What a Week!

The title of the post says it all--What a week!  By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, we all felt like we'd been through the wringer!  Why was it so tough.  It was week two of the transfer cycle.  That means zone conferences start.  There are three zone conferences in the Montreal area.  The seniors provide lunch for these three.  All three of them occurred this week:  Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  We were hopping getting food where it needed to be and getting everything set up and ready for each individual conference.  It that weren't bad enough, we also had Mission Leadership Council (MLC) thrown in--that was on Thursday!  So, in a word, our week consisted of food here, food there, and food everywhere!

Here we are at the first conference:  all set up and ready to go.

We served a delicious meal of chicken tetrazinni, green salad, a dinner roll, and a luscious brownie for dessert.

 

We are so fortunate to have two couples who have more flexibility in their schedule because of their mission assignment. They graciously came into the office to do the actual cooking of the components of the meal.  Because of them, we can get all the prep work done before the day of the conference.  That makes such a difference.  Once we get the food where it needs to be, it is pretty straight forward:  set the tables, watch the clock to make certain the food is popped into the oven and set out ready to be served.  There are several senior sisters who help in the kitchen.  We're able to get everything ready to go quickly. After lunch, the clean-up is equally quick.  Win-Win in my book!

When we loaded the food on Monday, I forgot to pull the dinner rolls out of the freezer.  I realized I didn't have them when we arrived at the church where the conference was being held.  What to do?  Now this is Montreal so I had the métro available.  I called the office and arranged to meet Elder Evans at the Lionel Giroulx Station. He stepped out of the car, handed me the rolls, and I stepped into the car and headed back to the church!  How's that for convenient! He had to catch the train going in the opposite direction to get back to the office.  Got to love the métro! I do!

We ran into an interesting problem.  I purchased the items needed for the salad from Costco on Friday.  We use large boxes of spring mix lettuces. The expiration date was February 10.  Apparently, the lettuce had other ideas.  Much of the spring mix had to be discarded because it had gone bad.  Luckily we had a plenty of romaine lettuce, so the salad was OK--the missionaries didn't know it was supposed to be other than it was--naivety is blissful! 

As soon as everything was cleaned up, I hopped back on the métro and went to the office.  There was a lot of police presence inside the Laurier Station. I heard chatter of some kind of medical emergency (often that means that someone has jumped onto the track and committed suicide). Then when I arrived at the office, the Evans told me that the métro had been closed for some time.  From the office window, we spied on the station to see what was going on.  We were surprised, to say the least, when we saw a hearse drive up! So whatever the medical emergency was, it resulted in someone's death.  I actually saw them get the gurney out of the hearse and then bring up the body on it.  Such a sad day for someone's family.

Our second zone conference lunch was held in the church connected with our office.  That one was a piece of cake to do--because we have everything we need at our fingertips! For the other conferences, we often have to haul equipment in addition to the food--so we love doing it at 470 rue Gilford!

Thursday we had MLC. This went off without so much as a hiccough!  Yeah!  

Friday dawned windy, very windy.  Sister Puzey and I loaded up the food in my car--quite a feat because the area around the back stairs was like an ice-skating rink. Sister Puzey handed me what needed to go in the car.  Both of us had our feet planted as firmly as possible and used lots of stretching to get things where they needed to be--moving around out there was simply out of the question. If we tried to walk, we would slide.  It was pretty bad.  Well, the day just got more interesting.  While we were over at the Longueuil Sud Zone Conference, the power went off!  With temperatures in the negatives, it gets cold really fast in a building that relies on electricity for heat. The Phillips had the missionaries grap their coats. Sister Phillips and the senior sister conferred as to what we should do for lunch--we went with the same lunch as planned but cold.  The cultural hall where the missionaries usually eat was dark, so we set up a serving station in the foyer.  Loved that the picture of Christ was right there! After all, we are all in Montreal together because of Christ and what he did for each one of us!

Approximately 15 minutes before we needed to serve lunch, the power came back on.  We didn't have time to heat the food, so we had cold chicken tetrazinni--the missionaries didn't seem to mind.  We had a bit of salad left but nothing else!

As we pulled out of the parking lot, we got a glimpse of the snow falling around the Temple.

I decided that since I was on the South Shore, I would do my weekly Walmart shopping after zone conference thus freeing up Saturday morning.  Once the shopping is done and we're in the parking garage at the apartment, it is quite a process to get from the parking garage to our apartment:  You must first get everything up to the ground level.  To do that you must take either an elevator or the stairs to do that.   I didn't have my handy little shopping cart, so we just hauled it up in bags.  Then you have to go through a locked door, move everything into the lobby, call another elevator, load everything in that elevator and head up to the floor of your apartment.  Here we are at the ground floor--the door into the lobby has been opened and we're ready to haul everything inside the lobby and put it near the elevators.  Needless to say, it's always, always an adventure!

Saturday, I spent a rather leisurely day cleaning the apartment. Pat and Joseph, the walker, took the 24 bus to the cleaners.  He also stopped at McDonalds for his weekly burrito! (He usually gets it at the McDonald's in Walmart, but I had already done the shopping, so he had to go with Plan B.)

The Mandarin Branch had a Chinese New Year's Celebration that we were invited to attend.  Look at these two darling little boys all decked out in their Chinese outfits.  Here they are with Claire, an amazingly talented musician (in the back next to me) and their mom.

There was lots of delicious Chinese Food . . . .

 . . . . and karaoke for entertainment.  Here are Elders Ramos Chen, Hsu, and Wang entertaining us.  They were incredible! (Elder Larsen is looking on in the background.)

Today, we had a lovely Sacrament Meeting.  Catherine and David Benson were the speakers.  Each did an excellent job. I will miss the people of the LaSalle Ward very, very much.

I've decided that the hour we save with the new schedule is often eaten up trying to get home.  Today, there were police directing traffic. I thought the officer was telling me to turn right--which I did. Unfortunately, I could have driven through the intersection and continued on my merry way with no problem. By turning right, we wandered around until we finally found Saint Patrick's again.  Lucy had us doing very strange things.  We made it home safely--and that's what's most important.  

We are having some pretty cold, icy conditions up here.  Pat is currently on the phone dealing with the second accident that the missionaries have had today.  The first one was interesting--it involved two of the mission vehicles.  One car slid into the other car in the parking lot!  That's a first--two accidents involving three of the mission cars on the same day--and Sunday to boot!

We ended our week by doing our favorite thing--Facetiming with our precious kids and grandkids.  Love these two so very, very much!

That sums up our crazy, busy week.  We love the Lord; we love the Church; and we love what we are doing.