Monday, July 15, 2013

pillar families


Family & Friends! 

This week has been AWESOME! I LOVE VANNES. The fact that I could get transferred out of here in a couple of weeks makes me SICK. I have grown SO close to these people in the past couple of months. The amis and the members are some of my best friends! I'm living the dream. 

So, the theme of this last week for Soeur Garrett and I has been SUDDEN DEATH. We have been teaching A LOT of people lately. A LOT A LOT. And they all love us and want us to see them ALL the time, but the problem is that a lot of them aren't progressing. And they are taking up too much of our time, so we really haven't had the chance to go out and meet anyone new. So this week we booked Rendez-vous with all of them and basically evaluated who we should keep teaching and who we should drop. It was SOOO SOOO hard to drop the people that I love so much, but honestly we should have done this a looonnnnnnggggg time ago. 

I have just been feeling lately that we need to find and teach more families. Because families become the pillars of this church. And we need pillars here in Europe, we need em bad. 

Finding families is hard work, but we've already seen miracle after miracle of people who the Lord is preparing. And we've already had 5 families placed in our path who we've set appointments with to start teaching this week:

One lives on our street. Their daughter went on a study abroad in Canada and speaks English fluently, her mom heard us speaking English on the street and got so excited that she came up and started talking to us. She invited us to come over anytime! Then -crazy coincidence-  we had exchanges and Soeur Garrett was in Nantes and ran into them again over there in the SAME day. They practically tackled her. They are so cute. 

Another family is one of the one's we found in our miracle day of porting last week. It's a young mom and dad with two daughters. 

Another is a Tahitian family that has member friends. We finally got a chance to teach them on Saturday and it went really well and they came to church the next day and really liked it. They've met with the missionaries since 2007. 

ANOTHER is an Albanian family we met on the bus. They moved here to France 8 months ago and are having such a hard time learning the language. They can't find a French-Albanian dictionary anywhere, so we found them a Albanian Book of Mormon and are going over tonight to drop it off. 

And last but not least, a young mom who was Soeur Roney and I's 8:45 miracle. We met her walking with her two kids in our neighborhood and she agreed to let us teach her this week :) 8:45 miracles are SO real.

Amazing huh? Please keep praying for us to find families. 5 is a GREAT start, but I know that there are more who are being prepared for us. 

Another highlight of my week was my exchange with Soeur Roney. Soeur Roney is the definition of a consecrated missionary. She has 2 transfers left and is absolutely inspiring in every way. She has really figured out how to get through to these French people. I can see that she has been blessed by her consistent obedience to mission rules. Ah, I just think the WORLD of her. I was just thinking the entire time I was with her, "Now that's the kind of missionary I want to be". 

Y'all I love this. Everyday is beautiful. My heart is here. 

Avec amour, 
Soeur Johns 

Just a picture of BEAUTIFUL Angers! 
Soeur Judd and I in Angers for transfers! The last PATISSERIE I ate. I'm on a fast. Don't want to talk about it. 
LUDO'S BAPTISM. Happy day. 
The Gentry family. Literally the funniest people I know. Think British modern family. 
Paula loves 'murica
Oh and so does Paul. Her brother. Great names right.
to sum up my mission in one picture...