some pretty basic supplies, and have been watching videos…Dad’s passion is landscape, specializing in trees, and my passion is…you guessed it…flowers, so far I can paint ranucula, roses(sort of), and delphinium…nothing like Jessie Ursenbach, but it is so fun, and we both love the relaxation of that simple activity. You should try it!! (We started with $1.00 store, and cheap Michael’s supplies…make sure you get decent brushes, and good paper!!)

Attended a farewell party for our friends Elder and Sister Livingstone on Friday night …first party we have been invited to!!! They have been serving as the CES couple, and head home to Arizona this week. 

P’day was so relaxing..went for our morning run, visited three thrift stores, and sat around painting trees and flowers!! 

Sam and Jeanine McCollum (Tom Jensen’s sister), our newest Senior couple arrived this afternoon, just in time to enjoy dinner with us. They are staying the night in our General Authority room, and will attend our Monday Office meetings before moving into the Livingstone’s apartment.

Oh the big excitement of the week … Halifax Ward welcomed 11 ‘friends of the Church’ - (formerly called investigators!) today..most of them are Congolese, and are ready to set Baptismal dates!! Can you imagine how excited our missionaries are?!

New Brunswick Stake Conference is next week so we are gearing up for that…we will fly to Fredericton Friday, and stay till Sunday. Elder Bennett will be the visiting General Authority, so maybe we won’t be speaking!!! I would be just fine being a listener!!

Have a wonderful week!! We’ll send this off with much love XOXOXOXOX

Keep Smiling!!   Dad and Mom, Richard and Gayle, and Grandpa and Grandma  

Storms, Nursing, and Teary Farewells!

Today is February 17, 2019, and it is Jonathan’s 30th Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday Jonathan LeRon!!!  And Happy Birthday to Janice Louise who will celebrate her 62nd on Friday, February 22nd!!

Another exciting missionary landmark announcement Friday, where missionaries can have weekly contact with family using any method of communication including phone, or video chat!! We are thrilled, as are our missionaries, and know it will be so helpful to many of our team, who currently are struggling with emotional issues. Families generally are the best cheerleaders a missionary has, so getting to visit with loved ones every week, if they choose will be just wonderful, and just what the Doctor - or Prophet ordered!! And…. our sisters can visit with their loved ones wearing pants!!

Monday meetings are always a highlight….having close connections with our office group is wonderful. Transfer week we don’t have our Senior Couples Zoom call. Sister Arnold’s farewell party was Monday night, and we loved eating, laughing and visiting. I have already expressed my fear and trembling about being the designated Mission Nurse, and my concerns are still valid!! Sister Goldie Vay, a local member is working on her mission papers to hopefully receive a calling to serve as our nurse…and is so willing to assist me with anything I need. This week my calls have been pretty simple, and my homespun remedies have included drinking lots of water, eating oranges, having an hour nap, and taking an Advil! We have an area medical advisor named Elder Gatrell (living in Philadelphia) who is my first contact person. I also have regular email contact with him. 

This is what I wrote to him this week: 

“ I feel pretty inadequate adding this to my responsibilities BUT, one of our sons is an internist, another son is a Dentist, we have three daughters in law that are nurses, another daughter in law that is a radiation therapist, another daughter in law that is an ultrasound tech, and our youngest son was the Mission Medic while serving in the Chile Santiago North Mission….SO maybe their medical knowledge will rub off on me!! Actually, I think my years on the front line being a Mom will be what will get me through!!!!…and his phone number!!”

Weather has such a bearing on travel to and from Atlantic Canada, and of all weeks for storms to rage across the continent, it challenged all our Week 6 - Transfer Week cycle!! New missionaries that normally arrive Tuesday evening waited in SLC all day in the airport, and after their flights were cancelled, eventually were transported back to the MTC…can you imagine that letdown? Wednesday their flight was again delayed, which made them miss their connector flight in Toronto, but thanks to Church Travel they rested their weary bodies at the Hampton Inn. 

We were very frustrated when WestJet sold their seats for the final leg of their journey to more aggressive travellers anxious to come to the big Scottie curling championships in Sydney, NS. Elders Hillyer, and D’eon, two of our eight did get seats for a late afternoon flight, and arrived around 8:30pm. President, and Elder Olsen and Elder Benson, collected the other six - Elder Brown and Elder Clifford, Sister Bromley, Sister Rhodes, Sister Wall, and Sister Schultz and arrived home around 2am.  

Add another layer to this day …Thursday was our Farewell Dinner and Testimony Meeting for our departing five - Sisters Nelson, Gillett, and Crowley, and Elders Bringhurst, and Willoughby SO you can imagine the goings on leading up to that!!! Office seniors always celebrate at our farewell, and this week our CES couple, Elder and Sister Livingstone were included in our goodbye party. I know food is boring to report on, but in case you ever wonder….cream chicken, wild rice, fresh rolls, asparagus, carrots, broccoli, spinach salad, jello salad, and turtles cheesecake were on the menue. Sister Majeran brought her delicious lemon broccoli salad…obviously…we never go hungry!!! Farewell testimonies always are the highlight of the evening, and these five were top shelf. Their missions have changed their lives! We know they will be great leaders, and are excited to track their lives, and see ‘Oh the places they will go!!’

Teary farewells at the Stanfield International Airport Friday morning are usual…it gets harder the longer we have to know and love these dear ones. Depending on the security crew…sometimes we can walk way up the queue line and crane our necks as far as we can to 

catch the last glimpse of each of them…most often they are watching for us and wave back…

Back to the Mission Home to find our eight new recruits obediently studying, ready to head to the Office where we, along with our office staff fed and oriented the enthusiastic new group. Taco soup that I had made for Tuesday tasted just fine although it was heated and cooled so many times…(like everytime we thought the group would be arriving!!) After our welcome supper, street contacting  with our metro missionaries was the evening activity, followed by a sweet testimony meeting. Saturday morning the Mission Office was the hub for many of our transfers, including all of our enthused new group. It is a miracle that all the connections happen. Moncton, NB was the other hub for transfers, so several companionships met up there. Three missionaries didn’t fly to Newfoundland until 9pm and arrived around 11pm. Our assistants check and recheck logistics, and everything worked our perfectly, (including weather!) We might be concerned about logistics when our Mission joins the Canada Montreal Mission!!! Look at a map of Canada, and you’ll know why!!!!  

Dartmouth Sacrament Meeting today had a Missionary theme with two of our recent converts; Kathy Eldershaw and Stephen Creelman who were baptized in December and November sharing their conversion story, as well as the Ward Mission Leader Brother Macmichael speaking. Also Josh a 12 year old young man who was baptized yesterday was confirmed. So wonderful to have wards and branches that are becoming missionary minded!! We love when members catch the vision and become part of our ‘finding army!’ Are you part of the finding army?? 

So it goes in the Canada Halifax Mission!!

We continue to LOVE our service, and can’t imagine doing anything else!!! It is dawn to dusk challenging hard work, but oh so rewarding!!….and now Richard declares that I should cap this report, so I will!!!

Love to all!!

Dad and Mom, Grandpa and Grandma, and Richard and Gayle

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX…Keep Smiling

Lake Banook....Skating Adventure and Where Eagles Soar!!

Today is Sunday, February 10, 2019 

Out our kitchen, and dining room windows we have a beautiful shrub bed with a variety of about a dozen different shrubs -  I only know the names of a few…like hydrangea, boxwood,  and rhododendron.

Our rhododendron act as a weather gauge for our outdoor or indoor exercise activity, and rather than check on our phones to get a read on whether we run outside or head to the gym, we simply look at the rhododendron shrubs which if it is -7 and colder look pretty sad and droopy; and warmer than that, they look healthy, vigorous, green, and pretty perky, which simply tells us we get to enjoy the crisp air, and run/walk outdoors.  Lest you think I have loved digging in this rich dark soil around our lush plants..think again…it is the same bed our resident rats have been seen; so my love of playing in the soil has to be stifled!! Someday when I reread this Mission record,  I need to remember our close encounters with these nasty critters…(the only distasteful thing about our beloved Mission Home!)

The week of January 28th (Megan’s Birthday) was almost a record bed and breakfast week with our Bay Roberts couple - Elder and Sister Jagoda, and our Corner Brook couple - Elder and Sister Shenfield, Sisters Powell, and Newman (they call themselves the ‘Island Princesses’!!!)from Summerside, PEI, as well as five of their branch members - Cat, Zoe, Jamie, Emily Carroll, and Eliza Law, all stayed. We are blessed with lots of comfy beds, and are happy to have space for these wonderful saints to stay while they are attending the Temple. We are grateful to have so many new friends come and visit!

After receiving diagnosis of Sister Shenfield’s lymphoma, Elder and Sister Shenfield packed up their truck with all their belongings, hopped on the overnight ferry from Newfoundland, and spent the night with us before heading west and home to Rocky Mountain House. All our local senior missionaries joined us for a Farewell Dinner party which, for all of us was bittersweet. Chemotherapy treatments were to begin the day after arriving home, which I believe was this past Friday.  Our thoughts and prayers are with them.  CornerBrook saints are devastated having the last two Senior couples - Shenfield’s and Datweiler’s both leave them..and both for cancer diagnoses. Richard has requested for another senior couple to serve there..hopefully  we will hear soon.

French seems to occupy our minds and much of our time, and while I struggle to conjugate verbs, speak simple phrases and understand this foreign language, we have the faith to know the Lord will bless us for our simple efforts. We will keep praying for the Gift of Tongues. Tutoring sessions are a challenge for me especially, and although our tutors are gifted French speakers, my progress is slow. Richard is helping me by creating sentences using my conjugated verbs…I know this will really aid me in remembering verbs as well as help me in communicating with people. Someone also told us that it is really good for an old brain to learn a new language…maybe I can slow memory problems down by trying to become bilingual!! Richard had an amazing experience on Thursday night where he shared Joseph Smith’s First Vision in French with a new person of interest! Eric his tutor had just had him share it in his tutoring the day before, so his relearning French is progressing really well! 

Last Saturday we had about a half hour to try out our ‘new to us’ skates, so with lawn chairs in one hand and skates in the other we headed across to Lake Banook. Beside the path there is a little brook (hence our street name - Brookdale Crescent!!) and this little brook, of course empties into Lake Banook. We were smart enough to not try skating on the ice at the mouth of the brook, but went further down the shoreline thinking the ice looked nice and stiff. People skating out in the middle of the lake made us feel the ice was safe, but just to make sure Richard with boots still on, stepped out, and immediately was through the ice - up to his knees! Next time we will go to the other side of the lake where no freshwater is entering !! We laughed, but were so grateful it was shallow there!! Another perfect day will come along for us to give it another go!! I have several pair of ‘homemade by Jan’ socks that will fit perfectly under the skates, so it will be a fashion statement when we finally get on the ice!!

Last Sunday the Halifax Elders had 9 investigators needing rides to  to Church so we got in on that excitement and taxied five to the Lacewood Building. About a year and a half ago this group of Congolese immigrants moved to Halifax, and we are finding them!! They are receptive, and anxious to hear the gospel!! I asked Sarah, the oldest daughter how she felt about her experience at Church, and she replied ..“I just loved it!” They all seemed excited, and engaged in both Sacrament and Sunday school!! We are anxious to get a report of their experience today!!

Five Temple couples joined us for Sunday dinner last week,  Randalls x 2, Larson, Andrus (family history), and MacIlmoils, and we loved hearing them laugh and share experiences of their Temple missions. Randalls and Randalls are brothers serving with their wives..one Randall couple came here about two years ago, loved it so much, returned home and talked the older brother and his wife into serving again here!! (The one Randall couple are neighbours of Neil Harker’s uncle Kent Crookson - amazing the connections we make!!)Soooo any of you considering a mission…Temple Missions are pretty amazing…getting to be in the Temple a few days a week seems like a dream to me…next mission!!!

Another invitation for a sleepover had me spending Friday night with six sisters - Sisters Crowley, Boelke, Brennan, Mavy, Gillett and Green over in Halifax. I love to take them to the grocery store to get important supplies like strawberries, grapes, and muffins for breakfast, as well as some evening treats like ice cream, and potato chips and dip!! Those sisters love to get me talking, and don’t seem to tire of me sharing our love story!!!…they love the “I’m considering you for marriage” line!!! Exercising even happened yesterday morning at the Church where we played basketball and chair soccer!!! So much fun to be with these awesome, converted sisters. 

Our nurse Sister Arnold is returning home to London, Ontario this week so her responsibilities will now be mine, and yes I am a bit concerned about this. We do have many resources, and great back-up help…but I am hoping and praying no-one gets physically or emotionally sick!  Our farewell Sister Arnold party is tomorrow, and our office seniors will join us for that party.  We will miss her cheerful, willing presence in the Office. She certainly has been a fixture in the Mission, and has helped so many missionaries with both physical and emotional issues.  Our CES couple - Elder and Sister Livingstone (Carole’s cousin) also are completing their service here, and heading home to Arizona, so this is a triple header farewell party. FYI - I must add that Sister Livingstone - Arnon Bateman was born May 25, 1954 - the day before me in St. Michael’s Hospital in Lethbridge!!! Elder Livingstone was the first Stake President here and they have done so much with CES, as well as reaching our to less active friends from when they lived here many years ago. 

Yesterday after we attended Nikita Glanfield’s Baptism, we had an adventure out to the valley..remember ‘until we reach the valley oh!’ We even picked up a hitchhiker named Mark who looked like he might freeze if we didn’t. Elder Peterman and Elder Olaveson who are serving in Kentville told us about the bald eagle mating sight in Sheffield, down the road from Kentville. Apparently there have been hundreds of eagles there..December through the end of February, and we were excited to see about a dozen of the magnificent birds flying around. Big black ravens circled around scavenging leftover chicken parts. A local farmer throws out chicken guts for the birds. 

February 10, 2019 and it is Week 6 again!!  Tuesday night we get to welcome our eight new missionaries. Hot taco soup and fresh buns is our go-to meal. Wednesday we orient this enthusiastic new group, and welcome them with a big dinner Wednesday night. 

Thursday we have the group to the office by 6:30 am to meet their new companions, and they are off!! New missionary orientation is not limited to that Wednesday office orientation…every Friday morning for the next 5 weeks, we have Zoom meetings with our new missionaries, and discuss a variety of inspired topics that help with adjusting to Missionary life.  I have been grateful for strategies, and suggestions we talk about, and know they work, because I have used them as we have adjusted to our missionary lives!! 

And then Thursday we have our Farewell Dinner for our five departing missionaries: Sister Nelson, Sister Gillett, Sister Crowley, and Elder Bringhurst, and Elder Willoughby.  The highlight of the evening is always hearing each of them bare heartfelt testimonies, and share stories of conversion - others and their own.The longer we serve, the more attached we grow to OUR missionaries, and it is so hard to say goodbye.

Well …there you have it… the latest report from the Canada Halifax Mission, and 

Dad and Mom, Richard and Gayle, and Grandpa and Grandma xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Keep Smiling and CTR!!! 

Happy 13th Birthday to Isabelle tomorrow, Jennie on the 15th and Charlotte -6 years on the 16th!!!

Suggestions for future missionaries:

Read the Book of Mormon everyday…try to apply what you learn, and write it down in a scripture book 

Exercise hard everyday - sweat!!

Drink lots of water

Smile at everyone you meet

Pass out 'pass along cards' - get a supply..keep them in your backpack, car, purse, and pass them out!!!