LOVE Y'ALL SO MUCH. Seeing your faces was the most amazing thing and honestly such a blur! I signed off and was like wait, can I do that again tomorrow I have so much more to say!!! I don't even think I wished Mom a Happy Mother's Day! My bad. Happy Mother's Day to the BEST momma in the whole world! #repentance. Ahhh, next time we see each other it will be in flesh and bone!! I cannot wait!! But I can!! so many conflicting emotions already. i'm going to be one awkward mess of a returned missionary. haha.
The previous week was absolutely insane. we made a lady cry on the street, we hit up the beach, we took our amis contacting, we did exchanges in paris, we discovered a sushi place that delivers and ordered it twice in one day, Lia from St. Ouen got BAPTIZED, I skyped your beautiful faces, AND we went to the classy french wedding of two of our amis!!! Haha, my life is never normal.
Now for the explanations...
Monday night we walked around contacting people after P-day. We stopped this beautiful french mom on the road named Katherine and ended up having what Soeur Berge and I agreed to be the BEST conversation of our missions. During our lesson planning that morning we had decided to talk to every one on the streets about how change was possible through Christ. We stopped Katherine and introduced ourselves and everything and then we asked her if she thought that change was possible. She said yes, but that she has seen most people change for the worse. She told us about how she used to be believing, but that France had kind of cultured it out of her and that she doesn't really think that God exists anymore. We testified that He does and then Soeur Berge asked her what she thought would happen after this life. She said that she wasn't sure, but hopes that there is something more. We started sharing the Plan of Salvation with her and she started crying and began to open up to us about how her husband had died two years ago and that she wants nothing more than to see him again. We testified that there is SO much hope in the Gospel and that she can and will see him again! Typing it out this all sounds really simple and like just another contact you have everyday as a missionary, but this contact was just so different. The Spirit was really really there and it felt like there were a lot of people watching over that conversation trying to push her to listen. Soeur Berge and I walked away and felt like we had just walked out of the temple. It was amazing.
Tuesday we had our district meeting in Le Havre. And well there really just isn't much to say about that. Haha. As lovely as the Elders are, I am so excited to not have to be around little boys anymore. Our train didn't leave for about an hour after district meeting so we profited from the occasion to go see the beach. Be still my soul. It was one of the prettiest places i have ever seen. See the pictures. After that we came home and taught Nina. We saw progress!! She talked to her husband about the church and how she loves it when we come over because she feels the Spirit. We challenged her to envision herself in white and really prepare spiritually for her baptism. She knows that she is going to be baptized she just wants to take her sweet time and that is okay with me as long as it actually happens. Later that night ate dinner with the Warenghein family aka. the cutest couple in the world. It was a party and they told us that they want to take us to the zoo with their non-member friends next week for p-day. Yay for friends.
Wednesday was crazy as it was the only full day we had in Roeun this week. We had the pleasure of watching our amis contact people on the streets. Meet Camille, Wendy, and Anne-Zoé. I like to call them our little atheist missionaries. They are all 20ish year old french architecture majors and people that i would actually hang out with in real life. Soeur Berge had met them right before I got here and had given Camille our number. Rule of thumb is that when you are a missionary and you give someone your number but don't get theirs it means that you will probably never see them again. But no, Camille called them back and wanted to meet up. So the Soeurs met with them and gave them a church tour. Then we called them back to see if they wanted to talk again and they were so willing! When they got to the church we talked for a minute and then they started asking us questions about what we do everyday. We told them about contacting and they were like...wait can you go do that right now and let us watch you. haha. Why the heck not? So that's just what we did. We walked around Centre Ville while they trailed us. I know Heavenly Father was watching out for us because nearly everyone we stopped actually listened and was touched. And even when we got rejected it was great to show them that that doesn't even phase us because we know why we do what we do. After a little while we went back to the girls and asked them what they thought. They told me something that really hit me...every single person who walked away no matter if they had rejected us quickly or not had walked away with a smile on their face. You don't really think about how people react after you contact them, and I honestly expect them to be kind of mad sometimes, but I guess that is not the case. It was a testimony builder of how this work that we are doing is spiritual work and that people are touched by God's hand even if they don't realize it. Then we turned our little contacting object lesson on them and asked them to think of something that they just really love and want everyone to know about. They decided that they all loved chocolate, and so we challenged them to go stop people on the road and bear their testimony of chocolate to them and commit them to eat chocolate that night. Haha, it was kind of silly, but so cool to watch them walk around getting rejected, or having real conversations with people. They told us that is was so scary walking up to people and stopping them and they did not know how we did that every single day for 18 months. We told them that we manage because we are strengthened by God, and that our message means a lot more to us that chocolate. We are bringing people the everlasting joy of the gospel of Jesus Christ :) We went back to the church and had an amazing discussion about God. All three of them are atheist, but they were asking us really deep questions about why we have faith. It was amazing. We were able to testify of the miracles we had seen in our lives and our missions and how we know that they hand of God has led us to exactly where we have needed to be. We got permission for them to come to our Zone Conference on Thursday and meet President! We are so excited. One of them, Wendy, is especially interested and I really think she is feeling the Spirit strong and that she will be very ready soon to take the lessons and get baptized. We also met with a lady we had met on the street named Melika and she told us that she has already started reading the BOM with her husband every night!! Miracle!
Thursday I had a great exchange in Paris with Soeur Vance!! I LOVE that girl with all my heart. We had the funniest day. We witnessed a fight on the metro, cleaned an African ladies apartment, met a really cool beautiful thai girl on the metro and set up a RDV to meet with her next week, and consoled a frantic member mother whose daughter had just ran away from home. It was great to be back in Paris.
Friday we had a little time before our train once again so we went and got some pictures by the Eiffel tower together and ate at my favorite patisserie on the champs-elysées. well sometimes being a paris france missionary has its perks :) we got home and had a pretty normal day and our DMB meeting that night.
Saturday was INSANE. So our branch president is a fire fighter and he has some friends from work who were getting married on Saturday. They knew he was a leader in his church so they asked him if he could give a spiritual presentation on marriage before their wedding. He told them yes, but that before he could do this they had to have FHE's with the missionaries and come to church. They agreed and to sum things up all of the missionaries ended up getting invited to their perfect French wedding. The presentation went so well and it was amazing to see an entire room of 40 something people reading along to the family proclamation to the world. We met some really cool people as well, especially the sister of the bride who we are going to start teaching!! It was the craziest most fun day of my life. And don't worry, we gave them the Living Christ in a cute frame for their wedding present. Haha.
Well I sure do love y'all and I sure do love being a missionary. I feel so blessed to have been given this life. I do not have any idea what I did to deserve it. I just know that I want other people to be happy and to have blessings. I just have got too much not to share it, you know?
Tout mon coeur,
Soeur Johns
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