Bienvenue en Novembre à Ottawa

 Welcome to November in Ottawa!

Sites from our morning walks

They went from beautiful fall colors

(aren't God's creations amazing! Seed pods are living proof of Diety)

(Cute street in Little Italy)

(Siberian Larches with their needles still hanging on)

and lots of geese and ducks

We've had a busy, bountiful, blessed, nice, November!  As we describe the events it will fill in some of the blanks about a question we get all the time.  "What do you do?"

We do apartment inspections and we go to trainings.  We started the month with inspections but it included cleaning and preparing apartments that had been vacant for awhile- getting them ready for new missionaries. There were bags and bags of stuff that needed to be taken to the mission office (clothing, books...) Turned out all the missionaries had stuff they wanted to get rid of, so because we were headed to Montreal on the 9th, we became the storage/moving van that got the job.  We headed out after lunch (2 hour drive to Montreal) dropped off the stuff, grabbed a quick dinner at a GREAT little Italian deli by the office, went back for a training then headed home in a pretty heavy snowstorm, arriving at about midnight. 

to beautiful winter scenes overnight!

These amazing trees are still holding on to their leaves!

Love when the evening snows leave a dusting of snow for morning

We also go to baptisms!!! One of our favorite things to do.  On the 10th a sweet creole sister was baptized.  Her mom didn't speak English but it so happens, our Bishop went to Hati on his mission so was able to speak and translate  It was awesome.  Lots of members came to share her special day and everyone brings treats!

Two baptisms in a row.  This one speaks Creole

and this one Frensh! and both such amazing women!
Elder Mikkelsen had the privilege of confirming this wonderful sister

Sometimes we speak in church.  The 11th was Remembrance Day in Canada.  Its kind of like a mix of Memorial and Veterans Day. It commemorates those who died in armed conflicts in and since WWI.  At 11:00 on the 11th day of the 11th month the armistice was signed, so at 11:00 everyone stops what they are doing for 2 minutes of silence and remembrance and bells ring and there are ceremonies and parades.  Its more celebrated here, I think, than at home.  we had to speak in the Champlain Ward sacrament meeting that day.  It was kind of cool to be out and a part of the celebrating.

Many people wear poppies on their lapels in remembrance of Flanders Field

Mondays we usually get a few hours to make preparations for the lesson we teach on Wednesday nights.  The 13th we had a special Zone Conference, special because we had a member of the Quorum of the 70 Elder Halmaton here to visit and do a training.  It was a great training. He drew an image of a light post.

It doesn't take a lot of faith to stay within the circle of light.  We have to act, we have faith enough to take a few steps into the darkness before we will receive a witness of the truthfulness of what we are desiring to know.  You have to pay your tithing before you see the blessings, you have to trust in the Lord to heal you after a blessing, you need to kneel down and pray before you get answers.  It always requires us to take a step into the darkness before our eyes adjust so that we can see our way to move forward. We can now have improved ability to gain more light.

The first Sunday of each month we have a "Break-the-fast" meal after church and on
the third Sunday we have a munch and mingle.

Every Wednesday we teach an institute class.  Our students are amazing!  We're still learning but they teach us something new every week, and they are so patient with us!  They are the best!  Once a month we have a dinner before class and always there's treats after, and then they play hard- volleyball, basketball, whatever sounds fun that night.

These youth are serious about their sports

and their treats

The 15th we got to help out with transfers.  We had a bunch of new missionaries coming in who needed rides and missionaries moving from one apartment to another.

Two amazing sister missionaries that are about to go home!
We will really miss them!

What else do we do?  We help clean the church, serve at the satellite Bishops Storehouse. Once a month we have Institute Council Meeting and once a month we go to YSA council meeting.  Friday mornings we usually have District Council ( We meet with our district (6-8 to 10 missionaries) for training and counseling together, helping each other to be the best we can be) and Friday evenings we usually have Ward Mission Correlation (the missionaries meet with the ward missionaries to counsel and make plans as to how they can work well together).  

When we have a council meeting we all go away edified!

We also give a lot of rides, we run a ton of errands preparing for activities, meals, and lessons, and we go to ward and stake activities- we even sing in the choirs therefore we go to choir practices. Activities this month?  We went to a bonfire out in the country!  It was absolutely beautiful.  Too dark to take pictures but it was just like walking into the set of White Christmas or Christmas in Connecticut.  So fun.

We taught the youth how to make cookies one night at FHE (we have FHE every Monday night).  We had a Christmas party at the Stake Presidents house for all the Stake Leaders and Bishops.

One night for FHR we played Human Battleship

It took forever to sink this sub

Movie Night

"Bump"  They can play this one for hours

Met this couple at the Stake Presidents Social/  He was a missionary in
France who helped to teach the Branch President of our first Branch in
Ukraine 20 years ago.  Small world!

We had a GREAT YSA Christmas party

White elephant game

Ugly sweater contest

The contest winner!

And sometimes we get to help out with service projects.  Hopefully soon well be doing that on a weekly basis.

A mall in town supplies all the paper, citizens do the wrapping and all
the proceeds go to a local charity.  It was lots of fun

Best thing that happened this month-- Daniel, Sonia, and Aria came to visit for Thanksgiving!!!!!

A Christmas tree at Parliament

We also went to the War Museum

The prom that talks of the Poppies in Flanders Field
This is in the War Memorial Room at Parliament 

Just before we end here are a couple of shots to prepare you for next month's Blog a true Winter Wonder Land

Hogs Back Falls at 7 degrees fahrenheit 

Early morning delegate snow fall

And starting on December 1st the Church world wide has taken on the responsibility to light the world.  So the question that begs to be answered is how are you Lighting the World this Christmas Season?

Lighttheworld.org

Fall wonders

Fall is in the air Video

Mission time is an interesting thing.  Everyday just keeps going faster and faster.  We decided since it is going so fast that we better only post a blog page on a monthly basis. There are two blessings, you won't have to be bothered by our ramblings quite so often and it gives us more time to prepare for classes and other mission responsibilities.

The Locke right by our house is getting a new set of Lock Gates. These are big!

The old Lock gates laying in the bottom of the lock.  

Sister Mikkelsen caught this shot one morning on our walk. Looks like a calendar shot to me

This assignment is so different than our Ukrainian assignment.  We have no language barrier this time around and so we are so blessed with many things we can do to help the people here in this area.  In the past month we have been busy working in what is termed a Satellite Bishops Storehouse.  The bishops make the orders, turns them in by Sunday and then the next Saturday we set up an entire Bishops Storehouse in our church cultural hall.  A local grocery store then picks all the items that have been ordered for that week and delivers them to the church. We then hand truck everything into the building and set up a miniature grocery store.  The patrons come in and we, as volunteers, take them around the gym and they pick up the things they order as we mark them off the list. We have little wagons we pull around for them to place their items in.  It is such a blessing working with the people.  The church is wonderful and the Welfare system is so awesome.

Sister Carroll is beginning her last transfer. She is a great sport! Baby food eating contest at Halloween party

Our District These are amazing missionaries. What a fun transfer it has been.

Our first zone conference in Ottawa we are blessed to work with great missionaries

We each have been given ministering routes to go out and find the lost sheep.  I have 18 on my list and Sister Mikkelsen has 7.  My companion and I had a dinner at our house the other day and had a little miracle take place while we were working on contacting the people.  Most of the addresses and numbers are wrong. We were calling them to see if they worked.  I called one number and a lady answered and I asked 'if this was (We will call her Sally Jones) Sally' she said no.  I then said 'is this Sally Jones phone number and the lady hesitated and then said who is this.'  I said this is Elder Mikkelsen and senior missionary in the Ottawa area.  She said this is Sally Jones mother.  I was so shocked so I asked if her daughter still lived in the area and she confirmed that she did but had been inactive for over 4 years since she moved to the area to go to school.  She told me that her daughter often talks about going back to church but feels awkward just showing up after so long being away.  I told her we would love to visit with her if she felt comfortable giving us her contact information.  She hesitated and then said,  "you know what, I'm going to because the spirit is telling that I should." What a blessing to have contacted a loving mother who is in tune with the spirit and now we can go and visit her daughter and extend an invitation for her to come and join us.

Hog's back falls with lots of water flowing- about a block away

The colors of Autumn 

View from the stairwell on our way to do the laundry. 

This tree is an example of allowing others to serve us
If it weren't for some good landscapers (ministering servants)
this tree would have gone years ago.  We need to allow
others to assist and support us in our trials

A fall picture of a Hamilton Euonymus  As the leaves fall the blossoms bloom!

Nice tree but notice the little white sign red
and black writing on it.  This is a snow removal marker.
People hire companies to clear the snow away all winter long
and their driveways are marked with these types of signs.
Several years ago there were 9' high snow banks. I'm sure that
will not happen while we are here (Praying)

Notice the two Herons that are standing in the water. The reflected
light was just perfect

Ducks on the pond quack a happy tune

The mushroom forest

Other things that have been happening? One is our weekly Institute class.  We love our students and have been blessed to have the spirit attend our class and have enjoy learning through that spirit. We have also been visiting other wards and encouraging attendance at Institute.  We have 452 potential students and 32 are signed up so there is lots of room for growth.  We had a goal in our ward to get 75 people at church two weeks ago we had 83. We need to continue to work and increase that number.  We have a dinner on the third Wednesday before institute and had 25 attend last time. This last week we had 45 attend our Halloween party. We brought our Karaoke machine with us and it was a big hit with the girls.  We will need to encourage the young men to participate a little better in the future. On Fast Sunday we have a break the fast dinner right after church.  We had over 50 stay for dinner it was wonderful.

Angel the girl on the right is getting baptized in two weeks

winning Pumpkin carvers

No candles in the church but no problem I have a cell phone light!

Great group of youth

Eating Mexican hot spiced Larva

More baby food

Fear factor ice-cream challenge Mustard, mayo, and canned Mackrel toppings on this one

Two returned missionaries doing the Karaoke thing.

"We must save those pumpkin seeds! I love them!'

The weather here has been so wonderful.  The fall colors are beautiful and now they are all but over.  The Geese have decided it's time to leave town and we see huge flocks of them heading south.  We had a little snow storm the other day to get us ready for the rest of the winter. The people here in Canada are proud of their country and their winters.  They love to let us know we are in for a "Wonderful" experience!  So we purchased our snow tires -40 window washer fluid, and have our winter coats and scarves.  Now we are just waiting for our winter boots to arrive in the mail.

Don't you just want to kick your feet through the leaves 

I need to apologies to all my wood shop students I misinformed them.
Not all Coniferous trees are evergreen. This is a. Eastern Siberian Larch
that is a coniferous tree that is also Deciduous (loses it's leaves in the fall)and drops
all of it's needles each year.  It is still a soft wood tree. There is an arboretum that
we walk through and they have trees from all over the world.

Geese are ready to fly

They are leaving by the hundreds the last couple of days it is amazing to witness.

600,000 Tulips are planted in preparation for the spring Tulip festival
Holland donates them to Canada every year as a gift of appreciation
for their liberation of Holland in WW2

Workers planting the Tulips

Tulip park

We love the Hogs Back Falls

We have the blessing of inspecting the missionary apartments it is wonderful to visit with them each transfer.  Most of the apartments are in great shape and we just give them the Okey Dokey and some cookies and move to the next one.  We have 3 vacant apartments in our zone that we inspected the other day. Two were in good shape but one was a bit of the challenge.  We had a District pizza party and met together for several hours to clean it out.  We filled half a dumpster with things that were of no value and took lots of stuff to local charity drop box. Some things we boxed up and saved for missionaries that might need replacement clothing.  Two sets of sisters also had cleaned their apartments of clothes that were left by other missionaries and we took about 15 bags out of their apartments. So we went to the mission office the other day and filled our car with items for the missionary clothing bank. The office senior Sister Evans was over joyed by the donations.

The apartment cleaning that took place several weeks ago
The elder in the white and yellow shirt just got transferred to this apartment
He's glad it got cleaned.

 While in Montreal we also attended the temple. One of our young men just got his mission call and we attend his endowment session. What a blessing.  We got to speak in church with him the day he gave his farewell talk.  And a week later Sister Mikkelsen and I had the opportunity to speak in the Saturday Night Stake Conference Adult session.

Josh and his mom. This is the young man heading off to his mission. We are so excited for him

Well this is way too much information for one blog so I'll close here, but I just need to say that serving on a Senior Mission is such a blessing. There is such a great need for more senior couples through out the world.  You can serve from your home even and bless your local stake. But you deserve the blessings that come from service.  And for those of you that are too young, begin to plan now so that you can serve when it's your time.  May the Lord bless each of you in your efforts where ever you are serving.
All of our love
Elder and Sister Mikkelsen

The Lord blesses missionaries. We had a tornado in this area about a month ago
These are the apartments across the street from where the Elders lived.  Their apartment
lost a couple of shingle is all.

Mads our Grandson the boxer

Aria with her first Pumpkin

Riley- our little Alice

But first she dressed up as---- Her Daddy!  Kelsie re-made one
of his word t-shirts.  She thought that was a lot if fun!

Jacob and his new wife Natalie

Cruella Devill'e and her side kick taking care of the Dalmatian puppies
AKA Daniel, Sonina, Trixie, and our cute Granddaughter Aria.