We have been very busy these past 3 weeks. Most of our time continues to be spent with the online seminary course. We currently have 11 students enrolled, and expect to have a few more join in soon. The course is going very well, albeit quite time consuming. The students and their parents are telling us that the course is much better than the home study seminary that was all they had available before.
We have been having an "Indian Summer" since our last blog entries. Temperatures have been in the low 40's during the day and mid 20's at night. And no snow! That's good, because we have had to do quite a bit of traveling these past few weeks. Our stake president has asked that we arrange to speak in other wards or branches in the stake at least two times each month. In the past three weeks we have spoken in Sacrament meeting in Moncton New Brunswick (our home ward), Saint John New Brunswick, and Caribou Maine (which is a border town with members in both Canada and Maine). In addition to speaking in Sacrament meeting, we visit families with seminary age youth who are not participating in seminary and meet with seminary and institute teachers in each ward or branch to discuss the potential students in their area.
There are two stakes and one district in the Halifax mission. Each of these holds a "Super Saturday" once every two or three months. These are stake-wide or district-wide activities for seminary-age students and typically include some classes, some fun games, a service project, and possibly a dance. We attended two of these in November, in Fredericton, New Brunswick and on Prince Edward Island (which everyone calls "PEI" here). This was our first trip to PEI. It was a beautiful drive to the activity, even in November when there are no longer any leaves on the trees.
There are only two ways to get to Prince Edward Island by car: using a ferry, which costs about $70, or driving across an 8-mile long bridge--the longest bridge in the world over water that freezes--with a $43 toll. We took the bridge on this trip. It was both less expensive and closer to where we live than the ferry. A picture of the bridge that I pulled off the Internet is attached.Veteran's Day is called "Remembrance Day" in Canada, and they take it much more seriously here. Most business, including grocery stores were closed the entire day. For a week or more leading up to the holiday, almost everyone we saw was wearing a felt red Poppy pin in remembrance of military veterans.
On one of our trips to visit some families we stopped at a tourist attraction called "Hopewell Rocks". It is near the top of the "Bay of Fundy", which has the highest swing in tides in the world. The difference between low tide and high tide is 50 feet!
At low tide, a person can walk out on the ocean floor to some big rock formations that at high tide are either completely submersed or our just have the tops sticking out of the water. The larger rocks that stick out at high tide have small trees growing on top of them. The Hopewell Rocks park closed this time of year, but there was a "proceed at your own risk" sign on a pathway, and so we did. By pure luck, it was low tide when we stopped there, and so Elder Sutherland walked down a few flights of steel stairs and out onto the ocean floor to take some pictures. One of those pictures is attached. Last week we got stuck in a traffic jam on the way to a member's home. The next thing we knew, several police cars went by the other way escorting a runner carrying the Olympic torch! Unfortunately, we didn't have a camera handy :( but at least we got to see the torch and runner! Early the next morning we went to leave our apartment to go to a mission district meeting, and crowds were starting to gather on the sidewalks along the street. The Olympic torch was going to be carried right past our apartment building a short time later.
For American Thanksgiving (just a normal work and school day here in Canada), the mission president and his wife invited all the couple missionaries to the mission home for dinner and to go to the Halifax Temple that evening. We taught an early morning seminary class Thursday morning, and then drove to Halifax, 3 hours away. Six couples were at the dinner: us, 3 other missionary couples, the mission president and his wife, and the temple president and his wife. Two younger sister missionaries also joined us. It was a great day! A new grandchild, a good visit with other mission couples, a delicious turkey dinner and a visit to the temple all in one day!
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