remembering family...

Don't worry that we'll forget anyone while we're here in Canada. Everywhere we look there are little reminders. Some are streets:or sometimes there are businessesand, of course, everytime we walk into our little apartment, there you all are to greet us: It's fun to have all these reminders of you all clear up here in Canada! We love you ALL !!!

It's getting colder...

Well, we somehow missed the big snow storm that the Northeastern US got, but that doesn't mean it wasn't cold here - So we decided we needed to get prepared... We've already had to scrape our windshield (no garage to park in ) So we constructed a home-made cover:Then we decided that the cardboard looked too much like the "poor relations came to town" so we actually purchased a cover for the windshield. It looks much better. Now our neighbors don't snicker and say... those crazy Americans!Then, after talking with a HUGE number of people we decided that we really needed to break down and purchase snow tires. The mud & snow ones we had put on before we left are really not as good here. These are made for snow & ice and have deeper treads. So, we bit the bullet and paid for the expensive Canadian tires.. PLUS their 17 % sales tax! OUCH ! The last thing we had to do was to work on was Elder Mahaffey's poor little cold head. The only thing he brought in the way of warmth for his head was a beanie..in case he was outside doing service ...(or playing)...and his BYU baseball cap. So, every day when we went out here he was with his suit & tie & looking very missionary-ish ...... and then the hat:It just didn't quite cut it. So, we were off to find him some head-wear suitable for his dignified status as a missionary. We tried this one first:It kept his ears warm... but we decided it was a little too threatening for a door-approach. Next we tried this one:... The grandkids would probably have loved it.... but red just doesn't go with his suits! So, we finally settled on this one. It has cool knitted flaps that will flip down when you need them - or up when you don't. Doesn't he look dapper?(wasn't he a good sport letting me post this? ) But, lest you think my head was not equally in need of warmth... here is my hat:Now we're all set for the Canadian winter... ???

Zone Conference

Zone conference happens about once every 3 months. We travel up to Montreal (about 1 1/2 hrs.) and go to zone conference from 9am-2pm... this includes lunch. The 2 mission assistants do some teaching and then we hear from President and Sister Cannon. This time we reviewed the talk given in Oct. conference of 2011 by Elder Matt Richardson. He's the one who spoke on missionary work... (are you are REAL missionary? .... and a mission was the best two years FOR my life) It was excellent. Usually the senior couples in the area are in charge of the luncheon for everyone.... So... we got to go to this zone conference and then next week will go back to the second zone conference and work in the kitchen and help serve. While we are in meetings, the senior missionary couple in charge of vehicles are outside checking everyone's car. They wrote "Wash Me" on our back window.... hmmmm. In our zone there are 9 sets of elders, 1 set of sisters, 1 set of assistants, & President & Sister Cannon. There are also normally 4 sets of senior couples, but 1 set was in the kitchen, another set was called to work in the temple that day - and the 3rd set works in digitizing geneology records and usually do not come, so it was just us. The four elders down front left are all serving in the Mandarin ward and have a tradition of all 4 wearing the same tie to zone conferences - they are Elders Shaver, Tam, Nzojibwami, & Bell. The sisters are Rodriguez and Fitch. The two zone leaders are Pistorius & Erickson, & the two assistants are Elders Jacquier and Williams. The back row left to right is Elder Reid, Elder & Sister Mahaffey, Elders Bonny, Garcia, Jepperson, McLean, Lockhart, Resek, Blank, Rollingson, Green, Mollinet & Rasmussen.We did Hawaiian Haystacks... (for 50 !!!). They were a big hit... of course, I forgot to take a picture of the lovely serving tables until everything was almost gone! sheesh!
Still, it was a great conference and lunch. Sister Cannon got up at the end & presented everyone who has a birthday coming up in the next 3 months a candy lei and their companion has to give them a birthday wish. You can just IMAGINE what that was like ! ha! It was, all in all, a really wonderful first experience with zone conference.

COOKIES !!!

We have decided that the best way to visit our less-active members is with a plate of cookies in hand. Roger has taken up the mantel of Cookie-maker and has thrust in with his might! To date we have made approximately 28 dozen cookies!He started by making regular chocolate chip cookies. He tried both Chad's recipe and Misty's recipe. In honor of the season, he has now moved on to Pumpkin Chocolate chip cookies. Who could turn down a face like that holding a plate of those?
While "...man may not live by "cookies" alone.... we find it makes our entry much easier! Please feel free to send us any easy cookie recipies you have. We'd love to try new ones!

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

Yes, that's right, I said Happy Thanksgiving Day... which is what it is today in Canada. They say they are smarter than the states, because they have it BEFORE the snow falls and you can enjoy it more. Plus, it's not right on top of Christmas! ha! Maybe they have a point. So, to celebrate, we got permission from the President to go on a little road trip. We left Sunday after church and drove 2 hours southeast to Plattsburgh, NY.

We took the ferry across Lake Champlain to Burlington, Vermont.
Every part of this trip was wonderful because we've never been to Vermont before- so it was something new at every turn. We drove another 2 hours south and stayed in the city of South Royalton, VT at a lovely Bed & Breakfast called Antiqued Inn Time.

We met the wonderful people who run the B&B- Jim and Gerrie Rikert. They were so accomodating and it was just like staying with family. It's pretty much the only place to stay around the area, and because the law school is close, they usually have many visitors. They had rented their other two rooms, so we ended up having to stay in the most expensive room... oh well! ha! It was a 3 room suite. The bedroom was separated from the living area by a large see-through window.

The bathroom had a LOVELY soaker tub in it which was wonderful!

We had come to this area to go and visit the Joseph Smith Birthplace. We talked with the Rickerts quite alot that night and they told us of some wonderful covered bridges in the area as well - so the next morning we decided we would go & explore those first. Before we left, we gave the Rickerts a Book of Mormon & Joseph Smith pamphlet (amazingly, living only 5 miles from the site, they had never seen a Book of Mormon before & really didn't know anything about Joseph Smith, other than the site was a very nice place to visit!) We bore our testimonies of the book & invited them to read it & find out more... see? we're getting better about being BOLD! Then we were off. We visited several covered bridges.I guess normal wooden bridges usually last only about 10-15 years, but when they are built with a protective roof, they last 70-80 years! Who knew? We just thought it would be a cool place to hide the horse & buggy... and maybe sneek a kiss ?Many of these bridges have old ghost stories associated with them and it's fun to learn their history. I had never seen even one covered bridge before - so it was fun to see so many! And we might have never even known had our wonderful hosts not told us about all of them in the area.I will have to say that we also were very surprised at some of what we saw. Apparently Hurricane Irene, that struck the Carolinas in September, caused quite a bit of havoc here as well. The rains and floods that occured here as the tail end of the hurricane passed through Vermont was really devestating!We saw so many downed trees and complete bridges taken out. Many roads & bridges are still closed and are trying to be rebuilt. We hear that it rained here for 18 hours straight & the rivers rose between 5 and 12 feet in many areas. Those rivers took out homes, trees, everything in their path. 30 bridges in Vermont were closed because of some kind of damage and 4 were completely destroyed, including some of those wonderful covered bridges. We just had not realized that the damage here in Vermont had been so substantial.

Next we headed to Sharon, Vermont to see Joseph Smith's birthplace. IT is an absolutely lovely area.The area is very wooded and there is church music being piped throughout the grounds. It is wonderfully peaceful and the grounds are absolutely beautiful. There are 3 senior missionary couples called to be the grounds crew there on the 30 acres of land.The monument is a 38 1/2 foot high solid piece of granite - one foot for each year of the prophet's llife. Apparently it is the largest single piece of granite in the US ? and they told us amazing stories of all the miracles that occured procurring the land, and then getting that granite piece up to this spot.The visitor's center is off to the right and the building to the left is the office & the apartment for the senior missionary couple that are the directors of the site. Of course, we had a great time talking to the other senior couples here leading the tours. They told us many details about Joseph's life that we hadn't heard before. It was a great morning!Next we had planned to drive home up through a route that would take us through the Fall Leaf Tour area. As we began, we drove over the Quechee (kwee-chee) Gorge. It was an incredibly high bridge over a beautiful gorge, especially with all the fall leaves changing.We proceeded to drive up Highway 100 for a glimpse of the spectacular leaf colors. However, our B&B hosts had told us that to have really great color, you needed to have had a frost first & they haven't had one. They've just had tons of rain. So, as a consequence, many leaves are just turning a yellowy-brown and just falling off. So, we were a little disappointed that the leaves weren't their usualy vibrant colors, but there were still many areas that had wonderful color.Of course when we got to the end of Hwy 100, we were in Waterbury, VT. That is the place where they have the original Ben & Jerry's ice cream plant. Well, we HAD to go see that!and, take a goofy picture, eh? and... of course... do some sampling....We took a tour of the ice-cream making process. It's pretty amazing. They keep approximately 50 flavors in their line at any one time.But they have retired over 300 hundred flavors!!! At the end of the tour they hand out a sample of their newest flavor... this day it was something inspired by Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night talk show host.It is vanilla ice cream with salty caramel swirl and chocolate covered potato chip chunks... I can't say that I'd recommend it! Best to stick with Phish Food! We drove back home that night arriving around 8pm at the bridge to Canada. However, since it was Thanksgiving night, EVERYONE else was coming home too and it took us an HOUR to get across the bridge & through customs! YIKES! note to self... don't take the bridge on holidays! Still... it was a wonderful Thanksgiving Day for us and very relaxing. (well, relaxing for me, but poor Roger had to drive the whole way, so he was probably not so relaxed!)

Upper Canada Village

Today we had a combined preparation day with many of the other senior couples! This time we invited all of them to come down to OUR part of Canada.We have a place here called Upper Canada Village. It is Canada's version of a pioneer village. It is a whole village made to look like life in 1830-1860. In the 1950's Canada undertook a massive project to improve the St.Lawrence River to make it a better transportation route for large ocean vessels. In order to do this, they had to flood approx. 20,000 acres of land and several small villages. Since many of these buildings were historically significant, they moved many of the buildings to Upper Canada Village & restored them. They also had to consider the many people buried in those areas. They ended up relocating 5000 remains and 2500 monuments! These pictures are taken from the top of the telegraph signal tour. This village reminds me of Pioneer village in Salt Lake, up by the This is the Place monument. People are dressed in period costumes in each house, to tell you the history of that home, there are wagon & hay rides, etc. They have a still-working sawmill where they still use much of the sawn logs: It was an absolutely gorgeous day for us to walk all throughout the village. Had to stop at THIS spot... It sounded like fun: They had a man's figure set up out in the field and they had frying pans, rolling pins, and hammers to toss.... Of course, I missed. My man is so wonderful that I've never HAD to throw anything at him! Sister Davis tried the rolling pin... she missed too... I guess we've just got great husbands!... and lousy aim!They have a working cheese factory - where they taught us about how those famous cheese curds are made that they use in the Canadian favorite of Poutine.

They also have a working bakery... and the MEN are the bakers!

We ended the day with a canal barge ride drawn by a horse on shore:

It was a lovely day and we all enjoyed it. Here is a picture of all of us, minus Elder & Sister Davis who had already gone to the car, so I'll put on their picture from the barge...

Left to right: The Levitres, the Giles, The Florences, and us.Then all the couples came back to our apartment for dinner. Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the great way we fit everyone in, all 10 of us sitting down at a table to eat dinner in our small little apartment. We had a great time together. We have found that these get-togethers are really good for our dispositions. After working so much all on our own, or all the meetings with the young elders and sisters, we find ourselves hungry for adult friendships. Sometimes the isolation can get to you. It was such a great day all around.