We have been in our new Chomedey Branch for just over two weeks now and this area is so amazing. We have been meeting so many members, and everyone is so kind and happy to see us. The branch is quite large in area, so not many live close to the church. Everyone works and/or goes to French class making it hard to do many activities. But on Sunday they love to visit. We are getting to know them, and we are a little better with names now that we understand from past experience that most members here have about four or five names. The ward directories are not exactly alphabetical. You just have to learn which name each goes by. Maiden names are commonly carried on here too.
For Easter Sunday we invited Abiola and her little son, Godson, to our Easter dinner with the sister missionaries. Godson and his mom are from Nigeria, and she was baptized last July. She is super faithful, but suffers from a handicap, so has to walk with a cane. Her 3, almost 4-year-old son is quite a handful for her. We set up a little Easter candy hunt for him in our apartment and he warmed right up to us. Abiola will begin her government sponsored French classes in August. That will be 8 hours a day for 6 months. This is a requirement for people looking to obtain permanent residency. I made a ham for our dinner, and she had never had ham before. She loved it and couldn’t get enough. Abiola is very interested in volunteering in the community while she waits for her class to start, so I’m helping her to get onto the JustServe app. She eventually would like to work in customer service where she has some experience from her home country. She is very intelligent and resourceful. I would love to see how we can help her more.
Today we had our elders over for dinner with three of our ward missionaries. These three guys; Mathius, from Uganda, Ezekial, from Nigeria and Joedel, from the Philippines, are all recent converts of the last year in a half. We got to hear all their stories today firsthand. Each of them came as immigrants and each was looking for a way to worship God. They are typical of what we see all the time here in Quebec. They all come with humility and faith and each in his own way was led by the spirit to the gospel of Jesus Christ through the Book of Mormon. We are excited to be working with all of them as we continue to fellowship more friends in the church. Just today we met a man from Albania who is looking for a church. He liked what he saw today and told us that he will be back next week. The sisters are setting up some teaching appointments with him. Many people are drawn to our church through media referrals also. Yesterday we were able to join with the sisters on a call from a media referral to share a little bit about how our church works and to bare testimony.
There are also many in the branch who live far away and have a difficult time getting to church. We met several of them this week. Our little truck is getting lots and lots of miles and the traffic here is terrible. In Longueuil it only took us 15-20 minutes to get to the temple. Now it takes an hour and 20 minutes just to go 30 miles. But that’s ok because I’m working on the virtue of patience, so this is good practice. Haha! We also have a great FHE group with Joedel, one of our ward missionaries, as our group leader. We meet at the church each Monday night for some great “Come Follow Me” lessons. Also, today Tim was officially called to be the Branch Executive Secretary. He will be working closely with the Branch President and is looking forward to this calling.
For my pictures this week I am sharing from the last two weeks as I didn’t get a blog out last Sunday. First is the Sunrise over Montreal taken by our mission president Easter morning. I also had my Easter Lily bloom with all 8 of its buds, but not all at the same time. It was lovely to have a bit of Spring in our home these past two weeks. This is transfer week coming up, so had to grab a shot of our district before some of them maybe get transferred. We combine our branch with the Mandarin speaking branch for our district. Those four elders are amazing in their ability to learn Mandarin; they even learn to read the Chinese characters. And of course, we have to share our fun times around the dinner table with our new friends. I love Mathius’s great big smile. Tim made his favorite key lime pie. It was yummy, but a bit too sweet for our Nigerian friend, Ezekial. He wouldn’t eat any. I wish I could be so opposed to sweets.
Au Revoir,
The Glenns