Post Christmas Post with Best Wishes for a Happy New Year

Greetings to all from the north! It's great to be here, and I'll show you a little of what we're doing.

THE LANDSCAPE

Here is an early morning picture of a Calgary sunrise over the city.  The sunrises and sunsets are beautiful and last a long time with no mountains to hide them.

When the ground is flat, it is really flat. But it is  awesome to see how far you can see. It's beautiful!

THE ROADS

Calgary has an interesting way of naming streets. The numbered streets going north and south are streets. The numbered streets going east and west are avenues. Every neighborhood is named, and most of the streets start with that name, such as Silver Hills Drive, Silver Hills Way, Silver Hills Blvd, Silver Hills Crescent, etc. So it's very important to know your streets from boulevards from drives from crescents. And the NE or SW in each address is helpful, too. Photo cop is here and a lot of missionaries get flashed for speeding, and other infractionsl. They pay for those tickets themselves, and the co-driver pays 25% of each ticket. Those aren't fun phonecall for Elder Vellinga to make!

THE WEATHER

The first week we got here was beautiful weather-in the 40s. The next week the temperatures dropped to     -35 degrees with wind to make it worse. It was painfully cold. And it snowed. So the roads were frozen and the Elders had a hard time. They had 15 to 20 fender benders during that time. Not a fun time for Elder Vellinga, the "Car Czar".

We have been out to do car inspections twice. We drive 4 hours into British Columbia, check about 10 cars, then drive to Lethbridge to do it again. It takes 6 days to do all 86 cars in the mission. We bundle up and keep a few cars  running so there will be a warm place to do paper work. The first day it took us about an hour per car, but we can do it in about 15 minutes now. How practice helps!!

Individual snowflakes on a clean car.

MISSIONARY WORK

We went to the mission home to help serve breakfast to the zone leaders. The custom here (and it's necessary because of all the dirt on the roads and sidewalks used to make them less slippery) is to remove your shoes when you go into anyone's home. Including the mission home.

We have been to several baptisms. They're great, even when they're in Spanish!

 

We had a wonderful Christmas. We talked or video chatted with all our children, went to a baptism, then to dinner with the other office missionaries and the mission president and wife.  We played games in the evening, then enjoyed visiting with 8 of the missionaries who dropped in.  They are wonderful!

 

I hope to get better at putting a blog together. It's not as easy as some of you make it look. But we'd love to hear from all of you.  We are doing well, and wish we had more time to stay in touch. Being busy on a mission is a good thing, even if you're just the ones behind the scenes keeping it all moving. We wish all of you a very Happy New Year!

We're Here!

This is my first attempt at a blog, with thanks to granddaughter Beth Foley for her gentle guidance.

We entered the MTC in Provo on October 25. It was a wonderful 2 weeks (2 because we were changed from a proselyting mission to an office mission 4 days before the MTC and we had to learn the office skills the second week). We met many awesome senior missionaries, who were going to many diverse places. We hope to stay in touch with them.

We left Provo on Thursday, stayed in Logan to see all the Logan families, then left for good on Friday morning (after posing with Gretchen, our newest grandchild!).

We arrived in Calgary on Saturday, November 6, 2010. The weather was beautiful, and we were met by our neighbors and fellow senior missionaries, the Bardsleys (from Island Park, ID). They helped us unload our car, then took us out to dinner. On Sunday, Elder Vellinga was sick, so I went to church with the Bardsleys. On Monday morning we went to the office, met the rest of the office staff, then took off for a 4-day trip to check vehicles at Zone Conferences. We first went to Cranbrook, British Columbia, about 4 hours away. Elder Low, who is the Western Canada medical supervisor, was our guide and teacher. He's a native, was the perfect tour guide, and he knows everybody. He had been taking care of cars until we got here, and we're so very thankful for him. We were really slow in checking the cars on Tuesday, but by Thursday we were much faster. Elders Low and Vellinga got to change the battery in our mission truck while we were in Cranbrook. BC is a beautiful part of our mission.  We travelled back into Alberta, and stopped for Zone Conferences in Taber and Lethbridge. It was a fun trip, and it was good to get back so we could finish unpacking and get settled a little.



British Columbia



Transfer Day

Inspection Day

The next couple of weeks were spent learning our duties in the office. Elder Vellinga is in charge of all 86 cars, their inspections, tons of paper work, and phone calls from the Elders when they crash. The weather our second week here fell to -40 degrees with the wind chill, and the roads were really slick. Way too many accidents, but nobody got hurt. I maintain the referral database and keep missionary supplies ordered. The elders are very glad to get referrals, so they like to hear from me.


Happy Face Barn



We are glad to be here, we are learning a lot, and meeting lots of great people. We miss everyone we left behind, but it's good to know we have a lot of support from a lot of great people. Even though we don't teach much, we have close contact with the young missionaries and it's wonderful to feel their spirts and hear of their successes. The church is true and it's great to be a part of sharing it with others.

 


Sunrise in Canada