The Office

We've been out 9 months today. It's probably about time to tell you about what we do all day. It might be better to show you.

Sister Street, first thing in the morning as we're all arriving. The office gets
lighter once we open the blinds.

Often we're surprised to find missionaries doing their studies in the office
when we get there. Guess we're just irresistible!

Sister Street uses President Pratt's office when he's not there. There's a
Canadian flag in the other corner.

We do more than just talk. Honest!

We had an Elder Smith in our mission who lost the back magnet on his name tag. Someone found the front part and stuck it on the picture of Joseph Smith that's jut above Sister Street. People get a kick out of seeing him wearing a missionary tag.

The windows on the left look into Elder Holbrook's office.

Elder Holbrook's desk with a view of the front door through his window

The Conference Room, or Fishbowl as Sister Street calls it.

The Storage Room - anyone want a Book of Mormon in Arabic? We've got
them, and in Portuguese and Hindi and Spanish and Russian and Simplified
Chinese and a grundle of other languages in addition to English and French.
The boxes on the table are full of supplies ready to be delivered missionaries
at zone training later this week.

The back end of the Storage Room with lots of pamphlets in just
as many languages. The big overhead garage door makes it easy
to wheel bikes in and out and get our supply deliveries.

And more storage in a small loft upstairs--the missionaries put their
extra stuff up there when they get transferred to Newfoundland and they
can't fit everything in their two suitcases. How they get it all home is a
story for another day.

The kitchen/break room

Between the post on our apartment a few weeks ago and this one, you know now where we spend most of our time!

It is a blessing to be here. The area is beautiful, the people are wonderful, spring has (finally) arrived and is quickly turning into summer. The missionaries have a zest and enthusiasm for sharing the gospel. It's great to be a part of it all!

These are some more of our Favourite Things

There is so much to love about being here.

Fresh seafood in many varieties

Picturesque churches everywhere

Cute pictures showing reserved parking

Descriptive No Outlet signs

The somewhat rare blue-sky warm summer days that helped change . . . 

this to 

this (yes, the same sidewalk months later)

Sister Street, the new office missionary who has been
SO helpful and taken a load off of us, particularly many
of Sister Holbrook's responsibilities. She's not afraid
to handle the techie things and can work wonders on
the computer and social networking and computer
 things we're scared to attempt.
We love the joy she spreads and her can-do attitude!

The many faces of Mortimer, the sinkhole in the parking lot by our old apartment.
(If you look closely you can see his frown that started after we drove over him.)
Of course, we didn't like him much as we bounced over him pulling in and out,
but the apartment manager filled him in with some bags of pourable asphalt
every few days, and we managed not to fall in! We
like him much better in retrospect.

This is a great place to serve. More senior couples are needed--we've lost four couples since we arrived and haven't gotten any replacements yet. If you know of anyone considering a mission, we'd love to have them consider Halifax. It's beautiful, there's a temple here, the people are friendly, and they speak English! Lots to love.

Before and After

     Time has gone by quickly. It doesn't feel like we've been out very long. Oh wait, that's probably because we've been out for less than half the time of our first mission. A year goes by much more quickly than 18 months, especially when it's broken up with visits from family.

     A little while ago we received notice about the couple who will be replacing us in the office, the Hulls from Idaho. Because of some questions they asked, we decided to look around and check out other apartments for them. We didn't intend to move, just see what was available. What we found was a place that is as nice as or better than our other apartment, but it was now or never, so we got permission from President Pratt and told our landlords we'd be moving out. The timing was perfect since our year-long lease was up the end of May.  After having senior couples as tenants since 1999, the landlord was a little surprised and disappointed, but gave a glowing report to our new landlords. Moving definitely was NOT in our plans, but we think the hassle was worth it, even for such a short time.

     The new apartment is in a double condo building (each 10 stories) called Lake Banook Woods. There is a nice lake on the back side of the building--we're on the front side. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so we'll let pictures do most of the explaining for us. Some of the pictures have a warm yellow glow to them. That's not a photographic effect, but as bright as we could get the lights.

BEFORE                                                                                                                     

Kitchen

  AFTER    

Love the cooktop! (There's a sink on the other side of the well-lit
pass-through kitchen)

Master Bedroom

Plus the all the furniture in the other apartment

Bathroom (or washroom as they're called here)

#1

#2

Living Room

Before we moved furniture in

Taken during the move

Laundry room

Coin operated machines in the basement for 20 units

In a small closet in our apartment--no sharing, no hoarding change!

Parking entrance

The Bat Cave (See the post from November 10)

Just an ordinary entrance to . . .

. . . dry underground parking

     It's still a 2-bedroom apartment, only slightly more square footage than the old one, but a little newer, a little nicer. We're a little closer to the mission home and the office. Every day it seems like we find something else to love about it--like stairs when we're feeling energetic in the morning and an elevator when we come home loaded with groceries. And they even provide a grocery cart at the elevator entrance in the parking garage for us to carry all our groceries or other stuff!

Elder Renlund and Elder Gong

     We just had stake conference three weeks ago, but Sunday we had another one. This was a bi-stake conference held in Sackville. When it was first announced a couple of months ago, there was a lot of

excitement in our ward, the Sackville Ward. People couldn't believe an apostle was coming to our little ward. Turns out he wasn't--it was held in Sackville, New Brunswick, which is part of our mission but the next province over. It was interesting that they would hold it there because there aren't any wards or branches in the city. The meeting was held in Convocation Hall at Mount Allison University, which easily accommodated all those who attended.

     The Canada Halifax Mission is comprised of two stakes--Saint John New Brunswick (includes PEI) and Dartmouth Nova Scotia, and one district--Newfoundland. Unfortunately for them, most of the members in Newfoundland weren't able to attend. There were a few who had attended the temple the night before, so they joined us, but Newfoundland is either a flight or overnight ferry trip away and it's just not affordable for most people to jump back and forth between Newfoundland and the mainland.

     We got up earlier than usual on Sunday morning because we needed to leave about 7:00 AM to make it on time. We had volunteered to take some missionaries with us and were given three sister missionaries (no, we didn't split up a companionship--they're serving in a trio). We had some nice conversations on the way up, sharing favorite mission stories, and getting a good laugh from some of the humorous ones.

     In Sackville it was fun to see the reunions taking place. The missionaries were hugging former companions and even more delighted to see people they'd worked with previously. It was a grand reunion for them and fun for us to see the love they all had for each other.

The soloist

     In Sackville everyone gathered in the Hall. Elder Renlund started to wave to the audience as he walked in, but when he realized we were all starting to stand up, the wave quickly became a be seated signal. He is such a humble man. We heard brief comments from both of the stake presidents. Sister Renlund and Sister Gong spoke as well as their husbands. Great talks, all of them. Elder Gong spoke in a way that helped grab the attention of the children (he knows how to walk and talk like a penguin). Elder Renlund was, well, himself. We love that man. After a musical number where one sister had sung a beautiful solo, he stopped her as she was walking off the stage and talked to her. It didn't bother him in the least that the entire congregation was waiting for conference to continue, he wanted to tell her something and it was more than a simple acknowledgement of her singing. It was touching to watch the silent conversation take place.

     At the end of Conference, the stake president stood up and announced that Elder Renlund and Elder Gong would like to shake hands with anyone who was interested. The people were so excited to be able to shake hands with an apostle! They didn't rush through it either, although most people were considerate and moved on fairly quickly.

     After the session was over, we enjoyed a picnic lunch. Elder Holbrook had made sandwiches for the five of us, packed apples, drinks, carrots, chips, and cookies. We didn't see any other missionaries come with food. Apparently they have become dependent on having the members feed them so often that they didn't think to plan food for the day, which from Halifax was about 8 hours round trip. Many of them didn't have quite so far to travel because the ones from farther away drove up the night before and stayed with missionaries who live closer to Sackville. By the time we finished eating and got on the road, most of the traffic was gone.

     We made a quick stop when we reentered Nova Scotia and took a picture. The sisters fooled around posing their badges in different spots on the rocks (on the left) for a picture. They were surprised to realize there was a lady working inside of the lighthouse building.

Sister Koyle (Utah), Sister Bailey (Utah), Sister Law (Michigan)

     On the way home we started talking a little more about some of their experiences and then the sisters started singing church songs. They probably sang hymns and Primary songs for close to an hour. Just before we got home, one of the sisters asked what our favorite mission memory was. Elder Holbrook immediately said, "having you sing to us on the way home." Yeah, that's one great mission memory.