We have been digging out of a mountain of snow these past two weeks. It gets frigid cold, then warms up enough to make things slushy and then snows again. It has been fun checking out all the snow mountains they are building around the city. The giant snow blowers come through the streets at night and fill up these big dump trucks that carry the snow away. Some cars were buried for days by the snow blowers.
This was also a zone conference week for us. We helped our friends, the Busaths, put on the luncheon for Montreal’s zone on Tuesday and then attended ours, Mount Royal zone on Thursday. Pres. Sorensen always inspires with his lessons from the scriptures. He gave wonderful analogies about Humility and Meekness, how we come before God in humility and how we treat other people with meekness. He then went on to teach about Grace and Mercy, that mercy is how Jesus Christ saves us and grace being the enabling power from the Lord. I was drawn to John 15:1-11 where he taught that Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. I couldn’t take notes fast enough, but thankfully he always sends slides from his presentations. It is so refreshing to go to these conferences and be reinvigorated by our leaders. It is also wonderful to see all these young missionaries full of enthusiasm and cheer. They are truly amazing.
We got a new assignment this past week. Our friends whom we assisted with the luncheons are heading home in May. They asked if we would be interested in carrying on with the luncheons in the mission home. With their training we think we can do it. It means preparing and serving 5 lunch/dinners every six weeks to about 40-75 people. That will be three zone conferences, a welcome dinner for newly arriving missionaries, and an MLC (Mission Leader Council) dinner every six weeks. Elder and Sis. Busath took this on after another missionary couple before them started the tradition because they were caterers prior to their mission. Sis. Busath has created a plan for multiplying recipes and has really organized the whole thing quite well. They usually alternate several different menus so that missionaries don’t get the same thing every time. I may throw in a few of my own recipes later on but for now we are going to stick to her very successful plan. Without this tradition they just have to order pizza or subway sandwiches. That is what they do in the other zones that are far from the mission home. Missionaries love it when they get transferred into one of our three zones that meet at the mission home. I think every missionary gets transferred through at least once. It will be a big job, but there are only a couple times when we will have two dinners in a week.
It has been a week of service too. Among other things, Elder Glenn got our friend, Pearl all set up with her new secondhand computer and I got her set up with FamilySearch. I’m trying to get her onto RootsTech this week with their big online version of the family history conference. We are about halfway through our institute class semester. One of our students is planning on doing a mission for the church as soon as she finishes her degree. She is an awesome student from the Philippines. Mark will begin his BYU Pathways program this week. We are so excited to see him get to this point. The Pathways program will help him earn a degree in business and then he can really take off with his business startup plans. He has come a long way but still has much anxiety to deal with. Baby steps!
Pictures include the snow dump trucks, me in front of our apartment, snowed in door at church, and mountains of snow. I know all my friends in Utah would love to have more of this snow this year. Previous winters here have been mild, so the locals are quite happy to be back to their normal. Me, I’m ready for Spring.
Au Revoir,
The Glenns