Today is Sunday, February 28, 2021
and we are celebrating Liesl’s 1st Birthday!
Actually we should be waiting four years to celebrate because she is our leap year baby….
(she was born last February 29th.)
Happy Birthday to Liesl Anne Low!
Who can even believe that it is the end of February!! It just seems like yesterday that I was creating our whiteboard calendar with all our February activities, and embellishing it with tiny red hearts, and now…it’s already time to erase the whole month! In the wake though, we feel grateful for the many happy memories that remain!! I have to say…’oh dear’…this speeding bullet train that we are on has picked up speed, and we have no idea how to pull the emergency brake!! Three years ago our Mission trainer, Ken Packer; before we even arrived likened our service to being dropped from a helicopter onto a speeding bullet train, and for three years we work with all our heart to get to the front of the train, to the locomotive car to take control of the train….and right when we are almost in reach of the controls….another engineer, and his companion are dropped on and begin the same pursuit. What a great description of our Mission journey!! But for now, the calendar, with the tiny March shamrocks get to stay for another 31 days, and before we know it April showers and May flowers will appear!!
With our dear Sister Little leaving yesterday our Monday Office Meetings were sort of a tribute to her. What a remarkable missionary she has been, touching everyones life with her effervescent ‘larger than life’ personality. Certainly she has been everyones favorite person to visit in the Office. We will miss so much…all her efficient organizing of gas receipts, cars, click reports, telephones and sim cards, service opportunities, the ‘in-house free thrift shop,’ zone conference luncheons (that was last year!,) her engaging personality, and her hilarious ‘elsa’isms’ will keep us chuckling for a long time!! Richard made a roaster oven filled with an incredible batch of his special ‘Killer Beef on a Bun,’ and we served it over fresh buns, and although we did not break any covid distancing rules, we all enjoyed a delicious feast together. Frozen strawberry dessert was what Sister Little had requested, so we all were filled to the brim by the end of that feast!!
Our Queen Elsa Bee will be missed for as long as we are here…and way beyond!! It is incredible how after a few short months serving together we have found so many new best friends…and Sister Little is another one of those…truly, a cherished ‘golden’ friend. She returns to Fairfax, Virginia, and also to her summer home on the Jersey shore. We are excited to travel there to visit her, and explore the east coast!
We continue to be amazed at our Key Indicators for Conversion report…man.. our missionaries work so hard to find scattered Israel…We have 36 friends on date for Baptism, with 84 friends at Church, and 51 new friends found! From Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, to Charlottetown,PEI, to Ottawa, to Quebec City, to Montreal, all virtually on their little phones, they ARE finding, teaching and baptizing converts…Oh, how we are proud! We know the Lord gave us all top shelf missionaries, and oh how we love every one of them!!
Tuesday and Wednesday we spent in our National capital of Ottawa, and so enjoyed our interviews/visits with every missionary. We sandwiched an awesome Zone Conference between interviews on Wednesday and by our final interview it was 5pm, and the snowstorm was raging. Normally the two hour drive back to Montreal, took us four, so you can imagine what a storm that was! And, again we were out past our eight o’clock curfew, but any officer looking at our vehicle that looked like a big round igloo, would have known why we were late!
More great interviews and visits with Longueuil Zone on Thursday, and Longueuil Zone Conference via zoom on Friday. My teaching this transfer is all about ‘Prayer,’ and I love testifying how grateful I am to be able to communicate with our Heavenly Father. Teaching these consecrated young adults is inspiring. The key is to ask a few good questions, and they do the teaching! We especially love when they share their personal inspiring experiences!! They are so good!!
Speaking of good missionaries…one of our favourite extra curricular activities is when returned missionaries reach out to us, and want to have a FaceTime visit!! It is lovely to reconnect and see that they are well on their covenant paths. One of the best realizations we have had as we serve is how our hearts have grown - (probably ten sizes) and how they are continuing to grow!! What a wonderful blessing of serving!!
Charlotte Anne Low’s Baptism yesterday afternoon was such a neat highlight, where so many loved ones participated in her special day. Zooming has been such a blessing for us to be able to ‘be there.’
And face timing for Mom Low’s 94th ‘outdoor’ Birthday celebration where many, many grandchildren sang primary songs, waved, and blew kisses was another happy memory, we got to participate in.
Briar, Haysten, Charlotte, Sadey at Charlotte's Baptism
Today has been another marathon Sabbath where we got to watch and hear Elder Justin Brown, and Elder Jeremy Croft recently returned from the CMM; report their missions in their home wards! Here is the beautiful JOY priority acronym that Elder Crofts shared;
J - Jesus Christ
O - Others
Y - Yourself
Another ‘blessing’ of covid has been the ability we have to tune into our returned missionaries homecoming reports..if we know when they are reporting..we zoom in!! Two convert baptisms this week: yesterday was Natasha, and today Nathalie. Whether they are English, French or Spanish, we can always feel the Spirit present. Also today, two new Spanish Wards were created..Terrabonne which was a French Ward and converted into a Spanish Ward, and Monte Rey which was a Spanish Branch, and was made into a Spanish Ward!! The Church is growing, and we are excited to be a part of it!! We also tuned into Westminster Ward Sacrament Meeting. Our Sunday evening Mission Wide Devotional is always great! Being together as an entire Mission and discussing the amazing weekly Devotionals that the Missionary Department organizes for the worldwide Missionary force is awesome!! This week Elder and Sister Uchtdorf enthusiastically, and in Elder Uchtdorf fashion motivated us to continue to be creative in our finding efforts, to be bold, and to be focused on our missionary purpose.
This upcoming week promises to be another great one…maybe you can guess what is on our schedule? We are very predictable, so, if you guessed office meetings, interviews and visits, Zone Conference, New Missionary Zoom Call, and District Meetings, you are correct!!
Thanks for your prayers, thanks for being missionaries wherever you are, thanks for being our friends, and thanks for reading this epistle!!
With much love,
Grandpa and Grandma, Dad and Mom, Richard and Gayle
February 28th, 2021 Missionary Miracles:
Montreal Sisters:
I want to share a quick little miracle that really testified to me how much God prepares His children to hear His word. We have been teaching a couple who is hardcore protestants. We have really good discussions and they are really curious to know how we have such a strong relationship with Jesus Christ. She was telling us God prepared her to meet with us. Her whole life she had been trained and was told to always shut the door on the missionaries. One night after she couldn't sleep she decided to watch a random documentary on Mormonism. It was made my the Lutheran church, but one thing they said was to not shut the doors on the missionaries and just let them in! She thought maybe next time she would try it. The next day I ended up texting her off a random Montreal page and we set up a lesson. She told us that if she wouldn't of watched that documentary she would have never allowed us to have a video call. God is so good.
Montreal Est Elders:
Recently there have been some great miracles that have happened in our area. About two weeks ago, we had a lesson with a member who was doing super well. The content of the lesson was the plan of salvation. At that time, we were only thinking about it would be a good lesson to teach, to help remind her the abundant love heavenly father has for us in creating this plan. Then three days ago we called this lady again and she told us that her father passed away just last week. She had no idea beforehand that that would happen. As we listened to her story, she was crying and sobbing convulsively. My companion and I were sitting on the other side of the phone in silence. A bit later down her story, her tears turned from sour to sweet as she explained her gratitude of the plan of salvation. Slowly, she was crying in joy. And we witnessed a living testimony that God is in all the details and he knows and loves each one of us. That was a wonderful night.
Granby Elders:
I think one of the coolest experiences we had was our good friend Yvon wanted to have a call with us Saturday, and he expressed he began reading the Book of Mormon, and loved the testimonies of the witnesses! Never heard that one before!
He also attended sacrament meeting, as well as Sunday school! (With a couple of technical difficulties), where we were of course talking about the witnesses while following Come Follow Me! There are no coincidences!
Halifax Sisters:
It was good to see you and Sister Low this week!
This week we had a cool experience, we were thinking of dropping someone and we ended up being led to talk about Family History. We had a lesson planned and a member present and the member brought up family history and our friend started talking about it and now we are trying to help her set up her tree! We are working on finding more people to teach and working with members. Sister Nabrotzky and I are working well together and enjoying being out of quarantine!
Quebec Sisters:
We've still been meeting with Stella, a returning member in the Lévis Branch, and that has really been amazing. We've introduced her to a younger member of the ward, Marie Laurie, and they meshed really well.
It's has been wild for me to reflect on the time we have been meeting together, as Stella was one of the first less active members that we called when we arrived in the Area in November (also the first person I ever called on the phone on the mission), and she was very very clear that she wanted no contact with the church. I remember feeling super bad about it because I felt like it was my fault because I am really really bad at talking on the phone (which I have come to realize is pride) but either way, flash forward to January and one of her friends in the branch called us and asked if we could meet with her to do come, Follow me. Because of the interaction with her, I was a bit hesitant about it, but I shouldn't have been. I really don't know what changed in her life, but she's been coming to sacrament meeting and to relief society/sunday school. Together we read the Bible, Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants. Its been crazy to see the power of the gospel really really in action in people's lives.
Keep Smiling!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment