Living Large!

Here we are at the Vancouver Zone Conference sitting to the left of President and Sister Nelson.  If you look carefully you can almost see us.  There will only be one more zone conference before the Nelsons leave on July 1.  President and Sister Tilleman from Arizona will be our new mission president and wife.  They both grew up in Calgery so they have dual citizebship.  It will be fun to see what changes happen when they come.  They have 5 children and they will be bringing their 6 yr. old daughter with them.

 Here we are on our preparation day down by the wharf.  It is a beautiful day and we just walked around taking in the sights.  I'm wearing my raincoat that I wear everywhere.  The rule is-always have your raincoat, umbrella and camera.

Paul bought a new Vancouver Canada hat.  He also bought a box of cookies from a cute little "girl guide," Canadas equivelant of a girl scout. We are in a small town called Steveston which is a suburb of Richmond where we live. We are always very close to the water (ocean) and in this case commercial and personal fishing boats. The humidity makes it seem colder than we are used to in Colorado....it is about 47 degrees but it feels more like 32.

There were many of these boats set up all along the water selling their fish, and there were quite a few people buying their dinner for the night.  We chose instead to go to a little cafe and get 2 tuna fish sandwiches and 2 diet cokes, all for the "reasonable" price of $17.25! For us the sandwich looks better than taking one of these fish home and looking at it because we would have no idea what to do with it.  If it doesn't come in a box, we don't eat it!!

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!!!!  Don't you love it!  Elder Lahache is the sane one in the middle and is a First Nation (Mohawk Indian) from Canada and Elder Williams, the insane one on the right,  is from Utah.  The weird guy on the left is from somewhere north of the ozone! The two Elders are currently working in the office making a DVD for a temple grounds tour of the Vancouver temple so we get to see them every day.  They are awesome!

Sightseeing in Vancouver

Isn't this beautiful!  This is looking at the North Shore across the bay from downtown Vancouver.  We think the mountain in the background is Grouse Mountain where some of the Olympics took place in 2010.  The sun finally came out so we went downtown to do some sightseeing.  It was sunny but boy was it cold.  We can't wait for warmer days ahead to get out and see the sights. It cost us $12.00 to park for an hour and a half.  Then when we went to Stanley Park we had to pay $2.00 for 2 hours. Wow I think we got a deal on that one!

Paul took a picture of the Vancouver skyline,  We are right down by Canada Place where the cruise ships come in.

We drove from downtown Vancouver to Stanley Park, a distance of 3 miles which took us an hour.  The totem pole is unique to the BC Northwest Coast FirstNations (Indian Tribe).  Each pole tells a real or mythical story.

On President's Day in February we decided to close the office and go sight seeing.  We went with President and Sister Nelson and Elder and Sister Nielsen. We took the sky train all around town, the sea bus out to North Vancouver and ended up in Chinatown to eat lunch and do some shopping.  All the Elders have silk Chinese ties but Paul didn't find one he liked--so that's my mission now-one Chinesen tie for Elder Traxler.

On Wednesday March 10 we attended our first zone conference.  Because our mission is so large geographically, we actually have 6 zones and 6 zone conferences.  The President likes us to attend one of the conferences which are held each quarter.  We hope to go over to Victoria in June and stay a weekend when  the Island has their next conference. We came away with a new admiration, respect and love for those young men and woman. The 4 sisters you see are mandarin chinese speaking.  In the group are also Korean, Spanish, and of course English speaking. Now a note on the tsunami and earthquake in Japan.  We trained with a couple at the MTC who were going to the Japan Toyko to be office missionaries.  After we heard about the tsunami I called over to Japan(it was 2;30 pm Fri. our time and 7:30am Sat. over there.) They had 60 missionaries at the office who had spent the night because they had their zone conference the day the earthquake hit and no transportation was running so they couldn't get back to their area.  Their mission president had changed their zone conference by one day which resulted in all those missionaries being in Toyko instead of in Sendai where they would have been right in the middle of the tsunami--isn't that  awesome.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  They felt the effects in Toyko but all were safe.  We are so greatful to be a part of this work and watch the hand of the Lord in everything all around us.