Today is Sunday, January 10, 2021
What a great week we have enjoyed here in the Canada Montreal Mission, but will someone please push stop on the play button?! Our weeks are literally zooming by so very quickly, and we are almost frantic thinking of all we still want to do..
Monday Office Meetings always confirm to us how important it is to work as a team, and we know we are blessed to have such a stellar team to serve with. The Roberts - our new couple from Magrath have been tutored by Elder Baird and Elder Garside on all the ins and outs of Housing, and this week the torch will probably be passed and Elders Baird and Garside will ride off into the sunset…actually they are both Mandarin Elders and will serve in the Mandarin Branch. We will miss their enthusiasm, and dedicated hard work. They have left our housing in shipshape.
Another highlight of our Monday was a two hour zoom call with our replacements - President David and Sister Lisa Harkness who will begin their service as Mission leaders the end of June. President Harkness served his Mission in Belgium, and Sister Harkness served in Baton Rouge, Louisiana - Spanish-speaking. They are enthused and ready to work hard, and we are confident they will bring the Canada Montreal Mission to new heights!! For the next several months, every other week we are excited to meet with them, and hopefully orient them to this wonderful Mission!! It was fun to give them a virtual tour of our home while we were still all decked out in Christmas splendour!
Driving to Ottawa is really the only road trip we take in a transfer cycle, and we love the quick two hour drive where snow laden hardwood forests, great, old expansive farms with lines of silos, and stunning partially frozen rivers, always take our breaths away.
Ottawa interviews, and Zone Conference were both wonderful! Sweet missionaries had a lovely bouquet of flowers on the table, with a space heater for me, and another gorgeous bouquet greeted us on our car when we finished…such thoughtful missionaries. Sister Jensen from Medicine Hat arrived here in August, and when she arrived for her interview on Wednesday, her eyes were beaming, and she said “Sister Low, this is the first time I’ve met you!!” I was shocked…I felt like I already had met her…It is really incredible because with all our zooming….I KNOW the spirit is with us even when most of our connecting is done over zoom; it is like we really are physically together…..what a beautiful experience..
Wednesday late afternoon, after interviewing, we enjoyed fun cross country skiing around Mooney’s Bay…and it was so beautiful, and peaceful!
Coming home on Thursday we travelled the backroads, and found a calendar waterfall on the rivier de la nation, as well as a historic old CP Hotel..now Fairmont’s - Le Chateau Montebello built in 4 months of 1930 by 3500 craftsman using 10,000 cedar logs; it is quite the beautiful, unique hotel, and brags several rich and famous guests like Prince Rainier, and Princess Grace of Monaco, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as well as other Canadian prime ministers, and other famous folks!! It reminded us of the Lake MacDonald Lodge in Glacier.
Meeting with our Atlantic Zone on Friday for their Zone Conference was also wonderful..the last time we were there was almost a year ago, in March 2020…we do ache to be with them in person, and continue to pray for an end to covid so we can travel and meet with both missionaries and members alike. But for now we zoom!
Maybe you heard that effective Friday night at midnight Quebec implemented a mandatory 8pm-5am curfew, and as well has mandated absolutely no church meetings. Knowing that was coming into effect, and with four baptisms scheduled for Saturday, missionaries hopped to it, and rescheduled those four for Friday, afternoon and evening. It was so awesome to attend each one…
Ange was at 1pm, Luis Fernandez at 4pm, and Leon and Jerry were both at 7pm. Again we were so grateful for zoom technology where we could witness each of these sacred ordinances. Oh how happy our missionaries were to be involved in helping these new converts feel the Spirit, and gain testimonies of the truthfulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Daily exercising has been such a blessing for both Richard and I. Working to keep our physical bodies in shape has certainly helped us also keep our emotional and mental selves in shape!! Our little downstairs gym equipped with Nordic Track machines keep us moving!! As missionaries during covid, our once busy ‘on the go’ calling has really morphed into a sit down calling, so we are happy to schedule exercise everyday; and we encourage our missionaries to do the same! It's almost as if we can feel our hips sprawl with all our sitting around!!
Pday was a wonderfully relaxing day where we undecorated, and packed up all our Christmas decor, Richard cross-country skied on Mount Royal, I ran the treadmill, and, we ventured across the Champlain bridge over to LaPrairie to our favourite donut bakery!! How disappointing to find it closed until May. Still it was a beautiful day for a drive, and..we did find another delightful French bakery (no donuts though!) The donuts we were dreaming of are a simple, yummy flakey cake donut with the creamiest, most heavenly light maple frosting…(and since they were closed…. we are still dreaming of them!!) You can be sure we will be back there in May!!
Mooney's Bay sledding hill
Read on for this weeks Canada Montreal Mission Miracles:
January 10th, 2021 Missionary Miracles
Montreal East Elders:
« We also found someone who was interested in family history. He has Haitian heritage and had started doing his family records on his own. After all three of us explained how to use the family search website, he started to play with it after our lesson. I never thought that really would be something that draw people. I have heard some success stories, but never have seen one with my own very eyes. This is the first time that I actually see that. As I listened to this man, Jean, talk about his desire to search records for his ancestors, I felt a very tender warm feeling inside my heart. At the end, we testified of eternal families and their part in God’s plan. I'm sure that Jean felt that penetrating spirit just as much as we did. These are the kind of lessons that bring joy to missionary work. No matter what the background, status, or age any person has, everyone is precious and beautiful in Gods eyes. The love of God covers all differences and remains the same to all. I love to see that, and am grateful for this knowledge. That's one of the priceless rewards of missionary work. «
Montreal Sisters:
« I finally got to meet the lady my Mom taught on her mission! After a few weeks of searching my mom was finally able to find her married name and so it made it a lot easier to find her. Turns out her name is Liane Pearson and she is in our ward!! We called her and set up a lesson with her. I asked to hear their conversion story and after, I told her I was Sister Pitcher's daughter. Her jaw dropped to the floor and the spirit just filled the room! She kept repeating over and over again at how she was "so deeply touched!" She told me she still wore the dress my mom made her and still read the book of scriptures and quotes she gave her as well. She called it her own personal scripture and she was so grateful for it. It was such an amazing experience. After the lesson I was able to give her my moms number and they were able to reconnect. I definitely know one of the reasons God sent me here was to help reconnect them! «
Laval Elders:
« This past week has been very good. We have been blessed with safety and many teaching opportunities with new people. As we put things on Facebook to give away, many people are interested, people want to hear the word of God and our message. In fact, one of the friends that we found through Marketplace is on date for baptism!! His name is Patrice, he is so amazing, and funny. I love him and his willingness to let God prevail in his life. Elder Croft and I started teaching him back in October and ever since then it has been a pleasure to teach him, and help him come to know of the blessings of the restored gospel. He still has family in Cameroon and he agreed to have them meet with the missionaries too. And to think that all of this was from a Facebook Marketplace ad of a Restoration Pamphlet. Heavenly Father works in amazing ways, and I can not thank him enough for the blessing of Patrice, he increases my love so much. His baptism was scheduled for January 30th, but with the new restrictions we will have to move it to a later date when things open up again. We are excited! »
Granby Elders:
« I am so grateful for your challenge to fast for faith! As I have seen all these many miracles this past week, it has really strengthened my testimony on fasting so much! I would love to share one of the many miracles we have experienced here in Granby! There was a man that just showed up to church last week. He came again this week! He even bore his testimony! I was in shock, and a little nervous cause I had no idea what he was gonna say. But he testified about Jesus Christ, and it was perfect! He is an example to me cause I convinced myself not to share mine cause I panicked and doubted my French. His name is Yvonne and he is awesome! He really wants to be taught to, so that was a huge miracle! Little background knowledge of Yvonne, he lives 30 min away, and he walks in the cold just to come to church! «
St. Hyacinthe Sisters:
« we are still seeing a lot miracles. We have already seen some miracles from this mission wide fast. Sister McLeod put a Book of Mormon ad on facebook and usually they don't really get a lot of positive responses but this time, 5 people were interested in having one which is seriously such a big miracle. Also one of our friends came to Church and he bore his testimony, and that was so cool. We also found a super cool girl who was a former and she said that she really missed church and wants to keep meeting with us again. She also had a baptismal date last year but due to the craziness of covid, she distanced herself a little bit. But now we are teaching her again. »
Trois Rivieres Elders:
« This past week definitely ranks among the top of my whole mission. We set several goals: 3 people at church, two new people found, 20 lessons with at least 12 of those being non-member lessons, and 4 messaging conversations. All of these goals were a challenge, we had never met the 20 lesson challenge, never had more than 3 messaging conversations, and had slowed in our finding numbers. Elder Foster, our District Leader, focused a lot on commitment to our goals this week. It really helped us solidify our determination to do EVERYTHING possible to accomplish these. Our week was filled with prayer asking for help in our efforts and the Lord responded with miracles. We accomplished or exceeded every single one of our goals! We had a total of 24 lessons and 5 conversations! A lesson fell through which we were hoping would lead to a new person being found, but the next day a former called wanting to set up a lesson! We already told you that someone walked in unexpectedly to our sacrament meeting and we have started teaching her as well! Truly a week full of blessings. »
Hochelaga Plateau Elders:
« . I want to share a miracle that Elder McCoy and I saw this week from our fast! On Saturday night, we had to drop one of our friends. It wasn't going anywhere and he told us that we had been lying to him about the restoration and the Book of Mormon. We were pretty bummed out about that. Then on Sunday, we are at church and we see 7 or 8 people that we don't know. After the Sacrament, the member who had invited all these people told us that her friends want to be taught! We were able have a mini lesson with them in the foyer. One of them, Andrea, was super interested and asking really good questions. Elder McCoy and I had never seen anything like it! I know that Heavenly Father is always willing to answer our prayers. He does it because we keep his commandments and he loves us. What a tender mercy from our Heavenly Father! We will keep in contact with these people and we are working on setting up a lesson with them! I love you both! Have a great week! «
Kirkland Elders:
« We met with the Droual family again (The one who was teaching me French while I was with Elder Shipley) And it went VERY well. Her husband is not a member and we know he has been lukewarm investigating the church for a long time. I wanted to show Souer Droual I still cared about what she taught me and decided to to say the opening prayer in French which literally made them so happy because he is from France. We just shared the story about Joseph Smith and actually read some of Joesph Smith History with them. In the middle of the lesson, we invited the whole family to pray with us and thank Heavenly Father for the restoration. The Spirit came in so strong again and Charles was very enlightened. He said he was very touched by the story and the Spirit we felt afterwards. He actually asked us at the end of the lesson if we could meet every Friday! We can't wait to start working with him. »
Assistants:
« During LightTheWorld season we were trying to do as much as possible to serve the organization leaders, and asked them to provide us recommendations of people to have a lesson with, promising that we would report back on who is willing to speak with us. One name was Sister Dallenbach, an elderly sister. We had a nice call with her, shared a missionary-message, and asked who she knew. She mentioned Franz, but she didn’t understand how she could possibly connect us with Franz effectively.
Come Christmas, Franz has no-one to talk to so we encouraged Sister Dallenbach once again to ask Franz if a lesson with us would be alright. It was, and so was the second lesson wherein Franz asked to have Sister Dallenbach deliver her a copy of the Book of Mormon. It turns out Sister Dallenbach was praying to give someone a copy of the Book of Mormon! »
Trois Rivieres Sisters:
« When you encouraged us to set a goal for baptism each month, we decided that it was possible. A few hours we had a lesson with a friend named Gina, she told us that she wants to be baptized, but wants to pray about when. Wow!! Having faith and trusting in God and the counsel that He inspires you to give us, makes miracles happen! »
Quebec City Sisters:
« We were having a lesson with a friend who had fallen out of contact recently. We finally succeeded in getting ahold of her, and when we did she told us she had actually been reading and praying about the Book of Mormon for over two years! She had been taught by missionaries before elsewhere but didn't meet her baptismal date for a few reasons, and then eventually the branch was closed down and she moved here to Quebec not long after. She told us of the powerful witness she's received that the Book of Mormon and the Church are true. At that point, the words from Preach my Gospel popped into my head: "during this or any other lesson, do not hesitate to invite to baptism." We did, and she said ‘yes!’ She is now on date for February, and we are so excited for her! This happened the day before mission conference, where we talked about setting high goals that will lead to baptisms, and we just couldn't believe that our miracle had come before the fact!”
These amazing experiences are blessing so many…the new friends, ward and branch members, families back home who hear the miracles, us, and especially the teaching missionaries who are so grateful and thrilled to be busy teaching. Their testimonies are being solidified. We keep praying that ALL our missionaries can find people to teach. Thank you for your prayers on behalf of these outstanding young men and women who are doing all they can to ‘find, teach and baptize.’ In such challenging times they need all our prayers.
In my rereading and rereading of our October General Conference sermons, I have found so many wonderful, hopeful messages….here are a few!!
“I pray that we as a people are using this unique time to grow spiritually. We are here on earth to be tested, to see if we will choose to follow Jesus Christ, to repent regularly, to learn, and to progress. Our spirits long to progress. And we do that best by staying firmly on the covenant path.”
“The challenge for you and me is to make certain that each of us will achieve his or her divine potential. Today we often hear about ‘a new normal.’ If you really want to embrace a new normal. I invite you to turn your heart, mind, and soul increasingly to our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. Let that be your new normal.”
President Russell M. Nelson
“May we go forward together to fulfill our divine mandate - that of preparing ourselves and the world for the Second Coming of the Lord.”
President Russell M. Nelson
“While faith is not a perfect knowledge, it brings a deep trust in God, whose knowledge is perfect.” Elder Neal A. Maxwell - quoted by Sister Lisa Harkness
“We have every reason to rejoice, for our Lord and Saviour is keenly aware of our troubles, cares and sorrows. As Jesus was with His disciples of old, He is in our boat.” Sister Lisa Harkness
And with those cheery reminders, I’ll blog this letter to you!
Have a wonderful week!!
Sending much love,
Grandpa and Grandma, Richard and Gayle, Dad and Mom....Keep Smiling!!!!
Keep Smiling!!
