For Tim, this is our little but very warm, comfortable apartment.  We even cleaned it yesterday and did laundry.  Love you, ma basting

Jim took the picture of the Canadian products in the cupboard.  He gets a big kick out of French and the
special packaging here.

 Home Sweet Home

Notice the lables : )

Mom and I went with Sister Paulson to do two Missionary apartment checks. The first one was good because she forewarned them. The second was pure disaster because Sister Paulson called them from the parking lot. They at least made their beds. The remainder of their apartment looked like a tornado went through it. Anyway it will eventually be part of our responsibilities to check apartments. Mom broke out Rex' Russian coat. It does curl our toes at 5 degrees F. making coats, hats and gloves are mandatory. Mom and Sister Paulson are smiling despite the cold.

Pictures!

 Baby, it's COLD outside!

 Downtown Winnipeg

 Future site for the Winnipeg Temple

The price of gas!

Hockey sticks at Costco

December 5, 2011

We are here in Canada. It's strange though since it's almost like home but it isn't. We can see Safeway and Sears from our window and of course there is Mc Donald's, Burger King, Dairy Queen, Wall Mart and even Home Depot. Road signs are the same but everything is in metric. It's a pain to go to the store and try to compare. Although I now know that 1 Kilogram is 2.2 pounds. Also everything is double labeled one side in English and the other in French. The people in general are very  friendly. Their license plate does say friendly Manitoba. It took us several days to get settled and set up a Canadian checking account. Fortunately the American dollar was worth more than the Canadian dollar for the exchange.

We travel across town to our assigned area which takes us through downtown Winnipeg which is like any big city. Lots of busses, foot traffic, cars and bikes. The bicyclists ride in the buss lane, so far we have seen no carnage. Everyone wears black, maybe to attract the heat from the sun? Makes them hard to see at night. We travel mostly by GPS but have learned some main routes. One night on the way back we pushed the home button on the GPS supposing our apartment address was "home". Sarah our GPS voice led us  astray. We had driven quite a long way when she said turn left and drive 72 miles South. I knew something was a muck. Donna checked and Sarah was sending back to the border perhaps to Oregon. I looked at a map after we got home and discovered we had driven about 25 extra miles around the perimeter highway that circles the city. It was truly the scenic route, too bad it was in the dark.

The Red and Assiniboine Rivers run through the city and join at a place the locals call The Forks. It's similar to Portland's water front area with lots of stuff going on at least in warm weather. The Red River is the only river that flows North from the States into Canada. The country side here is absolutely flat and the Red meanders allot setting up the potential every year for flooding. The rivers freeze over (they are frozen now) and as the ice breaks up in the spring the water can't get past the ice dams and the water begins to back up, ergo flooding.

 Everything is very expensive especially groceries. Food from the market is not taxed but everything else is. They have a 12 percent sales tax, 7 percent goes to the Province and 5 percent to the federal government. The locals say if you bleed in Canada you are taxed. I suspect in part the heavy tax pays for their socialized medicine. I bought gas today for $1.05 per liter or $4.20 per gallon. Fortunately the tax is already figured into the gas price. Across the border in ND gas in $3.35 per gallon.

Canadians can enter the US and buy up to $400.00 in duty free goods every two weeks. They have to have receipts and they better not lie as the Canadian Govt. checks them closely. If you get caught you get put on a list and are restricted for a long period of time. I see why they cross over since tax here is so high. They travel to Grand Forks ND which must be 1 1/2 away. Grand Forks has all the attractive shopping things we are familiar with.

The weather is cold for us. The daytime highs have been in the mid 20's F and in the low teens at night. The wind is the killer. It blows a lot and you dress in layers according to the wind chill factor. It has only snowed once, about 5 cm. The city gets right after it with plows and a sand salt mixture. It does no good to wash your car as the sand salt gets on your car from the road spray and it looks like you have just come in from a Baja mud race. There are no do it yourself car washes. Too cold for that everything freezes pretty quick. You can pay between $8.00 and $60.00 for a drive through wash and air dry but with the road spray most folks let it go. We live on the 3rd floor of a 11 story apartment building and the road spray from a four lane boulevard reaches our balcony sliding glass door. Everyone tells us they are having a mild fall and early winter. They tell just wait and see. We are fine with the way it is but know it will get worse.

Since I started this letter (last week) the temps have dropped. Last night's low was -10 F and today's high will be about +15 F. The sun is out though. Before we left home I bought two pair of Cabela's silk long johns. Best buy I have made in a while. They keep the wind from going through you pants and freezing your legs.

A couple more things. When it snows it's here to stay at least on the lawns, roof tops, shaded areas and lots of residential shaded residential streets. I almost forgot no one has studded tires. You see lots of all season and traction tires but nary a stud. They may be outlawed. Something that stuck me funny is their two person traffic teams. These folks are on foot and wear the florescent green coats and hide behind phone poles, bushes etc. One has the radar gun and the other one pops out and waves you to the curb and gives you ticket. Of course they have the regular police officers in patrol cars too.

You need to know about "loonies" and "toonies". Since Canada has nothing smaller than a $5.00 bill they have a one dollar coin, a "loonie" because it has a Lune Bird on it and two dollar coin or "toonie" which is a tad bigger and is made up of two metals. The outer circle is silver and the inner circle looks like copper. They of course have quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. At some grocery stores to get a cart you put your "loonie" in a slot in the handle that unlocks a chain that locks one cart to another. After you use the cart if you want your dollar ("loonie") back you bring the cart all the way back into the store reattach the locking chain and out pops your "loonie". Most people have their own grocery bags made of cloth or heavy vinyl. If you use plastic as we do in the States they charge you a nickel per bag. Another Canadian custom is shoes off at the door. People take their shoes off so their house don't get all tracked up. Lots of winter sand from streets and sidewalks. Anyway makes for cleaner rugs and floors. The Canadians don't have post offices like we do. There in a corner of some drug stores. To post a letter inside Canada is $ .57 cents but to post one to the States it's $1.03 plus 12 percent tax. Ah the ever present tax.

There is Mission downtown Winnipeg where different churches work together volunteering to prepare and serve diner each night to about 330 people mostly men but a few women and kids. Donna and I participated one evening and were assigned lettuce; we unwrapped, cleaned and chopped up 72 heads. Also cut gallons of mushrooms while other grated carrots, sliced cucumbers, apples etc. Others cooked the spaghetti and a group of older high school kids served the meal. Quite an operation all supervised by some young fellow 22 years old. I must admit that while not minding kitchen work, going to and from the facility surrounded by a mass of homeless people made me uncomfortable. Looks like I have some things to work on eh!

Well that's all the news from Canada eh!. Take care and have a Merry Christmas.

Jim Bob.

Here are a few photos

 The mission home

 Elder Basting & Elder Christensen (the FBI agent)

President & Sister Paulsen

Two Weeks!

We have had the blessing of meeting so many wonderful people.  We have been able to make 10 visits this week, not as many as we would like but we are able to sit and listen for as long as they would care to share.  It is helping us get to know the special people in our ward.  Strangers in our building and in public places are friendly but no one has asked to have the discussions yet, C:  It is against the law for us to proselyte our apartment building because it is a locked facility and you can't get in unless someone invites you and buzzes you in. 

It snowed lightly all day but there is very little accumulation.  On the other side of town there is more snow than at our place, more ice, too.  We visited several interesting people today.  One family an older man, not as old as us, but middle aged and a very young beautiful Filipino wife.  They have a little girl Terah or Terra.  She has a Master's Degree in microbiology and works in a pharmaceutical lab.  Her teaching license is not valid in Canada but it is in the USA.  Back home, her father had 10 acres of land with guava, mango, pineapple,banana trees, etc.  And they would hunt cobra snakes especially to protect the children from the nearby school that jump the fence to pick fruit.  When her father was younger, he and his cousin were walking on this property and a snake(she says) or a lizard (he says) bit the cousin, he was dead in 10 minutes.  Jim was real glad we weren't called there. 

We visited the home of a wonderful German sister who is a widow.  What a story she has to tell.  She speaks very good English.  She made us lunch of turkey soup with spaetzel (sp), oh man, was it good.  Any way, her father and mother were not married when she was born in 1939, then tragically he was killed fighting Poland.  Her mother took her to her grandparents (father's side) and left her for care while she worked as a nurse.  She never came back. Later we find out, she had been told that they were killed in a bombing raid.  The grandfather was with the railroad and kept someplace for years?  The grandmother, with Sister G. and 2 other nieces survived by working on a farm for room and board.  After the war, the grandfather found them and the family was reunited.  All this time she thought her grandparents were her parents and the nieces were her sisters.  The grandma died and the grandfather was put in an isolation ward for tuberculosis.  He suggested she and her "sister" find the other sister that was living in West Berlin.  If you went with a ticket and didn't come back, your family was automatically thrown in jail until you returned.  He told her to go because they would be afraid to move him and spreading the TB.  She and her sister actually hopped the train when the engine was in West Berlin and the Caboose was in East.  For some reason she was never asked to produce her ticket so her father was safe.  After her father died, she immigrated to Canada with some friends and has been here ever since.  She married and said she never knew anything was wrong with her marriage, no clue.  Her husband abandoned her for a younger woman and left her devastated.  She quit Church at this point because she was mad at God for letting this happen to her.  I forgot, in order to immigrate you have to have a birth certificate.  This is when she finds outs she was raised by her grandparents.  So, a friend here in Canada suggested she find out if her mother was living.  She didn't want to, thinking she had been abandoned and not wanted; but relented and contacted the Red Cross.  That failed and the letter was returned, she thought rejected.  Finally she went through the police and it had been an address glitch.  She phoned her mum, she said she paid $50 to listen to her cry.  She went to Germany to meet her mom.  Her mother thought all those years that she was dead.  Her mom had remarried, he was killed in Hitler's army; she remarried again, and he was killed in the war.  Finally she married again and had had 2 more daughters (I don't know who the father's were).  So Sister G. met her mother and 2 half-sisters.  She only had a few encounters with her mother before she passed.  She desired to be sealed to her family after she came back to church and was done being angry.  Her niece (the one she thought was her sister) was best friends with Harriet Uchtdorf. President Uchtdorf had been their Stake President  and now, of course a member of the First Presidency, well he helped with that.  I will have to tell you about that later.  She had to leave Germany early because of a gall-bladder attack and make friends on the plane with some other German Canadians.  They invited her to dinner, not to be set up, but they always invited a widower that was also German.  They hit it off, but she said no to his marriage proposal because she would never marry out of her Church.  He said, what Church do you belong to?  She was just like me, I had never heard of a Mormon before, either.  As fate would have it, the missionaries knocked on her door, he thought it was a set up, she didn't have a clue they were coming by.  He started visiting with them.  They taught him the Great Plan of Happiness, he didn't accept right away.  He had a heart attack and needed 5 bypasses.  She said he was agitated and scared, etc.  She asked him if he would allow a Priesthood blessing.  He agreed.  She said from that moment on he was a changed man.  He threw away the few bad habits he had and was baptized.  They went to the Temple and she finally got to be sealed to the man of her dreams.  Then he died.  Her testimony is amazing though.  "Life doesn't always turn out or even go the way we plan, but the Lord knows me and He did provide everything I needed and wanted."  She looks forward to their reunion.  What a woman!  She has the most beautiful blue eyes; fair clear skin and incredible spirit.  Hope this all makes sense to you.  Let me know if I am giving too much detail.  I just get incredibly touched by these people and the things they have been through. 

I know how she feels about being sealed to her family though.  I feel that way about all of you.  Heavenly Father has blessed us with a wonderful, loving family, surely one I want to be with for all eternity!   I love you!  xoxox mom

Getting Settled In

It continues to be a small world in the Church, although I haven't met anyone who knows Mollie yet, but I suspect that will happen.  But the first night we were here we went to a missionary farewell, 2 Elders were going home after completing their missions.  After the fireside we were introduced to some other senior missionaries.  Elder and Sister Christensen are the seminary and institute missionaries.  Did you know there is a pilot program for online seminary?  It reaches outlying areas, which here it is vast, some people are 6 hours away.  Anyhow, Elder Christensen is a former FBI agent, but that is not the interesting part.  He was the agent sent to Samara Russia when Andy Propst was kidnapped.  Now it gets interesting.  He has a picture of their meeting, Andy looked terrified still.  He was in the clothes his captors put him in, but being a photocopy it was not a good photo.  The KGB interrogated both elders, 14 hours a day for 3 or 4 days, I forget.  Elder C.  talked with the elders and asked them was there anything in their conduct that he needed to be apprised of. Thankfully, the answer was no. The story Elder C.  related was pretty exact to what Andy told in his fireside.  Elder Tuttle had gotten out of his cuffs, they could have overpowered their abductors but the Spirit told them not to.  This ended up to be a great blessing to the continuence of missionary work in Russia.  The head of the KGB said he had never met young men so pure and without guile.  Both Elders had forgiven these men, even though they had been severely beaten with a baseball bat.  In fact the KGB told Elder C.  if you ever have any trouble or need anything in Russia, you come to me.  Also, Elder C. said before he left for Russia, he asked (because he was required to) the First Presidency if they would pay the ransom.  President Faust's remark was, Jesus Christ has already ransomed them.  The timeline of when Elder Tuttle and Propst were released instead of being shot was when the Prophet was in the Temple praying for these two Elders with no guile.  They probably don't even know the missionary work they did in their short time in Russia or the hearts they softened in the KGB. 

I have to tell you one more story that Elder Christensen related in a YSA fireside.  You will be too young to know anything about this.  But some Croatian men who wanted to start a revolution back in Yugoslavia hijacked a plane going from LA to NY.  Well, this plane was not equipped to fly overseas so the Air Force sent a plane to lead the way.  They had to land in various places to refuel.  When they got to France, the police shot the tires out.  The hijackers demanded a direct phoneline to someone of importance in the USA.  As the workers were laying this line they cut into a conversation unaware to the people.  It was a man and a woman.  He was trying to convince her to rendevous with him and he was sure no one would ever know.  Little did he know that several hundred people heard the whole set up; in many countries.  His point to the young adults, what do you do when you think no one else is listening or watching?  The clean hands and a pure heart scenario.  Just so you will know the rest of the story.  These hijackers were not mean, they released everyone.  I don't know about the adulterers!

We have been to our ward once now.  It is a sister ward to Sweet Home, very, very friendly.  It covers a huge area.  Yesterday we drove 40 miles to visit 3 homes.  Then when I pressed home on the GPS, Sarah (GPS) got the USA in her sights.  I didn't catch on we were going the wrong way until she said, "go 73 miles"  what?  Oh well, it was a nice drive.  Our Bishop's name is Heieie, pronounced Hi yi.  We visited his parents yesterday, he was also one of the past bishops.  They are originally from Scandinavia, but their name was Petersen.  Well, one of his ancestors somehow joined up with Jesse James and somehow killed a little girl.  Well, Bishop H's grandfather was so embarrassed that he packed his family up and moved to Canada and changed his name.  The word Heieie has special meaning in his native tongue.  That is how they ended up in Winnipeg.

We visited a sweet Guatamalan family.  They moved from their beloved homeland to escape the Gadianton robbers.  They said it is too dangerous to live there anymore.  But they have a desire to retire there.  They showed us a beautiful picture of their dream location which he is sure is by the Waters of Mormon.  His wife Alma goes to the Catholic Church because it is in Spanish.  He is trying to get cleared to teach math, science and physics here like he did in Guatamala.  Just a lovely couple.  Then we visited a Filipino couple, and her name is also Alma.  Well, I have been told that many of the Lamanite and Nephite descendents named their sons and daughters after the great prophet in the Book of Mormon, (but these people are converts??)  I wonder if the Philippines were also discovered by Hagoth?  Filipino's insist on feeding you and then send more home with you.  It is delicious but I know expensive.  I feel guilty visiting them if it is going to cost them.

We have visited 4 other families and are trying to get acquainted with the ward members.  They asked dad right off if we were from Salt Lake.  They don't like people from Salt Lake coming here and telling them to do things differently.  We had no intention of doing that anyway.  But....missionary work would go better if they would follow the outline of the Church.  For instance, they don't believe in having ward correlation or PEC unless someone has something specific to bring up, then they will call a meeting.  We had to invite ourselves to ward council just so we could get a ward list and some recommendations of people to visit.  I get the impression that they don't have consistent YW's or YM's, and I don't know if they have a scouting program.  They only have 18% hometeaching and I don't know the statistics on visiting teaching.  But as I said, the boundaries are huge and petrol is very expensive.  The cold and ice don't seem to slow anybody down.  This is a warm winter for them, so far, but the bishop said hold on to your seat.  They actually call it "balmy."  Lots of people get around on bicycles.  They are dressed in black, no helmets usually, and just pedal amongst the cars.  Crazy.   Our mission president who is a wonderful brother, plans to leave us in London Ward for the entire time, unless he gets another senior couple.  He will have us work in the mission office during the day, after his brother and wife go home in 6 months.  Then we will have evenings to visit and reactivate or teach discussions if we ever get that privilege.  (sure hope so).  I have to tell you about our mission presidents brother and wife.  What a dynamic couple.  He was a Captain in the Air Force and a Major in the Army and served lastly as an air traffic controller.  He is built like a wrestler, with a Roman nose and can charm a snake.  I have never heard anyone handle people on the phone like him, but don't get me wrong, he is so kind but ???? at a loss for a word.  He gets things done now.  His wife, the mother of 9 is so soft-spoken and gentle but she can call a sloppy elder to repentance before he knows what hit him.  When President Paulson and Elder Paulson tease each other, it is hilarious.  They have me in stitches.  I had no idea the work, money and time that goes into running a mission and watching out for all the Elders, Sisters and Senior Couples.  The Lord is definitely the overseer, it would not be humanly possible to correlate the missions throughout this vast world without His Divine influence.  The Temple has been held up by the Jewish community.  They are next door to the mission office where the temple will be built.  The rabbi was afraid of the traffic that it would bring and the streets are very narrow and congested.  So that was understandable.  He influenced the commission to rezone.  I think that has almost been worked out now, but there are still some hoops to go through to get final approval.