At the Mission Home

22 Sept 2014

So a while back you sent me a quote from Elder Holland about missions and putting in all our effort. Part of that came to mind allot this week. He said to give every last ounce of energy until we collapse at th end from exhaustion. well... Don't worry I haven't passed out or anything. this week just wasn't very eventful because I woke up with a fever Monday night and was sick all week long.
Not exactly how I pictured the last couple weeks of my mission but that's how it is. I remember thinking to myself a while back "I only have a couple weeks left so i wont get sick" ha!
However I still did what I could. I taught a couple lessons but I was severely limited because after a couple hours of being outside I would get super exhausted and that was about all I could do for the day.
I am a lot better now so don't worry I should be back to full health by the time i get home. :)

Yesterday we had stake conference in Aubagne. That's where I saw the brias :) It was good. They reorganized the stake presidency. A member from my ward is the new stake president.

The only thing that really happened this week was that we were able to finish teaching and get the interview done for our ami Jacquline who will be getting baptized on Saturday! She met the sisters back in November and has been coming to church faithfully since then. I've been teaching her since I got here and she has been making really good progress. At the moment it seems like everything is falling into place for her to have a great experience at her baptism. :)

Oh I ended up having to pull out some money the other day cause we were having some difficulty with train tickets. It was kinda a crazy day.

Well I guess this is it.

LOVE YA! see you soon:)

15 Sept 2014

I am doing great. No I'm not really anxious at the moment. I don't think it will really hit me until I get on the plane. For the moment everything is still kinda normal. I am excited though.

Pt Mugu sounds great! Its been a really long time since we have been there :)

I had to do a questionnaire so I didn't have much time to write this week sorry.

LOVE YOU!!!!
^thats the most important part anyways :)

8 Sept 2014

Hey there!

Everything thing is going really well! Soeur Carvalho is from Portugal. you were close:) She is good. She is really nice and a good worker:)

We had some pretty cool miracles this week! First we fixed a rdv with a university student and he brought 3 of his friends with him! They were all really nice and all interested in receiving a Book of Mormon and talking with us more:)

We also met with another guy who had met the missionaries a year and a half ago and he is really cool.

Then finally our ami Jacquline, We are preparing her for her baptism the 27th and she has been making big progress lately. In the past, it has been super hard to fix rdvs with her but we told her that we need to see her 3 times this week in order to prepare her for her baptism and she fixed all the rdvs for the week on the spot! that was a huge miracle!

Wow time is really starting to sneek up on me. I cant believe only a couple more weeks till Ill be home! Crazy! Anyways I have no idea about the letter from president. My group is kinda big there are 13 sisters and 9 elders going home with me so he has quite a few parents to write if he does that. Also this week Elder Ballard came to visit Switzerland so He has been busy with that. Other than that I don't know anything.

Oh I have officially bought everything I wanted to so I wont be spending any more money unless MAYBE if I go out to eat somewhere and need to use my money. From now on I will not be acquiring things but getting rid of things(unless someone gives me a gift) I hope to be able to go home with allot less stuff than I came with:)

Don't worry about my room even if you had it organized when I got there Im pretty sure it would be a mess almost as soon as I get there trying to find where I put everything.

This coming week should be really good! After all our miracles last week I am sure this coming week will be great! Plus we will have a big zone conference on Friday so I will see President and also Elder Bria! I'm excited!

Heads up next week I think we are going to hike that mountain again so if I don't email till later that is why.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to be here!

I LOVE YOU!

2 Sept 2014

My birthday was good! I got the big package tuesday and the small one thursday. Thank you so much! You guys are the best! Yeah we went out for luch and found a frozen yogurt place that was California themed so we got some of that:)

Sorry you had to move all my stuff. I have been planning on doing some serious spring cleaning when I get home so that just reinforces that.

I got a email from Brother Chronis. He asked me to come visit the Stake MTC class when I get home. I told him I would love to but that I would clear it with you since you are officially in charge of my life for the next month :)

Yeah I heard that Preston is a Zone Leader in Montpillier. About a year ago we were in the same zone but I havent really seen him at all since then. I might See him at a conference next week but im not sure.

I know dad is busy I have never doubted that he loves me. I love him too.

LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

25 Aug 2014

Hey! Thanks:) 

I'm sure I will have a great day! I don't really feel any older. 

Everything is good My new companion is from Portugal she is really nice. I like her allot. Don't worry about the thing with the bria's; I'm sure it wasn't just you. If they were asked not to its probably cause there were allot of parents asking for addresses. I don't think the bria's really mind.
I will let you know when I get the packages. Thank you!

Nothing super exciting happened this week. So unfortunately I don't have much to tell.

But I love you lots! I hope you have a great week!

18 Aug 2014 {Transfer #10:Still in Aix-en-provence}

I am happy to stay here i think it will be good. Some investigators and members were really happy to hear that I am staying so i think it will be good. I didn't really expect for me to stay and sr Hiltunen to leave but I'm fine with it there is more that I need to do here. My new companion is from Portugal. I haven't met her yet but ive heard good things about her. My district leader and his companion are from Spain so aix is getting some variety as far as language and culture. It should be interesting.

Thanks for taking care of my life for me. I trust you:) So I will be doing the second block right? I don't have any objections I will do whatever you tell me to haha:)

As for this week it was good. It went by really fast. I did an exchange with Sr Witt and her companion Sr Wolfe I was with Sr Wolfe. She is really cool This was her first transfer and she is already a awesome missionary. then Thursday we went to an outerville taught our ami and then went to a members house for dinner. The members invited Jean over so he could make Iranian food(he doesn't have a kitchen so he cant really cook anywhere). It was really good. Sr Muylderman is an architect and she designed their house its really original practically all made of glass and the only real door is for the bathroom. I'm not sure I could live in a house like that but it is really cool.

Saturday we went to see if the kid that we met on the bus was going to come to play soccer with us. But he didn't show up. However one of the members brought his friend and her children and so we stayed to talk to her. At first it didn't really go anywhere cause she was preoccupied with the kids So I got the idea to go play soccer with the kids and sr Hiltunen stayed and talked to the mom and she ended up being really interested.. They are just here on vacation but again planting seeds.
Oh yeah we hadn't been planning on actually playing soccer so i was playing in a skirt:) luckily the kids were 5 and younger:)

Haha 6 weeks will be over before you know it! We had 5 sisters stay with us last night because of transfers. Two of them were going home. It was kinda weird to send them off. I can imagine that allot sooner than I think that will be me. I cant really fathom it.

I'm excited to hang out with you guys but it also makes me want to work harder and take advantage of the time i have left.

Read PMG, if you haven't been already:) Elder Ballard challenged us to in the last conference

I don't remember if I really told you anything about the Elder Andersen conference. If I did I guess Ill tell you about it again. As a mission we had sent a goal to baptize as many people as possible the 5th of July as a gift to Elder Andersen and the Lord. So with the spiritual uplifting we received from Elder Andersen and our mission President and our own dedication on the 5th 22 people were baptized! That is a pretty huge miracle for our mission because during my whole mission we have had maybe 6 baptisms at most.
They gave us a dvd of the highlights from the conference and watching it has reminded me of that experience. It was really cool. We tried really hard to be really prepared to learn allot from an apostle. It was really cool to see the difference between the meeting we had with him in the morning and the meeting in the evening with the members. there was a totally different spirit in the room. Of course the spirit was present for both but remarkably stronger in the missionary meeting. There is definitely a difference when we are prepared.

Well I think that's about all I've got for this week.

Love ya a lot!

11 Aug 2014

Hey! I had a good week!

First of all I am FINALLY 100% legal in France. I've been technically legal since may but I havent had the card to prove it but after another trip up to Chalon we finally were able to get the card! That was a pretty big sucess to start out the week!

I had a really cool miracle this week! When I was in Chalon, I taught a man and he had a baptismal date and was progressing very well. Long story short he went on vacation and didnt come back before I left and texted us saying that he didnt want to get baptised any more. I was really sad because I knew it was because there was something he hadnt understood that we hadnt had time to teach him. So I did all I could at the time which was pray for him to come back. To my suprise praying one morning last week I saw his name on the engagee list! He came back! He was baptised on sunday! I talked to the sisters teaching him when we went to pick up my carte de sejour and they told me all about it! They said that he remembers me and that he asked if I could come to his baptism! That really touched me. I hadnt even thought that I had made that much of an impact in teaching him!  We often do more than we give ourselves credit for, I think

Another cool miracle: We were sittin on the bus a this guy(maybe18 or 19 years old) starts talking to us asking how he can become a missionary too! he seems really cool. I hope we start teaching him this week. He came a played soccer with us on saturday.

Idk about the weather being perfectly nice. Its been pretty hot lately especially today. I think it does get cold in the winter but i wouldnt know too much about that.

I actually found myself thinking about my talk last week. I guess that will give me something to do during my redicuously long flight home:) Im also very glad that conference is right after I get home this way ill have some time to maybe get used to speakign about the gospel in english

Aw man I guess Ill soon see how much confetti you packed in there. It will probably be like new years all over again.

Another highlight of this week: I found Resses peanut butter cups :D I bought a bunch of them :D

Well that was basically my week in a nutshell.

Love ya Lots!

Avec tout mon cœur!

4 Aug 2014

Hey there.

Sorry about not emailing last week though I did get your email.

I have no idea who that kid is but I'm sure he will have a great mission in Milan! One of the sisters I lived with in Chalon is From Milan. And Italian people are really nice and welcoming not to mention Christian.

As far as transfers I have no idea but I feel like it is time for something to change so I guess we will see. I will have the Brias tell you asap.

This week was pretty good slower than the last couple week though.

Saturday there were two baptisms one was an ami of the Elders and the other is Jean's brother he is taught by the missionarys in a different ward but their building is under construction so the came here for the baptism :)

I gotta go love you lots!

28 Jul 2014

Everything is going good here! This sunday was really cool all the talks were really great and we had about 45 visitors! BYU Folk dance team. I guess they are preforming in a town not too far away (but not in our area). I got to talk to a couple of them. It was interesting. The ward was so excited about them haha i think probably like half the ward will go watch their preformance. Zone conference was really good :)

Sorry i don't have time to write more I get easily sidetracked :)

I did find something I want for my birthday :) however there isnt any point in sending it to me just hang on to it til i get home. There is a book on the distribution website called pathways to perfection by Pres Monson.

People ask about me? I figured by this time people had sufficiently forgotten me(hopefully at least just the stupid stuff I've done)

LOVE YA!

21 Jul 2014

Hey there!

Ah Rexburg thats nuts! I now have a new reason to not really want to live on the basement floors but I imagine once they fix up those apts again they will be really nice!

Thanks for picking up my stuff. I think I am going to downsize quite a bit when I get back. I definitely dont need as much stuff as I have.

I had a really good week! We ended up teaching more lessons than I have ever taught in one week! It was great!

Have fun with Jordan and Kris for me!

Love ya lots!

14 Jul 2014

legality...yeah hasn't quite worked out yet. still working on it though. We only have to renew it once during the mission. It would have gone smoothly but then something happened and now its kinda a bit more difficult but it will work out soon enough.

This week was pretty awesome. We ended up being pretty busy for most of the week because we had rdvs with almost all of our amis! It was great :D Definitely lots of miracles at work at the moment!
No it didnt get crazy or anything when they lost. We actually had a ward activity to Watch the game. haha I think everyone kinda knew they were gonna loose.

something pretty funny though. Today is France's independance day. The country's motto i guess is liberty equality fraterity. Yesterday the subjects of the talks in Church were liberty equality and fraternity and one of the speakers even referenced Les Misérables. haha so French!

Thanks for your thought. Its really true that we need to evaluate why we do what we do and especially in Church things, find ways to change our motives so that we are led by sincere love for the savior :)

I read the talk from elder scott from the most recent conference and I liked it allot!

7 Jul 2014

Monday was Pday then we got headed to Chalon in order to do legality stuff Tuesday. due to crazy train stuff we ended up taking a later train which ended up being late so we missed our connecting train and stayed in Lyon with the sisters there. took the train in the morning. We to do legality found out that they lost my legality stuff. So have to kinda redo the whole process here in Aix. another series of crazy train adventures including our train getting stuck at some random gare for about half an hour meaning that we yet again missed our connection but because it wasn't our fault they gave us first class tickets to the next train...two hours later.

We had a cool miracle in the Lyon gare though. While we waited for the train we went to see if there was a piano in the gare because Sr Hiltunen is a good piano player and she happened to have some music with her. So we find the piano and there is a man playing a really complicated piece he had memorized so we wait then right after he leaves someone else gets up and also plays a really complicated piece they had memorized. After a while the piano was finally free again and I pushed Sr Hiltunen to go play. So she went and played and song about Christ i think its called "I saw him come" or something like that. Its a really nice song not complicated at all.
It was really cool to watch from my perspective because as soon as she started playing the people around were visibly much more interested. Where as before when the other people played it didn't seem like anyone around was paying attention, people were immediately much more interested. Some people came and stood closer around the piano some peoplecame and took videos and pictures a lady came and asked her who wrote the music and a drunk man was putting in requests for songs he knew. Then Sr Hiltunen started singing too! A man came up to me and asked me if we were from Lyon and if we did concerts! When she finished the song the people around clapped and thanked her for playing! The word were in English so I'm sure that they didn't quite understand that it was a song about Christ but I am convinced that the spirit touched all of their hearts.

The rest of the week was pretty normal until Friday. Friday we had a Ward activity where they watched the soccer match between France and Germany and then they had a Country night after that. We left the soccer match to go drop off some cookies at one of our amis who lives near the church. When we left it started raining just a little so we hurried over there because we didn't have our umbrellas. Our ami wasnt home so we left the cookies and went to leave. When we opened the door the apt complex to go back outside there was a wall of water waiting for us! It was pouring rain!! I have no idea how its possible for it to rain that hard. We didn't have our umbrellas and we didn't know if it would stop any time soon so we decided to make a break for it for the chapel. We got soaked! so we tried to dry off the best we could and went to the ward party. After the soccer game some people came and taught everyone how to line dance that was pertty funny to watch!

We have seen allot of miracles this week. Jean invited one of his friends to church sunday morning and he came! And his friend is going to bring a friend with him when we teach him later this week.
One of our amis cancelled our rdv for later that afternoon and later texted us saying that his friend has been reading his book of mormon and wants to learn more so they will come together to our next rdv!
Sunday we got a text from a potential investigator that was contacted almost a year ago saying that he wants to get his life on track and meet with us. We have a rdv with him today.
Later on Sunday one of our amis that we havent been able to get ahold of called us out of nowhere saying that she got a new phone number and she still wants to see us.

SO MANY MIRACLES!

You are awesome I love you so much! thank you for your example and for all that you have taught me!
We had a sister stay with us lastnight that is on her way home and it made me realize in 12 weeks that will be me. And 12 is a decent amount of time but I know it will go by fast because we are going to keep working hard. Weve got too much to do here that i think its impossible for to not be busy.


Have a fantastic week! I love ya lots!!

On another note, you should have seen the French's version of american country dancing =)

here is my funny french culture note for the week:

in browsing throught the dictionary I found this verb:

notice the phrase "to rush into marriage" they give the translataion as se marier.
now the translation for se marier:

30 Jun 2014

you prolly found this one but...

https://www.lds.org/church/news/elder-andersen-visits-construction-site-of-paris-france-temple?lang=eng

It talks about France and his visit here. ...word around here is the Paris temple will be finished in 2016.

Anyways... hi!

So I just spent the last little while looking at the church's page about temples (one of our amis was asking about them) holy cow there are allot of temples under construction! And the ones that they have the concept pictures of are so cool! The Phoenix temple is georgeous! and the other ones they are in the process of buildign are all so different its so cool! Definitely was really fun to look at all those :)

Remember how I told you about Soldes (a huge sale time in all stores in France basically) in the winter? Well right now is the summer soldes so if there are any kind of souvenirs you want me to pick up for ya while im here let me know. I only have one thing that I really want as far as souvenir anything else Im sure I would be able to find on amazon when I get home. ...sometimes I really miss amazon haha weird huh?

haha Im excited to talk to Fr Durand. I don't think he will have to worry about me talking too fast I've been in the south the whole time. (they talk ridiculously fast in the north and they kinda mumble or at least some of the people I've talked to from the north, in the south they have a funny accent but i think its allot easier to understand them).

I guess we will find out about transfers tomorrow morning. I guess president has to be somewhere friday so hes doing them early. So you should get the news from the Brias soon enough if they post it. if not youll find out. Idk what will happen.

Last week Jean got the Preisthood! so cool! and his brother is being taught by the elders in a nearby ward and we are working with them to get a fhe with them together and it could be that Jean might baptise his brother! that would be so cool!

Other wise we had a good week. I got to see lots of member I know from Montpillier and then Nice(some YSA came to our ward on sunday to visit) so that was cool. I love the people in France they are all so great!
Tonight we go to chalon for some legality stuff hopefully we can do that quickly so I can be offically legal here for the rest of my mission. Being deported would be a weird end to a mission...haha

Well I gotta go.  Love you!

16 Jun 2014

You will be so proud of me! You know why? ...I TOOK PICTURES this week! Haha its very much a group effort this week. I took some pictures, stole some from my companion, and a nice american lady visiting took some pictures and promised to send them to you. you should have a friend request from her on facebook.

We are in Marsielle right now. We came down to spend the day with the senior couple here and go sight seeing! This is the first time I have actually gone to see stuff. Saw the Chateaux D'If. It was cool. But unfortunately I have to go right now. Hopefully I will get a min to finish emailing later.

Love ya!