Monday, May 13, 2013

When they say Paris France is a hard mission, THEY MEAN IT :)


Chère famille et amis,  

first off, IT WAS SO GOOD to see your faces yesterday!!! made my life. everyone looked so good....even dad. hahah. 

Hanging up was so hard. I didn't want to do it and after we just sat there and both cried for a minute but then we walked out and Soeur Bouaka had made us crepes and chocolate cake and I just kindof forgot to be sad. fk. 

I seriously can't believe that Aubs is driving and that she already got pulled over. hahaha. I am so proud and SO scared that she is following right in my footsteps. :)

Ahh and Kenzie you are already so good at guitar that was amazing I wish I could have heard more, I can't get over it. BYU better watch out. 

Mom you looked so good and I actually beat myself up because I'm pretty sure I completely forgot to wish you a Happy Mother's Day. I'm the worst. I hope you know how much I love you and wouldn't pick another person in the world to be my mom! :) & you looked way too good as well. must be all of that boxing. 

Dad, Soeur grewar and I were laughing so hard on the way home at how much you have stalked us and our ville. You knew everything there is to know about Vannes. Too good. & thanks for all the great advice you KNOW how bad I need it.

For the rest of you wonderful people who didn't get to see my face yesterday i'll give you a petit update on this week: 

I learned lesson #20932034243 this week. I think it will be one that I will learn time and time again: When you have a bad week where it seems like NOTHING is going your way you should get really excited, happy, and grateful because you can know with certainty that a miracle is on the way. 

Oh my goodness did that happen or what. 

This week was awful. Every person we tried to see cancelled, no one called us back, Madame Pierre dropped us like its hot, and everyone who we went looking for wasn't home. It was just door after door after door of "Ça me n'intereste pas", and I couldn't take it. I felt like I had been straight up abandoned and that I was the worst missionary in the world. Literally, I'm not exaggerating it got to the point on Friday I was just laughing at how bad it was we had gotten 1 cordonne for the WEEK. I felt like every person who we knew in the ville had just up and moved or something and I'm not going to lie I wanted to do the same. 

We had one Rendez-vous scheduled for the week on saturday with a less active family who lives about 45 minutes out of our ville. So we drive (oh yeah we have a car now, score) over to their house and knock on the door and guess what. NO ONE ANSWERS. 

But then we figure out we accidentally went to their neighbors house and then we found their house and they let us in. 

Hello beautiful family of 7 children who all aren't baptized and are all way too happy than usual to see us. 

We start talking to the dad and ask him why he's not coming to church and stuff like that and it turns out that he's a cardiovascular surgeon who is always on call. He told us that he wished that he could come to church, but that the chapel was too far away and that if he went and got called in he would be putting lives on the line. He shared his conversion story and how he knows that the church has given him everything and that he wishes he could go to church. Sticky stuff. 

Then we told him we wanted to share a message with his family and he called everyone over and made them sit down in the living room and asked one of his daughters to say the prayer. Then we pass out Livre de Mormon's to the whole family and give them pencils to mark things while we read. 

PAUSE, this is not a NORMAL lesson already. In France normal is sitting at some old ladies table as she spills her life story and tells you why she doesn't believe in God and then allows you to pray with her. 

Anyways, then we start reading Alma 32 about how faith is a little seed (we actually hijacked a lesson that Sister Woomer gave to the YW when I was like 15 where she brought seeds and showed us how tiny our faith needs to be to let Heavenly Father start to grow it. So thanks for being awesome Sher-bear!) All of the kids were totally engaged and marking and asking questions. There was a point in the beginning of the lesson where I tangibly felt the Spirit enter the room. It was unmistakable, as real as if another person actually walked in to join us. I knew that everyone else was feeling it to and I just wanted to cry I was so happy. At the end we asked all of the kids if they would continue to read their scriptures every night and start to grow their faith in Jesus Christ and they all said they would! Frère Mmbay LOVED IT and invited us to come back later in the week and teach them again. We told them that next time we were going to talk about what we do after we develop faith in Jesus Christ aka be baptized. :) Then we all knelt down and closed with a prayer. 

I'm not kidding I felt like I was filming The District. 

That lesson was worth every single trial we had gone through before and every single trial I can now expect to go through this week because it was just TOO GOOD. I love being a missionary! I don't feel like I'm a good one yet at all, but practice makes perfect right? 

Ahh soo good. Pray for this family! We are going to see them get baptized I just KNOW it. 

Welp I'm all out of time as usual. Love you all SO MUCH:) 

Soeur Johns