Happy Family Day (Feb 20, 2017)!  I love that Canada has a holiday to celebrate the importance of families!  They really take their holidays seriously.  No stores (not even Walmart) have been open)!

February is a great month for celebrating in the Morse family. Lucky and I celebrated our 35th anniversary (Feb 5), and we have four family birthday celebrations (Brigg, Jared, Layne, and Colin).  We’re happy that our kids and grand-kids are keeping the tradition of celebrating together while we’re on our mission!

Snow in Toronto!

Cute Valentines Card!

Sister missionaries eating strawberry hearts with ice cream.

We enjoyed having the sister missionaries over for dinner and a missionary lesson about “LOVE” on Valentines day.

Last week we finally got some snow here in Toronto!  But the last couple of days the weather has been sunny and warm.  Warm enough today for a nice bike ride through Centennial park, and to the beautiful nearby botanical gardens!

We’ve been anxiously engaged in many good things here in Toronto!  We’ve also been learning a few “Canadian quirks” for example, a shopping cart is called a “buggy”, and there is no such thing as a “Carton” of milk.. it  comes in “Plastic bags”, and if you don’t bring  your own bags to carry your purchases home, you pay 5 cents for each bag you use. Also, if you want to go shopping at Walmart, you’ll first have to pass through a security gate (similar to the airport), and if you want to use a shopping cart, you’ll pay a dollar. The “up” side of grocery shopping is that there is no tax on food (but a high 13% tax on non-food items).  We’re finally getting used to the metric system (liters vs Gallons, kilograms vs pounds, kilometers vs miles, Celsius vs  Fahrenheit).

This month we’ve been busy with several interfaith projects. We love working with, and getting to know people of other faiths!   This year, because of Canada’s sesquicentennial celebration, we’ll be extra busy planning for, and attending events.  So far, we’ve attended the Black History Month kick-off brunch fundraiser (a 1st class event with amazing food, great entertainment, and awesome people).  We’ve also interviewed, took pictures, and wrote a news article for the Canadian Mormon Newsroom about an interfaith organ recital performed by a young LDS missionary at a historic baptist church (posted here).  I’ve been busy with several graphic design event flyer/poster projects, and Lucky has been busy coordinating the collection of Canadian LDS faith stories to submit to the “Faith in Canada 150” initiative.

Our Public Affairs Mission Purpose:

• Raise the profile of the Church.
• Clarify what we stand for.
• Be known as good people who do good things.
• Stand up for the family.

We’ve also enjoyed meeting the young Elder and Sister missionaries in the Etobicoke area.  Tonight we went with the sister missionaries to visit a Nicaraguan family (mother & daughter) who live in our ward boundaries, but who have been inactive since moving to Toronto (25 years ago).  They committed to coming to sacrament meeting this coming Sunday!   Although Public Affairs missionaries are NOT supposed to do any proselyting, this is a special situation where Lucky and I have the ward calling to home teach/visit teach them, so we also get to go to their lesson appointments!