Happy New Year 2019

Welcome to 2019

Winter Sun Rise over Mooney's Bay looking out our window

December has been a busy month for us.  We finished our first semester of teaching institute, we participated like many of you in #Lightingtheworld, and had a wonderful Christmas Holiday and last night ended with ringing in the New Year.

Capturing the season as they change

It is such a blessing to be able to serve in the mission field. What a wonderful opportunity to work with wonderful people and participate in their lives.  We can't explain the feeling of peace that fills our days as we enjoy the blessing of being here in the Ottawa Area.  One of the fun activities we enjoyed was attending the First Presidency Devotional.  Here the Stake President wanted the opportunity for all of us to meet together and enjoy that wonderful message as a stake.  So they had a 1 1/2  hour reception at the stake center. What a wonderful opportunity to meet together with other saints that have a desire to strengthen their Christmas Spirit.  They go all out with this reception and it was worth it as we got to fellowship with many members that we might never have met.  It is really fun to be talking with a member and realize that we have their children in our YSA Ward.

reception snacks

The first stake party I ever attended that had Shrimp

The stake also puts on a live Nativity for the community each year, out behind our chapel.  It was really wonderful.  I talked our neighbor into coming over and helping with parking. He is a good man we are blessed to get to know him.  The night of the nativity it snowed and was very cold but the cast preformed two productions one in English and the other one in French.

Mary and Joseph by the manger

Nativity Display in the cultural hall 

We had a very large attendance

Two of our sister missionaries petting the wooly sheep

The Nativity cast

The angels talking to the shepherds

Weather here is an interesting mix as we get many cold days but several times this month it has warmed up and even rained. Our snow has never gone completely away but when it gets cold again and we have freezing rain that really adds to the excitement of walking in the mornings.

Not your normal street sign

Each winter the canal is turned into the world largest skating park

This is what it will look like in a couple of weeks it has
not been cold enough yet to open the canal to skating

This is a large government building getting into the spirit of the season HO HO

 For Christmas we gave each other trekking poles and we wear ice cleats on the bottom of our boots.  We have only gone down once so far this year and that was before we got our equipment.

Wood Pecker hard at work

ice on the Hogs Back Falls

If you zoom in on this picture you can see us in the doors of the garage.
I have never seen garage doors made out of mirrors before 

This is one of our friends Magie the dog playing snowplow.  We see
her and her owner Anita quite often on our walks

This is the ice covered walks we navigate everyday

We have the wonderful opportunity to work with some of the worlds best missionaries.  The only problem is we get loving them and then the Lord gives them different assignments and they leave.  It is always a sad and happy time as you watch missionaries go home. This last transfer we lost lots of missionaries from the mission but we lost three very dear sisters we have grown to love.

Ethiopian dinner that is a large pancake made with fermented flour

Our two wonderful sisters at their farewell dinner
they just headed home we will miss them

But this is all part of the mission experience and new elders and sisters move into our life and we learn to love them just as much.

Transfer day at the Grey Hound Bus terminal 

We will miss Sister Ashcraft (far left)

Christmas time is always a wonderful time in the mission field. We had the opportunity to have Christmas dinner with our bishop, his family and the new sister missionaries.  They are the STL (Sister Training Leaders). They are so wonderful and great examples of perfect obedience. The sisters that went home used up most the miles on their car so we had the opportunity to take them around some this month. They would never consider going over on their miles.  They added such a bright spot to the dinner on Christmas day and blessed all our lives.

The Bishop's wife sets a fine Christmas dinner table 

The wonderful food

The fine detail on the drinking glasses

The day before on Christmas Eve President Phillips our mission President posted the plan for his replacement in July. He and his wife will finish their three year calling on June 30, 2019. We were wondering if Sister Ashcraft's (she was one if the wonderful sisters that just went home)father who has just been called to be a mission president would be coming here to replace the Phillips in fact he even served his mission here and speaks French.  But as is often the plan the Lord and his Prophet have other ideas.  It was announced that the Quebec Montreal Mission and the Halifax Missions will be combined.  President and Sister Low who began their mission in Halifax this past July will be our new mission president.  That will bring about lots of changes this coming July and we will not even begin to speculate what all is going to happen.  The Halifax Mission Office is over a 14 hour drive from here so that is going to make the mission way bigger.

The area in blue outline is the Halifax mission the area just to the left
is the Montreal mission the map on the right gives you an idea of
the new mission size.

14 hour drive from our apartment to the new mission office

They have about 100 missionaries in the Halifax mission and we have about 150 in this mission. That is going to make President Low a very busy mission president.

final district council meeting this transfer 

Names of the Savior. This was an activity at our Christmas
zone conference it was a wonderful day

The Ottawa zone

We ended out the year on a wonderful note.  Our YSA Ward had no meeting on the 23rd. They encourage all the youth to attend their home ward.  Sister Mikkelsen and I took the opportunity to travel to the Petawawa branch with is the farthest north and west branch in our area.

YSA activities a way of life for CES couples

The finished product

YSA temple trip Poutine after the temple it is the thing to do

Italian Poutine normally it comes with brown
graves topping but we decided to be adventurous  

The blessings of a temple in our mission 

Singing time at a YSA Christmas activity

Not only did we go to the temple together but we had a night at the National Art Gallery here in Ottawa they have a very impressive art collection.

interactive art display they provided tablets to view the interactive art work

This was one of my favorites

They handsome wonderful native art work

The detail was amazing all carved out of an antler

It was about a 2 hour drive. What a wonderful experience, we were able to meet the Saints from that part of our stake and also participate in their special Christmas program.  We also had the opportunity to deliver a plate of goodies to some missionaries that don't see other missionaries very often.

Heavenly Hash

Christmas goodies ready to bag up.

We finished up the year with a small New Years Eve party with some of the youth from our ward.  It was a fun night.

Angelė a recent convert

Well we hope each of you had a wonderful Christmas season and we wish you all the joys of a New Year.
All our love Elder and Sister Mikkelsen

Our little Grandson received a name and blessing on the 23rd of December we were unable to attend but got great reports of the blessing from Jacob and Natalie

Mads gets a name and a blessing from his Dad

Daniel, Sonia, and Aria traveled to Florida and then to Columbia
For the Christmas break

Riley was a good girl and Santa visited her this year

Jacob and Natalie are packing up and heading back to
to Rexburg to continue their schooling.

One more fun thing about this area many people spend the winter in the southern part of this continent.  As we shop at Costco quite often I was surprised to see these items for sale in the December.  But if your heading to Florida I would be a good idea to take this with you.

Costco Swim Suits

Snorkling masks

A local High councilman Elder Turner paints as a hobby
this is his way of flying south for the winter.
All the geese are gone now and just a few ducks are hanging out still