Rays of Northern Light

This has been an eventful week. We are finding greater success with our appointments and our calendar is really filling up. On Wednesday we helped put on a lunch for a zone conference. Next week is transfer week and we fear we may lose a couple of the young missionaries that we are growing so attached to. That is how it is with these young missionaries. They move on to other areas and we hold down the fort here. In two weeks, we are helping with another zone conference lunch, and we have a general authority visit with our own zone conference the day before. The GA is Elder Alan Haynie who Tim happened to go to school with him back at Bountiful High. We will not mention how many years ago that was. We are so grateful for these opportunities to serve and to hang out with other senior missionaries, especially when it is in the kitchen.

      I have to share a little miracle that we just learned about tonight. Our friend, Lucy, lives with her adult son. She once told us that he had no interest in the church and didn’t even believe in God. But apparently, he has been getting a lot of the church’s popup ads on his phone. He finally decided to look at one. He was so moved by it that he responded and contacted our sister missionaries on the church’s referral system. They taught him the first lesson before making the connection that he was Lucy’s son. He has committed to come to church with her tomorrow. He is not a member yet and doesn’t know a lot about our church. What a blessing this is for Lucy. She has much to learn also and has been attending our gospel essentials class with intense interest. I love it when things come together that you would never expect. We are thrilled with this unexpected new development. Through working with our young missionaries, we are finding several others who are showing interest in coming back to church. We are anxiously engaged with meeting them over these next couple of weeks. We also have a baptism tomorrow morning for an Iranian man our young Elders have been teaching.

      As we continue to plan for our ward Christmas party, we hope to get many of our new friends as well as those who have been absent for a time to join us. The word is going out and with lots of good food, music and a festive atmosphere for the whole family we hope to see a big crowd on December 14th. We are doing a Dickens style Christmas theme and have involved a new member and a less active member in our planning along with some very talented people from at least four different cultures. The Brazilian sisters are doing the rice, they insisted. Columbian sisters are helping with costumes for two French Canadian couples who will be our carolers. Another member has agreed to be our “reformed Scrooge” who will be handing out foil covered chocolate coins to the children. The short skit is being written by a sister who went to England on her mission and loves everything English. She is from Zimbabwe. Did I mention that we have the most culturally diverse ward in all of Longuiuel? I really love this ward. 

      Some other delightful news for us was an invitation to be temple ordinance workers at the Montreal Temple. We have enjoyed attending as patrons once a week and have really missed the days when we worked in the Provo temple. The challenge for us will be to do it all in French. We will start on Thursday of this week and will dedicate one day a week at the temple. The Montreal temple is one of the small “Hinckley” temples and it is very beautiful. There are many motifs of the Canadian maple leaf throughout as well as other Canadian designs to represent the Quebec history and heritage. I love how every temple is so representative of the area’s history and culture. Tim and I have been reading a book about the history of Quebec. It is a fascinating history that I never knew anything about until we came here. More on that in a future blog.

      Here are a few recent pictures: the Montreal temple in September and then in November, us at the temple with our good friends and fellow senior missionaries the Hunsakers, Tim trying out some top hats for our Dickens party and Tim at the park in the big chair.