Where Did July Go???

Here is the latest from Jill. She talks about peanut butter costing 7€ (euros). I looked it up and that is about $10. Judging from how exchange students react when the see the size of things we buy from the grocery store, my guess is that it is for a small jar of peanut butter.

What a week!! Weeks go by pretty fast on the mission, and every time there's a million things that happen!! But I'm going to tell you about just a few otherwise this'll be way too long to read! 

The highlight of the week was Thursday when Reyna Aburto from the Relief Society general presidency came into the centre! Her son served in this mission so they were back to visit. If you don't know her, you're missing out! She just made an awesome video series on lds.org. Watch it! 

https://www.lds.org/blog/how-i-overcame-challenges-and-found-hope-in-my-life?cid=HP_TH-19-7-2018_dOCS_fBLOG_xLIDyL1-B_&lang=eng

My favourite part of our tour with her was when we showed her the stained glass window of Christ. The cool thing about this window is that the artist redid the face five times until he got it perfect! In the final product, he made the facial features look more French so that when people would look at him and recognize him as someone they knew. BUT THEN Soeur Aburto pointed out that the people could see themselves in Christ! A totally new way for us to look at it. So awesome. 

Zone conference was this week too! It was great and we learned a lot, but it was SO HOT in that chapel. I don't get why air conditioning isn't a thing in France? Or peanut butter? The Visitor's Centre director bought us some from Costco and it was 7€ 😥

We met with one of our potential amis that we found by stopping her to pet her dog(named donuts) and she gave us presents! Such a nice lady! 

And then on Sunday we did a special musical fireside in the patron housing building at the temple! It went so well! We planned for 110 people but we had 200! It was so great for all those people to come and experience the spirit of the temple. 

That's all for this week! Hope everyone is having a good summer!! 

Soeur Ackroyd 

A Tag photo! Funny thing is we were just having a conversation about this in the Facebook group I'm on. Another missionary mom was saying she'd been asking her son to send her a tag photo. I didn't even know what a tag photo is! It's funny that Jill should send one this week.

I'm pretty sure that's the Versailles Castle in the background. You can read more about it here.

Update: One of the other missionary mom's pointed me to a place where you can see the video of their special musical fireside. You can watch it here.

Bait Texts

Today Peirce sent me a text: I got my ears pierced.

*deep breath*

I replied: Oh boy. You did? Send a picture!

Turned out he hadn't - he and his friends all sent that same text to their parents to see how they'd react. He said I was the nicest. *phew!*

It was a front though. I was having birdies inside....but I'm glad I didn't respond that way.

I personally don't have an issue with pierced ears - I just would hate the social ramifications that come with it in the church.

What a kid. And I was having such a lovely day prior to that. LOL

Week 10

Jill talks about a hymn in the French hymn book in this letter. I found a video with a recording of it and a translation of the lyrics here.

Souviens-toi, mon enfant
Souviens-toi, mon enfant: Tes parents divins
te serraient dans leurs bras, ce temps ne’st pas loin.
Aujourd’hui, tu es là, présent merveilleux,
ton regard brille encore du reflet des cieux.
Parle-moi, mon enfant, de ces lieux bénis
car pour toi est léger le voile d’oubli.

Souviens-toi, mon enfant des bois, des cités.
Pouvons-nous ici-bas les imaginer?
Et le ciel jusqu’au soir, est-il rose ou gris ?
Le soleil attend-il la neige ou la pluie?
Conte-moi, mon enfant, la couleur des prés
et le chant des oiseaux d’un monde oublié.

Souviens-toi, mon enfant : A l’aube des temps,
nous étions des amis jouant dans le vent.
Puis un jour, dans la joie nous avons choisi
d’accepter du Seigneur le grand plan de vie.
Ce soir-là, mon enfant, nous avons promis
par l’amour, par la foi, d’être réunis.

Remember, My Child
Remember, my child : not long ago,
your divine parents held you in their arms.
Today you are here, marvelously present.
Your gaze still shines with the reflection of heaven.
Talk to me, my child, about that blessed place,
because for you the veil is still thin.

Remember, my child, the forests, the cities.
Can we down here imagine them?
And the night sky, is it rosy or gray?
Is the sun waiting for snow or rain?
Describe to me, my child, the color of the meadows
and the birdsongs of a forgotten world.

Remember, my child: at the dawn of time,
we were friends playing in the wind.
Then one day in joy we chose to accept
the Lord’s grand plan of life.
That night, my child, we promised through love,
and through faith, to be reunited.

 Jill's letter:

I'm super happy to say I'm writing this to you as I eat my lunch that consists of literally just 5 types of cheese and a baguette. La vie (missionaire) est belle :) 

This week was mostly just usually missionary stuff! Teaching lessons and making new friends and sharing good news :) But there were a few things that really stood out! The missionaries did a musical number in sacrament meeting AGAIN but I managed to talk sister Marteeny out of making me do a solo this time. We made the new elder do it! In the end it went so well! We sang a song that's only in the french hymn book. It's called Souviens toi, and it's so beautiful! 

Probably the best part of the week was teaching Ivane! He's nine years old and he's getting ready to by baptized! We gave him a book of Mormon with pictures last week, and when we asked him what he learned, and he practically recited the whole book! We literally let him talk for half an hour and he told us every story in the first half of the book! It's so awesome to get to teach such a smart little guy who loves the gospel so much already :) 

The other highlight of the week was having the main architect of the temple here! He is a super cool man! He's not a member of the church, but since he grew up in the United States, he was very familiar with our church. He talked about how he had one close friend who he hung out with so much that they even went to seminary together! When he was in architectural school, he went to the temple gardens in San Diego once a week to relax and feel refreshed for the week ahead! He definitely knows the power that the temple can have! He talked about how every time a new team came to work on the site, they'd be playing their music and acting like they would on any other site. But after a few weeks of being there, he noticed them being different. He could tell that even before the temple being dedicated, the spirit was there and was having an effect on everyone present. I wish I could put every story he told in this email, but that would make a pretty long one! It's just cool how the temple can bless everyone around it, even without going inside. 

Well that's about it for this week! Can't wait to hear back from you guys!

All Done Transfer One

When President and Sister Nelson spoke in Calgary Sister Nelson alluded to big roadblocks prior to the broadcasts. She didn't explain what those things were but just said that Satan is real and wants to stop this work. Jill's letter explains more about what Sister Nelson was talking about. Fascinating! Here is her letter this week:

Hi everyone! I'm writing you from the most patriotic country in the world at the moment! These people sure love their soccer! President wanted us in our apartments for the whole time the final game was on, in case things got a little rowdy. Which they did. People were yell g and honking until super late at night! 

We had a lot of cool experiences this week! The head of the missionary department of the church stopped by so that was a little nerve wracking! But not as nerve wracking as the next week when one of the visitors Centre instructors that taught me in the MTC came in. 😅 

The missionary department head is named Elder Nielson. And he shared a really cool story with us about President Nelson! On the Friday of the Be One devotional, he had a super sore throat. After the devotional it got worse and worse until Sunday, when he was supposed to address the youth about the gathering of Israel. It got bad that he literally couldnot talk! He knew that what he had to say was so important and would make such a difference that the adversary was trying to stop him! He asked Elder Oaks and elder Eyering to give him a blessing,and because of that he was able to talk and give his message at that devotional with such strength! You guys have to listen to it!! Again!!!

Bastille day was this week too! We didn't do too much to celebrate, but we did invite one of our people to be baptized on my birthday! (August 18 in case anyone wants to send gifts) but really what better gift could I ask for! 

I hope everyone is having a great week! I'd love to hear about what's going on in the world! 

Bisous!

Soeur Ackroyd

Summer Update

Jill has now been gone for 60 days. Seems like forever!

Peirce is into his third week. That means he's half way finished! I'm sure looking forward to having him home.

This has been a good week. I've been going to the gym in the mornings. Gold's gym! It's me and the meathead football players and I think a bunch of Hell's Angels. It's quite a change from Goodlife. LOL 5 km a day makes a big difference for me. I've been doing it every day. I have also really been keeping up on my watching The View. LOL Now and then I get tired of those ladies though.

Our French students are pretty interesting. One is a health-conscious athlete type boy (well, he's a hockey player. Does that count for athlete?). The other one, let's just say, isn't. They're so funny. The one likes to get up early and go running. The other one wakes up ten minutes before they have to go. I took them shopping on Saturday because today they had an activity at Sikome lake. They wanted to take some picnic food. We went and looked at deli stuff. The non-athlete boy wanted the pasta salad. The other one wanted the quinoa and chickpea salad. They have these animated French/English conversations....all I understand is "come on....free day....that's gross...." and stuff like that. I finally found a package that had both salads and said, "Hey boys!! No more crying! You can both be happy." On Saturday they went to Heritage Park. When I picked them up I asked how they liked it and they told me it was really a nice place. I said, "Really? I think it's kind of boring." They laughed and laughed. They thought it was boring too.

Peirce is having a good time. All the physical work at the kayak store is a good workout for him! This weekend he went to some place where they have rides (like Six Flagsish??) and then on Sunday they had some kind of French carnival...you know, with that maple syrup stuff and other stuff. I don't know. All I know is he said it was a great time and when I talked to him he was soooooo tired. I told him he just had to tell me two things he loved about it, then I'd let him go to bed. He's having a lot of fun.

Yesterday, when I came home, Allen was doing some great work in the yard. He had the doors to the house open. I went in to put my stuff away and when I went upstairs this BIG dog was laying on my bed!! He quickly got off and was checking out the house. He was a super nice dog. I was just so surprised to see this big dog!! Chico tried to boss him around, but he was so easy going, he wasn't eve bothered by Chico's meanness. Finally, we heard a lady driving around calling his name. He didn't want to leave though. So crazy!

 

 

 

Today I was asked to teach Primary - at least I thought I was. I prepared a really kick-butt lesson too. When I got to primary someone else was sitting in the row of kids I was going to teach. I was like, "Dude, whose lesson is better? Want to fight?" Turned out he's tougher than me so I let him teach. :) The good news is that I got the dates wrong and I'm actually supposed to teach next week....so now my lesson is ready to go. LOL One of the kids in the class kept passing notes to me during Sacrament Meeting with drawings of bombs and grenades and stuff saying he would destroy me. I'd write back and say, "Pink power will win!" and he's have another come back with a terribler weapon. Brother Hudson said, "Show me a girl who can draw grenades like that. Bet ya can't." I think he's probably right.

One thing I discovered this week while trying to learn some family history stuff, was the infographics you can make! Here is mine:

One day I might find a name for the temple. For now, I've mastered infographics. Will that help me get a pass to the celestial kingdom? Probably not. I'll keep trying.

The Week of Seven (jk! Two!) Plagues

This week's Jill's P-Day got changed to Tuesday so that a bunch of missionaries could go to the temple. She even saw her friend from school, Sedric LaPlante....now known as Elder LePlante! Peirce laughed when he saw the picture. He said, "It's like they're strangers, the way they're standing!" Ah yes. Mission rules!

Get ready...there's some crazy stories in this one:

So this week started off amazing!

We had a really good lesson with one of our "amies" about the priesthood! We taught him how it's direct revelation from Heavenly Father, made to suit our needs. We got the Visitors Centre Director, Elder Woods, to give him a blessing! It was incredible! Literally everything that we wanted him to hear and understand was said. He was even promised that if he would keep pushing his own limits and strengthening his relationship with Heavenly Father, he could have a family sealed together for eternity in the temple! Everyone present was really touched by the spirit. It inspired me to consider having more priesthood blessings!

Also this week was the BYU folk dancers performance! It was amazing!! They did a really cool Indonesian dance that looked like an elaborate secret handshake. Another highlight was when they sang the song from footloose called "fake ID" but changed the lyrics to make it about the BYU creamery. It was really fun and nice to listen to some different music! It was a great missionary opportunity too! One lady in another ward invited 120 people!!! 

Honestly after that the week got pretty wild!! On Friday night we finally got an exterminator to come and kill this HUGE wasp nest that was in the door frame that led to the patio. The exterminator told us it was pretty dangerous and that we shouldn't have waited so long to call him. But the answer was mostly because there was this horrible chair on our patio from long gone missionaries, so we didn't need to go out there anyways. (I attached a before and an after picture)

So he took care of that.... And we were happy to have his number because we needed it again a few day later!! Yesterday One of the other sisters in the apartment woke up to rice all over the floor. And then when she looked at it closer the rice started moving!!!! There were like 200 maggots on our floor! We canceled all our missionary work for the morning and spent literally eight hours cleaning. Just picture the scene: 6:30am, four sister missionaries running around stomping on worms, trying not to cry, scream or barf respectively. Needless to say, our neighbors aren't going to be learning about the church anytime soon.

But things shaped up today when we went to the temple! It was so amazing to finally go and see the real version of the temple model that we always teach with! Even with the incredible spirit that surrounds missionaries, the temple is incomparable! I even got to see my friend Elder Laplante!

Old high school friends!

Stampede, Picnics, QC updates and More Summer Fun

It's Stampede Week. Yee haa! This year the new weird food is grilled cheese with crickets. You can also get pizza with crickets. I was telling our Quebec students about that. Finally, one of them meekly asked, "Is there any food without crickets?" They were planning to go on Saturday and I think he was a little afraid he was going to go to some kind of place where he had to eat crazy food. :)  Sister Noblet went to the stampede with her daughters and they happened to meet Justin Trudeau. One thing they all noticed about him was that he has really soft hands. I guess that is the life of the privileged...no hard work to wear your hands out.

Peirce seems to really be loving his experience in Quebec. He calls every day and has great things to say about his family and his job and everything else. When other kids are discouraged or homesick, he seems to be the guy who helps them look on the bright side and cheer them up. I

Aunt  Bett and Uncle Dave are visiting right now. They've been to Raymond and Edmonton to visit family and now this is the last leg of their stay in Canada. Thursday night we had the parents and Elizabeth and Richard. Elizabeth and Richard went home to California on Friday and so it's just been Bett and Dave here. We went out for dinner with them on Friday to Big Ts and then went to Shakespeare in the Park - only we got the time wrong so we only saw the last 20 minutes of the play. Aunt Bett read the synopsis to us as we were driving there and while we were watching it I thought, "Man, this story goes really fast." Then the whole thing ended. LOL Guess I'll have to go again!

On Saturday, after Allen and I went to the gym, we went to the wedding for the people who are going to live next door to us! They seem like really nice people. The wedding was outside and was really a beautiful setting. Everyone sat on blankets mostly. The guy who married them was an Evans' relative and a dad of Jill's friend. He was their Bishop. After they had a pot luck dinner and a dance. We didn't stay for the whole thing because Allen was done, but I was really glad we could go to what we did go to. I think they'll be really nice neighbors.  Interestingly, the place where they had the wedding was a school and it was in the building where I got my very first real teaching job (at Montessori). It was a blast from the past, for sure!

Today we went and had a picnic in Confederation Park. What a beautiful place! It was really fun. It's fun to hang out with the NAckroyds. Hannah just had a birthday party and loved telling us about it. Evan had just been to camp and Sarah had a comic strip that was she was creating that was quite brilliant. This week Becky is going to Utah with the kids for a week. They have been working on their house and plan to list it this week. They would like to move to a bigger house. We hope they don't move too far away!

Yesterday Peirce got to go to Montreal and then today he went paddle boarding. We talked to him when we got home and he was really worn out. He had a busy weekend!

Week?? 4?? Already

Here is Jill's email for this week. One thing that has changed lately with missionaries is they no longer refer to people they are teaching as 'investigators'. In France, they called them their "amies" or friends. Another thing I recently learned is that new missionaries aren't green there, they're blue! Not sure why.

FYI: Jill's letter talks about a picture of a scary baby....but there wasn't one attached.

Jill has now been out for 49 days. 8% of her mission is finished! Maybe week 4 means Week 4 in France? Not sure. She has been gone for six weeks. We are sure proud of her and LOVE getting her emails.

Hi! Bonjour! Hola! Happy Canada Day!

My apologies for not emailing last week....P-day got a little wild!! But that just means this week's email will be that much more fantastic.

I'll start with a little update on some of the friends we are teaching! We have one Friend who loves the temple SO MUCH that he comes to visit us almost every day!! He's amazing. He's a photographer, just like my brother! He had a baptismal date but his elderly mother isn't super into the idea of him getting baptized again so that's postponed for now.

We have an awesome guy who works at the Versailles castle! He took the sisters on a private tour the week before I got here so I was kind of bummed about that! But he said he can hook us up with ice cream. 🤙His birthday was this week so we made him a cake and had an awesome celebration before the fireside!

We have a friend from Haiti that we're teaching!! How cool is that? Heavenly Father is really giving us all we need to bring the gospel to the world! 

The BYU folk dancers are performing in France this week so they started off with an awesome fireside in Versailles. They played so much cool music, including a song with a banjo?? So that was different???

I'm not that sad about having Christmas away from home because I've done it before... But Canada day??? My district is half Canadians so we celebrated just a little bit with pancakes! It made me feel like I was at home at the Hawryluks annual pancake breakfast! 

I feel like I should explain this creepy baby picture. We have this awesome family history Centre at the temple and we can make that glass wall frosted or clear. We went in there to have some privacy to eat lunch and then this little guy popped up! Pretty freaky at first!

Elder Woods gave us an awesome training about that family history room... So to prepare for it he asked us to find a family history story to share! It was so amazing to see how my family lived! When we know more about our families, we know ourselves better! We're more well equipped to get through hard times and to enjoy good times!! I'll make my invitation for the week to learn a new story about your family! I learned about how my family joined the church back in the day, they're all such faithful people and it was exactly the boost I needed this week. Enjoy!! 

Miss you all ❤️ Have a great week!!Soeur Ackroyd 

Peirce's First Day of Work

Today was Peirce's first day of work. He is working at a kayak shop in Mascouche. He said he didn't drop a kayak on anyone so he felt like it was a good day. He said that he feels like everyone speaks really fast. He understands what they're saying, but responding isn't quite as quick. He also said he doesn't always get the jokes they say.

 I'm grateful for Google Duo! We have talked on it every day. It works great!

This is the girl from the family where Peirce is living. She is staying with a family here in Calgary that lives in Acadia. We had a pot luck tonight that was a lot of fun. It was nice to meet all the other host families.

He Made It!

 His host family gave him a flag of Quebec. In Quebec, apparently Canada Day isn't a big deal (I won't comment on that!). Today is actually considered "Moving Day" as many people's rental contracts end after six months at the end of June.

He keeps sending snaps in French. I'm going to have to up my French game, I guess.

 Apparently, lots of people have pools there. They had a pool party today!