We made it to Canada!

At 10:30 PM Atlantic time (that's one time zone east of US's east-coast time zone) on Saturday, September 26th, we arrived in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada!!! This is the city where the Mission President has assigned us to labor in for at least the first several months of our mission. We already have an apartment here, courtesy of the previous missionary couple that we are replacing. They finished their mission 6 weeks ago, but before leaving they arranged with the apartment landlord to hold the apartment for us rent free until we arrived. Since we arrived so late in the evening, however, we could not pick up the key to the apartment. We have checked into a hotel for the night. Sunday morning we will attend church at the Moncton ward, which we understand is a small ward even though it covers a very large geographic area. Afterwards, we will move into our apartment. Once there, we will be out of touch for a few days, since we have to arrange for phone and internet serivice and wait for it to be installed.

Some quick updates since our previous post... Our car has run flawlessly since we left Kirtland, Ohio. Whatever had caused the engine to quit twice last Monday never recurred. We drove from Kirtland to Utica, New York this past Wednesday. The route took us past Palmyra, NY, and we took the time to stop by the Hill Cumorah visitors center (which is fantastic), drive by the Palmyra Temple (it was closed that day), see the recreation of the log cabin the Smith family lived in and the restored original frame house that the Smith family built, and walk through the Sacred Grove. On Thursday, we drove to Merrimack, New Hampshire, where we lived from 1983 to 1990. We took some back roads across Vermont and New Hampsire to get there. It was a beautiful drive, with the trees just starting to turn fall colors. We stayed in New Hampshire all day Friday, and then drove the rest of the way to our mission today (about 550 miles). It took us "just" 45 minutes to clear the Canadian Customs and Immigration, and we were the only people coming through at the time.

We will post some pictures once we are back online again.