Learning to Ice Skate!!

Hey everyone!

So this week has been full of adventure, that`s for sure. Transfers were Tuesday and that`s always fun..I love being with a million other missionaries, saying hello to some for the first time in awhile, goodbye to others. It makes the Berri metro stop pretty exciting :) So this one I said goodbye to my "mom" (Sister Williams) and Sister Morse and the AP`s took SIster Pearson and I to the office where we picked up our car. Unfortunately, the car needed windsheild wiper fluid, so we had to stop and get some before leaving. It took awhile to find the place, so we ended up not leaving Montreal until about 3:15. President McKinnon called us just as we were leaving to find out how close we were to Quebec and just laughed when we told him we weren`t even close and he said if we didn`t get out of Montreal before 3:30, we`d be stuck in traffic forever. Well, he was a bit off in his timing, and we ended up being stuck in traffic anyways. Also, the car we got had just come from Ottawa and didn`t have snow tires on it (which is illegal in the Quebec province) and it started snowing, so we were driving a bit slower than we otherwise would have. It gave us plenty of time to talk, which was fun, but in the middle of one of my stories I guess we missed the exit and didn`t realize it. We realized about 45 minutes later than we didn`t recognize anything, so we called Elder Ronndahl to find out where we were (being the AP, he had access to a computer...we didn`t even have a map in our car). He tried to help us, but wasn`t much help, so we pulled over and asked a woman at Jean Coutu. She told us to keep going, get on the 30 and that would take us back to the 20 so we could make it to Montreal, but she forgot to tell us which way to go on the 30. We went the direction we thought we should take, but after about 15 minutes it seemed wrong, so we called Elder Ronndahl AGAIN and his exact words were "Freak man, you`re way out there." So we had to turn around and EVENTUALLY (7 hours later instead of the 2 it should`ve taken) we made it to Quebec. So that was fun. Then the next day, our first REAL day in Quebec, we had a bunch of finding planned and went porting for a bit (door-to-door or porte-a-porte in French) and tried to get ourselves acquanted with the area. That evening we picked an area to go porting in, but when we got there we saw that it was private property, so we tried to make a u-turn to go someplace else. Unfortunately, what we thought was the side of the road was really a ditch and our car slid into it as we were turning, getting completely stuck. We called the zone leaders and explained what it looked like and Elder Pearson, who had been stuck in a ditch twice already this winter, said we could get it out ourselves and to call the other elders. We did, they came, the car was still stuck. We didn`t have AAA or Onstar or anything, so we decided we needed to call a tow truck and called every missionary we could think of who would have a phone book and could get us the number. None of them answered. We didn`t really want to call the members because we figured that wasn`t the best of impressions to make . We finally called Elder Ronndahl again to ask him, and again he wasn`t much help, although he now thinks we`re two of the ditziest sisters in the mission. The zone leaders ended up calling the senior couple here who called a member family who called us and gave us the number to the tow truck. The truck came, got us out, adn while Elder Magre was paying, a pickup truck decided it was going to try to go around the tow truck (bad idea). It ended up getting stuck in the SAME ditch we did, and even with the 4 wheel drive and the snow tires, it couldn`t get out and the tow truck had to help it as well. So crazy. We ended up sitting there for like 3 hours...we tried porting a little, but we ran out of houses.

Then Friday was fun...we taught a recent convert in French, ported a lot, then went to sports night and played dodgeball. We met the CUTEST family from France there..I just love them. But then sometime in the middle of the game, I fell really hard, giving me a LOVELY bruise on my knee (it matches the one I got on my other knee playing volleyball on Monday) that made it difficult to even walk, let alone kneel. But it was so worth it..we had a great time. Saturday we did some more porting, taught an investigator, and taught English class (SO much fun). Then yesterday was church and that was LONG. I am SO tired of thinking in French...I got a headache the first day and it hasn`t gone away since. I think I understood maybe one out of every 10 words yesterday in church...the accent is so strong and they speak incredibly fast. But everyone was so nice and it was fun to be back in a family ward again. I LOVED the YSA branch, but it is fun to have little kids in the ward and youth and everything. The ward is about the same size as our ward back home, but with more children, and it covers a larger area. Being in Rive SUd, it means there are only about 2 active families that we can really work with and about 7 active single adults, so I`m not sure dinner appointments will be much better than they were in YSA. But we did have a really sweet woman who cooked dinner for us yesterday. Unfortunately by the time we got over there I was so exhausted and so tired of speaking French that I couldn`t contribute anything to the conversation. But I`m sure the French will come soon...I`ve been working hard and trying to input things in to the lessons when I can, so I should be improving soon. But it`s been a fun week. OH, and one other adventure: we made homemade tacos for lunch yesterday, but we forgot to turn the stove onto medium instead of on high and so it completely burned the first tortilla, filling the house with smoke and causing the smoke alarm to go off. crazy. Then this morning we woke up (PS: it`s WAY colder up here than it was in Montreal. I freeze with 4 layers on every day) and it had warmed up just enough to have freezing rain instead of snow. We went out to our car and it was COMPLETELY iced over and we don`t have an ice scraper in our car, so we just sat inside for 30 minutes waiting for it to defrost. Then walking outside is an adventure: we don`t really walk, it`s definitely more of ice skating. But I`ll be an INCREDIBLE ice skater by the time I go home :) So it`s been fun; this transfer will definitely be different than last transfer, but it should be good. Take care and have a wonderful week! I love you tons!

Love, Sister Nicole Lindsey