Come and Stay…Please?

Greetings mes chers,

 

This week has been jam-packed comme d'hab. I am just going to pick the best part of every day to tell you about, sound good? 

Monday. We threw a big FHE for all of the single adults. it was a hit. We had about eight members show up and three amis! We taught the plan of salvation and ate yummy food. party party. Eric, Veronique, and one of the elders ami's were there and they all loved it! 

Tuesday. We taught Ludivine. When she got to the church we could tell that something wasn't right. It looked like she had been crying all night. We asked her what was wrong and she would not tell us and just asked us to start with the lesson. We talked about Joseph Smith and his prophetic calling. It went well, but we could tell that this was just NOT what she needed to hear right then. we both sat there praying our hearts out to know what to say, when finally she opened up to us and told us that she was pregnant. We had just taught the law of chastity last week and were pretty bold with it, and so she thought that we would judge her and tell her that she had to stop seeing us and coming to church. Au contraire! she was soooooo grateful to see our reaction of pure happiness! We explained to her how she could still commit to living the commandments even if she has broken them before and encouraged her to continue on with these lessons because of the blessing they could be for her future family! It all ended SO differently than it started and we all ended up walking out of the church laughing. I could have cried I was so happy. 

Wednesday. We went porting Wednesday night and found Christelle and Francois! They are a brother and sister who moved to France from Congo about 8 years ago. Their mom had consecrated their home as a house of prayer when they moved there and always told her children that if anyone wanted to come and pray in their home they could not refuse them. The first thing we asked them was if we could pray with them and invite the spirit into their home! They were just like yes of course come right in! haha. I love it when that happens! We prayed with them and talked a little bit about the restoration of the church and they were both very interested. We invited them to come and take a tour of the church next week! I feel really good about these two. 

Thursday. We taught Eric. best and saddest lesson ever! He informed us at the beginning of the lesson that he is moving to Bretagne this week for two months! BUT that he had already looked up the address of the church in Rennes and wanted to know if there were missionaries over there. phew. He is so awesome and has such a genuine desire to know for himself if this is true, and he told us that he has already received a couple of very specific answers to his prayers. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the Bitangas and invited him to be baptized when he got back from the trip. He said, in English, 'Why not?'. haha. It is so apparent that he wants this and promised to send me pictures when it happens. He is going to be a HUGE strength for this branch. I have no doubts about that.

Friday. remember Elodie? the girl we met a couple of weeks ago who is studying English? well we went down to see her in Dieppe this week! Dieppe the cutest little town is about an hour away from Rouen by rail and home to one of the Normandy beaches! We taught her about the Book of Mormon and then she took us on a little tour of the city. yeah, so fun. She is moving to England in about a week and a half, but wants to continue meeting with the missionaries over there! ALSO, she told us that she just booked a trip to come to the great U.S. of A next year and made sure that SLC was on the itinerary! We obviously planned a whole day trip where Soeur Berge and I are taking her to temple square, city creek, and cafe rio. Maybe we'll all be able to do baptisms together by then :) who knows? 

Saturday. Went out to Elbeuf to visit the lovely Teclaire. She is so prepared for this. Her friend is a recent convert from Paris and she had spent all of last week at her house (she even met with the elders twice over there). When we came over she was just like 'preach to me'. Haha. She is so ready to live the standards of the church and is praying to know that the Book of Mormon is true. She wasn't ready yet to set a date for her baptism, but I know she will be soon with her sincerity of heart to know and ask God if these things are true. She came to church on Sunday and all of the members remembered her name and it made her feel so good. These members are rock solid. 

Sunday. Sunday night we went and passed by Rachel. She has been literally working EVERY single day for the past two weeks and we have not had a chance to see her. She was not home when we got to her house, but her husband, daughter, and mother in law were!!! It was the first time we had ever met her husband, Daniel, and we were just blown away by him. We walked out of that RDV and Soeur Berge looked at me and said, "we just found the next stake president for Kinshasa." Mark my word, he will be. He is ready for this and wants to study and discuss with us. He said that he had been looking at the Retab video that was sitting at his house for weeks, but thought it was only in English! When we explained he could change it into French he was like, "Ok. I'm going to watch this tonight and read the Book of Mormon and you are going to come back on Tuesday and we are going to talk about it." I love when amis give themselves their own engagements and set their own RDVS. what? he is so cool and everything that came out of his mouth was doctrine. I'm really excited for tomorrow!!! 

As for me, I am doing well. I had a moment this week as I was sitting on my bed and realized that in 5 short weeks I won't just be able to take the train into Paris, or go grab a patisserie, or speak French to strangers, or ride the metro and I got so sad. I am going to miss this so much and that's not even counting the missionary side of things. Thank heavens it is not over!!!!! I am going hard till the end and not wasting one second! I can't say enough how grateful I am for the chance I've had to preach this gospel. It is beautiful and perfect and true. I gain a testimony of it all over again every single day. 

I love you all so much. Go hard for me on the 4th.  

Bisous, Soeur Johns 

Elodie and I! Isn't she precious!

Soeur Berge and I. Living the dream. 

  

Dieppe

Encore, Dieppe

Jumping picture!! Two of my favorite humans everrr.

We were supposed to put the raspberries in the bucket, bit I think most fell out…into our mouths.

The FHE. Veronique is the little Asian lady in the front and Eric is the French man standing up in the back right corner.

Our district. Holding up those 11's scary.

feeling blessed as usual

Ah sorry I don't have a ton of time today... this one will be really short.

Just know that i am so happy here. Miracles are everywhere. Rouen is the best ville ever. and six weeks left does not feel real or right. I refuse to believe it and I'm not just saying that to seem hardcore. I really love my mission more than I can express and am not looking forward to the end. ah, but at the same time I am SO EXCITED to see you and run until my legs fall off. It's a true dilemma.


Also I forgot my planner. which means that it is going to be nearly impossible for me to remember what happened this week, but I will do my best.


Well lets just start with the best part of the week. Yesterday at church. We have been having a rough time getting our amis to church, but yesterday they CAME. and they all absolutely loved it. Eric even brought flowers to put on the pulpit. Ludivine was also there. and Milady and her three kids. and Teclaire. the members were wonderful with them.


The hardest part of the week by far was saying goodbye to the Poznanskis. I love them so much and cannot even say how much they have taught me. They are incredible. and we got to hug president at the end!! always wanted to do that!! haha.


ok...that's all I got for this week! I love you all so much. If I have time tonight before p-day ends I will send some pictures!


xoxo, Soeur Johns

good days and better days

my dear family, friends, loved one's, members of the Rouen Branch who have found this blog, 

it has been one heck of a week. yet again. 

wednesday of this last week was THE WORST. haha. We had 5 RDV's planned out and confirmed for that day and every.single.one.of.them fell through. by the last one soeur berge and I just looked at each other and started cracking up. we had been anticipating such a good day lessons-wise, but in the end...nothing. it's okay though. it was still a great day and we met some interesting people.  

thursday was such a CONTRAST. everything thursday just seemed to go our way. we began our day by teaching Myrielle, a new ami who was found by the other sisters. She is from Benin and so awesome. We talked about how prayer is a conversation with our Heavenly Father and she agreed with everything and committed to start praying to know if the things we teach her are true. I have really high hopes for her. Then we taught Elodie. she is AWESOME. we met her in town a couple of weeks ago and she told us that she met a friend on her study abroad in Canada who is a member of the church and would love to learn more. She is majoring in English and so she speaks perfectly. She preferred that we teach her in it because she is preparing for an oral exam next week and thought it would be great practice. Man, was that hard or what? We are so used to teaching in French that we felt like we had to rely on the Spirit even more for us to get to right words out in English. I guess it worked because Elodie really seemed to grasp the magnitude of the Restoration more than any other person I've ever taught. She was just like "HOLD UP, we have a PROPHET!! I need to know what he has to say!" It was awesome. We are going down to Dieppe to visit her this week before she goes over to England for a few months. She already agreed to meet with the missionaries over there. She told us that she was going to send a FB message to her friend from Canada tonight telling him that she knew who Joseph Smith was now. Haha. He probably wet his pants. Right after Elodie we taught Ludivine with Soeur Barnjak. We talked about to Gospel of Jesus Christ...faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the holy ghost, enduring to the end...and Ludivine really opened up to us about her worries about baptism. She is concerned that her family is going to reject her. Soeur Barnjak was the BEST person to have there for that because she shared a really touching story about how her husband joined the church and his family wasn't super happy, but how they eventually came around. In the end, Ludivine asked to see the baptismal font, and said..."oh, okay so I will get baptized here"...I think that is a good sign. :) After that we taught Leila, the mom of the Madagascan family and it went awesome and she is really progressing well. And after that we taught our girl Rachel with Soeur Loemba. Hello, powerhouses. We talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and committed Rachel to baptism on the 28th of this month :) She said a big YES and then pulled out her work schedule to make sure that it would be okay. It was! We are hoping that her 11 year old daughter and husband can join her on that day! :) 

yeah, so I'm pretty much convinced that wednesday had to happen in order for thursday to be THAT good. i am to the point where i literally get excited when i have a hard day because I KNOW without a doubt that a good one is going to follow. that's just how it seems to work. 

the rest of the week was awesome. to be brief, we...

-gave Leila a tour of the church! which is a huge step for her! now she knows where it is and what it is like. 

-had a FHE chez la famille Barnjak with Ludivine. It was PERFECTION thanks to that wonderful family. We talked about commandments in general and how they are there to bless us and then taught the 10 commandments with our hand signs. haha. we had so much fun and Ludivine really hit it off with the family!  

-had an awesome DMB meeting. why? well, Ludivine had had some questions about why blacks couldn't have the Priesthood, yadda yadda and we really didn't know how to respond. well, our DMB is a huge African man and has one of the strongest testimonies ever so we decided to ask him what to say. Well turns out he has studied this topic enormously and bore one of the most powerful testimonies I have ever heard on how the church is not racist and has never been. It brought me to tears. Basically, I didn't have a testimony of this before. Now I do. We are sending Ludivine straight to him. 

-ERIC. such a miracle!! We were coming home on the bus Saturday night and I noticed that the man in front of us just kept turning around and staring at us, so I asked him if he had ever heard of the church. "In fact, I've been to Salt Lake City" Ah, bon? After that we had a great conversation about the church and the restoration/priesthood and asked him if he had ever been to one of our church meetings. He said no, so we invited him to come. AND HE ACTUALLY DID! And HE loved it!! We are going back to teach him about the Book Of Mormon this week. 

Yeah. It was a great week already and on top of that we PLAYED TENNIS this morning with the Barnjak's and Anderson and then ate a yummy lunch at their house. Basically, I love them to pieces. 

Well family I sure do love you. You are such a blessing. 

je vous embrasse, 

soeur johns 

S.U.R.P.R.I.S.E.S

MY HEART IS GOING TO EXPLODE. 

I am so blessed. This week has been absolutely incredible and I only have good things to say. 

Mmkay. where to even begin? 

Let's start with the reason this email is coming to you on Wednesday instead of Monday. Monday was a holiday here for Pentecost and everything was closed, so the Wareingans took us on ANOTHER adventure to the most beautiful place I have ever been to in my whole life. Etretat. Y'all should just scroll down and look at the pictures because there is no way I am going to be able to describe this place other than heaven itself. Oh, it was incredible. After that we headed off to the Branch President's house for a meeting. President Bertrand felt that "we have been having some difficulties lately with how our zones within Rouen are unequally divided between us and the elders" and needed to talk to us about it. Let's be honest. I hate confrontation and was so nervous about this meeting, so I was not looking forward to it at all...and on top of that it was on P-day. I was clearly SHOCKED when I walked through the door to their house and heard a huge "SURPRISE!!!" and saw a big happy birthday banner!!! Turns out Soeur Berge and Soeur Bertrand had been sneakily planning this party for weeks! I COULD DIE I LOVE THOSE TWO SO MUCH. I think Soeur Berge has a little 007 in her future cause it is not easy to plan a surprise for someone who never leaves your side 24/7, she deserves a trophy. To make it even better the Bertrand's had invited their f.r.i.e.n.d.s from the wedding, an inactive family that lives in their neighborhood, and the Bitangas! And ON TOP OF THAT it was a TEXAS THEMED BBQ. Soeur Bertrand literally out did herself making it perfect!!! We grilled hot dogs and chicken and kebabs and ate chips and guacamole and she made a SPECULOOS CHEESECAKE for the cake. Ah, I am obsessed with this family. AND ON TOP OF THAT we had the most amazing missionary moment during it!! How do I explain this briefly? Ok, so the parents of the less-active family were in town and are both very strong members of the church. We got talking to the mom about her conversion story and she started sharing it which was great, but Vanessa (ami) wasn't in the room. I think every single Soeur listening to her amazing story started praying for Vanessa to come in and voilà! Prayer works. She sat down and STAYED as the Soeur explained her conversion to the gospel and her first testimony of the Book of Mormon. The spirit was so strong and I know she felt it!! As we were leaving at the end I went over to Vanessa to see if she would be coming to church this Sunday and she said "oh YES, we love the church. we would come more often it's just that my husband works, but the kids love the church so much, but we will be there this Sunday because he is not working!" Ah, I know the Lord is touching their hearts and it is incredible to watch. I know that there is a special reason for all of this happening right now! And I have high hopes that they will be members soon :) Ah, I still can't believe that happened! I feel so blessed and CANNOT DESCRIBE THE LOVE I HAVE FOR THESE PEOPLE. They are amazing.  

As if that didn't make me feel like the most spoiled princess in the whole world, the next day, my actual birthday, Soeur Berge decorated the whole apartment while I was in the shower, and then we had our district meeting and the mantes elders brought balloons and hid in our in-ground baptismal font and popped out and threw them at me. haha. and they made a banana cream pie, my favorite! AND THEN, I am almost embarrassed writing about all of this, but just know it is just out of complete GRATITUDE... we had another little party with two sisters from the ward and our ami Veronique! And then went with the Wareighans to visit a Sister in the hospital and THEN ate a gourmet dinner at their house. Seriously, SPOILED ROTTEN, je sais. I don't know what I did to deserve all of this. I am clearly obsessed with the Rouen branch and their amazingness! 

Wow, all of that and I didn't even touch what happened last week...which was full of miracles and tender mercies. 

Let me just quickly give you the highlights. 

-One of the members found a blank check that was signed and everything that had an address on it for a woman. Being the angel he is, he thought of the missionaries and asked us if we could return the check to the woman and see if she was interested in the gospel. Turns out her and her family are Jewish, and while they weren't super interested they were SO grateful and it gave me warm fuzzies. 

-Our ami Rachel called this week to tell us how much she LOVED church! She then passed the phone over to her husband, who we thought lived in Africa, and he said that Rachel had explained all of the teachings to him and that he wanted to come to church next week with her! They are golden. 

-Ludivine is progressing slowly but surely. It is so hard because she looks up so much crap on the internet and it really shakes her up. We just keep telling her to focus on how she is feeling and telling her that if she feeds her faith then her doubts will starve to death. We are seeing her later today...that will be good. 

-I got a nasty flu and was actually bedridden for an entire day, a first for my mission. I watched Temple of the Lord probably 6 times in a row. I don't know why I do that...it was like National Treasure when I got my wisdom teeth out. I just became obsessed...the temple is the FIRST place I go when I get off the airplane. We had our exchanges the next day, in Rouen thankfully and I was with Soeur Doyle. She is a peach. I was still really sick and slept through most of it, but we managed to still meet some really awesome people.  

-We had the adult session of stake conference in Versailles aka. I WAS REUNITED WITH ALL OF THE MEMBERS FROM ST.OUEN. Be still my soul. It was so good to see them and hear about all the miracles that are still happening. Go team St.Ouen. 

-Stake Conference on Sunday was re-transmitted from Switzerland and we had the privilege of hearing from Elder Anderson, Sister Reeves, and Sister and President Uctdorf. It was like a mini general conference and was SO GOOD. They talked about the struggles and blessings of being a Saint in Europe and how they need to bloom where they are planted and grow the kingdom with faith. It was so inspired. 

Yeah, that is a really watered down version of this week, but there you go. It was amazing. I feel like the Lord has just water-hosed us with all sorts of unexpected blessings lately and I am beyond grateful. I couldn't have asked for a better companion, or better people to teach, or better members, or a better ville for the end of my mission. It is simply perfect. 

I love y'all. I am so proud of you GRAMPY JOHNS!! Or should I say President Johns! You are going to be such a blessing for the Toxey branch! They are so lucky to have you! 

All my heart, Soeur Johns   

etretat aka. heaven on earth. 

the crew. 

comp pic. 

hold onto your socks dad...it's also a golf course. 

The crew. Don't you love the oragami lotus crown that Sam made me? 

i'm feelin' 22! everything will be alright if...your comp.stays next to youuuuu

yummy yummy in my tummy 

the party animals. 

Soeur Bertrand, Vanessa, and I! 

timeo! the cutest little deaf boy. 

the decorated apartement! so spoiled. 

with soeur bachelet, soeur martel, et veronique! 

us with veronique in soeur bachelet's garden! fresh strawberries, mmm. 

the gaston girls from St.Ouen! 

Nicole! She just got back from Temple Square and knows ems!! 

i'm going to miss them so much! 

chinese elders. 

Margret!! look who it is! 

with the bertrand kids at stake conference

gold to cold, and cold to gold.

OH y'all. 

I cannot wait for you to meet the Roeun Branch. They are something else! We had a lot of good member bonding time this week, and actually a lot of good lessons, and now that I'm thinking about it we met a lot of really good people too. This week was just really GREAT.  

play by play? 

MONDAY night we went over to the Bertrand's. Literally if my future looked like theirs I would be A-OK. :) They are the most adorable young couple with 6 kids and they are sooooo strong and FUN. And they really grasp what the Gospel is all about and it is so refreshing! President Bertrand is a volunteer firefighter and is in the process of sharing the gospel with a bunch of his co-workers! Remember the wedding from a couple of weeks ago? Those are their friends. I love people who are brave enough to share the gospel! 

TUESDAY we taught Ludivine. She was being taught by the other sister equipe, and is preparing for baptism on the 28th of June so please pray for her! She is awesome and JUST what the church here needs. She is 28 years old, a nurse, and just really responsible and normal. Love that!! We talked about the Plan of Salvation, more specifically Christ's Atonement, and she asked the BEST questions. She was working this Sunday, but she still asked if she could swing by the church and drop something off for the branch luncheon even though she couldn't stay! Sounds like a future leader to me! :) That night we went over to the Bitanga's and taught them our hand trick for the 10 commandments and then over to the Warengheins to eat with them and their daughter and son-in-law. It was TOO much fun. 

WEDNESDAY we met a lovely muslim lady from senegal on the bus who is curious about our message, we ported into a nice muslim man who works as a manager of a restaurant and interested to hear more, a 22 year old atheist who wants to take a tour of the church and learn more about what we do as missionaries, a student from Cameroon who studied abroad in Canada and has a Mormon friend over there who talked to her a little about the church already, and a cute protestant lady named Deborah who thinks what we are doing is cool. We also met up with Camille, Wendy, and Anne-Zoé! Ah, I just love them so much. They agreed to come to church next week! Progress. We also taught the Kalobe family! They literally treasure their Book of Mormons. They have been reading it together every day and love it. They still could not make it to church this week though :(

THURSDAY was kind of a struggle. We chased down a bunch of people with little luck. But we did have a lesson about the 10 commandments and keeping the Sabbath day holy with an old ami named Juliette. yeah...she still didn't come to church so I don't know how well that went. haha. Unreliable people will be the death of me. That night...is just a story for another day. 

FRIDAY morning we were walking to the church to teach a lesson and we contacted a lady on the way. She was PRECIOUS. she agreed immediately to come and take a tour of our church with us. She grew up protestant with her dad as the preacher and she said that our church reminded her a lot of the one that she grew up in. One of the first questions she asked us was "Do you have hymnals?" Haha. We don't get that one like EVER. We sat down with her and sang a couple of hymns and she cried. She prayed for us at the end and thanked God that she was able to meet two "women of God" in this crazy world and that she knows it is not a coincidence. We are meeting with her this week. :) After that we saw Ludivine again and it went great and then we had DMB meeting. We taught Nina that night about Christlike attributes and as usual she just ate it right up!! We are praying hard to know what is REALLY stopping her from getting baptized. 

SAMEDI. We had a lot of people frudge us, but managed to have a great day of finding quand même. ALSO, a lady on a segway gave us coupons for free tacos and we went and ate them for dinner that night. tender mercies. The best part of the day was our lesson with Rachel!! Who knew she was actually SO interested! We watched the Resto film, invited her to be baptized, and she came to church the next day!! Yay!! Finally someone who is into this!! 

SUNDAY was interesting. We missed the sacrament looking for one of our amis haha and had to take it after church in the Branch President's office. whoops. We also had a branch meal after church and it was so fun to be around the members. I LOVE OUR BRANCH. 

Yeah! That was our week! I hope that y'all are doing great! I am so sad about the ward change, but I know that the Lord needs y'all in the 2nd ward and that you are going to rock it. Plus, what could be more fun than BISHOP NAHOO? It will be great. M5 forever. 

gros bisous, 

Soeur Johns 

The Bertrand Family!

Sometimes this is what porting feels like.

Rachel, we love her and her coconut beignets

Souer Berge playing badminton with the members

Lions and tigers and bears, Oh my.

Transfer news.

No changes. So yes, we are the happiest campers. 

On top of that the other soeur companionship got taken out of rouen, so basically our number of amis just doubled. 

Goodbye lunch and dinner hours. 

Hmm/ what words could I even use to describe this week? out-of-the-o.r.d.i.n.a.r.y that's for sure. We spent more time in prefectures getting legal in this country than doing anything else. But I can officially stay in France until 2015 now, so... see you then? 

Cool miracle with the kalobe family this week. We had a lesson with them this week about the Book of Mormon and we brought one of our members named tarolin with us. Turns out that both Tarolin and Mr.Kalobe played professional football. Insta friends. The lesson went great and the family is excited to start reading together every night. The only thing that is holding this family back right now is that they haven't come to church. We are working on it.

We also had a great last minute lesson with noella this week. someone else fell through so we texted her to see if she wanted to meet with us and she did! love it when that happens. it just so happens that fr.bitanga, our dmb, was at the church early for a meeting so he taught her with us. He is the most incredible teacher. ever. We taught the restoration and her questions were incroyable. The spirit was so strong as we were talking about Joseph Smith and it was a confirmation to me, yet again, of the reality of his prophetic call. She was really taking things in but she kept saying, "I don't want to change my religion." I know that she understands that this message will require change, but what she needs to understand is that we are not asking her to change her religion. We want her to stay Christian, but realize that there is so much more than just that!! Christ's real and living church is back on the earth!! There is more that we can do and more blessings than we could ever even imagine. 

Then we saw Laura. It has been a while since we had seen her. we got a text from her saying she wasn't really interested in the church anymore for the moment..we were devastated! She was on the path with a baptismal date! we wanted to hear why the sudden change, so we set up a RDV and went over to her house. She started by telling us that she had watched more conference talks and knows the church is good and one day she may get baptized...which is AWESOME, but she ended by saying that she doesn't feel like right now is her time, nor that she wants to lead a Mormon lifestyle. It is so sad because we know how much this will bless her now! But we respect her agency and just love her anyways! I know one day she will be ready and we don't want to push her or force her to baptism. she has to want it. one day. 

We also had the BEST P-DAY OF ALL TIME. Meet the Warheingans. best. people. ever. they took us to the zoo and packed us a huge picnic. We had a blast. I love member bonding time. & there is nothing quite as pretty as the Normandy countryside from a car window. 

ALSO, I got to go back to ST.OUEN and spend the night because I started my legality in Versailles. It was so good to see Soeur Hosking, she is doing amazing!! She is SPEAKING ON THE PHONE IN FRENCH. miracle child. Also, TEX got baptized! I never thought that would happen, but i am learning fast to never say never. That place is still exploding!! Ahh, also Soeur Hosking just got transferred to LIEGE!! Which means, a) we are living the same mission and i am obsessed and b) YOU GET TO MEET HER WHEN YOU PICK ME UP!! I feel so blessed. 

Other than that this week was pretty steady. Our amis are progressing slowly, but we have a lot of faith that they are going to make it. We are really excited to stay this next transfer and really get things rolling here. I know that miracles are coming. Stand watch. 

bisous bisous, 

soeur johns 

District photo. Trying to hide those double digits. 

The jungles of France. 

Favorite animal. 

Nothing in the white handbook about not holding BABY GOATS.

One more. Doing the family name proud. 

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.