Yesterday we had zone conf in Ottawa, the capitol of Canada. The drive there took about 2 1/2 hours. We left in the afternoon on Monday after working in the office and arrived later that evening. We stayed at Macies Best Western. I liked it although it didn't have a fridge or a microwave and was quite expensive. Also none of the hotels served breakfast. I think that is so inconvenient and also not economical. The room was nice and the beds were very comfortable.We
We walked around in this tiny mall and then found Rockin' Johnny's a nice little diner.
Papa is reading the menu and I loved seeing the old juke box on the table. It reminded me of my youth when we had those in many restaurants. They also played music from the late 50's, 60's and I enjoyed that.
Papa had a hamburger which was huge.
I had wings and the best spare ribs. In fact, I think these were about the best ribs I've ever had.
The decor was lots of fun too.
In the morning we ate bagels and fruit which I had packed and took off for the conference. We took a wrong turn and what should have been a 10-15 minute drive took us 30 minutes. Luckily we arrived just in time for conference to begin. After the hymn and prayer and a few announcements, it's my turn to do training and after me it's Elder Arhets. This time I was teaching the missionaries how to fill out baptismal certificates properly. It should be a fairly simple exercise where you just fill in the blanks and yet the forms have not been filled out carefully. I tried to teach them to be careful and I added a little bit of humor to my presentation. One of the things they need to be careful about is putting in either m for male or f for female. I got a few forms from which I need to submit the information to Salt Lake City for their permanent records that had the sex marked as g. What does g mean. At first I thought maybe it stood for girl? I discovered that it actually stood for garcon, which is boy in french. However we are filling these forms our in English and I am sending the info to America and it needs to be in English. I also told them how important it is to get dates correct. For example one form had the mother of 10 children listed as being born this year. Now I'm quite sure that a mom of 10 is not just 8 months old. We also need to write who the head of household is. On one form one of the children was listed as head of household at the age of 11 when the rest of the siblings has the father listed as head of household. There were a lot of other things that I needed to make the missionaries aware of in how to fill out certain form and documents. Elder Arhets who is in charge of the fleet of 47 cars spoke on car maintenance and also instructed the missionaries on safe winter driving. Then while the conference continued we had to go outside to inspect the cars. Wouldn't you know it, it was just our luck that is began snowing just as we began inspecting the cars. It continued for the next couple of hours and then just as we were finishing up, the snow stopped. Luckily there was not much wind, so it wasn't as cold as it could have been.
The lady in the picture above is Sister Booth. She prepared the lunch for everyone. She has been cooking for the Ottawa zone conference, every 3 months, for the past 14 years. I think she is amazing. I cannot even imagine doing that. She is a woman of dedication and hard work. She does the whole thing herself and does not accept any help. Yesterday she fixed chicken tetrazinni, corn, green beans, rolls, and a raspberry, nut, green salad. For dessert she served some sort of a pound cake that had been soaked in some sort of a fruit sauce and had fruit in it. It was topped with whipped cream and had a cookie on the side. Everything was absolutely delicious. The table was set with nice dishes and a candy cane at each place setting. Afterwards there were also after dinner chocolates. We are sure thankful for her selfless service to the missionaries. She is waiting for her son, the father of several of her grandchildren to return home from Afghanistan in 3 weeks. We pray for his safe return.
Here are the Ottawa Zone missionaries. Two of the sisters are from Mexico, one is from Montreal, and one is from Tahiti. The elder on the front row right is Elder Vanfau from Vanuatu. The one in the front row in the middle didn't even know about the church 2 years ago. He is from Mexico also. In this group there is also an elder from Switzerland, one from France, and several from the U.S. I didn't get a chance to talk to all of them, but I look forward to meeting all of them. I am always amazed at how wonderful the young missionaries are. They are so nice and enthusiastic. They love the Lord and they are anxious to do good. It is just a pleasure to be with them and to work with them.
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