No, we won't join you at the discothèque.

Soeur Berge and I had the strange realization this week that we actually have "real" friends in Roeun, but only like 2 amis who want to learn about the church...ha. ha. ha. I find the fact that we were texted 3 times last week asking if we'd like to "go get a glass in town" hilarious. yeah, no. We are going to remedy this by being a lot more bold with our baptismal invites this week or something. "like NO we is not here to hang out with you and all yo friends and go drinking... we are here to invite you come unto Christ by helping you receive the restored gospel...." It's so frustrating. #theproblemswehave   

  

actually some of these people are cool. they just don't know how interested they really are yet. let me tell you about them. 

cindy. last monday night we were walking around trying to find the apartment of someone we had met on the rue and I guess we looked lost because this random girl ran at us from across the street asking if we needed help. we didn't, but we contacted her anyways and although she was so so so uncomfortable for the first couple of minutes she started to open up. she is 26, french, atheist, and about to leave to cambodia in june for her company. She comes from a catholic family, but never felt the love of God for her like she was supposed to when she prayed so she stopped believing He exists. We testified that we KNOW that He is there and that sometimes the answers to your prayers are not in the way you would expect, but that He always answers. She was really touched by that and agreed to meet up with us on Wednesday and take a tour of the church which went GREAT. In between meeting her and the RDV she had looked up the church website and found out that we were the Mormons, so obviously she had millions of questions. We only touched the surface of them in this first RDV, but she was anxious already to see us again this week! I just want her to be able to recognize that Heavenly Father loves her! That's the goal. 

camille, wendy, anne-zoé. our three contacters came to zone conference this week! they have officially decided that they would love to be missionaries, the only problem is that they still don't believe in God. big problem? yeah i think so. it was so cool to see them talking with all of the missionaries and the Poznanskis. The main question that Camille (the loud one of the trio) asked each missionary she met was "have you seen miracles?" Clearly every single one of them said, YES and then shared with her either a cool mission story, or a miracle they had seen in their life back home. It was amazing. Soeur Peepgrass, a Belgian senior sister, was also able to share her conversion story with them. She converted at 18 years old and has never looked back. It's crazy to see the internal battle Camille is having between her rebellious natural-man and the light of Christ. I know she is feeling the spirit, but every time we ask her if she thinks that it is possible that God exists she still says no and goes of on the big bang, and evolution, and social norms, and family culture. on verra avec elle. 

noella and nicolas. we met noella on the road a couple of weeks ago. She is an economics student from Rwanda, 20 years old, and catholic. When we met her she was in the middle of taking all of her big tests, so she couldn't meet until this week. We had offered to give her a tour of the church in our contact and that's just what we did. She came with her friend Nicolas french, 20 something year old, atheist. When she came in she said practically the same thing as Cindy, "I looked up the church website, you are mormons??!!" Haha. classic. Her questions were a lot different though...more of the "why do you think that you are the only church that is right?" kind of stuff. It ended up really good though and she agreed to come to Kevin's baptism next week. Nicolas was convinced that religion is just there to help weak people deal with their problems...gee thanks...he was actually really nice and we had a really good conversation the whole 'if you don't pray you'll never know' concept. 

cindy number 2. cindy is a 24 year old french girl who lives in our building. we met her in the elevator about a week ago and exchanged numbers really quick. well she texted us earlier this week to see if we wanted to go out for drinks with her and her friends. we explained that we don't drink, but told her that we would love to meet with her sometime anyways. She texted us a couple of days later and asked if we wanted to go out to a resto with her for midi. We decided that it couldn't hurt, so we went out to sushi together. We are going to call this "the day Cindy accidentally invited the Mormon missionaries to give her a lesson at a sushi place". Hahahaha. Did the tags not give it away?!?! She is not necessarily interested, but she is believing, and she likes us so we might try to see her again. I'm not really sure about this one. ...

Other than that we are still on the hunt for the preacher of Lillianne's Nigerian church so that we can convert him and Rouen can become a stake, the Kalobe family is doing really good and we were finally able to order materials in Madagascan so they can really know what they are getting themselves into, my last interview with President & Soeur Poznanski went GREAT, we brought the house down in Sacrament Meeting singing Savior Reedeemer of My Soul (no, actually it was so terrible I laughed a little in the middle of it), and I finished the Book of Mormon and found my testimony of it all over again!! Yay for good weeks. 

Life is good. I have a lot of faith that all things happen for a reason and know that all of these people that we are teaching right now are in our lives for a specific purpose. I am most truly convinced that God lives, loves us, and answers our prayers and I have been really grateful to have been able to share my testimony of this over and over again this week! Heavenly Father loves us!! If you are ever unsure of this fact, please humble yourself enough to get on your knees and ask Him out loud. I can promise you that if do that something will happen to show you, and YOU specifically, that He is there. 

Bisous bisous,
Soeur Johns  

 p-day on top of the Gros Horloge. 

the Gros Horloge.