Monday, December 27, 2010

I love Christmas :)

Hey everybody!

Christmas here was WONDERFUL! I have eaten more tourtiere (meat pie) and bouche de Noel (these Christmas ice cream/cake logs) than I thought was possible. It was SO fun though. Sister Palmer is my new companion and we are having the best time together. We laugh everyday...I don't think there's been a single day where we haven't laughed for at least half of the day. On Tuesday we met at Berri and went out for poutine (as is the tradition among missionaries) and then came home, unpacked, and went to go teach a new investigator. She's actually been taught by missionaries before (she's the wife of a member) but has smoking problems and has never been able to quit, but has finally decided that right after Christmas (so this week) she's going to stop for good. We're excited to keep teaching her and bring that family closer together so that they can get the blessings of an eternal temple marriage. I'm excited for it :)

We also spent a lot of time with members and less actives this week. It was amazing to me how many people remembered to invite the missionaries over to their houses for Christmas (we got at least 7 invitations, but had to turn quite a few down), but forgot about the other single people in the ward who don't have families nearby. So Christmas Eve we spent visiting with these single less active sisters and trying to help make their Christmas a little better. We had made fudge the other day and put some of that on plates and delivered it to less active families and it was a lot of fun. Then Christmas Eve we went to this Christmas party with a family in our ward and all their relatives and the elders were all invited too and we had such a great time. WE ate all night (including a meat pie made out of moose....yes, I ate moose. crazy) and the traditional turkey dinner. We then went to midnight mass at this Catholic church with the elders and that was an interesting experience that I don't think I'm going to repeat...it took way too much concentration for how tired I was that night to try to follow along and stand up and sit down at all the right times. But it was a fun experience to do once. Then on Christmas day we went to a family in Lemoyne's ward (the elders area) and it turns out that my favorite family in our ward (the Groux's...the ones who she's 23 and a convert and they have 3 girls under the age of 3 and we go to their house like once a week) were there because it's the husband's family. They're from Switzerland and made a traditional Swiss meal which was good, but had some very different-tasting things (like these jello jigglers made out of like chicken bullion) and we were there for several hours and just laughed the whole time. At one point they gave us cookies which we had already eaten way too many other things and so I gave half of my cookie to Sister Palmer who gave her whole cookie to Elder Anderson, who gave it to Elder Helle, who stuck it back on the plate of the man who had given it to us to begin with. The man turned around and asked who had stuck it there and Sister palmer and I both blamed Elder Helle, but he pointed at us and the man thought it was us. It was just so funny though. Probably funnier in person....

Then we went to a second dinner at Sister de Seve's house. She's an older single woman and she had invited another older single woman to come and we were all sitting there and Sister Palmer and I were SO exhausted by that time that we could barely keep our eyes open. She gave us ANOTHER tourtiere (like the 6th one we had eaten that week) and so much more food that we could barely eat. It was SUCH a fun day...we really had a great time this week.

And I'm really looking forward to this transfer with Sister Palmer. She is so much fun...she's a lot like the people that I hang out with back home. And she's SO excited about the work...she goes and talks to everyone and she is so enthusiastic about it that it makes everyone else want to listen to her. I'm so excited. It should be a really good week :)

Anyways, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that you have a great New Year! I love you all!

Love, Sister Nicole Lindsey

MERRY CHRISTMAS! :)

Hey everyone!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! What a wonderful season this is! I just love that we get to celebrate Christ's birth and that we know the impact that His birth had on the world. It's so sad to talk with people here sometimes where Christmas has become just a commercialized celebration and they either haven't been taught or don't care to know the real reason that we have this holiday. I love being able to share the message with those that listen that Jesus Christ is our Savior! He was born for us, lived a perfect life to show us the example, and died for each one of us. And then the most exciting part of it all: He was resurrected and He lives today! Because of Him, we CAN return someday and live with our Father in Heaven again. We can be completley pure or all errors that we might make. And we can overcome our weaknesses. I just love that part of this Gospel...it is so full of hope and joy! :) Weare STILL rejoicing in the birth of our Savior just as the angels did on the day He was born. What a wonderful reason to celebrate! :)

Things here are going really well and I'm excited for this next week. We did have transfers and I am staying here in Longueuil but getting a new companion, Sister Palmer. She started her mission 6 weeks ago up in Victoriaville and we were a bit surprised to hear that she was being transferred but even more surprised to find out that Sister Quist was going up to Victoriaville and replacing her, still keeping her 2 other companions (there is a 3 some there now and still will be). But we're both pretty excited about it...it'll be different, but so fun :)

Also this week we had our mission Christmas party and we just had the most amazing time! It started at about 10 in the morning and we got our flu shots first thing (not the best way to start it off, but at least it was over and out of the way) and then we all voted on what movie we wanted to watch. there were 3 options: It's a Beautiful Life, The Bishop's Wife (I'd never heard of that one before), and Toy Story 3. So naturally we picked Toy Story 3 and it was such a good movie! It was kind of strange to be sitting there with a bunch of elders watching a non church movie, but it was a lot of fun. Then the senior couples had all prepared us a fabulous dinner, we had several muscial presentations (one from each zone and then one or two others) and then we had a qhite elephant gift exchange. There were some random presents that were given...but it was a lot of fun. The funniest was our assistant to the president, Elder Corbett. Everyone teases him mercilessly about how he looks like Jacob from Twilight (and he really does look a lot like him) and so he opened his present and it was a poster of Jacob from Twilight. SO funny. Everyone was laughing and he posed for about a million pictures with his poster. I loved it. Then after that we had a quick visit from Santa and Mrs. Claus who gave us each presents before we headed home. The whole party ended at about 4 in the afternoon and we all just loved it.

So that was probably the highlight of the week, but we had some other good things as well. We had several DA's...several members from the Greenfield Park ward invited us out to eat with the sisters from that ward so we went to a really nice Chinese restaurant and a great Italian one. Then we also went to the Elders Christmas party in Lemoyne because they had a recent convert who wanted us to come. It was so much fun. In between all of that, we did teach several lessons and met some great people, unfortunately most of them are going out of town for the holidays, but we'll see them when we get back :) And we've been opening your presents everyday Mom...thanks so much! it's always so fun every morning to look up the scriptures and then try and guess what the presents are. We've done a pretty good job of guessing them so far...there are some really clever ones. Thanks so much :)

I hope you all have a wonderful week and an incredible Christmas...we do have such a great reason to celebrate this Holiday season :) I love you all tons!!

Love, Sister Nicole Lindsey

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

On the first day of Christmas.... :)

Hey everyone!

How are you? How was your week? This week was really fun...it started off with a wonderful but incredibly exhausting P-day last Monday. We've been wanting to climb Mount Saint Hilaire for a little while, so we all drove out to St Hilaire (the zone leaders area) and did emails, went out to eat, and then went to go climb the mountain. it was kind of crazy though, while we were eating it started snowing TONS. We decided to climb the mountain anyways though and just take the shorter route, but then that route was closed and so we ended up taking the longer one. It was likte 5 kilometers which wouldn't have been too bad, but by the time we got to the top the snow was like 5 inches deep. it was SO much fun though. We had a great time. We were all pretty exhausted when we got back, but it was definitely worth it.

Other than that, this week was pretty uneventful. We taught a couple of people and had our ward Christmas party which was really fun. We taught Magda (the woman from Romania) and committed her to be baptized in January. It was so exciting! She has a daughter who wants to get baptized at the same time, but we have to teach her a little bit more first. I'm so excited for them...they're wonderful. Then we taught Ruth and she came to the ward Christmas party and LOVED it and then came to church and just had a really great time. She's doing really well.

Also this week we went on splits with the Greenfield Park Sisters (Sister Cottrell and Sister Tschumi) and so Sister Tschumi came here with me and we worked together for a day and it was just so much fun. I haven't really seen her very much since I trained her back like 4 transfers ago, so it was fun to be with her and catch up. We were laughing the entire time and just had a great day together finding and teaching people. We met a really interesting man...I've realized again how little clothing people wear here. We had several who opened the doors without pants on...so bizarre. But it was a lot of fun :)

We also had the chance to visit with a lot of our members this week which was really neat. I just love working with the members and we have some really neat people in this ward. I love them and I'm so excited to work even more with them! One of our members, SIster Groux, invited us over and we talked with her for a LONG time. She has 3 daughters all under the age of 3, and they're so cute! I just love that family. Transfer calls are this Saturday adn I'm almost positive that I'm staying here and I'm so excited...it'll be fun to work here for at least another 6 weeks and get to know the members even more and keep working with our investigators.

Then this week we're having a Christmas program for all the missionaries...we're meeting up with the IDM zone (so the one I was just in last transfer) and the Quebec zone and we're spending the entire day together playing games and singing songs and doing all kinds of things. I'm so excited...it should be a lot of fun this Christmas. I hope everything is going well for you back home...I love you all tons and I'm so grateful for all your love and support! thank you for all that you do :)

Love, Sister Nicole Lindsey

Hey mom!

Thanks so much for you letter! I`m going to write you a real quick one now and then I`ll write a bigger one to everyone and then hopefully I`ll still have time left to write you another one. But I wanted to let you know that I DID get your packages! Thank you SO much! They came on Tuesday night and it was kind of funny, the woman we live with (Grandma) said that she signed for them but then realized she didn`t know who Nicole Lindsey was and so she almost sent them back, but then luckily we decided to go visit her that evening and as an afterthought I warned her about the packages that were coming and she said that they had just come! I wasn`t expecting them for another week or so, but they came really fast this year. Thank you so much! We started looking up scriptures almost immediately and there are some that we got pretty quickly and others that it took us a lot longer to understand. Like the toothbrush one was pretty easy...`cleanliness of teeth"! How did you find that scripture? And did you find the scripture for the package or did you find the scripture first and then decide to send toothbrushes? Pretty funny. There are some really good ones...we opened the first presents today and it was so exciting! thanks so much for the gingerbread house and candle...we're going to have a blast this Christmas :) I love you tons and I'll write more later!

Love, Nicole

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Christmas bells are ringing... :)

Hey everybody!

This week was SUCH a wonderful week! We had zone conference on Tuesday which is always fun and it just started out the week well. Then afterwards on Tuesday afternoon we went and blitzed the elders area a bit and ate with them and then went out and met a really neat girl while knocking named Victoria. She's 17, studying to be a dentist, and has already met with the missionaries (a long time ago) and is really interested in learning more. I'm way excited to keep teaching her.

On Wednesday we went out to eat with the Hochelaga sisters (Sister Davis and Sister Hamula) and I just LOVE them! They are so much fun...Sister Hamula and I have been talking about how much fun it would be to serve together...maybe someday we'll be companions! We did a lot of knocking doors this week, which was good, and got to have a couple of dinners with some of our members which was also a lot of fun. It's really neat to get to know them better and see them in a home setting instead of just at church...I really love it :) We also had a Relief Society dinner on Thursday and that was way fun...we spent all day decorating for it and then we were there for a couple of hours and it was just a lot of fun to be there with all of the other women in the congregation. We had several investigators who came and just loved it, so that was good. 2 of them (Magda and Lunabella) decided that they just loved our church so much that they want to get baptized and they came and asked us how to do that. So we're going to keep meeting with them and set a date at some point in time...I'm pretty excited about it :)

The best part of this week though was definitely on Saturday...we went to the temple with Lyse! Haha, we thought we were doing baptisms at 9:30 though so we got to the temple at 9 and met up with Sister Leonard and Sister Rodriguez, then found out that the bus from Quebec wasn't coming until later because they weren't starting the baptisms until 11. So we sat and talked with the other sisters for about an hour and I love them so much...it was so fun to catch up with Sister Leonard. while we were waiting we also called Elder Coronado, one of the elders who was Sister Leonard's and my zone leader when I was in hochelaga who is now in Quebec and talked with him for a bit, and he said how we were legends up there in Quebec...everyone loves us. It was SO neat to be able to see them all again and to look around and realize how much I love those people. I saw Lyse (which was SO amazing!) as she did baptisms for her family and it was so exciting to realize that she has been able to keep her baptismal covenants since her baptism and is still so strong in her faith..I just love it. And to know that she's now been the means of bringing even more of her relatives into the Gospel...so neat. I was all set and ready to take care of her as well, but we walked in to the temple and the members were already doing such a good job leading her around and taking care of her that I realized that she didn't really need me there. But it was still SUCH a great experience to be there and to have those memories of Quebec...I LOVE Quebec.

Then church yesterday was fun. We were asked on Thursday evening to give the RS lesson in church on missionary work, so we toodk some time on Saturday to prepare the lesson and it went SO well. We were so grateful...it is really incredible to see how much the Lord blesses us each week...I really just love being on a mission. I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week!

Love, Sister Nicole Lindsey