MY NOSE HAIRS ARE FROZEN

Hello from the frozen tundra.

this week was definitely a trial of our faith. we had so much planned with our investigators (we call them amis de l'eglise in french, which means "friends of the church" so we just call them amis) and less actives and recent converts, but probably 75% of what we had planned fell through. it's discouraging but at the same time we are trying our hardest and we are being obedient, so we know we are doing the right thing. our ami sebastian is still doing well but he's nervous to be baptized because he doesn't like big crowds. we know he can make it and be baptized by the end of the month! i know it! he has so much faith and really wants to follow god. it's great, and we are praying for a miracle for him! we do a ton of service, wash a lot of dishes and i almost got attacked by a dog on tuesday so that was terrifying.

something hilarious happened this week with one of our recent converts named jacqueline. she's in her 60's and always sounds like she is in distress. you call her and think she is dying but she's really fine. she has the fattest cat i've ever seen in my entire life. imagine a huge sack of potatoes and then put two of them together and you have this cat. he can't even walk but jacqueline LOVES him and talks about him like he's a real person. anyway, on saturday we were visiting here and we gave her some cookies that we had made and she takes one look at them and said, "who made these?" we told her we did and then she started laughing so hard i thought she was going to keel over dead. she laughed for like 2 minutes straight and sister clark and i were just looking at each other like... okay... when she could finally breathe she told us she couldn't believe that we had made her cookies and then kept saying "i like you, i love you, i love you." oh jacqueline, she's a hoot.

sister clark and i work together really well and she is really patient with me. i love her and am so grateful for her!! together we can speak some french so that's good. i still have a hard time understanding really thick quebecois accents, but we actually don't teach a lot of quebecois. they don't want to talk to us, we talk to a lot of immigrants from all over, especially people from south africa, and they are way easier to understand.

IT IS SO COLD. we've had a very mild winter, but this past weekend was a different story. we had what's called a vortex and that means winds from the north pole come down here and create a vortex of freezing cold weather. santa, what are you doing???? friday morning was -31 degrees Celsius and yesterday got down to about -46 degrees C which is about -51 in Fahrenheit. it's windy and freezing and it hurts sooo badly. but we keep on going. i am so grateful to have a car it helps a little bit even though it's freezing. friday the weirdest thing happened! i stepped outside and my nosehairs froze! talk about a weird feeling! on sunday at church on the pulpit the bishop said he felt sorry for me because it was so cold so that's kind of embarrassing. it's so cold that all you can do is laugh. the car tells us the temperature, so every morning when sister clark and i get in the car, we take one look at it and literally start hysterically laughing because there's nothing else you can do. today we walked outside and were like, it's so warm! because it was only -18 haha.

the quebecois are literal french rednecks who watch the tv show the Voice every night. when the voice is on, no one wants to talk to us, but i still love them. heavenly father has blessed me with such a great love for this strange little place. i'm so grateful for it. even though our days don't go as planned, we have so many little miracles and my testimony has grown so much, especially of prayer. sister clark and i have been blessed to really have our prayers answered even if it's just to have the door unlocked so we can heart attack and leave cookies at someone's door or to have someone answer the phone. the work is slow, but it's coming and we are really succeeding in showing everyone that we love them if nothing else. we have been able to melt some "frozen" hearts if ya catch my drift :)

love you all! stay warm! we will be over here laughing our guts out because it's so cold!

love, soeur paine

picture:

me and sister clark at the carnivale eating frozen maple syrup. as it becomes spring, the trees are ready to be drained to make maple syrup and they have these sugar shacks where they boil the syrup and put it on the snow and you eat pretty much frozen maple syrup. i don't know if i really like it, but it's not really in season yet, so maybe it will be better when we get the good stuff!

Me at the Carnivale on Monday 

Eating my first poutine