Today is Sunday, April 11, 2021

      and SPRING is in full swing!! 

Celebrating each of the four seasons has been so much fun here in the east; and, as each season transitions we declare: ‘this is our favourite!’ 

Fresh springy air, warm sunshine, brilliant blue skies, rainy skies, stately hardwood maple, oak, horse chestnut, birch trees budding out, as well as every gorgeous shrub popping, with spring bulbs bursting, green grass growing, with throngs of families gathering in every park around, and no more shrinking mountains of snow…. confirm to us that spring has officially arrived. Oh, we were so relieved to discover that our naughty resident squirrels raided only about three dozen of our 200 white tulip bulbs last fall.  The rest are looking perky and are probably 8 inches out of the ground! 

Speaking of seasons has us thinking about the ‘next season’ of our lives which is sneaking up on us pretty quickly! Weekly our  schedules have been filled to the maximum interacting with our missionaries, meeting and teaching them, as well as with members, and friends who are being taught.  We are anxious to make a smooth transition to the our next ‘season,’ and are setting goals but know our lives will never be the same. This has been a sacred, choice time for us as a couple, but individually as well. As we have taught, and applied the Doctrine of Christ in our own lives, and witnessed as it has transformed hundreds of our missionaries, as well as hundreds of new converts, our testimonies have been solidified, and we have such a desire to continue with helping the Great Gathering of Israel.

You know I’m going to make some comment on how quickly this week flew by, and there you have it!! 

Monday Office Meetings were really a thrill when we tallied our Key Indicators…we had issued a challenge last week to try and have 200 friends attend a session of General Conference! We all happy danced when our totals showed 206 friends had watched a Conference session!!! A thrill for us, but such a thrill for our Missionary army!! That was a lot of inviting, and a lot of follow-up!!

Other key indicators in case you were wondering - 2 friends were Baptized, 37 friends on date for Baptism, and 60 new friends found who are being taught!! What hard-working, incredible missionaries!!

With Sister Breckenridge leaving to return home to Utah in about two weeks, and it being Easter Monday, we cooked our big spiral ham that had been patiently waiting in the freezer for over a year, made a huge roaster with funeral potatoes, cooked carrots, rolls, and one of our favourite desserts - layered lemon delight. Everyone that popped into the Office, including our new Missionary Medical Consultant, Elder (Dr.) Opper and his son Daniel who just arrived from Kingston, as well as a bunch of missionaries enjoyed the feast, and we were so happy to not bring a single leftover home!! 

Tuesday first thing we were off to Ottawa for interviews/visits, the plan being to have Tuesday and Wednesday be our interview days, and then Thursday our Zone Conference day.  Wednesday morning while Richard was down getting some takeout breakfast at the Hotel, the gal at the breakfast counter asked him if he had heard about the lockdown, and he said yes referring to the week old announcement, and she said the Premier was announcing another at 2:00 Wednesday afternoon. Richard has become an expert at reading these covid lockdowns, and immediately knew they were going to make it even more strict, and guessed the restrictions would come into place at midnight…SO..he called the Zone Leaders, and instructed them to notify the Zone that the Zone Conference was now going to be that afternoon.  We would do another set of interviews Wednesday morning and almost finish them after Zone Conference. We seem to dodge every covid bullet…moving times, and places just in the nick of time!! The lockdown actually did come into effect at midnight. 

We had such a wonderful Zone Conference…with such wonderful missionaries!!

Rather than stay in a Ottawa we headed home, and thought Thursday would be a bit of a breather. I was anxious to move 6 delphinium from the front yard to the back planters, and I wanted to split a Shasta daisy, and a ground cover for Teresa, which I did….  Richard did a quick rake of the front lawn, and pumped our bike tires for our little biking adventure. It was a glorious day…no jackets needed!  

                                                                Notice the Street Sign!!

I was anxious to use up some dated cottage cheese so made a nice lasagne for supper.  Richard had some lessons with Elder Wetterstrand and Elder McStravick set up, and I was happily working on birthday cards, when I started feeling horrible….like both my back, and my lower right abdomen….very suspiciously like kidney stone pain…

I resisted going to the Hospital as long as I could, thinking perhaps I could pass it like last year, but finally about 1am Thursday morning Richard took me to the Jewish General Hospital, where I spent the night. They were able to get the pain under control, and Friday morning Richard came and collected me. Unfortunately the 8mm kidney stone is still lurking somewhere inside me…I did get a referral from a Dr….and will call tomorrow to see if he can do the procedure this week to remove the stone. Today I haven’t had any Tylenol..only Flomax, so my pain for now is under control. I will have to monitor things, and see when Dr. Fahmy can see me. Private clinics are also a possibility... 

Yesterday we were able to watch three of our five baptisms, and what a thrill that was. The other two were right in the midst of New Brunswick Stake Conference, so we didn’t get to see those. Exciting nevertheless! 

Weekly Sunday evening Zoom devotionals are always a highlight...tonight we discussed the outstanding devotional by Sister Jean Bingham and her husband Bruce. It is always so fun to see our whole Mission together!

This weeks schedule includes our Monday Office Meetings, 2 days of Longueuil Zone Interviews, Longueuil Zone Conference, as well as MLC…(two days in Drummondville to avoid having too many people in a building, and 3 days in Montreal.) It will be another great week, interacting with our wonderful missionaries!!

Thank you all for your love and support of missionaries the world over. We feel the power of your prayers. 

Have a wonderful week!

With much love from us,

Grandpa and Grandma, Dad and Mom, Richard and Gayle

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                                                                             Ottawa

                                                               “The Maple Leaf Forever”

                                                            Run along Rideau Canal

                                              View from Westin Hotel -  Downtown Ottawa

April 10th, 2021 missionary miracles

Montreal Sisters;

“Wow this week was incredible. I absolutely loved everything about conference and conference weekend. We were able to have Heidi come watch in person and had an incredible lesson with her and a member after. Then, a couple of days later we had a lesson and put her on date!!!!!!! I definitely cried I was so happy. It's amazing how when you give your all to helping someone come to understand how Jesus Christ can help them change, that you have so much joy when they start to take those steps for themselves. I love it with all my heart.”

Ottawa Dows Lake Elders:

“Grateful to have had the interview and a wonderful Zone Conference this past week. Elder Chin and I had a member visit with someone who had not been to church since the last time I was in Ottawa. We decided to not make that fact the focus of our visit but instead followed the Love, Invite, Share method with this man. Not only did the man readily mention someone that he desired to introduce us missionaries to but he also agreed to come back to Church this Sunday. So glad!”

Ottawa Riverside Sisters:

“ In the middle of last week I kept feeling like I needed to post on Instagram which is random, but we made plans to go take pictures in between Conference on Sunday. We happened to run into these two guys at just the right time and one of then named David noticed our name tag. He said he knew our church and had been before. We ended up having a 30 min conversation about the gospel. It was incredible! I learned many lessons from this experience. The first is when you have a thought to do something do it even when it seems random or doesn't make sense. I realized the reason we were at that park wasn't only about making an Instagram post, it was because God needed us at that place at that time. He guided us there! The second is that all we do really is planting seeds. If the past missionaries hadn't already talked to David we wouldn't have ever had that conversation. David stopped to talk to us because he remembered missionaries in the past were kind to him. We added them on Instagram and they have kept in contact with us. David is interested in coming to church! It was a really special experience for me. “

Montreal Sisters:

“We had a  cool miracle this week. We always go on a run in the mornings and on Monday we were able to run into somebody. All our studies and planning got pushed back and so we went out probably 30 mins later then we normally do. On our runs we try and say hello to as many people as we can. This time we said hello to this girl and two seconds later she yelled back at us and was like "Hey do you know where I can find a church around here?" We were like yeah definitely we will help you find one!!! It was so cool how God places us at the exact moment that someone needs Him! It turns out she is a member but haven't been active for years. She recognized our name tags and reached out. She also split up with her husband 3 days ago so it was perfect timing.”

Victoriaville Elders:

“Since the beginning of this transfer, we have had a baptismal goal for the month of May. We didn’t have anyone close to being ready to be baptized, and didn’t, realistically, see anyone on course for baptism in March or April, so we had one set for May. No real plans at that point for how we were going to do it and with who. But we put faith in setting that for the month that we did. A few weeks ago, we picked someone up from area Book who was taught a while ago. He has a large problem with smoking, but we know as we work with him, and he puts in his effort he will be baptized. We had the blessing of extending an invitation to him, and him accepting it for the month of May. Big blessings come through our faith. “

Quebec Sisters:

“This week has been great! We have been meeting with a few new friends and they are all such kind and incredible people. It's amazing to see people interested and searching for answers to their spiritual questions. We had a really cool experience with one of our friends this week. Our friend Hivanne has been progressing so much in the past few weeks and it has been really incredible to see how Heavenly Father has given me specific prompting to help him! 

As we were listening to conference this past weekend, Sr. Gatz and I heard a talk that was absolutely meant for our friend, we looked at each other in awe as the speaker said every single thing we were planning to talk to our friend about that night. Last week I had woken up with this strong impression that we needed to ask ask him to be baptized, and so we this week we did and he said yes! Very cool stuff!! “

And from her Companion:

“In related news to Hivanne, this past week our plan was to invite Hivanne to be baptized. He explained that something he wanted to discuss was how to avoid the everyday attacks of satan, and one thought that came to our mind was the Holy Ghost. It had happened that the week before we had given him Moroni 7 to read, and it all kind of just clicked from there. When we planned his lesson, we had planned on explaining the difference between the light of Christ and the gift of the Holy Ghost, and then explaining how he could recieve the gift of the Holy Ghost, which would help him to better resist temptation. When we listened to Elder Dyches talk in the afternoon on sunday, we were just floored. His talk was almost the exact same layout of our lesson plan, touching on every single thing we wanted to talk to Hivanne about. More than that, this was the one session that Hivanne planned to listen to (he said that he watched for a bit, but hadn't been able to see the whole session, we aren't sure if he heard this particular talk or not.) We took this as a sign that this was exactly what Hivanne needed, and so we went forth. We invited him to be baptized, and he said yes, and so we'll work out a specific date this week. 

That was one miracle that we saw this week. “