Today is Sunday, May 23, 2021
Happy Birthday to Kaylee Victoria Low tomorrow!!
The best news of the week is that….ALL ‘our’ diligent, hard work is paying off and we are thrilled to report Five baptisms this week including the Fuentes Family of three from Victoria Ward, Luna from Kirkland Ward, and Delphine from Montreal East Ward!!!
We say ‘our’ work referring to the efforts of EVERY Canada Montreal Missionary!!
Wonderful meetings every Monday keep us coming back for more!! Our young Elders are so capable and do their best to keep things running smoothly. Elder Trevino runs the front desk, answering phones, taking care of Richard’s correspondence, taking care of incoming and outgoing missionary travel etc. etc. Elder Chadbolt is a whiz at missionary phones, and also coordinates all missionary service - (at food banks, thrift stores, homeless shelters, etc. etc.,)where each missionary can serve up to 10 hours/ a week - that is a lot of service, and a lot of organizing!! Sister Little had this very well organized, and Elder Chadbolt is continuing her high standard. You would think with covid restrictions easing up it would be easy to keep this current, but it is a busy calling! Elder Zhou is our accountant, (has an accounting degree from BYU!!) and he keeps our finances in perfect shape - we are always ready for an audit, thanks to him!! Elder Glenn is a computer genius, and is currently helping the Roberts create spread sheets to keep track of Housing leases etc.etc. He also is ready and willing to help troubleshoot any, and every computer issue!! Elder Gibb is the right hand assistant to Elder Roberts in moving beds, chairs, couches etc. etc.!! Sister Roberts, another one of my BFF is delightful and loves decorating, visiting, and thrift store shopping! She is a worker bee 🐝 and is doing a clean sweep of every apartment. Being a native Québécois she can communicate with sassy landlords; and, every missionary is motivated to keep a spit spot apartments! Yeah!!Elder Garside and Elder Wentzell keep perfect track of vehicles, oil changes, cleanliness, etc. etc.!! Young missionaries spend the day at the Office, and lest you think that is all they do….oh no…from 5 - 9pm every night they are finding, and teaching new friends…so they are multitaskers at their finest!! Sister Mecham keeps our supplies filled and in top order. She returns home the end of June. Elder Opper keeps our medical issues in order… and currently is coordinating covid vaccinations for every missionary, which hopefully will be complete in the next few weeks. Our new senior couple Elder and Sister Walker arrived from Sylvan Lake, Alberta last week, and have been finishing up their on-line training. This week they will have the hands-on, in-office training as they replace Elder Trevino, and Elder Zhou. We are so grateful for the incredible service of every one of our Office team - it takes everyone cheerfully, working together, (which our team does) to make this experience such a JOY!! We are so grateful for the efforts of every Office missionary - currently serving, as well as so many that have gone before, that have worked so diligently to make this Mission experience so wonderful for everyone!!
Guess what we did the rest of the week?? Tuesday and Wednesday we had delightful interviews and visits with our Longueuil Zone. Tuesday in the Office, and Wednesday in Drummondville where we stayed overnight since Zone Conference was there in Drummondville on Thursday. Late afternoon as we were finishing our last interviews with Sister Training Leaders, Sister Irazoki and Sister Davis, they mentioned that the whole zone were dressing in red the next day. Our coordinating pink sweater and tie that we had packed were definitely not suitable for the zone photo!! So…’Valuers de Village was just a few minutes away, and in no time we had selected 3 lovely ties, a sort of cute (but tired and pilly) red knit jacket, and a pile of beautiful doilies (which have nothing to do with Zone Conference, but I love to rescue handcrocheted or knit items!) Zone Conference was so good…the Zone leadership - zone leaders, and sister training leaders were such fabulous teachers teaching about the urgency to find, and how to be effective teachers. They practised what they were teaching, using creativity; and we loved the small group fun role-playing activity.
Richard and I team taught about ‘Developing a Heart Like His; which really is a lifetime quest for all of us; but serving a Mission is a great way
to get a jump start on developing Christlike attributes, with a focus on a change of heart. Bishop Causse’s conference talk last year was our ‘prepare to learn’ reading. It is so fun team-teaching! We LOVE Preach My Gospel, and we LOVE The Book of Mormon, and all our teaching comes from those two great handbooks!!! READ THEM!!
RED Longueuil Zone photo below
With a pause day on Friday, and Pday on Saturday it was a perfect opportunity to continue east from Drummondville to Quebec City for a little break. We hadn’t been there for over a year, and we were so excited be tourists!!
Several friends suggested visiting Isle D’Orleans, an island in the St. Lawrence between Quebec City and Levis, and just a quick 15 minute drive over a great old bridge. The island’s microclimate has ideal growing conditions for apples, strawberries, grapes, and potatoes so besides the 6 little villages, and farmsteads the 42 mile island is absolutely covered with fields of apple orchards, strawberries, vineyards, and freshly planted potatoes!! Oh and wonderful groves of maple trees that are tapped for maple syrup!! Old Quebec is charming and definitely just like France! Quaint little shops with authentic ‘Made in Quebec’ souvenirs, and lots of cute eating stops were so fun! Most breads and pastries are absolutely delicious and we have to limit ourselves, but we are drawn to every boulangerie!! We had a delightful, relaxing couple of days. Friday night President Morin and his wife Collette drove over to our little island and joined us for a fun supper at a wonderful patio right on the St. Lawrence. On the 7th of June they head off on their third Mission to Africa!! Their first Mission they served as Mission Leaders in Benin, the second to Senegal, and this one is to Cote D'Ivoire! They have nine children who are stalwart members all here in Quebec. (FYI - Dad's companion Elder Kinghorn and Elder Whitely taught President Morin back in 1974!) We had such fun visiting!
And now it is time to get this posted, and get to bed!!
Have a wonderful week! Mission life is wonderful!!
We send love to all..
Grandpa and Grandma, Dad and Mom, Richard and Gayle
Photos follow the Miracles
Canada Montreal May 23rd, 2021 Missionary Miracles:
Montreal 2 Elders:
“We had a cool miracle happen this week!
Me and Elder Sillito had a lesson fall through and it was almost the end of Prime Time. So we went on the Instagram to like and comment on the pages. I started looking around and found a place in Instagram where you can search places so I searched Montreal shoes. And found this guy with some pretty sweet kicks so I shot him a message. Long story short I was able to set up a Bible study, and in our study he expressed how he didn't really understand the Bible at all and was praying something would happen were he could. It was just a miracle to me how we came into contact and his prayers were answered!”
Montreal 2 Sisters:
“Miracle time: yesterday we were doing service at a soup kitchen. There was a new volunteer with us and we'd only met her once before. Anyway, we started packing up some food with her and got talking. She knew a bit about our church because her boyfriend has been inactive since he was 18 (remind us to see how he is) so she had a bunch of questions. One thing led to another and she started talking about religions and God and specifically prayer. She had a bunch of questions about memorized prayers, how to pray, and why we pray. So we talked about that for a while!! And then Sister Jensen, bless her soul, asked if she would like to have a call to talk a bit more about God and our beliefs AND SHE SAID YES!!! So at the end of service we got her number and are going to set up a call. Wow. Talk about miracles!! You really can help people learn about God wherever you are. It’s my favourite thing!!!!”
Longueuil Elders:
“This week Elder Rees and I continued to be blessed in abundance for our efforts. Finding through Facebook has been a huge success as we continually pray for our leads ad. We have found many people who are willing to read the Bible with us and everyone of them so far that we have called have been open to receiving a Book of Mormon. One in particular I would like to share. His name is Ranel, he has a family and they are all from Haiti. In Haiti he had a good job and his wife was a doctor but because of political issues happening there they were forced to leave the country. He has been here for several years without work, but his wife does work. He is very humble and we will have a lesson with the whole family upcoming this Saturday. “
LaSalle Sisters:
“I also wanted to tell you and Sister Low about a miracle! We had a member give us food! That's the first miracle but the miracle I wanted to share was what happened when we went to pick it up. The pasta was left in the fridge in the church. And when we arrived, the Chateauguay Elders were inside. Because we can't use the church at the same time, we had them bring it out to us. They met us outside and this man drove up. He asked if we spoke French and I told him I speak a bit. He then asked if this was "the Mormon Church" He explained that he is from Africa and lived in the United States for a bit where he met the missionaries. He is new to LaSalle and was looking for the church. His name is Shabani. We got his number and shared it with the Hochelaga elders. What are the chances that the missionaries would be outside the church at 2pm on a Wednesday, the exact same time someone drove up looking for the church, and that one of us spoke any French at all considering LaSalle is an English ward? The chances are zero, it was by divine design. It was really fun to speak to someone in french!! And I know God helped me to understand him because I really don’t speak that much. And all this happened because Brother Simkovits bought us pasta. “
Villa Marie Sisters:
“This week has been so fast paced and so miracle-filled! This was a really cool miracle yesterday: unfortunately we have not found her yet but we met with someone who was contacted through Instagram! We were doing Instagram finding and looking through posts nearby and we came across this lady, I immediately found a common interest and that was fitness and nutrition! I messaged her saying I was into dietetics and I loved her page and her next text back was like let's meet and go for a walk and we can talk more! We were planning a lot before this meeting on how we were going to bring the gospel into our discussion, and how we can potentially find her. However it was a lot easier than we had anticipated, I had mentioned in our texts that I was on a mission and all that and right when we met up with her at the park she was super excited and she said like as well "when you said you were on a mission I had no idea what that meant so I did some researching on that too so I am excited to talk about your mission as well!" We went and sat down and we had a beautiful conversation, turns out too she is very religious and she really believes in incorporating God into her fitness business and is constantly praying for her clients and asked them what she can pray for. She also told us that she follows up after she prayed for someone specifically and I loved that, then like they can realize how prayers work if they noticed a difference or something, I learned a lot from her! Then she told us that she would love to refer her clients to us, because we had told her we once did a prayer call with someone! She was like ‘is there a number or a website?’ She said she misses church so much in person and we totally agreed with her, she also misses her bible studies, so without us even asking she's like we could do bible studies and make it a weekly thing! And she said she would be interested in checking out our church! She is English speaking, so we will have to pass her off to the English missionaries. She was amazing, the one regret maybe is that we didn't set a date, that has been something I have been really wondering this week, I know how important it is to set a return appointment in that first meeting and when the spirit is still strong, but like to what point do you push it to when maybe when it's not natural. I think maybe we can more go about it like "we can plan for this day". With Donna she said she would confirm with her schedule, but we are planning on either Monday or Friday next week. And we are going to pray to know how to introduce the Book of Mormon I think she would be very interested. She had lots of questions about our missions all that, and for her too she said at the end of the day, it's Jesus and He is the centre. “
Victoriaville Elders:
“I had a cool experience this week. After Studying all of the Doctrine and Covenants Prepare to Learns for Zone Conference, I was thinking, is the field really white? I have tried my whole mission to believe this and have faith in it, but despite every effort I put in things often seem to move slowly. So after my studies I prayed and sincerely asked God if this was true, what it was teaching us in Doctrine and Covenants. That very same day, we received an unusual amount of Lead ad responses, and one we had targeted just at Montreal said she was from Victoriaville! It shouldn't have happened, but it DID as a response to a prayer. We quickly started up a very nice conversation with her, and she was searching for something greater in her life. Later that same day, we got a knock on our door, and it was our neighbour. Her key that has worked in her door
for 13 years didn't work this one time, and she couldn't get into her
apartment. So we helped her call the landlord, and in waiting for him to come, naturally we struck up a conversation. She was comfortable enough with us because the week before we had gotten locked out of our apartment, and had knocked on her door for help. We just got to know her, and we found out that her husband had passed away a few years ago after a 30 year marriage, and we were able to testify and give her a plan of salvation pamphlet, and she said of course I'll read it, I have nothing else to do! So yes, there are people out there that God is preparing. It was a beautiful answer to a prayer.”
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