Our Elders

Elder Garrett and the missionaries are always doing a lot of service.  They always come in hungry!

Fellowshipping after dinner with the missionaries and Nadja Viado.  Nadja is from the Philippines and is a nanny here.  She is a very sweet girl. 

The missionaries have dinner with us on Sunday nights.  Elder Dutson and Sister Garrett ready to eat.  Elder Dutson looks like our nephew, Spencer Crunk.  We are really enjoying the missionaries.  They are two hard working Elders!!  They are learning some southern ways!

Elder Taylor and Sophie playing "what time is it Mr. Wolf."  What a good sport he is!

This is the missionaries with Sophie Greenwood.  Her dad is the YM president and her mother is the counselor in YW.  We babysit for her on Wednesday nights when they have activities.  We usually have refreshments with the youth afterward.  Elder Taylor is a great babysitter.  When he is here he entertains Sophie!  Sophie loves Elder Taylor!!!

We get to inspect the missionaries apartment once a month since we are so far away from the mission president!  Elder Taylor and Elder Dutson are neat and tidy.  They have things set up pretty good with each having their own space.

Elder Dutson's side.

Elder Taylor's side.  The church put up new signs in the building so Elder Taylor adopted the old one.

Elder Dutson is displaying his Christmas gift of a custom blanket with the picture of his dog at home.  We don't have a pianist in the branch so Elder Taylor brought the keyboard from the church to brush up on his music some so he can play for Sacrament meeting.

WE LOVE VISITORS

We have had a few visitors this past week.  Sister Madeline Heffel and her husband were here in December.  They live in Norman Wells which is a town here in the Northwest Territories.  Her husband was in the hospital here.  Yellowknife is the biggest town and so people are flown here for medical problems.  Her husband ran the airport in Norman Wells.  She called us while they were here.  She is a member of the church but her husband is not.  The day she called we were having the branch Christmas dinner.  So we went to pick her up and she came to the dinner.  We picked her up for church a couple of times while they were here and took them to the airport when they were ready to go home.  She was in town this time for some court proceedings for three days.  She was staying in a hotel close to the courthouse.  So we picked her up each evening to visit and have dinner.  Her husband is still having some health issues and has not returned to work yet.  Just another advantage of being a member of the Lord's amazing church!  You have friends to help you wherever you go!!  We enjoyed her visit.

Sister Madeline Heffel and Elder Garrett

 Brother Lambert works for the church and is over the building here.  The building needs lots of repairs so he flew in from Edmonton to see what all needed to be done.  Elder Garrett spent all day last Tuesday with him and he had dinner with us.  He finished up Wednesday morning and had lunch with us and the missionaries before heading back to Edmonton.  We had an enjoyable visit with him. Elder Dutson was serving in his ward in Edmonton and got to know him.  He took the missionaries out to lunch on Tuesday.  I forgot to take pictures even though I had plenty of opportunities!!

We met Bishop Coombs when we were in Edmonton for Stake Conference in March.  He is an attorney and comes here a couple of times a year on business.  He said he would call us when he comes up here.  He surprised us on Thursday morning.  He was actually going to Hay River, a little town about five hours from here and had a lay over here.  He took us out to lunch and we showed him around Yellowknife.  The funny thing about meeting them was they had a baby four months old.  She told me they had five other children.  Come to find out they did basically the same thing we did.  They had five children and then seven years later they had the baby.  Her oldest was eighteen, the same as ours.  We thought that was pretty funny.  Bishop Coombs is also the head of the bishops welfare counsel so Elder Garrett will be interacting with him some.  Such fun to meet such wonderful members of the church!

Lunch with Bishop Coombs at a little Bed & Breakfast in Yellowknife

Mondays With The Missionaries

We spend most of  the day Monday with our new missionaries.  They come to our apartment to wash their clothes.  If they went to the laundromat it would cost about $50.00 a month just to wash their clothes.  The first week they went to the library to do their emails and there were only eight computers and they had to get in line to be able to use one.  They are only allowed an hour and the people on either side of them were watching porn.  So Pres. Campbell gave them permission to get on the computer here.  One of them uses ours and the other one uses the one in the clerks office.  So since they are coming first thing I told them I would cook breakfast for them.  So each Monday we have a nice breakfast.  The second week they were here they both decided they needed a hair cut.  So we got out our haircutting supplies and gave them a hair cut!  I cut Elder Taylor's and Elder Garrett cut Elder Dutson's.  We Love Our Missionaries!!!

As soon as the missionaries get their laundry going, they study!  What good missionaries!

Elder Taylor getting a hair cut.

Elder Dutson getting a hair cut.

We enjoy our breakfast while the laundry is getting done!

Elder Dutson and Elder Taylor with fresh new haircuts!  Elder garrett dropped the clippers and broke the attachment for the top of Elder Dutson's hair so it was shorter than he wanted.  He said he didn't care.  But we rounded up a new one for next time!!

Elder Dutson is our District Leader.  We have the district meeting every Wednesday morning.  He is an awesome teacher!  We are learning all about missionary work!!  Afterwards they have lunch with us.  That is awesome too!!!!  I am really impressed with the branch because they are getting four or five dinner meals each week.

What We Did In March

We're back to catching up on this blog.  March was a very busy month for us.  We had our Relief Society Birthday dinner on March 8th and I did the decorations and program.  We had nine sisters come, which was a good turn out for here.  Most everything we've had so far we had we've only had four or five come.  There are only about 15 active sisters.

Decorations for the Relief Society Birthday Dinner

Sisters at Relief Society Birthday Celebration

March Bulletin Board

Birthday Cake

Sis. Milnes read statements from modern day Prophets pertaining to Book of Mormon.  She also had of picture of each prophet.

Book of Mormon Reading chart with our handout.

Handout for birthday celebration.

I saw an idea on Relief Society Sugardoodle about "Chicken Soup for the Soul".  I decided to do
"Book of Mormon for the Soul."  We decorated in mostly red because we couldn't find any white table cloths here.  We put cans of chicken soup in the middle of the table for the decorations because there is not much room for anything else and we played a game with them.  I typed up questions pertaining to the BOM and taped them to the bottom of each can.  If you answered your question you got to keep the can of soup.  If you couldn't answer then someone else could answer and take your soup.  I tried to make the questions really simple.  It was a lot of fun and we found out that Melanie Wozencroft, the single girl in our branch, knew all the answers!  She was the winner with the most cans of soup.  We also had quotes pertaining to the BOM from several prophets and showed pictures of them.  The food was great and the whole night was very enjoyable.  Elder Garrett came in at one point and told us he hasn't heard that much laughter in this building since we have been here!!


We flew to Edmonton on March 11th.  The stake president wanted us to come for Stake Conference on the 16th and 17th.  The original plan was to fly down on Friday but the mission president wanted us to come down earlier so we could attend Missionary Zone Conference on the 13th since we don't get that opportunity.  Bro. Gorbohn (our High Councilor over Yellowknife) loaned us a car for the week.  President Campbell (mission president)  wanted us to stay in the mission home.  On Monday evening we met with Bro. Gorbohn to make plans for Yellowknife Branch.  On Tuesday we had the day to ourselves so did a little shopping for things we needed that would be much cheaper in  Edmonton.  I got my hair cut there for $20.00 compared to the cheapest place in Yellowknife that was $45.00!!  On Wednesday we were at Zone Conference all day.  On Thursday we went to the West Edmonton Mall.  We were told that we only saw about one fourth of the mall.  It is really amazing.  There is an indoor water park, indoor amusement park, indoor skating rink, bowling alley, two miniature golf courses, an Imax 3D theatre plus other theaters,  skateboard park, haunted fun house, rock "n" wall, 3 food courts, souvenir shops and arcades.  This is not all, you can go to the website and see all the amazing places that are in the mall.  Of course there are all kinds of shops, the big stores included a Sears store and Target and a couple more that are Canadian stores that we were not familiar with.  We will post some pictures of the places we saw.

Canada Edmonton Zone Conference March 13, 2013

Replica of Santa Maria inside West Edmonton Mall

Seal show

Santa Maria

One of the Food Courts in the Mall

On Thursday night Pres. Garside (stake president),  his wife and three other couples took us to dinner.    It was an enjoyable evening.  (We forgot to take pictures!!)  All the stake people are so nice and so helpful to us here in the Yellowknife Branch.!!  It is so much fun to be a part of this great church and the Edmonton North Stake!!

On Friday we went to the Edmonton Temple.  It was snowing pretty hard that day.  Oh, forgot to tell you, we woke up to snow on Tuesday morning.  Everyone was so mad because it had started to warm up and the snow was melting.  It snowed every day we were there and finally stopped on Sunday afternoon! We didn't take our boots but we saw others that didn't wear any either.  I even saw a lady that had on sandals with the back out at stake conference.  They are definitely more adapted to this weather than we are!!  Anyway, the Edmonton Temple is like the Memphis Temple except it was renovated a few years ago and has a bigger entrance with  a cloak room on both sides of the front entry.  The waiting room was different with a separate room for the Temple workers.  It was beautiful  covered with snow and yes, we forgot to take our camera!!

On Friday night we went to dinner with the people that work in the mission office.  We met them all when we came in October and went to dinner with them then.  They live in Edmonton or close by and  are serving three years in the mission office. 

Elder and Sister Garrett at La Rounde Restaurant. This is the restaurant we went to with the Edmonton Mission office staff. It is at the top of one of the hotels and spins around with fantastic views of Edmonton.

This is Bro. & Sister Woodruff at dinner.  Sis. Woodruff helped us to get everything together in October before coming to Yellowknife.  He is a descendant of Wilford Woodruff.  Great people!!

Brother & Sister MaFadzean work in the mission office and live about an hour out of Edmonton.  They stay with their daughter during the week.

This is Brother & Sister Higgins.  They are church service missionaries assigned to young singles.  They are from Idaho and got to the mission just before we did.  We had dinner with them  when we were in Edmonton in October.  So much fun to hang out with these missionaries!!

View of Edmonton from LaRounde Restaurant

Sun starting to set.

After Dark

Downtown Edmonton at night.

Canada Edmonton Mission Home

Canada Edmonton Mission President Campbell and Sister Campbell

President & Sister Campbell and Elder & Sister Garrett.  In case you're wondering what happened to Elder Garrett it wasn't me!!  He opened the car door on his head and split it open.

We had an enjoyable stake conference. Elder Garrett was asked to speak in the Sunday morning session.   We loved every minute of being there with saints.  Love this missionary work!!

Coming home.  This is the baggage pick-up area at Yellowknife Airport.

Office in Yellowknife Branch Church Building. We came home from Edmonton to this.  This used to be an attorneys office and was rented again.  The people wanted to move in on April 1st.  Chris Johnston who takes care of the building could not find anyone to paint it on such a short notice.  Guess who spent most of the week painting?  Mr. Fix-it is not afraid of anything.  He spent a day and a half just filling and patching holes.  He does great work though!!!!  Got new carpet and is almost done!

Elder Garrett does neat work.  He removed all the old carpet, rolled it up and put it on the porch for the carpet people to remove. 

Ice Palace in Yellowknife.  Every year one of the men that lives in one of boat houses builds a snow house.  He starts in November and has it ready to tour the month of March.  We did not have  time to tour it before it closed.  We did get there and took some pictures.  Hopefully we will make it next year.

Snow King statue next to snow house.

Little ice rink next to Snowking Palace

Windows in Snowking Palace.

Window panes of ice

Front door to Snowking Palace

Side view.

Snow sculpture at Ice Palace.  Notice house boat in background.

Snow Palace side view.

Back view of snow palace.