Greetings from Canmore, Alberta!

Well, here we are in beautiful Canmore. Our mission president has encouraged us to get out of the office every now and then so we made plans and traveled here after work on Thursday. It has been wonderful. We will include lots of pictures so you can appreciate the area and just how magnificent it is. Canmore holds a special place in our hearts so we really looked forward to coming back.

In 2013 Kathy and I met online and began corresponding, then after several weeks we met in person in Sandy, Utah. Thereafter about once a month I would make the 700+ mile trip from Montana to Sandy so we could get to know each other better. After four months of dating we decided we were sufficiently interested in each other to consider making it permanent but we needed to spend more time together to see whether we were just friends, in love, or if we might get on each others nerves. Kathy and her late husband had owned a World Mark Timeshare plan which has potential destinations all over the western U.S. and into Canada so we discussed where we could go to take advantage of the plan. I noticed that one of the locations was just west of Calgary in the Canadian Rockies. Since my family and I had had such a great time at the Calgary Stampede back in the 1980s, I suggested to Kathy that we go there and she agreed. The timeshare was available so off we went. It was while in Canmore that we became engaged. So here we are back again. As was the case the first time, the weather has been remarkably beautiful and the mountains just as grand.

Friday we drove around the area including a scenic two-hour drive south through the mountains from Canmore. The pictures above are mostly from that drive. Breath taking! We saw an elk, several dear, and a mountain sheep. 

Friday evening we had dinner at a restaurant at the Silver Tip Golf Course with Elder and Sister Gardiner, a senior missionary couple who arrived quite recently from a town very near Vancouver, BC. For all you golfers out there, I have to tell you that this is one of the most spectacular golf courses I have ever seen, - on a par with Pebble Beach for sheer beauty. 

Today we joined Elder and Sister Gardiner again, this time to attend Church in nearby Banff. 

The Branch is quite small in numbers of local members but always has a varying number of visitors as was the case today; - Boise, Idaho, Cokeville, Wyoming, Vancouver, Alberta, and Calgary. The couple from Cokeville, Wyoming had a history very much like ours; both have spouses who had passed away and were recently married. 

Yesterday we walked around downtown Canmore and then met a couple, the Perdormos whom we know from our own ward in Calgary. Bro. Perdormo makes custom jewelry and has a cute little shop here in Canmore. 

He and his wife are our Home Teachers. They are both originally from Uruguay, lived in Brazil for a time, and later immigrated here to Alberta. They took us to a Brazilian Rodizio Grill called the Gaucho Grill. We had enough meat to last us for quite awhile!

Our work in the office this past week was pretty much routine so there is nothing particularly newsworthy to report. This next week starts a new round of zone conferences and car inspections. The zone conferences will start first in the south followed the next week by two zone conferences in the north. These will be special because the missionaries will be able to go to the temple in the morning and then meet for their respective zone conferences in the afternoon. Because we will be inspecting cars on Friday while the missionaries are in the temple, the office couples will go down to Cardston on Thursday evening so we can attend the temple ourselves. The Cardston Temple is one of the early temples in the Church and is quite unique so we are really looking forward to being there. Stay tuned next week for details.

So, in closing, Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers. We hope the day was wonderful and special. I got some roses for Kathy before we left so we hope they are still alive when we return later this evening.

We love you all.  Please join us praying for rain for Alberta, especially in the fire devastated area of Ft. McMurray. What a tragedy; 80,000 people had to be evacuated. There are many miraculous stories coming out of the tragedy.