Peirce - Terrebonne, QC

Today Peirce left for Montreal. He will be living in Terrebonne, QC and working at a kayak store in Mascouche. We are very excited for him to have this experience. He is ready for it!

Last night we went out to one of our favorite ice cream places, delloR, and of course, Seniore's.

 Look how tall he is! He isn't a little boy anymore!

There are a bunch of kids going from Calgary. In return, there is a group coming from Quebec. We will have two boys staying with us.

One Week Until MY Summer Starts

Did you know I only have one week left of school?! I love my class this year so much - but jeepers, I'm sure ready for summer!! It feels like this has been a really long year. We started out the year with the bathrooms under renovation and we're going to end off the year with them renovating the portables. Not mine though. The library and the music room will be in beautiful new portables come September. We'll see if they're even finished by then. They're going to have air conditioning AND big beautiful windows. I might be spending a lot of time in the music room/library. 

Actually, my coworker's husband does air conditioning for his job. He maintains air conditioning systems in big buildings downtown. This week he brought her an air conditioner for her room. It even makes a difference for my room. It's so great!! Some people give her a hard time about all the electricity it'll use. I say that she's just ensuring there's an environment where these little minds can focus and learn. That is very important and well worth the cost! Also, it's important they have a teacher that isn't a worn out dish rag. We're much perkier now that there's cooler air in our portable. It's bliss.

We went to this really cool place this week called Ralph Klein Park on a field trip. The kids got to scoop up water and look at all sorts of creatures in there. We even saw a muskrat! It was so cool. Check out this eel:

I decided I'm going to get started on my 5 km a day pursuits this week. I should be able to do that since I used to get up and get to seminary on time. Last week was a bad week for walking. I had this idea that I had all this time in the morning and so I tried to do too much - then I'd realize time was almost up and just be able to do 1 km. Time to change that, baby!

Karen Johnson is moving to the states and so they're renovating their house. She needed a bunch of boys to come help so I got Peirce to do it. He pulled up carpets and he did a lot of painting. He said he really likes painting. 

It was pretty hard work - but in the end, he was pretty happy about the money he earned. That'll be some good cash to start off his time in Quebec. He goes this week. Oh my heart!!!

This weekend Gaylene and Duane went to Kelowna for Neil's birthday. Rachelle had a surprise party for him. Of course, the best part is being reunited with his dogs. Oh Harley! 

They donated blood for Neil. I think it might become a new tradition. Neil needs blood transfusions all the time because his hemoglobin gets really low. I am going to get back into donating blood regularly.  Taylor and Sydney went too - but Taylor, apparently, is too short. LOL 

On Saturday I went grocery shopping. I know. I know. I always do that. The reason I'm sharing it is it reminded me of how I always like to turn things in to a game. Did I ever tell you that about me? For example, when I was growing up and cleaning rooms in my dad's hotel, my cousin, Nickee and I used to time each other and see if we could beat each other's time for making a bed. We had requirements for how the bed had to be made and we'd try to do it super fast. It made the job fun. I've always done things like that. When I get up in the morning, I challenge myself to be dressed and have the dishwasher finished before the CBC news podcast is finished. Then I have to have lunches made before the other podcast I like to listen to ends. I do it with grocery shopping too. On Saturday, you could get a box if ice cream treats if you spent $250. My goal was to get the treats but spend as little over $250 as possible. In the end, I ended up spending $250.33. My best job yet at that game!! When I was on my mission we used to play that game too. We'd challenge each other to only say kind and positive things. We'd see how long we could go before one of us would slip up and complain or say something negative. We got so we could go all day! Maybe that's where the whole streak thing started in my mind. I don't know. All I know is the mundane things can be made a lot more fun if you turn it into a game. 

Tony leaves this week. Oh boy. What am I going to do without these boys?! I will miss Tony, for sure. 

Friday Fun

Woke up this morning to a text from someone who had visited the Paris Temple Visitor's Center. Love it!

Allen has gone to Lethbridge this weekend. Peirce is out with a friend and so is Tony so I'm home with the oreos and a book. Life is good!

Peirce went to a cafe where they had live music tonight. He bought the CD and I like it!

Week 2 in France

Some of the latest from Jill's emails this week:

• I was thinking about how we as a family are always on each other's team. It seems kind of like a little thing but, knowing that I have people supporting me in the things I do makes a big difference. I really appreciate having you on team Jill and I hope that my missionary service blesses team dad! 

• I used to eat out so often as a flight attendant so that's pretty different about mission life! Like maybe once a month? I personally think that's the funniest part of visiting a new place! We do this thing that's close enough though. It's called French Friday. And if you get thought the whole day speaking French in the apartment and in meetings and everything, you can go buy pastry!  I put a photo of my latest one in here! 

• I literally laughed so hard at the dead Gopher that you sent hahaha! I still feel like him sometimes when I go to sleep! Sister Marteeny always says "earn your pillow" and we really do!! We spend half our day in the visitors centre, which is half online, half welcoming guests. And then there's five wards around the temple so we spend the other half proselyting in one of those. Ours is Chesnay, so the temple ward! 

• I love that whole day in the mornings feeling!! We're like that too! We run everyday! I lost 3 kgs haha! And then there's the fact that we definitely don't eat as much as in the MTC! We cook all our meals every day in the morning to pack them for the VC.. so we made lots of good things that aren't as good later!  One highlight from this week was my first quiche! A low light was we made those little baked egg things but I forgot to grease the pan so it took us LITERALLY three days to scrub them clean. But it's so fun to on p day to plan our whole week of meals and make a grocery list... one of the best parts of missionary work is PLANNING! I LOVE IT 

• Sister Woods, visitors centre director, told us a really beautiful story about when they were presiding over the Louisiana mission. Their daughter got married six week before they left! But then when they were gone the daughter found out that her husband had been hiding an addiction for 10 years! There's a huge long story attached but the important part is that when she wanted to go home and take care of her daughter, the brethren said no. That was really hard for her but the spirit told her "if you go to her, you will be the blessing. But if you stay in Louisiana, I can bless her how I want to." So I'm hoping that Heavenly Father blesses you and Dad and Peirce in the best way possible while I'm out here! 

• We live near the visitors centre, with another companionship. There are lots of dog walkers in this neighborhood so I always stop them, pet their dogs and call it contacting. Yesterday we met the CUTEST blood hound who was so bored while we talked to his owner that he like fell asleep on the sidewalk haha! 

• The French is going well! There's another sister in our apartment from France and so I have the occasional word that sounds super Quebecois, she always is like noooo soeur! 

• Facebook proselyting is cool! We don't have that much time to use it so the guidelines aren't that hard. It's pretty flexible, just do things that help you accomplish your purpose! 

Blessed by Technology

I woke up this morning thinking about Jill. In the MTC, Friday was her P-Day so we would normally get an email today. When I looked at my phone, I had a text from someone who was vacationing in Paris (interestingly, his name was Joseph Smith!) and he and his wife texted a picture to us.

During the rest of the day, text messages have gone back and forth between all the moms of these girls and Joseph Smith. Here's what I learned:

• Katie Smith is the lady in the middle. Apparently, she served a mission in Ontario, Canada! She is married to Joseph Smith, who is Joseph Fielding Smith's great grandson.
• The redhead is Soeur Olsen. She is from Utah
• The one with the bicycles is Soeur Hannah Marteeny and she is from Oregon
• Soeur Arnott is in the patterned shirt

Joseph Smith said they're happy and enjoying what they're doing.

I was happy to see Jill has her tablet. I guess she can use it after all!

Technology is a great thing!! So grateful to have received this text today.

Calgary Connections

I got a message on Facebook today with a picture of Jill. The message was from a friend of mine from when we were in 13th ward years ago. She has a daughter on a mission at temple square in Salt Lake City. Jill did some training there and guess who was her trainer?! Emma!! Well,  I guess I should say, Sister Piepgrass.

They were once nursery friends. They connected again at institute. And now they were companions. Go figure!!

She Arrived!

The internet sure changes things. We got an email this morning that Jill arrived safe and sound. Here she is with her mission president and his wife, President and Sister Sorensen.

Book Club Gala

This is my favorite event of the year at school.

For the gala, students nominate characters for different categories (greatest hero, favorite character, nastiest villain, funniest character, cutest animal and best book overall). We have them vote and then we have an awards night. We have students read out categories like they do in award shows (the nominees for nastiest villian are.....) and then they open an envelope to reveal the winner. We watch a short book trailer and then move on to the next category. Everyone comes dressed in their best and we have a bit of a finger food pot luck. I talked to them all about how this is a fancy event and expected behaviors. After the awards we did a crossword puzzle with clues from all the different books we read (we meet 8 months so there were 8 books). It was a lot of fun and hopefully something that inspires them to keep reading. We actually invite all the grade 3s to attend, not just the ones who came to book club - so that hopefully they get inspired to read more.

It is always a great time!

SLC - CDG!

Today Jill leaves for Paris!! Her stay at the MTC was cut a little short to coordinate with transfers in her mission. She said she was the travel coordinator. When I talked to her, she had already lost the elders. LOL We had no idea what time she was flying out. The rule usually is that they can call when they're traveling so we kind of waited close by our phones all day. She called when I was in the middle of our Grade Three Book Club Gala so it was a little hairy. She didn't have a lot of time to talk either because it was almost departure time...and there was the issue of figuring out where the Elders had all gone.

There's always a story!

I'll be checking flight statuses all night long!

Day 18/528

Hi Everyone! 

It's been so crazy here at the Missionary Trainging Centre but I finally had time to write an email about my whole experience!! It's hard to remember to three weeks ago because every day here is very full! But I'll try my best :) 

It was so fun to go from the Airport with my cousin who just got home from her mission! I tried to get a little wisdom out of her, but she was just trying to go back to speaking English! I was supposed to get here around 3:00 and her flight landed at 1:00! So we had to pack  3 years of quality time into two hours! I think we were successful!

Once I got here they just THROW you into the thick of things! You don't even get to put your suitcases away right away, you just set them down and go straight to class! We learned a lot during the first week about adjusting to missionary life and about the most fundamental ideas that we're going to be teaching! That was so awesome! We focused almost entirely on teaching about Jesus Christ and connecting any ideas that we teach to him. So you can imagine that was a really uplifting and inspiring week! 

My companion from my first two weeks is so awesome! She is from the Dominican Republic! Her name is Hermana Feliz and she's going to be serving in the Priesthood Restoration Site in Pennsylvania. She's the first one in her family to serve a mission, so it's been awesome to hear her motivations. The funnest part about her is... WE HAVE THE SAME BIRTHDAY!!! We were so shocked when we learned that!!  

I met a bunch of people who are serving in Calgary! and even some who are from Calgary so that was fun! Keep your eyes open for Sister Ichimi and Elder Salerno! 

I'm trying to think of a funny story to share with you guys but all I can come up with is a tramatic experience Sister Feliz and I had! She left her retainer on her tray for lunch and it got thrown in the trash!! So we looked through the garbage for like half an hour... But this manager of the Cafeteria came and helped us the whole time! He was wearing like a dress shirt but he like dove right in and ended up finding it!! 

I'm already all out of Pday time so I'll have send more stories and adventures from France! that will be much more interesting anyways haha! Sometime life here is just Class, food, repeat... But honestly I can't complain about that!! Can't wait to hear back about how life is where you are!! 

Soeur Ackroyd 

PS if you didn't watch the BE ONE fireside, STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND GO WATCH IT ❤