November and December 

The month of October ended with the beautiful occasion of the wedding of 2 of our ward members.  They had been dating for a long time and finally decided to tie the knot.  It has been beautiful watching them as husband and wife. We were blessed to be able to help at the wedding and watch as they did missionary work on their special day.  Most people hand out notes of thanks and love to their guests.  This missionary centered couple handed out copies of the Proclamation on the Family and The Living Christ.  They sang Because I Have Been Given Much and other hymns, and they had the Elders at the door, the sisters serving and we were at the serving table.  So in their tiny house it was loaded with missionaries.  It was a sweet evening.

Elder Petersen has been able to use his teaching skills that he learned with his daughters as he taught the Sister missionaries how to change a tire.  

One day we went walking by Lake Memphremegog in Magog....  one of the cities in our ward.  It was so still and beautiful...  we had to take some "mirror" pictures - so you could see the reflection images in the water....  Look at the clouds....  it was just breathtaking!!!!   

It was a wonderful experience to have the Montreal temple have its open house and re-dedication while we were here.  

During the 2 weeks of the open house we were able to go there 6 times.  We served 2 days as tour guides, took our car full of members and investigators 3 different days, and we met some VIPs there and went with them on a tour.  

We were able to meet Kim Woodbury there (one of our daughter Kim's best friends).  She is the Church Public Relations person over this area.  She goes all over the world organizing temple open houses and we were lucky enough to have her assigned to our Temple.

We also got to see our new good friends the Hatfields who are the office couple for the mission.  They are wonderful people and we are blessed to now count them as our friends.

It is now open and our goal is to go every Friday and take a car full of people with us.   There are a lot of members who don't have cars and will have to take the bus to get there...  so at least while we are here....  we can all go together.

When we have transfers we try and get the whole district together for a goodbye breakfast before they head off to Montreal.   Here is our November transfer....  We were saying goodbye to Elder Sorensen.  It is always a sad day.  We get to love these Elders and Sisters. (as a side note - Sister Tehaamati had an emergency transfer shortly after this, while we were in Utah, and we didn't get to say goodbye to her.  She had to go to Montreal and work with 2 sisters who both had their companions go home.  So she will have her hands full. They are the 2 in the back row in front of the door.)

At that same Breakfast, Elder Petersen was sharing his mission journal with both the sisters and the elders.   They thought it was cool to see what his mission "so long ago" was like and how different it was from theirs. (this is in our apartment...   it is really quite comfortable....  we love it.)

  

Yes.....  you read that right...   we went to another baptism!!   Senior Missionaries have such great perks!!!  This time it was to Utah to see Jessica's oldest daughter Maggie get baptized.

We got there a few days early and in time for Thanksgiving.  This was the "other" side's year for the Thursday event....  so we ate with Kim and Grandma at Grandma's house.  Since we were going to be doing the "Big" meal on Friday, we decided to break the mold and had take out GREEK!!  It was yummy.  Kim picked it up Wed. night and we warmed it up and had a delicious Greek meal on Thursday.  Love it!!

 Friday was the Traditional Meal with LOTS of food and people at Grandma's house.  I think every one of Grandma's posterity was there except the 3 families who live out of state.  Needless to say she was Very happy.

We were there a couple of weeks so we got to have a lot of  grand-kid time.  It was fun raking leaves with them and playing outside. 

The wife of one of Andrew's students at the U, is a mechanic for the Blackhawk Helicopters for the Utah National Guard.  She was nice enough to give us all a tour and let the kids climb inside both the Blackhawk and the Apache Helicopters.  They thought is was totally awesome and so did we!!

The kids loved the guns on the bottom of the Apache....   they made me a little uneasy!!

When Brent retired from the DATC they honored him by naming the assessment center after him.  Here he is the first time he saw it.

The wonderful event that we went home for was exactly that....  wonderful. There was lots of family there.  Her Daddy baptized and confirmed her,  She sang a song and bore her testimony.  Her other set of Grandparents are on a mission in their stake, so both sets of Grandparents were asked to bear their testimonies during the break.  It was pretty cool to have both sets be on missions. Her Great Grandmothers said the prayers and Aunts and Uncles gave the talks and did the music.  We love these events where the two most important things in the world come together.  Covenants with our Heavenly Father and Family.  Paradise!!

While we were away....  Elder Petersen, the newly called ward mission leader - had a baptism.  The missionaries carried it off without a hitch.  It was a wonderful event we hear.  She wanted it to happen before the baby was born.  As you can see....   Papa and Mama Bergeron are proud parents!!

Attending the Merryweather's ward Christmas party helped to put us in the Christmas Spirit.  They had the children act out the Nativity.   It was cute.  The scenery was amazing.  and the Kids did a great job.

We went to festival of the trees with the kids and Millie got her first look at Santa

Meeting  Elder Rudolph's parents gave us the opportunity to hear the Other side of one of our missionaries.  We spoke on the phone with Sister Gardner's Mom and Elder Blake's Mom, too.  So we got to take our missionaries love to their parents, and bring their parents love back to them.

The family drove through the biggest light show I have ever seen.  It was huge!!!  You stayed in the car and just drove through it...  so it was warm and beautiful.

 And one of the best was doing the lights at Temple Square.  We loved seeing the nativities and all the beautiful lights.

The kids really like the Macy's windows.  They have brought back the candy windows that ZCMI used to do.  This year's theme was Peanuts Christmas....  so they really liked it.   For those of you who don't know they decorate the windows and everything is made out of candy.   Here is Lucy standing in front of Lucy.

    

This is a little dark, but I love the kids, the temple, and the reflection pond.  

  

and there is never enough time with kids and hugs.   Dani, J, and Millie joined us for a short visit...  it was good to have them here.

Just before we headed home we had an adult night of dinner and temple.  I do love these people and I love this place.....   It was a wonderful evening, We hadn't done a session at the SL Temple for a long time, and this was the perfect time of year to do it.

Then....  back to the mission.   The day after we got back was our Ward Christmas Party.  It was a great event with lots of food, music, and friendship.  As you can see, I spent most of the night in the kitchen...  but it was worth it.

We had a little problem with our car.  A few months back we started smelling something weird (or as they say in Quebec - tres bizzare) We thought we found some wet carpet and figured that some water had been spilled in the back or something.  We dried it out and fabrized it and it was pretty good when we left.   When we got back...  it was back again!!  and the carpet was really wet....  WHAT??!?!?!   it had been parked for almost 3 weeks and no one had even been in it.   We did some research and found out that there are some problems with this model leaking!!  So we took it to the dealership (of course it just passed the 100k mile warranty) and they found 3 leaks.  So they took everything out, dried it out, hopefully fixed all the leaks, and put it back together.  $800 later....  we have our car back.  Here is what it looked like stripped down and drying out.....

  

We had a wonderful Senior Missionary outing.  Our Mission President's daughter is a ballerina in the Montreal Ballet production of the Nutcracker.  We were able to go and watch her.  It was a beautiful production with amazing special effects!!  and She was one of the 3 sheep...  cute!!

Another transfer.  This time Elder Rudolph (behind Elder Petersen's Head) is leaving us.  Since we have to leave early  Tuesday for the Devotional....  we had it on Monday Morning.  

Our Mission President got permission to have a mission wide devotional for Christmas this year.  So we all went to Montreal.  It was a beautiful event with learning, singing, good food, and good people.  There was LOTS of missionaries who performed.  It is amazing how much talent is available with 167 missionaries!! 20 Senior Missionaries helped to serve and set up the food.  There was also a Mission picture that was taken....   have you heard the term "herding cats"  it was crazy to try and get that many people into one picture!!!   but hopefully it turned out well and we will be getting a copy soon....  I hope. 

Our Tree this year is a little smaller than the 10' tree we usually have at home....  but it is still beautiful and at least we have some lights to help bring the Christmas spirit.

We had to have lights......  because there was no snow.   Utah was getting blasted with many inches and we were 60 degrees and rain.  We did some checking and we were as warm as Phoenix, AZ on Christmas Day.   Not the normal I guarantee you.

Sherbrooke

 Utah

The Annual Sherbrooke Missionaries Photo

The missionaries wanted to share a little cheer with the ward so as a district we decided to go caroling and the goal was to get as many of the members as we could and make sure and get most of the investigators...   all in all we sang to 41 families.  One of our favorites was in Coaticook...  about 40 min away.  It is a part member family and we absolutely LOVE them!!!   They gave us a tour of their home and we had a lovely time with them on Christmas Eve.

Our missionaries spend a lot of time volunteering at the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen.  They are there at least 2 days a week and sometimes more.  We found out that the Captain at SA is in a Gospel Choir and they were having a Christmas Concert....  so we decided to go and support them.   It was pretty fun.  They really rocked St Andrew's Church!!  It was the same night as the Tab Choir Concert in SLC.  Since we weren't able to attend that....  this was a good substitute.

 The ward here is wonderful.  We had 3 meals on Christmas day!!  Brunch, Lunch and Dinner.  Dinner was at the Bishop's home.  What great people they are.  It is great to be loved and be a part of the lives of these wonderful people.

Dinner at the Bishop's

We hope your Christmas was full of love and thoughts of the Savior.  We also hope 2016 brings you  peace, happiness, and joy.