Faith is trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse

Are y'all ready to hear the miracle of my mission??!!!???

On the night of my missionary going away party someone gave me the advice of picturing a specific person/ people that I was sent to France to find. I took up the challenge and that night I wrote this in my journal:

"Here's what I'm picturing: Family. 2 parents, 5 kids. Living in a cute little French cottage. The parents have tattoos like the one family on the district. I get to come back and watch them be sealed.


I don't even know if that is possible because everyone says that my mission doesn't even teach any lessons, but I know the Lord can do what He wants. Why not get my hope's up?"

Well first I would like to say to all of those haters out there. We teach in the France Paris Mission.

And second, WE FOUND THIS FAMILY THIS WEEK. 

Last weekend we received a cordonné from church headquarters for a lady named Murelle. With all headquarters referrals you can pretty much expect them to be SUPER awesome and prepared, or to not even exist. We called Murelle and set up a RDV for Wednesday. She sounded really adorable, but didn't explain anything to us about why she had requested a visit. As we rode to her house I was thinking "either this lady doesn't live in our sector or we have just never been over here before", but I trusted that it was because the mission office had given the referral to us. When we arrived we sat down in a park, in the SUN (sidenote...it's been 60 degrees and clear sunny skies all week...i am sunburned obvi) and waited for her. I was not expecting her to be at all like what she is. An adorable little French lady with short hair and tattoo sleeves. She led us over to the bus that we needed to get back to her house and started explaining to us how she had watched a documentary on the Mormon church and felt a burning sensation in her heart that told her that she needed to be a part of it. She explained how she loves how structured we are. How she loves the idea that we have a prophet and apostles. How she loves the idea that we can be married for eternity in the temple. How she was moving to Blois in July and had already looked up the address for the church over there!! I practically fainted. Then we got to her apartment...this is where the cute little French cottage is invalid...and met her husband, also tattooed...and learned that she has 5 CHILDREN. WHAT THE WHAT. My people actually exist. And want to be baptized, and sealed in the temple!! We talked about the Book of Mormon, which ironically is the only thing she is not sure about...kind of a problem seeing that it is the keystone of the religion...but we explained how she can pray to know that it is true and that God will give her her own personal witness. And she agreed to start reading and praying about it! I have never been so high after a RDV in my entire mission. I KNOW that it is not by coincidence that I met this family…

here's the catch...they actually don't live in the St.Ouen ward boundaries. Which means we had to pass them over to the Paris Lilas zone leaders (who had actually already received their cordonné as well and were teaching them later in the week). IT WAS SO HARD. I told the elders they have to call me after every rendez-vous...haha. But as much as this sucks, we will still be able to attend their baptism, and it doesn't change the fact that they actually exist and that for some random reason we were able to a little part of their conversion story.

And now I have more desire than ever to find a family in St.Ouen just like them. There is no such thing as impossible. This can, and will happen again.

Other than this this week has been AWESOME. I still don't know why bad weeks are so bad and good weeks are so good. Here are some of the wonderful things that have happened:

-I have a tan...ok sunburn...but its whatev. the SUN is shining. We are going on a bike ride in the Bois de Boulogne after this. 

-Scott Michel, the son of Catherine Michel is getting baptized on the 29th of this month!! 

-We passed by this crazy less active and she had a friend there who is a mom with three kids and we read the family proclamation to the world and the mom LOVED it and was asking us all kinds of questions about the church! 

-We have been running up all of the stairs in and out of the metros. On Saturday night we got to a huge flight and were so tired, but just looked at each other and sang eye of the tiger up the whole thing. pretty much wish there was someone who could have gotten a third person video of that. 

-Joyce fed us RIBS for dinner this week. I can't even describe the hilaria that is that household. They are my favorite. 

My life is not real. I love living and serving here. Paris, although it smells like a giant public toilet, is a dream. I can't wait for y'all to see it.

All my love!

Soeur Johns  

man quiche

short one this week, sorry. 

so basically, this week started great. then I got the stomach flu and/or food poisoning (could have been related to the "man quiche" the elders made for district meeting).

the main points: 

-scott, the son of Catherine Michel, came to the institute FHE with us on monday night and loved it! he stayed even longer than us and all of the people there flocked to him and made him feel so welcome. i don't think the members even understand how much we love them when they do that. 

-Alicia received the Gift of the Holy Ghost and bore her testimony on Sunday. She was glowing. 

-Catherine Michel told us that she was super busy and that she couldn't come to church on Sunday. I was so worried and just thought, "thus it begins", but then at the beginning of Sacrament she walked in. She told me that she was sitting at home and thought, "do I want to be clean this week?" and decided that she needed to make the sacrifice to come to church! TRUE CONVERSION! 

-Soeur Hosking printed off a life sized photo of my face looking very disapproving and put it on a Popsicle stick, now anytime I do anything ridiculous she holds it up and says "soeur johns does not approve". Such a crack up. 

-Soeur Hosking had her Paris legality and is now LEGAL in FRANCE!

now that we are all rested up. Soeur Johnsking is ready to take down this ville. this week is going to be full of miracles, I am entirely convinced.

love you a bunch. 

Soeur Johns

she is such a gem

one year down.

Everything has been going so swimmingly well that I knew a week like this was coming. It wasn't even a bad week, and Alicia still got baptized on Saturday. We have just been so spoiled lately. Had to be reminded that we are still doing missionary work and that everything can't just be handed to us on a silver platter all of the time.

The highlights of the weeks are that Catherine Michel's son Scott came to church and wants to be baptized and that Alicia is a member of the church!!! 

Here is her story...Alicia's mom is named Joyce and she was born into the church. Her dad, older sister, and younger brother have always stayed active and faithful, but her, her brother, and her mom fell away for a little bit. During this time she started living with Alicia's dad and had 4 beautiful daughters. As they started growing up she realized that she needed something to help her raise them and wanted them to have the morals and standards that she learned in the church. So she decided to leave him and come back to the church. As she did this she invited the missionaries to come over and meet her family. They quickly found out, as missionaries do, that Alicia was 12 years old and not yet baptized. They taught her all of the lessons and fixed her for a baptismal date on February 22nd, the same day as her cousin. And that is where I came in. For the past two transfers we have been going over once a week and helping her get started on her personal progress and all of that, but honestly I was just the lucky missionary who got to be there for her big day. And it was a BIG DAY!! I LOVE THIS FAMILY. They are ROCK solid in the church and the baptism was incredible. Felt more like a family reunion than a baptism, and the Spirit there was incredible. Alicia was baptized by her uncle Brian who is also in the ward. My favorite part of the whole night was when Joyce and her Sister got up arm in arm and bore their testimonies together. Her sister talked all about how she always always knew that Joyce would come back and how happy she was to see her family in the gospel and how they would never let anything take them away from it again. And Joyce repeated NEVER into the microphone. JAMAIS. Ahh, I had chills. This is LITERALLY what it is all about. Happy families, forever families.

Also, I HIT MY ONE YEAR MARK. What a year. Never felt more in my entire life. I have not for one day regretted the choice I made to serve this mission. I would not trade ANYTHING in this entire world to have met these beautiful people. They have changed my life and my testimony of Our Savior and His Church forever. I have never done something so hard in my whole life. There are days when I just want to open my eyes and be at home. But I have also never done something that has brought me so much joy. And there are also those days when it feels like it's going too fast and it will be too short and there is no way my brain is going to be able to hold onto all of this happiness and remember it forever. I know that I needed these lessons. As C.S. Lewis says "isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back everything is different..." As much as I feel like the same old far from perfect Kales, I know that Heavenly Father has shaped me and helped me become who He wants and needs me to be. I know that I have done exactly what he has asked me to do, and that is what gives me the greatest peace to know that I am in the right place. And I am not stopping now!! I have these next 5 months to give it my all. Good ole' Napoleon once said, "I will not return except under arches of triumph" and I second that.

Well, I sure do love y'all.

Passez une très belle semaine!

à plus.
Soeur Johns 

 Alicia with her grandpa, and her aunt, uncle and cousins. 

Joyce, Alicia, and the family! 

 alicia 

love this little lady 

 the star 

all the kids!! 

A Valentines Day to always remember

Ma chère famille et mes amis,

Lundi. P-day, then we went and met Doris. An amazing lady from Nigeria who Soeur Thibault and I met on exchanges. She is a mom with 5 kids. The last two are three year old twins. They were super scared of us because "it was the first time they had ever seen white people".....hahah would not have expected that to happen to me on my mission in France. They must not get out much.

Mardi. So remember that Pastor from last week? Well, turns out that Madame Cherif is also a part of his congregation. She went back to her church last week raving about the two american girls who come to her house and teach her about the truth, and supposedly Madame Bernard chimed in about how she adores us as well. Well, coincidentally she was invited over that night to her Pastors house to eat, and has been visited by him regularly, and given a bunch of church materials that she can't read. Oh man, we died when we heard that.

Mercredi. We had ZONE CONFERENCE and interviews. We talked all about the primary song, "if you chance to meet a frown..." and how attitudes and desires determine your success. And it's SO TRUE, they do!! Once you just give yourself over to the work, everything becomes so happy and great things just happen. In my interview with President he told me that to him I am "the happy soeur" and I took that as the best compliment I could get. He also told me that due to BYU's start date he is sending us home a half-transfer early. At first I didn't know how I felt about it cause I don't want to ever regret not doing a whole 18 months, but then I realized that was psycho and that it is going to be SUCH a blessing to spend 2 weeks in Mckinney with y'all vs. 2 days. So I am officially coming home the 31st of July (harry potter's birthday) hope that doesn't throw anything off. It was SO weird to talk about coming home. That has been the last thing on my mind, especially serving with Soeur Hosking who just got here. ANYWAYS...that night we had the BEST LESSON EVER with Eric and Frère Poznanski and set Eric for baptism the 15 of March!!!!!!!!!!! With Eric it's not if or when he is getting baptized it's if or when he is going on a mission! He is prepared as it gets. And asks the best (and some of the strangest) questions ever. 

Jeudi. We went and said goodbye to Audrey who is going back to Illinois for the next three months. I know she is going to come back a baptized women and that is the best thing that could happen. Nothing else too crazy happened on Thursday other than I fell down the stairs on the RER and was picked up by an Asian tourist. We also visited Alicia, who is getting baptized this Saturday! :)

Vendredi. OH VALENTINES DAY....hahaha...BEST v-day ever. Literally don't think it will ever ever be topped. haha. In the morning we went up to Versailles to do my 2nd year legality. After which we went to the best pâtisserie I've yet to try in France. Since it was valentine's day and a friday we got two pastries...chocolate almond croissant and pistachio eclair...okay maybe that was a little (wayyyy) TF, but they were divine. The night before I had thought to call Anne (our lady who is in love with the Catholic Priest) and ask her if she had anyone to spend St.Valentin's with because if not we would love to spend it with her. Being Anne she LOVED this idea and invited us over to eat. We got there and started chatting as normal and gave a little lesson on "true love" aka. charity & the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We thought that she must have forgotten that she had told us she would feed us so we started wrapping up and getting ready to go when she said "okay, get your coats on were going out to dinner!!" Lo and behold, she took us out to a steak dinner at a SUPER fancy French restaurant. She knew the owner and announced to him that we were Americans, so he sat us at the best seat in the house and treated us like royalty the entire night. We ate soup and bread, steak and potatoes, and finished with a yummy desert. I even got proposed to by the bar tender down on one knee with a rose in his mouth. Don't worry, I said no.

Samedi. CATHERINE MICHEL GOT BAPTIZED!!!! Everything went off without a hitch and she is so happy to be a member of the church. I love how happy our ami's are when they get baptized. I love that we didn't have to convince her once that this was the right thing for her to do, she just prayed about it and got an answer and knew for herself. She was glowing and it was precious. We also went out the ghetto, like past the shantys ghetto, and taught new family. 

Dimanche. Catherine Michel received the gift of the holy ghost! She came back to sit by me after and I asked her how she felt, she just said "I can feel it! He is there" Ahh, love those moments. Another awesome miracle, Olga and her husband came to church again and set a RDV to meet with us this week :) ALSO, there is this man in the ward named Jean Francois and he has a girlfriend who had been coming to church every week for the past month. I thought that the Elders were meeting with her until she turned to me after Sacrament meeting and said, "hey, I think I want to get baptized here in St.Ouen what do I need to do that?" WHAT!!!!!! We are meeting with them on Saturday to talk details! Also, Alicia passed her baptismal interview!!! It made the 2 hours we spend porting in the rain that night easy as pie.


Seriously, we are being so blessed right now!!! St.Ouen is on fireeeee. As Soeur Hosking likes to say "we own this town and are evicting Satan."  

Y'all. I love YOU. Congrats tay bay bay on the engagement, Lo, for being 22 ooooh ooooh oooh oohh, and Aubs for killing it as always at the track meet. Stay strong, keep it classy, and see you in 5.

Bisous, Soeur Johns

Baptême Catherine

Consecration Hill in Versailles on Valentines Day

Versailles 

happy valentines day to me. cheers. 

Out for valentines dinner with our Anne

you'll wear those all white clothes, you'll look incredible

hello my dearly beloveds.

this week was cray cray. the stars are really aligning over here in st.ouen.

the miracles of the week…

catherine michelle is getting baptized on saturday! it's really happening! she is just the cutest and most prepared ami in the whole world and I feel so blessed to have been able to meet and teach her. this week we taught her about fasting and tithing. between that lesson and the next one she had already fasted AND set an envelope aside with her tithing money in it! she is one of those people who does not waste time. when she knows the lord's will, she does it immediately. i really look up to her so much in that way! also she is pretty much the most popular person in the ward. we hardly even got a chance to talk to her on sunday because all of the members just adore her.

at Noah's baptism one of their family friends, adrienne, came up to us and asked us if we could come over and teach her and her son. that happened this week!! adrienne was a little less than interested in what we had to say, however, her son Eric is AWESOME. he is about 19-22ish, and he had literally 15454321424 questions for us. great questions too. he grew up Christian, but then as he went to school he started noticing that the Christians he knew didn't really live their religion, but the Muslims did, so he thought that they must be right. sad. but basically he expressed to us his deep desire to follow the plan of God and learn more about him, and that He was willing to follow any path as long as he got a confirmation that it was true, and that the people were honest and practicing. hello, the mormons. & he came to church the next day and really liked it!!!

Therize is progressing wonderfully. We had an awesome lesson about repentance this week and the spirit was so strong. she is so willing and ready to change and start fresh. and, she already considers the church her church. so that's awesome!!

we taught Audrey about the word of wisdom on exchanges and she was already living it!! she is so prepared! she is moving back to the USA for 3 months, so we are sending her information back to the elders over there. i think she will get baptized during this time and I am so so happy!!

other than that….

we met with madame bernard and she invited her BAPTIST preacher to join us for the lesson. yeah, literally tried to rip apart all of our beliefs and bible bash with us. i do not know where the satisfaction in trying to prove two young american girls wrong comes from for a 80 year old man, but it was interesting enough. it reminded me of high school and all of his points of debate were nothing i hadn't heard before. I refused to get into it with him and just testified and invited him to read the book of mormon to know for himself that it was "false scripture". yeah, i don't think we've got a taker...but it's really just his loss.

yeah basically, that's all the exciting news for this week. other than that i finally found DOUBLE STUFFED OREOS and ate the whole box in one sitting. well whoops. it was my kick off for 6 months to sexy, okay.

well y'all, I sure do love ya. keep it classy.

bisous, soeur johns

Perfect Day!

for the books

Well hello there another beautiful week in the ghettos of the city de l'amour.

I just LOVE how much happens in one single week on the mission. It is overwhelming in every single way to try to update y'all on everything, but know that whoever wants the whole story just has to throw on sweatpants and read my mission journal with me while eating bluebell cookies & cream. those are my only requirements.

This week started with Soeur Hosking's first mangez-vous. OH man. WHAT A NIGHT. There is a soeur in the ward named Laurinda who was baptized in August, she is portugaise and only speaks portugaise. On monday we were invited over to a portugaise member's house for dinner with Laurinda, Laurinda's husband who is not a member, and another member to eat & give a little spirituel thought. Let's just talk a second for the phenomenon we like to call the French Forcefeed. Which ironically has nothing to do with food. In France, and I'm sure across the rest of the world as well, the members are terrified of sharing the Gospel. However, if you bring them anyone who is in the least bit interested, or even just willing to listen, they will spend 3 hours skipping straight over the PMG basics and diving straight into exaltation, reformed egyptian, and temple logistics. And that's basically what happened Monday night. What started with a simple spiritual thought on Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ turned into a deep doctrine debate. It was a disaster. And to make matters worse Soeur Hosking got sick in the middle of it, but we couldn't leave because they just kept talking and talking and talking. Half in French, half in Portugaise. We are just praying that Laurinda's husband will get amnesia and let us over to teach him again.

Members aren't always awful to teach with though. On Tuesday we taught 2 lessons with a girl named Shainy who is AWESOME and helped us so much. We started out by teaching Audrey who is coming along slowly but surely, and then Catherine Michelle who is ON FIRE and is getting baptized next weekend! We taught her about the Word of Wisdom and she was already living it! I just love people like that. She kept saying over and over again how grateful she was that she found the church because she "didn't think that that many people like her even existed in the world." She feels right at home in the church and wants her entire family to be a part of it. Pray that we can meet her husband soon! That night we had a really amazing experience with following the Spirit. Our RDV fell through so we decided to hit the streets and talk to people. We started walking down the street and talking to everyone, but no one was really excited about us. All of the sudden I got the feeling that we were not in the right place, or doing the right thing. I fought it for a while because I thought that maybe I was just sick of getting rejected, but then I told Soeur Hosking and she was feeling the same way. We turned around and literally seconds later we met a lovely women who we stopped and talked to for a good 10 minutes about the Book of Mormon. She was super open and told us that she was excited to read it and try out the promise! I sure hope we hear from her soon. Then we decided to continue following our gut and we felt that we should pass by an ami who lives close to our house. On the bus ride we saw a woman who we had met the night before, but didn't get a chance to really talk to because she had to get off the bus. Soeur Hosking had specifically said, "if we need to see her again, the Lord will provide a way." Annndd He did. We were able to give her a Book of Mormon as well and invite her to pray about it. Even though the ami we had originally planned on seeing was not home, I know that the Lord was guiding us to her through the Spirit.

On Wednesday we had a special conference with Elder Kearon from the Quorm of the Seventy. It was amazing. General Authorities have such a REAL power. Everything he said, and how he said reminded me of Christ. I felt his love for us as missionnaries and gained so much insight from his words. It was amazing. Then we had a lesson with Jimmy and Sarah who informed me that they ARE THINKING ABOUT BREAKING UP. Dang adversary. Not cool. I am so worried about BOTH of them if this happens. But as of Sunday they were still together, and Jimmy passed the Sacrament, so I think it's okay...for now. We also had a lesson with Noah and family and the twins joined us for it!! Finally!!!!!

Thursday...Madame Cherif...oh boy. So you remember that first door we ported, well we went back this week and had a lesson with Madame Cherif. During the lesson she expressed to us about how she was contemplating suicide and then proceeded to pull out everything she would need to do it. I hope this is the first and last time I ever have to talk someone off a ledge. Needless to say we helped her dispose of all of those materials and expressed to her how much the gospel message and the church can help her find joy in her life. She is willing to do what ever it takes and agreed to come to church with us on Sunday. Later on that day we saw Catherine Michelle, Alicia, and Rose and they are doing great.

Friday and saturday...lots happen, but I'm getting bored of writing this email. We are, however, in the process of getting missionnaried by a baptist lady named Mme. Bernard. She agreed to have a RDV with us, but then made us come meet her at a market and tried to get us to help her hand out flyers for her church. She now calls us almost everyday to ask how we are doing and invite us to church. Oh so wierd to be on the other side of things.

Sunday was again SO STRESSFUL. Madame Cherif and Catherine Michelle at church at the same time gave me another run for my money. But it was great, and went super well. Best part however was during a lesson on the temple in Relief Society when a lady raised her hand from the back and said "I'm not a member, actually this is my first time in the church, but what do I have to do to go there and how long do I have to wait?" Ahh yeah, you better believe we are meeting with Olga and her HUSBAND and her FAMILY this week :) Here we comin' eternal family.

Y'all I miss you. I really do. But I know that before I blink I'll be back in your arms, eating real hamburgers and milkshakes, and running as long as I want with headphones and music blasting. Until then I'm going to be baptizing these amazing French, Algerian, Guadelopean, Italian, Phillipino, and African people.

Avec amour, Soeur Johns 
  

Here is the picture of the first conference with elder Kearon
Voici la photo de la première conférence avec elder Kearon.

empty sea district reunion! 

 NOAHS BAPTISM 

the whole fam bamily 

at the opera house! the phannnnnttttoommmmmm of the opera issss herreeeeeee 

 well whoops 

CHIPOLTE. Its a weekly occurance. 

we found milkshakes in france. they were sub par. 

 sometimes I fall asleep with the area book...

this bleu is on fire

There is this thing in our mission that we call: 

BLEU FIRE. Aka. the excitement and good missionary desires that new missionaries have when they get to the field. Uhmm let me just tell you...MY COMPANION HAS GOT IT. Thisssss bleuuuuuuu isssssssss onnnnnnnnnn fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (alicia keys, clearly).

I'm just going to throw it out there and say that this has probably been my favorite week of the mission. 

We literally saw it all.

Let me just give ya a little sample of the kinds of miracles we saw this week...

1) Soeur Hosking invited 2 ami's to be baptized this week!!! THEY SAID YES. Catherine Michelle will be baptized on the 15 of February! And Therize will be when she gets a confirmation that the Book of Mormon is true!! 

2) The FIRST door we ported let us in!!!!! Aka. the FIRST door that Soeur Hosking ever knocked on her mission LET US INSIDE TO PRAY WITH THEM!!! I could not BELIEVE it!!!! It was a beautiful Christian algerian lady who cried during the prayer!!!!!!! and said we could come back!!!!!!! obviously I am a little excited. It was a straight up miracle from above. 

3) 5 of our amis came to church!!!!!! 5. It was actually one of the most stressful days of my life, but so worth it. And they all stayed for the...

4) BAPTISM OF NOAH!!! Noah is such a stud, and the newest member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. What what, what, what. 

5) One of the friends who came to the baptism agreed to meet with us next week, so what's up salvation.

Soooooo St.Ouen may be a wretched ghetto, but it is WHERE ITS AT right now. This ward is just EXPLODING and Soeur Hosking's bleu fire is not helping at all to keep it under control. She is the GREATEST. Literally, the GREATEST. She has absolutely NO FEAR and talks to every single person she sees. We are meeting so many people...okay story time: we knocked on a door and a young man answered it with hair down to his butt and a weed pin on his jacket. We still contacted him because why not, and he said "I don't know how you party, but if you want to come in we can show you how we party"....yeah no. 

Ahh, okay we need to go eat Chipotle and see the Opera house, so we have to go!!!! But I LOVE Y'ALL SO MUCHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!  

Bisous,
Soeur Johns