John's Talk

Today was a most wonderful day at church.  John gave the best talk.  He spoke about how the spirit of Christmas has affected mankind, how people act more kindly with more smiles, with more of an inclination to be helpful and forgiving during this season of the year. He spoke of the babe of Bethlehem who was no ordinary baby and how through Him men's hearts can be changed.  He spoke of how 600 years before the birth of Christ, the prophet Nephi saw His birth.  In 1 Nephi 11: 18-21 we read, "And he said unto me: Behold the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the son of God, after the manner of the flesh.  And it came to pass that I beheld that she was carried away in the spirit; and after she had been carried away in the spirit for the space of a time the angel spake unto me, saying: Look!  And I looked and beheld the virgin again, bearing a child in her arms.  And the angel said unto me: Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father!  In a time that so many people do not believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, the Book of Mormon confirms by revelation that God is the Father of Jesus Christ.

John then related a true story that he had read and that he had also read many eye witness accounts of. The events go as follows (a shortened version):  Over 100 years ago an extraordinary event occurred.  The German, English, and French armies were bogged down in a horrible trench warfare that lasted for years.  The battle lines were only 300 feet apart.  The men all lived in horrible conditions in the trenches: cold, wet, little food, dead bodies with many being used to help hold up the walls and provide insulation, rats as big as cats running around and eating the dead bodies, and other horrible things.   Neither side could move or they would be shot by sniper fire.  On Christmas eve 1914, The French and English troops saw that the German trenches were lit up with Christmas tress that had lit candles on them. The Germans began to sing Silent Night.  The English countered with their own hymn.  Soon the  English and the German soldiers were singing the same hymns in their own languages. Following is a quote from from the soldiers who were there, eye witnesses.  "I was gazing towards the German lines when suddenly lights began to appear along the top of German trenches.  They were Christmas trees adorned with lighted candles burning steadily in the still frosty air.  When we finished singing, the Germans began clapping. A German soldier shouted in English "No shooting tonight. Sing tonight, sing tonight.  A sign was put up that said, English soldiers, Merry Christmas.  Another sign said, Come out English soldiers and hear us sing.  Finally a German officer came out of the trenches and walked towards the English trenches, shouting in English.  I am a lieutenant.  Gentlemen, my life is in your hands.  I am alone and unarmed.  Will not one of you come out and meet me?  Gentlemen, I am waiting."  Soon the unthinkable happened.  German and English soldiers were getting out of their trenches.  At any other time, this would have been suicide.  They shook hand, wished each other Merry Christmas and were soon conversing as if they had known each other for years.  Where they couldn't speak the language of the other, they made themselves understood by signs. They were laughing and chatting with men who a few hours ago they were trying to kill.  They exchanged cigarettes and chocolates.  For a while they were not enemies, but friends under the influence of a super power.  An estimated 100,000 troops experienced the Christmas truce which spanned a hundred miles along the trenches of the Western Front.    The Spirit of Christmas, which is the spirit of Christ brought peace, love, and joy for a short while in the midst of the atrocities of war.  The next day the shelling and the killing started again and the war was back on.  Constant shell bombardment from both sides and sniper fire spread death everywhere and hope was nowhere.    

And so, a wondrous little babe was born to Mary in Bethlehem.  The greatest of all was born in the humblest of all circumstances and because of Him death has lost its sting and the grave its victory.  Because of Him we can be forgiven and we will live forever.  Because of Jesus Christ we can have the greatest gift of all life eternal.  And we can express our love toward one another and toward God by giving of ourselves, by serving others, and by following Him in all that we do.

Dinner at the Lemble's

 Tonight we went to the Branch President's home for a Christmas Branch Presidency dinner.  Above are the Maisonneuve's.  He was the 1st counselor's until about a month ago.  Bro. Maisonneuve served a mission in South Africa.  He returned home in 2008 and soon after married Avril.  Avril has a very, very interesting story.  When she was 21, she wanted to go on a mission.  She was called to serve at Temple Square in Salt Lake City.  She happily went there and began her mission.  Every day she woke up and thanked the Lord that she could be there and that she could serve.  She was so happy.  A few months into the mission she began to be sick.  She tried to remain positive and tried to ignore her symptoms, but before too long she was so sick that she had to return home to Canada.  her parents took her to all kinds of doctors, but they could not discover what was wrong with her.  She became weaker and weaker until she could barely walk and could barely get out of bed.  All of her body ached very badly and she even had problems talking.  The slightest noise seemed like a roar to her and she kept getting worse and worse.  However, throughout this ordeal she never lost her faith.  Each day she would tell the Lord how much she loved him and how grateful she was for the blessings that she did have.  She had several blessings, but she never got better.  Her parents kept taking her to more doctors, but all to no avail.  She suffered like this for 5 long years.  Five years!  And yet, she never lost her faith.  Then one day she woke up and felt like she needed another blessing and that this time she would get better.  Her Father and another Priesthood holder gave her a blessing and she finally began to get better.  Suddenly she got better and better until she was finally healed.  She submitted her papers to go on another mission and she was called to serve in the Los Angeles Mission.  She happily and gratefully served and she says that she knows that God is a God of miracles.  Now she has been married for a few years and she has a new baby Eva.  She is so thrilled to have gotten her life back and to have been able to give life to a new little one.  This couple has a strong testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ and they live what they believe.

 Brother Pardieu is the new 1st counselor in the branch.  He and his wife came from Haiti to have a better life.  They came when she was expecting their first baby and they came with nothing.  Now he is a very successful business man and she just graduated with her degree in nursing.  They have 3 fine sons and are very fine people themselves.

This is President Lemble with his wife Rachel and their two children.  Baby number 3 will come in March.  Pres served a mission in France and Rachel served a mission in Spain.  A friend of hers convinced her to try internet dating just one time.  She did and she met up online with her future husband.  They soon began to spend many hours talking on the phone.  Then he flew to her hometown of Nevada and they spent 2 weeks together.  She then flew to Montreal to meet his family and spend time there.  She told me that as she was preparing to fly to Montreal she asked Phillipe to please be ready to go eat or to have some food ready for her when she got off the plane as it would be a long trip of many hours for her and she would be hungry.  She was expecting that he would have a little snack for her, but when she saw him, he opened up a huge coat that he was wearing and inside of the coat, pinned to it were many things for her to chose from to eat.  She said it was like a small concession stand
inside that coat.  She thought that was very endearing.   When she was getting ready to leave, she said to him that maybe she should move up to Montreal for the summer, get a job, and they could spend more time together.  "Or" he said, "we could get married." She flew home and planned their wedding. He soon flew down and they got married in the Las Vegas Temple.

We have a very interesting branch.  It is very small in number, but those who attend regularly have very strong testimonies of Jesus Christ and are very awesome people.  Most of them have an accent of some sort or another.  The branch Pres was born in France and then moved to Montreal.  His counselor is from Haiti,  the exec sec is Papa, an American now, but born in France.  The branch High Priest Group Leader is from Jamaica.  The mission leader is Quebecois.  The Relief Society President is from Mexico.  The gospel doctrine teacher is a Ukrainian young woman.  There are members from other places too.  It is wonderful to see them all have the same goals and the same love for Jesus Christ.  The gospel really has a uniting influence on people from all over the world.

Our dinner party tonight was a lot of fun.  The food was good and the company was even better.  We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Little Christmas Trees

 Well I'm back from a long absence.  First of all our internet was down and it took FOREVER to get it working again.  It finally took Elder Ellis to come to my house and figure out that I needed a new router.  Videotron, the company here that provides internet and TV service was happy to rent me one for a mere $397.00 a month fee.  I couldn't believe it.  When Elder Ellis was talking to them on the phone his response was, "That is out the window."  I bought a new router the following week for $40.00.  What a difference!   The other thing is that we are soooo busy every single day at the office.  We get there about 8:10 and work until after 5:00.  We are busy every single minute with only a 10 or 15 minute break for lunch.  John is responsible for everything that has to do with the fleet of cars.  I think the mission has about 48 cars now plus a van and a few trucks.  He is in charge of keeping them all in good working condition.  The past month he has been busy making sure that everyone has snow tires on their vehicles, sometimes buying new tires. He is also responsible for buying and selling cars.  Recently he has sold a couple of cars and has also purchased several cars.  This week he and Elder Conway, the financial secretary had to drive up to Quebec City with the van to pick up 10 elders and sisters and bring them down to Montreal for the missionary christmas party. The drive usually takes 3 hours, but because of the snow it took about 5.  The next day they drove them back, but this time it took closer to 6 hours because of the storm.  They ended up staying in a hotel because the storm was so bad the the visibility was about 0.  They drove home the next day.

Above is a photo of our little Christmas tree that I fixed up for some Christmas cheer.

Next is a little tree that I have on our table and below is my favorite tree sent to me by the Primary children from our ward.  I was so excited to open a package and find this cute paper tree inside.  Each star and little paper have a note written to us to wish us a Merry Christmas and to cheer us on our mission.  We also got some candy, a tie for Elder Arhets and some nice gloves for me.
The missionaries are always so excited for their mail and I sure understand why.  Whenever you get a letter or a package you feel so happy and excited.  I thought it was so super thoughtful of the primary and their leaders to send us something.  We do have a great ward.

                                                

My duties at the office keep me busy all day every day.  I take care of all the mail and all of the ordering of supplies.  When the supplies come in, I am in charge of putting them away.  When zone conferences come around, I take the zone orders and fill them.  Each zone gets their boxes of supplies that they pick up on conference day.  I keep the supply room in order too.  I am charge of all baptismal records, filling out and sending the forms to SLC and writing letters to the people who get baptized and to the missionaries who taught them.  I answer the phone, take messages, answer the intercom when people come to the door, which is often.  I am in charge of all of the mission phones and the phone bill. I take care of all the International driving permits for the missionaries.  I order all of the name tags and Books of Mormon.  I make copies of many pages of forms and information and put together the books for the incoming and outgoing missionaries.  John and I both do training of the incoming missionaries.  When it is zone conference, we go to the conferences and after the training missionaries there, we go and check each car.  The car check ups are very detailed and it actually take 2 people to do it.  Recently I folded about 650 Christmas cards, stuffed them into envelopes, put on labels and  addresses and hand stamped each one.  We, the senior couples, put on 2 Christmas parties for the missionaries.  We had to set everything up, cook everything, serve, and clean up.  Prior to that Sis Conway and I had to mark every single present that arrived at the mission home for the missionaries and put each package into it's proper zone along with keeping tab of who got a gift.  I also do various other things that either the Pres or his wife ask me to do.  This is just a bit of what I do. There is a whole lot more such as making phone calls, etc  I just can't even remember right now.  By the time we get home we're so tired that we have a simple dinner and then don't do too much else unless we need to go out and do some missionary activity or something like that.
Elder Arhets has been called to be the executive secretary to the Branch President so that keeps him busy too with calls, visits, etc.  Tonight he is out with the President delivering baskets of food to needy people that the branch has put together.  We have been collecting non perishable goods for about a month and at the last moment getting perishables to add to the baskets.

A tragedy

The Allens, a sweet senior missionary couple who work in the National Archives of Montreal had a tragedy in their lives on Monday the 19th. They were awakened early in the morning by a phone call from their youngest daughter.  Amber had gone into labor the night with her third child.  Her first son was born by c-section.  The second little boy was born by a natural, vaginal birth.  This little baby, a girl, was full term when Amber went into labor.  The labor seemed to progress well and the head was out.  Then the head was stuck and the doctor couldn't get the baby out.  He proceeded to push the head back in and then did an emergency c-section.  He got Amber opened up in about 2 minutes, but what met his eyes was a burst uterus with the baby, the placenta, blood, etc all spilled out into the abdominal cavity. They got the baby out, but by then there was extensive brain damage.  There was no hope. Beautiful, 9 pound baby Adalaide died the next day.
The family have all been so strong and so faithful in their knowledge of the Plan of Salvation.  We know that the baby is really fine, that she is now in the presence of God.  We know she will be reunited with her family.  And yet, it is so sad.  It is sad not to have someone you love so much and want so much to be with you.  I have felt so sad for all of them and so amazed at their ability to continue on so gracefully and so faithfully.     I am so thankful that we have the gospel and that we have a Savior who loves us and who died for us so that all of us can have eternal lives.  What a great blessing it is to know that we will all live again, that our sins can be forgiven, and that we will be able to be with our loved ones for eternity.  I feel so blessed to know that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us and that  Jesus Christ, His son, lives and loves us too.  I love them both and and am grateful for the many blessings that I have in my life.

Walking in Line

 Across the street from the mission office is the Metro.  Our windows look right out on in.  In front of the Metro I often see these little cuties walking.  In fact all throughout the city you can see little groups of children walking together holding onto a common rope.  I think they are so adorable as they walk along.

Ottawa Zone Conf

 Yesterday we had zone conf in Ottawa, the capitol of Canada.  The drive there took about 2 1/2 hours.  We left in the afternoon on Monday after working in the office and arrived later that evening.  We stayed at Macies Best Western.  I liked it although it didn't have a fridge or a microwave and was quite expensive.  Also none of the hotels served breakfast.   I think that is so inconvenient and also not economical.  The room was nice and the beds were very comfortable.We

 We walked around in this tiny mall and then found Rockin' Johnny's a nice little diner.

 Papa is reading the menu and I loved seeing the old juke box on the table.  It reminded me of my youth when we had those in many restaurants.  They also played music from the late 50's, 60's and I enjoyed that.

                                            Papa had a hamburger which was huge.

 I had wings and the best spare ribs.  In fact, I think these were about the best ribs I've ever had.

                                                     The decor was lots of fun too.

 In the morning we ate bagels and fruit which I had packed and took off for the conference.  We took a wrong turn and what should have been a 10-15 minute drive took us 30 minutes.  Luckily we arrived just in time for conference to begin.  After the hymn and prayer and a few announcements, it's my turn to do training and after me it's Elder Arhets.  This time I was teaching the missionaries how to fill out baptismal certificates properly.  It should be a fairly simple exercise where you just fill in the blanks and yet the forms have not been filled out carefully.  I tried to teach them to be careful and I added a little bit of humor to my presentation.  One of the things they need to be careful about is putting in either m for male or f for female.  I got a few forms from which I need to submit the information to Salt Lake City for their permanent records that had the sex marked as g.  What does g mean.  At first I thought maybe it stood for girl?  I discovered that it actually stood for garcon, which is boy in french.  However we are filling these forms our in English and I am sending the info to America and it needs to be in English.  I also told them how important it is to get dates correct.  For example one form had the mother of 10 children listed as being born this year.  Now I'm quite sure that a mom of 10 is not just 8 months old.  We also need to write who the head of household is.  On one form one of the children was listed as head of household at the age of 11 when the rest of the siblings has the father listed as head of household.  There were a lot of other things that I needed to make the missionaries aware of in how to fill out certain form and documents.  Elder Arhets who is in charge of the fleet of 47 cars spoke on car maintenance and also instructed the missionaries on safe winter driving.  Then while the conference continued we had to go outside to inspect the cars.  Wouldn't you know it, it was just our luck that is began snowing just as we began inspecting the cars.  It continued for the next couple of hours and then just as we were finishing up, the snow stopped.  Luckily there was not much wind, so it wasn't as cold as it could have been.
The lady in the picture above is Sister Booth.  She prepared the lunch for everyone.  She has been cooking for the Ottawa zone conference, every 3 months, for the past 14 years.  I think she is amazing.  I cannot even imagine doing that.  She is a woman of dedication and hard work.  She does the whole thing herself and does not accept any help.  Yesterday she fixed chicken tetrazinni,  corn, green beans, rolls, and a raspberry, nut, green salad.  For dessert she served some sort of a pound cake that had been soaked in some sort of a fruit sauce and had fruit in it.  It was topped with whipped cream and had a cookie on the side.  Everything was absolutely delicious.  The table was set with nice dishes and a candy cane at each place setting.  Afterwards there were also after dinner chocolates.  We are sure thankful for her selfless service to the missionaries.  She is waiting for her son, the father of several of her grandchildren to return home from Afghanistan in 3 weeks.  We pray for his safe return.

Here are the Ottawa Zone missionaries.  Two of the sisters are from Mexico, one is from Montreal, and one is from Tahiti.  The elder on the front row right is Elder Vanfau from Vanuatu.  The one in the front row in the middle didn't even know about the church 2 years ago.  He is from Mexico also.  In this group there is also an elder from Switzerland, one from France, and several from the U.S.  I didn't get a chance to talk to all of them, but I look forward to meeting all of them.  I am always amazed at how wonderful the young missionaries are.  They are so nice and enthusiastic.  They love the Lord and they are anxious to do good.  It is just a pleasure to be with them and to work with them.

Burger King

 A couple of weeks ago after working at the office all day, the Conways invited us to go and take a drive with them to Mount Royal and to visit a huge cemetery.  Unfortunately it was closed so we could not go in. Instead we drove around a little and did a little sightseeing from the car.  By then we were all very tired from working all day and I don't think any of us felt like cooking.  We invited them to go to eat.  They picked Burger King because it's fast and easy.   Well turned out it was upstairs in a 7-11 type of gas station.  You order downstairs and then eat upstairs.  We each had 1 hamburger and 1 order of fries.  That is, each couple split a hamburger and split the fries.  We drank water.  It cost us almost $20.00.  Yes, it's very expensive to eat out here.  In fact, everything is VERY expensive.