Just when I had some hope

   Last Tuesday we were invited to dine at a member's home.  We have learned that here in Quebec (pronounced 'Kay-beck', by the way)  the term "souper" (pronounced 'soupay") is often used for dinner.  I think this is because, unlike France and other parts of Europe, the dinner meal is eaten early , around 5:30 or 6:00, and it does not take 3 hours.  This is helpful to our young missionaries who are asked to follow a strict time schedule.
   The dinner was very nice although they gave us portions fit for a 19-20 year old young man.  And, just as I was garnering some hope in my language progress, we were totally immersed in a family of fast-talking Quebecois speakers.  They had a son and daughter there as well as a boyfriend (or husband).  These dominated the conversation, which was fine, but I felt that I had dropped into some country where a completely unknown language was used.  I literally did not understand two words in the hour-long discourse.  Paul was little help.  Afterwards I asked him what he got out of what had been said and he determined they had lived in their house since 1864 (boy, they looked great !) and that this daughter may or may not be married to the young man who showed up half-way through the meal.  Another huge dose of humble pie.
   On Wednesday night we drove to Quebec City for a zone conference the following morning.  We took the two elders from our city with us and dropped them off at another missionary apartment.  Unfortunately, there was little communication ahead of time (surprise, surprise) between these two groups and we ended up waiting in the car for 40 minutes for the hosting missionaries to get home.
As they in French "Ca va."   We did enjoy the zone conference and the instruction given by the mission president.  So nice to be a listener and learner instead of a speaker and teacher!  President Patrick mentioned something in his teaching and then looked at Paul and said, "Elder Peterson, you have been a mission president, did you do it this way?"  So, the cat is now out of the bag, as they say.  We had hoped to keep this information quiet because of increased expectations, etc. etc.  Afterwards, in the car, the elders from our town said "So, Elder Peterson, in telling what you have done in the past, you conveniently forgot an important part."  He told them he didn't think that it was pertinent to what we are now doing.
    Today we went to a member's house and gathered several boxes of food to distribute to some of the more needy members of the branch. I can't remember if I wrote of this before, but the father of one of our members (the father is not a member) owns a grocery store in town.  Each week he allows someone from the branch to go and get boxes of food with expiring 'sell by' dates, which are then divided and distributed. Another branch member has been picking up the food for a long time now, and he has asked us to take over this responsibility.  What a nice service from the store owner and the member who has done all this for so long!
    Paul has designed a flyer for English class, which we are putting up around town wherever we can find a bulletin board.  I think it looks quite professional.  We are hoping for a good turnout when class begins in Sept.  Here is the flyer:

  We found that one business which had a bulletin board was none other than our favorite spot to get  ice cream.  We felt obligated this afternoon to purchase a couple of ice cream cones as a thank you for providing the bulletin board.