Today is June 7, 2020
Happy 4th Birthday to Preese Auburn Low and Happy 63rd Birthday to George Solon Low!!!
Saturday, June 13th, Preese’s Dad, Michael Robert celebrates his 37th!!
Sunday evening devotionals are one of our weekly highlights. Tonight, coinciding with the 76th anniversary of Dday yesterday, we are drawing parallels between War, Covid, and Missionary Work. Watching many WW I and WW 2 movies I have come to feel and understand the horrors, the loneliness, the homesickness, and the real despair of fighting, and killing.
Years ago Uncle Max shared this amazing story with me. I’ll give a little preamble so the story has context.
Years ago Uncle Max shared this amazing story with me. I’ll give a little preamble so the story has context.
My Dad was the youngest of 11 children born to John Finlay and Anna Leah Anderson Hamilton; their 7 sons and 4 daughters were raised in Magrath, Alberta.
Leah, my Grandma, when calling for her children to come home for supper cupped her hands together like this, and whistled for them. Listen to the sound of this whistle…definitely not the sound of just blowing through your mouth, or blowing through your fingers!! All her sons were expert cupped-hand whistlers, and actually could whistle tunes. Grandma’s whistle could be heard all around the east end of town, and was in effect..the Hamilton family dinner bell…
Four of the seven brothers Bill (Vere,) Jim, Max and Alvin served in WW II, and one of my favourite stories I love to remember, and tell, is the story of Uncle Max and Uncle Bill (or Vere as he was called.) Brothers in Wartime, they had no contact with each other for several years…until one memorable day when unbeknownst to each other, they were both in London, England riding the same red double-decker bus..Bill was upstairs, and Max was down. The Lord knew where they each were, and he orchestrated such a joyous reunion. Bill who was upstairs starting whistling, and Max downstairs instantly knew that the familiar whistle must be one of his brothers, and bounded up the stairs for a joyous, tearful reunion….just imagine that!!
In our Sunday evening devotional last week we performed a puppet show spoof on Little Red Riding Hood with a cute missionary twist. So many missionaries have raved about the craziness of the puppeteers, and the story line, that we have decided not to retire the puppets forever!! I am far more comfortable creating the puppets than making them come to life…it is multi-tasking at its finest…moving the puppets mouths at the same time creating some silly puppet voice, and keeping track of which voice you did for which puppet, keeping both puppets moving, so they don’t look stunned or dead, changing props if need be,..and remembering to move their mouths while talking, all the while keeping hunched down behind the couch and blanket so no one knows who the puppeteers are!! It was such a fun variation from our normal devotionals… One of these weeks we are going to do a CMM Jeopardy Devotional; (definitely not with puppets,) and won’t that be memorable?!! Creating trivial questions is going to be so fun!!
A Banner week…office meetings, seven runs to the Airport to meet and greet 15 new missionaries, interviews, Area Presidency meeting, and two zone Conferences made the week literally fly by!!
Office weekly meetings were great, and again we were pleased with our Key Indicator report; with 29 folks on date for baptism, 62 folks at Church, and 33 new folks found to teach. Considering that all our contacting is done over tiny phones, we are amazed, and thrilled!! Generally speaking morale is really good, but I must admit we, but especially they.. are getting tired of isolation. We pray that covid will hurry up and be gone!!
Tuesday, and Wednesday we zoom-interviewed our forty Atlantic Canada missionaries, and were so grateful for their enthusiasm, obedience and diligence, learning to be missionaries a new, normal way. It is just delightful having these one on one interviews with every missionary, and to hear their miracle stories, some of which I will include today!
Atlantic Canada Zone Conference Thursday and Ottawa Zone Conference Friday over Zoom were so good. What a miracle to see all our missionaries, and to have them participate in this inspired meeting. Sometimes there is a hiccup, and occasionally there is a lag, but we are so grateful to have this incredible technology available so we can see and hear each other… but no hugs, and no enjoying a meal together….hopefully soon!!
A quick report on new missionaries that arrived: some are brand new, and others are reassigned. We have been instructed to treat the reassigned missionaries as being our own, and,… that they will stay with us the rest of their missions even though they just might return to their original mission. What a fine new group we received: Sister Driessen (Devon ), Elder Geisbrech(Maple Ridge BC ), Elder Nelson(Edmonton ), Sister Hawkes (Calgary), Sister Poihjoisrinne(Thunder Bay, Ontario), Sister Cherniawsky (Glenwood), Elder Bates (Edmonton ), Elder Fletcher (Claresholm), Sister Thompson (Raymond), Elder Day (west of Leduc ), Elder Noad (Magrath), Elder Hirsche (Lethbridge), Elder Ochoa (Drumheller), Elder Shipley (Raymond), and Elder Sudo (Lethbridge). Later in the month we will welcome 18 more to the Canada Montreal Mission!! Our numbers are going up!!!
Here are several miracles that happened right here in the CMM!! Read on!!
Mission Miracles
Fredericton Sisters:
WOW. WHAT A REAL MIRACLE. I CANT EVEN. JOHN WHO IS PARALYZED, WANTS TO BE BAPTIZED!! This was his lasted message: I will think on it mostly just want to hear the basic stuff how I would join the church and what is required from me." What is this life President Low?! This is probably the Coolest thing of my entire Life!! Oh my goodness!! John is oh so cool! Oh my goodness. He wants to be baptized! He also said he had a sign to be baptized when his homecare person said she was a "mormon" in this words! Oh my goodness. This has been the coolest experience.
Fredericton is the best. I cant even. As you can tell its Saturday night. I've really been meaning to send this email. Anyways, we picked up 4 PEOPLE THIS WEEK. 4 WHOLE HUMANS WANTING THE GOSPEL. what Is this life?! I cant even describe the amazing beautiful miracle area this is. Anyways, to talk about the people, we picked up a lady named Tammie, she is so cool! She has been taught in the past, yet she is so open to the gospel! She said that she has never really liked talking with missionaries before us. She is so cool. And we have a follow up appointment with her in a few days!! Then we picked up our friend ‘Lovely’ who we met at the Froyo place!! She is so elect!! And so wonderful!! She is from India!! I love her!! The last person we picked up was Anne. She called us out of nowhere! And we set an appointment up! Anyways,
so many miracles!!!
Hello President Low!
It was so wonderful talking with you today, the miracle that I shared with you was that we went to get Frozen yogurt the other day and as we were checking out, the cashier asked us if we had a church just down the street and we said yes and she said, "I've been wanting to go to that church for a while, are the services open?" We told her no but that they should be opening soon!! And then we exchanged numbers and we have a lesson set up with her tonight!!
I love being able to see miracles happening in our every day missionary efforts. We were able to finish the Book of Mormon with our less active member, Jessica, and we are now restarting it and are also reading with her daughter. So when we catch up with her daughter we are only going to read with them 3 times a week and have them read together on our off days to help build their testimonies and their relationship!
I hope you have a wonderful week and I love you and Sister Low so much!
Longueuil sisters:
The restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ is what sets us apart and we should NEVER be ashamed to share that with someone. Even if that means, doors slammed in your face, you being kicked out of homes, or what I am most familiar with now is anti-literature being spit back at me through messenger. Thursday night this week I was sitting on the couch and a lady I had reached out to in the beginning of quarantine pieced together that I was one of those "mormons" my phone started BLOWING UP with voice messages from her telling me what I believe is blasphemy, and her literally scoffing at me and my beliefs. (Kinda rough, People are super willing to say harsh things when they can hide behind a screen... but the next day??
FULL. OF. MIRACLES. I kid you not we spent the entire day sharing the message of Joseph Smith with people who replied with things like;
"Alright I need this Mormon Bible right now, can I get it on Amazon?""Yes, yes, this is true, it just is so much more clear than the Bible""I don't know what it is but something is telling me I have to keep reading the book"
I am so happy that God continues his work and that I have the honor of being a part of it! I know the world is way scary right now, but the only PURE and LASTING sense of hope and peace we can find is through Jesus Christ. In Honor of our African amis "AMEN, HALLELUJAH, PRAISE THE LORD"
I am so happy to be a missionary, and I have been feeling that missionary fire more and more as the days keep comin!!
This from the New Glasgow sisters:
This week was so cool! A member in New Glasgow, Sister Odo, messaged us and said sisters I need you to call me, I have a referral for you. We of course were so excited and we called her right after church. She told us she has a friend named Beverly and as they have talked throughout the years Sister Odo has shared advice with her which often leads to gospel discussions. Beverly called her Sunday morning and told her I am not interested in investigating your church, I am ready to join your church. She said that the advice Sister Odo gave her really helped her and she knew it was true. She asked for a Book of Mormon and a Bible because she wants to read them. Her husband JD found out we believe in eternal families. He said that he wants to have an eternal family and he wants to be baptized too. It is such a cool miracle. I am so excited to teach them and help prepare for baptism! Me and Sister Robinson really enjoyed your puppet show. Thanks for the fun entertainment!
This from the Fallowfield Elders:
I will share one miracle. We met with a part member family, where the wife was a member. The Husband did not want to participate, but we did get to talk to all of the kids. The Kids were great and we had a great time bonding with them! At the end of the lesson, we challenged them to read the scriptures everyday as a family. They have been successful so far! They all read a chapter a night of the Book of Mormon. We reported this in missionary correlation later in the week, and to our surprise, we found out that NONE of the kids were members! We don't know if this is because of the father's wishes, but we are looking into it! We may have a whole family to be baptized! We are also going to try to help their family get engaged in family history. This way hopefully get the Dad involved and he will begin to feel the spirit and soften his heart.
Office Elder
This is from a young elder who speaks mandarin, and whom we called to come into the mission office and be in charge of missionary apartments; this experience shows how the Lord directs every aspect of this work:
These past few weeks have been wonderful. I reaffirm my stance that being a missionary is better than being an avenger or a Jedi. There was a landlord named Liu Hai Yan recently who lost a rent check. While on the phone with her I asked what she had done over the weekend, she said she had been playing with her family. A little confused, I asked what musical instruments her family plays. She said none. After a few more awkward exchanges, I learned she had said that she had been praying for her family. Then, she without invitation declared she wanted to attend our church. I called a week or so later to let her know her replacement check was coming. She restated her desire to come to church and I also had the chance to speak in mandarin with her. I then contacted Elder Tung and Elder Wu and got them in touch with her. I felt it was very neat to be apart of that process. She also has a restaurant that is currently closed, but I am excited to go try it when it opens.
This from Elder Christopherson who was on his way home to Wyoming, May 22nd, 2020:
« Hey president Low, I hope everything is going well for you and Sister Low! I’ve been doing good, I’ve managed to keep busy and my mother has actually been really supportive of me living with my dad full time, which Is an answer to prayer. But I don’t think I ever told you what happened to me on my way back home. After a long series of layovers and flights I finally arrived in Denver, where I had a 4 hour layover before my final flight home. I had to print my last boarding pass so I was wondering around the massive terminal searching for some kind of desk, but as I was going I passed by three workers who were speaking a foreign language. I was quite a bit away from them, but it sounded like they were speaking French, which would make sense considering that they were of African decent. I debated about talking to them, but I felt a push and went over to them. I addressed them in English asking for directions, to which they looked more confused than I was. So I asked them what language they spoke and they said French, so I started speaking to them in French and they were soooo surprised. I then asked where they were from, and one was from Congo Kinshasa and the other from Brazzaville. I greeted them in their respective native languages, Swahili and Lingala and they were in Book of Mormon lingo “astonished beyond all measure.” During our conversation I discovered that they were meeting with missionaries but lost contact because of Covid. So we exchanged Facebooks and I now have both their numbers and plan on teaching them with the missionaries ASAP. That was a blessing, but when I got to my little terminal way in the furthest, most secluded area in the whole airport, I felt a yearning to find someone else who spoke French. I was restless and couldn’t sit still as long as I was a missionary. So I walked around the vast expanse of the airport, to absolutely no avail. (But some members of the church bought me Chick-Fil-a which was another amazing blessing.) I returned to my terminal, exhausted from the long day of travel and my fruitless expedition to find one last francophone. While I was thinking about all that just had happened a man came and sat a seat away from me, we casualty greeted each other and I thought nothing of it. He pulled out his phone and started talking to his wife. I listed to him and noticed that he wasn’t speaking English, but Quebecois. My jaw literally dropped, there was tens if not hundreds of other seats he could’ve sat in, but he sat next to me. As soon as he hung up I struck up a conversation with him and we spoke for an hour before I left for home. He was originally from Saint-Hyacinth but had been living in the USA for a good long while. We had a wonderful discussion in which it was apparent that he wasn’t exactly interested in the church, but seeds were planted. When I finally did get on the plane I was filled with more gratitude than I ever felt before. I was weeping because of the Lords mercy, He knew that all I wanted was an opportunity to contact people in French one last time. I hadn’t even asked for it in prayer, but He still knew that that was the deepest yearning of my heart so He granted it to me. The only reason why I can think He did that was sometimes during my mission I would pray for Him to grant me missionary opportunities as I returned home. He answered my prayers in a way could have never guessed! I love you both and pray everything goes smoothly with the new missionaries coming in! »
That concludes the wondrous, CMM Miracle corner!! We are so grateful for the many tender mercies our dear missionaries experience every day!
And…thank you for loving and supporting us. Your faith and prayers, combined with ours certainly have been answered, as we feel such strength, and energy to daily ‘Go Forth with Faith,’ relying on our Saviour.
We send much love to all… thanks for reading!!!
Richard and Gayle, Dad and Mom, Grandpa and Grandma XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
!Keep Smiling!!
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