The Un-Glamorous Life

I have been having lots of people tell me how lucky I am to be living here in Québec, how they feel like I am seeing so many wonderful things, and how interesting it is to live in a different culture and language. There are a few perks about living in a different place and being able to see new things, but it's not all it's built up to be. When people tell me how exciting my life seems, they make it sound glamorous and thrilling. I'm here to tell you that it's really not that glamorous.

The cold weather has indeed officially begun. The days are at hand when you dread going outside and putting on four or more layers just to stay warm. Some days you want to just stay home and inside all day, but when that happens then you wish you went outside or somewhere because you missed being able to have any social aspect during the day. If I am already experiencing these days of dreading to go outside but feeling guilty for staying in, I am in trouble because it's only January and we are sure to have at least three more months of this! (That is if  this year will be anything like last year.) And that is just the weather.

Sometimes the work isn't that fun either. I am sure many of you know what I am talking about, that tedious work that one has to experience at least once in their life: paperwork and filing. My work in preparing for the English Camps this summer has already started and this year my work load is going to be higher. Last year I had to deal mostly with the teams that were coming. This year I am doing that again as well as organizing all the children's applications and registrations. So far I am just getting ready to receive registration forms which includes updating forms and our website. That isn't too bad, for the moment.

What's kind of fun and exciting is dealing with teams and team members right now. I am already juggling teams and trying to fill holes. This is kind of what the process has looked like so far: Send invitations to old teams to see who will come again. Wait. Three teams have said yes! Yes! Wait, only one team will be full. Wait. I have an interest from this church and that church and that group. One church changed their mind, one group wants to commit. I have three vague emails asking for more information. I have one small team, I put them with team 1. I have a larger group of two families, I put them with team 2. Wait. I think the smaller team would go better with the bigger team and the bigger group with the smaller team. Suggest a switch. Wait. No, won't work. Larger group of families might need to split up. Smaller team is staying with team 1 and teams 1 & 2 still need around 5 more people. Wait to hear from the two families. Still waiting. Haven't heard from other churches who showed interest. Still waiting. I sure hope team 3 has enough people.
Juggling. That's what this part of the job is.

Filing and paperwork has been added to my list of jobs to do. I recently received a gift from my pastor of two huge boxes full of "who knows what" from the MA's files of five years ago. So I got to work right away of first finding out what was inside. I found  lots of old lesson plans, extra song books, lots of loose-leaf notes, stickers, cards, information and lessons from older English Conversation activities (which will come in handy), and five years worth of old registration forms. First, I organize: English for Kids, Francofun, English Café/English Conversations, registrations, extra materials. Second, I sort: use again, keep for files, trash. Now I have the contents of those boxes in nice piles on the floor of my room which thankfully only takes up a corner, for now. Now the really fun part begins, which I am already dreading.

We used to have a document of all the contact information we had for all of the families that have come to English for Kids camps over the years. Sadly that information got lost when a computer was stolen last fall. Since we don't have a backup, that I am aware of, all that information has had to be put into a computer again. This time we do have backups. My dear friend Suzy, who was in charge of the kids registrations last year, was able to input all the information she had from registration forms over the last three years. She gave me that document and now I need to update and add to it with all the old forms I found. Thus begins my tiresome job of inputting information onto a computer document on Excel. And I barely even know how to work Excel, so this will be fun. Maybe one day I will let you know of the horror stories of sitting in front of a computer for hours while trying to make illegible writing legible and trying to understand it myself.

But I'm already getting tire from writing this post. So that will be all for now.I hope you enjoyed a small glimpse into the mundane work or a missionaries associate. I am praying that I don't burnout in front of the computer over the next few months and that I will get it done. Diligence is a difficult thing, but if you don't get it done now, it won't get done.

So I hope you have a good end to the month of January. And here's to all the office workers and secretaries I know, with God's help we can get it done!

A Welcoming Christmas in Québec

This year I spent the holidays here in Québec. I had the wonderful blessing of being able to go home for Christmas last year, but this year I did not quite have that privilege. I had been given the opportunity to go home, several people offered to pay for my flight, but I made it my choice to stay here. Some of my plans with friends here had fallen through and it was starting to look like a sad Christmas, but God turned things around in answer to several prayers.

I ended up being invited to spend a long weekend with a friend with her family in Toronto. She was leaving that Saturday and this idea came forward Thursday. It was a little bit of a risk taking this last minute trip, but I had no concrete plans for the days leading up to Christmas Eve, so I said yes. We left Saturday morning around 10:30am and arrived in Toronto 12 hours later. We did make a long stop to have lunch with some friends before we ended up driving through a snow storm. It was a pretty good storm where we couldn't see anything in front of us. We made it safely after waiting the storm out at a McDonald's. We were wonderfully welcomed by her parents and a cup of tea around the fireplace. It was a lovely way to end the long day. On Sunday I went to church with her and her parents, and then we went to her sister's house to celebrate their extended family Christmas. It was a decent sized gathering of 20 people including two toddlers and two babies. It was overall so warm and a fun time with their family. The guitar got pulled out as we sung Christmas carols in the living  room. I felt very welcomed into their family, and it was such a blessing to take part in their Christmas celebration.

My friend Lindsay and her parents.

The rest of my time there was spent doing some touring around the city and visiting some friends and seeing the new Star Wars, which was really good. It was very sad for me to leave because I hadn't felt so much at home with another family in such a long time. I was very thankful for them.

My friend Lindsay and I.

Christmas Eve brought me to the church for their service. The church had a nice program where the kids put on a small play of the birth of Jesus and the pastor reminded us all about the true meaning of Christmas. Afterward, many people stayed for a pot luck supper. It was really good to see so many people in the church come together for Christmas. Many of the people that were there don't have families nearby and so the church does this bring these small families together to create a large family. And it became a large family gathering with people mingling and group games happening later in the evening. It was a blessing to be there. 

Christmas morning was quiet for me, but it gave me time to reflect on the season and make myself pancakes for breakfast while I called my family. My friend Edîth from my English Conversation group had invited me to join her and her family for their Christmas Day supper. So I joined her that evening and spent the night with her as well because we didn't leave her parents' house until after midnight. It was a good experience to see a Québecois Christmas dinner with meat pies and soup for dinner and a traditional yule log for dessert. I enjoyed getting to know her family and play games with them and watch them exchange gifts. It was a little different type of Christmas than I am used to because they are not Christians, but I still felt very welcomed by them. Please pray for my friend and her family, that they will know the Lord.

My friend Edîth and her son. 

The next day I was again welcomed into a smaller family, a couple and their baby. We spent the afternoon together and had a second Christmas dinner together, it was more traditional with turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes. We ended the evening with A Charlie Brown Christmas. It was a calm evening with them, but I am always thankful for the way this family from the church has welcomed me into their lives.

The following week was busy because we had a wedding at our church two days later, and two days after that was a  New Year's Eve party. The wedding was on a beautiful day when the sun was shining and it wasn't too cold, it had snowed a lot the day before and then it snowed even more the day after. Both her family from Québec and his family from France were there as well as many of their friends. And of course it ended in a fun dance party. Then two days later I saw a lot of the same people at a New Year's Eve party where we talked and played games all evening. It was a great gathering and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

My time here in Québec has been short and it will be short, two years is a short period in our lifetime. I am only in the lives of these people here for two years, I hope to keep connections with them but for now I am only living in their community for two short years. But what surprises me is how welcoming they have been. I could have been held apart at a distance because they knew I wouldn't be here for very long, but instead so many of them have welcomed me with open arms. The young adults here have invited me to so many of their events and parties, and I have been welcomed into several different homes of the church. This church that has welcomed so many different immigrants and families who don't have large families here, has welcomed me into their family, and for that I will be forever grateful.

This Christmas season might have been lonely and depressing if I had concentrated on the fact that I was not with my family in California. But God showed me that I have a family here in His church. I will be forever thankful for the small community of Christians that have welcomed me here in Québec.