How can it be the end of July, already!
We had a very strange thing happen at the office on Monday.
Sister Evans picked up a smoke/co detector and an alarm sounded. We all thought that she had pushed
something. She hadn’t pushed anything!
Once we figured out that the sound was not coming from the alarm she was
holding, we started looking for the origin of that obnoxious noise. There is an alarm inside our supply room—so
we thought that was the culprit. We
couldn’t smell or see smoke but didn’t want to take a chance, so we exited the
building. While we were outside, we ran
into a couple of sister missionaries who were headed into the building. They waited outside with us until we could
figure out what was going on. Then a
person by the name of Michael came up—he wanted to know what we were all doing
standing on the sidewalk—we all had our name tags on, so he knew that we had
something to do with a church. We had
the opportunity to talk to him a bit about why we are in Montreal. He was a
pleasant-enough guy. We gave him contact information before he went on his way.
After about 30 minutes we decided we’d go back inside. The facilities management team came over to
investigate the alarm—what we thought was an alarm had no siren attached to
it. He must have thought we were making up the
whole thing, but we actually heard a very loud alarm. It was loud enough that a missionary who was
talking to Pat asked him if he should be on the phone or if he should be
exiting the building? ‘Tis a mystery,
for sure.
For Family Home Evening this week, Sister Evans presented a
lesson on how important it is for each one of us to live in such a manner that
we can receive personal revelation. Each
one of us has to make many decisions throughout the day—thankful that a kind
Father in Heaven has given us ways to help and guide us.
We were just getting ready to close the office on Tuesday
when a group of young people came upstairs.
They wanted a tour of the building.
One or two members of the group said they belong to the church but their
friend didn’t. She was from Austria. I
was able to take them around the building and explain a bit about what goes on
in each of the areas, e.g., Sacrament Meeting in the chapel, Gospel instruction
in the classrooms, missionary support in the office, etc. We have material in many, many languages in
our supply room, so before she left, I was able to give her a Book of Mormon in
German along with a couple of pamphlets. She said she would like
to talk to the missionaries, so I was able to get her contact information. One
of the charges that all missionaries have is to bring individuals to Christ.
Felt like I did a bit of that on Tuesday.
Thursday morning proved to be very frustrating for us. I had
an appointment to see a dietician because of my diabetes. I had spoken to her,
set the appointment for 9:00 a.m. Thursday morning, and wrote her address down.
Many addresses have either East or West as part of it. I thought she said 4115 Sherbrooke East, so
we headed out at 8:20 to make certain we were on time. We exited at the correct station and started
walking. 4115 Sherbrooke East was part
of the botanical gardens! I had been trying to call the dietician to tell her we were lost but had to
leave several messages. We went to the
information booth at the botanical gardens and discovered that the correct
address was actually 4115 Sherbrooke West.
So, not only did we waste our own time, we wasted the dietician’s. Not happy campers. We’ll try it again next week and hope for a
better outcome!
One of the things I love about living where we do is that
all the other senior missionaries in Montreal live here as well. There is a culture among us that we help one
another. We were the recipients of aid on Friday. Our Internet was down. I did what I could to try to get it up and going. When that didn’t work, I walked across the
hall and asked Elder Carlson for help—he came over and showed me the correct
order to turn items off and then to turn them back on. I had turned everything off and on but didn’t
do it in the correct order.
Because this is the middle of the transfer cycle, it was a
relatively quiet week. I spent part of
the week getting the items prepared for departing and arriving missionaries.
After having our experimental dinner on Wednesday where we prepare what we’re
going to serve for zone conference lunches and then calculate what a serving
will be and the number of servings each recipe makes, I worked on getting the
amounts we will need figured out. I ordered what food I could from IGA. They
are supposed to deliver it to the office on Tuesday. Hope it works better than ordering groceries
from Walmart!
On Friday, Pat and I walked to Jean Coutu at Berri and Mont Royal to get some prescriptions renewed. While the houses along the street are not true row houses, they are 19th century homes that share side walls and have very small front yards. Some of the yards are done very well. On our way down Berri, we saw some lovely flowers in the yards:
When I was working at Indian Hills Middle School, I worked with some incredible people. One of those individuals was Isabelle Chabot. Isabelle and her husband Eric are from Granby, Quebec, and naturally speak French. Once I found out she spoke French, I took every opportunity to use that beautiful language with her. She and her husband spend part of their summers back in Granby. Granby is about 90 minutes from Montreal, so after getting the house cleaned and the laundry done, we headed out on Autoroute 10 East to Granby. When we went to Vermont a few weeks ago, we were struck by how beautiful the drive was. We found the same kind of beauty on our way to Granby. When you live in a desert, you are not accustomed to beautiful greenery like this:
Once we were back in Montreal, we attended the baptism of a family in the Montreal ward. At 10:00 p.m. I went up to the roof of the building at watched the fireworks. Once again, they were magnificent. This time it was the USA who did them. I think they were the most colorful ones we've seen yet.
Sisters Puzey, Austin, and Simpson joined us for dinner. We love these young missionaries so very much. And we're awfully fond of Sister Puzey as well.
To make a perfect evening complete, we FaceTimed with our son Christopher and his family.
That wraps up our week in Montreal.
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