Week 8 Transcript - Audio Letter

Hello.

How are you? Please let me know how everyone is!

On Saturday we went to clean an old apartment. We had a little more time since we didn't need to really get ready for the day. It was nice to have a little extra time.

So this week we had a few tombe vous - I don't know if I explained that before - tambe vous are when you get bodied - wait - more slang - when people cancel on  you. When something gets in the way - bodied.

We had one lady tombe vous us, so we went and dropped by N and two hours later she became  an engage - engaged to be baptized. The word for engagement in french is like challenge or invitation - not engaged to be married.

It was awesome. We prayed and we talked. She sees baptism like a mountain, and it kind of is - especially when your life isn't in order. We challenged her to pick a date, far in advance. She picked a date in August. Every week we will help her with something small. This week was prayer. We call her everyone morning to pray with her so we can have daily contact with her. Her next challenge will be to write down what she is grateful for. So, when life is hard and difficult, gratitude helps people to be happier and it's easier to accept what God is doing. Then we are going to work on other things, like coming back to church and following the Word of Wisdom. Each thing will take time.

One crazy thing here is everyone smokes. And I mean everyone. Like children - well, not children, but everyone over the age of 12 here! It's not like the United States. People smoke there, but they don't smoke in front of you, or while they are walking. There are places to smoke...so you avoid those places.

But you can't avoid it here. They smoke at the bus stops and walking around and it's so bad. The elevators and the metros all smell like smoke. One of the Elders has developed a cough. We are just not used to this!

Our other main investigator is M. She is Peruvian and has lived all over. She speaks quite a few languages and is now living here in France. She was found porting (door to door knocking). She has embraced the Gospel. We are teaching her the Word of Wisdom. She has had all the other lessons - she loves it. For each things, she just loves it and says it all makes sense. Then, what's next. She is basically already living like a member. They are such nice, good people.

This week we had legality (the government talks to you about diseases and stuff and then give you a sticker for your passport) and Zone Training. I had to present at Zone Training. It's weird, but I thought it went well. I'm not a Sister Training Leader - so it's like i'm always on an exchange.

Right now, we are doing four hours of studying everyday. It's insane.

Love you all!!

Soeur Beatty

(There was more, but we one part was lost, so I'm only transcribing the first part.)

Week 8: Bleu Fire

Hey everybody.

So this week has been crazy, and last week was crazy and it's all basically crazy -- but it's a good crazy! 

This week we had a bleus (brand new missionaries) only exchange and got an Engagé! (Someone who has a baptismal date) 

So, first off - the bleus exchange was where all of our trainers went to a leadership training and we were by ourselves proselyting for most of Tuesday and it was terrifying. The other sisters were all terrified but they kept saying it's okay -- there will be miracles -- and that was a lot of pressure for us because literally everyone would say that -- but after that day -- I believe!!  

But for real -- they call it the bleu fire because miracles just happen around bleus, without fail, every transfer. So ours this week was on our exchange. There were four of us sisters and we went and taught a man named J and that was fun. Then we went back to the institute to study. 

While we were there the bell rang and one of the Chinese speaking elders got up to answer the door -- since they were the veterans -- they were at the institute teaching a lesson.  The Elder comes running into our room and asks us if we are supposed to have an investigator show up?! and So I go running down to the door and standing there is a lady who had found the church online about twenty minutes prior and wanted to know if she could do genealogy here since the institute has a genealogy center.  

And so, I said "of course" and took her to the genealogy center and it was just crazy to talk about the church with an absolutely random ami (an investigator)! We were just amazed that she was there and went back to our studies when not even five minutes passed and then the doorbell rings again and the exact same thing happens again.

The Chinese speaking elder goes to answer it, runs in asking if we are expecting an ami, but this time it's a random man who met the elders in the street like five minutes prior and was told he could do genealogy here and so he came! It was absolutely insane -- just crazy! 

So that was our first crazy bleu miracle. 

Now on to our engagé  her name is N and she used to be a member, but through a series of events took her name off of church records because she wasn't ready to be a member, But she's been seeing the missionaries again for a long time now and we just stopped by to see her. She pulled us in and after like a two hour long meeting with her -- where we talked and prayed with her -- she picked a baptism date in August -- which is far out, but it's a goal that she can lead up to and it makes it seem smaller than a mountain -- because for our amis it's like this giant decision and it scares them. We call her every morning to pray to start out our day and it's crazy and great.

So this transfer, and probably the next one or two, I want to read the Book of Mormon with one of my goals in mind -- to let go of fear -- because it's really easy to let the fear of getting hurt or rejected or denied take over and then it can become debilitated -- but there's so many things in the scriptures about prophets and people being scared, and why, and how they overcome it, or if they don't overcome what happens to them. 

Reading the scriptures with this in mind makes it really easy to read through the Book of Mormon because I'm searching for a specific answer and am lucky to find some other answers to my other questions as well.

Sometimes, especially before my mission, it was difficult to just read the scriptures -- but reading with a purpose makes it so much easier. 

One of my friends, Sister Robb is so cute. She is another bleu and she made a transfer goal to finish the Book of Mormon before the end of the transfer (it's partly what gave me this idea). In her district -- her District leader's transfer goal was to help everyone in his district with one of their goals and so he called her the first Sunday and asked her what her main goal was and she said he almost died on the phone because the best way for him to help her with this was to read the Book of Mormon with her at the pace she needed to finish it before the end of the transfer! 

She said the phone was on speaker and his companion was just laughing real hard that now he has this big task to fulfill his bigger task of helping each person in his district -- but he said he's going to do it so that is just amazing! 

My French is coming along okay, although at ward council I maybe understood two words of what our bishop said, which is nice (not really). It's really easy to just get a headache, but I'm trying really hard and I am getting better each day. I can't wait for the day that I can understand everything that's going on in church! 

Our DMP (ward mission leader) is an American who is here in France working and he is great! We get to have the meeting in English and it is so wonderful to understand everything! His name is Brother Z.

This week we also had zone training and that was super stressful because my companion is a sister training leader -- but she couldn't do her presentation all by herself, so I had to help present, me! a bleu! to the Assistants to the Presidents (who are in our zone) and the office Elders and like eight other people -- who all go home within the next four transfers -- and that was scary.  I talked about having Godly love and letting go of fear and pride and just focusing on loving people -- because if you want to love someone -- God will help you. I think it went well since no one corrected me or anything -- so I'll take that as a good sign. 

One last funny, awkward, strange thing that happened, me and my companion were travelling around Vieux Lyon (Old Town Lyon) and it was gorgeous. We were taking pictures of all these gorgeous cathedrals with some intimidating gargoyles and we paused in this one spot to take a picture -- no one else was around because it was early -- and this van of French army soldiers with their giant guns and uniforms rolls up near us and were making motions and we got real scared real quick and started fumbling with our bags to get our passports -- because we weren't sure what we did but we must've been in trouble! As we started towards them, they started driving away, laughing, and as they started to drive away the soldier in the passenger seat blew a kiss at us!!! 

It was so awkward and terrifying because we thought we were in trouble but we laughed because it was funny and we were so relieved we didn't have to show our passports or anything like that! 

Later today I'm going on an exchange with a Tahitian sister who doesn't really speak English -- so wish me luck!

Love you all, 

Soeur Beatty  

So many of the buildings in Lyon/Ecully are painted in this 3 D style.

Ecully.

Ecully.

Mikayla is loving the food in France! 

Zone conference with all the trainers and their bleus.

Strange hair doings. 3 buns in one like the girl from Mulan.

The French and their tea.

The elevators are so tiny - stuffing three Bleus into one was quite a feat. S. Long, S Beatty, S Louder.

Potatoes and French Cheese. They are enjoying cooking as well.

Sister Long was presenting at the Zone Conference and so Mikayla was too.

Ecully.

Dinner Appointment with M. 

Fried Plantains.

The sisters spend PDay exploring Old Lyon - Vieux Lyon.

Mikayla loves all the patisseries. 

All the adults ride Razon scooters. 

Shoes!! 

Lunch out.

Week 7 - Transcript - Audio Letter

Hi Everybody.

My trainer is Sister Grant. She is from Utah. And fun fact, she is also a quarter Asian.

We’ve been having a lot of fun.  Sister Grant is awesome and has been out for almost one year. She will go home in about six months. She will hit her 6 month mark this transfer.

We serve in Ecully and we have the best apartment in the mission. It’s got this awesome shower with crazy nozzles and jets. It’s awesome.

Sister Grant plays the paino, but I haven’t heard her play yet. Sister Grant is amazing.

France is different. It’s old. Dad and Mom probably know what I’m talking about. It’s an Old World country, so they have nice things, but it’s just old. The houses are old, the buildings are older, the sidewalks are broken, because they are just old. It’s been so fun.  France is gorgeous.

Oh! The patisseries are amazing. We have had a bunch of  tarts and a couple different baguettes and an almond twisty thing - I can’t say the name yet.

My mission president’s wife is named Tracy Brown - she used to be Tracy Bruce and she grew up in Huntington Beach, California. She knows where you grew up. Did you know her?

There are mirrors everywhere. I don’t know if it’s like this in Paris, but in Lyon, there are mirrors everywhere. There’s mirrors when you walk into a building, and out of a building, and in all the elevators. And the elevators are tiny. You can fit like 2 people and a bag. When we had my suitcases we barely fit in the elevator.

Our apartment is huge. We have an apartment with three extra rooms with tons of beds.  We have an apartment near president, so when the sisters come for Christmas conference  and other things, they come and stay in our apartment.

We bought food this morning, which was awesome! We haven’t had food this week, so we’ve been eating scraps out of the cupboard. It was like half way through the week and we were supposed to have all these dinner appointments, but then they didn’t happen. It’s all good. We still got to porte.

La Porte is the door, so we say we are porting - it means we are going door to door. Street contacting is still the same. That’s what we say.

The city is awesome. The fire hydrants looks like little petite iron mans. The ward - there are a few kids in the ward, but mainly it’s older. They are all super sweet and everyone does bisous - which is like kissing on the cheek - but we shake hands with the brethren. With all the sisters  though we bis.

All the sisters are cute and little. There was one lady, she is tiny. She is smaller than Becky. She is so small, when she walked out I said, “Oh, i’m so tall!”  She was so cute. I’ve got to get a photo with her before we leave. She was just adorable.

They are all so small and speak really fast French, and I don’t speak fast French. Well, I can speak fast French, but I can’t understand fast French. But hopefully that will get better.

We have a few investigators that we are seeing. I’ll write more about them next week.

I might drive here, and I’m terrified. It’s scary. People don’t stop for anything or follow traffic laws. It’s waaaaah!!!

We do MANGOs in the morning. It’s an acronym for our morning routine (including exercise), so we stay charged and are good about it.  

Two pieces of advice that was given to me by one of my teachers. You need two things if you’re going to come on a mission. You need to believe that you can do hard things and when things get bad, you need to know where to turn.

If you have these two things, you’re good. When life gets hard, it will seem even harder when you don’t know what to do and you are thousands of miles from home. Make sure you believe in yourself and know you can do hard things, and that you know where to turn when it’s hard.

We got tombe vous a lot. Tombe is the French word for fall. It doesn’t make sense, but it basically means that people stood us up. It’s French missionary slang.

Have a good week.

Soeur Beatty 

Week 7: I'm Not Green, I'm Bleu

So Monday/Tuesday was just weird with all the sleeping I did on the planes, but we all got here with only two pieces of luggage missing -- which, for all 17 of us was pretty good!

My mission president and his wife are awesome. They are so loving and caring and a nice reminder of home. He is from Utah and she is from Orange County, California.

This week was crazy! I met my trainer Sister Grant and she is great. She's from Utah and speaks amazing French and is an awesome teacher!

We do lots of studies everyday, which is tiring, but good, because we need to be prepared.

This week most of our dinners and rendezvous (appointments) cancelled, but it was still great. My ville (city) is gorgeous and I loved walking around it and seeing all the cute French architecture. And the boulangeries (bakeries) and patisseries (cake shops) are everywhere and just soooo good -- and soooo much better than the MTC!

The ward is wonderful and I bore my testimony yesterday in French and it went pretty well. My accent isn't terrible, but understanding what people are saying is so hard, but it'll only get better with practice!

This week, really the only bad thing, but even then, not really, was we ran out of food -- so we ended up eating out of strange cans with strange food things inside of them. But we only had to do that once because our sweet Zone Leaders gave us some of their own food since we couldn't go get more and it was so nice! They're the best. Our Zone Leaders are Elder Mauss and Elder Berri. They both go home soonish.

In French -- Berry and Beatty sound similar - so all the ward members kept coming up to me and asking if we were somehow related -- which was funny.

Everyday is different but I love all the possibilities and just meeting new people. French is terrifying but it'll come. I just need time!

My trainer is a sister training leader and so tomorrow we are going on a split and I'll be with another brand new sister -- so wish us luck that we don't get lost or hurt! Haha. It'll be an adventure that's for sure!

Love you all and I'll hopefully have more for you next week.

Sœur Beatty

[Mikayla's Mom: In the mission field, new missionaries are called greenies. But in France, missionaries are blue, not green.]

Day 1 in Ecully, Mikayla's first area

Mikayla with Sister Grant, her trainer and first companion

Mikayla's sweet companion made her a beautiful planner. It made her so happy! 

Mikayla getting settled in her apartment

Photos around Ecully.

S Grant

S Grant

Homemade bruschetta with olive bread - sure beats the MTC

Mikayla was so happy to be cooking.

Curry vegetables and rice.

They ran out of food and had to open the cans in the apartment.

Sad meals. They are in desperate need of groceries.

The Elders took pity on the sisters and gave them some food to make it to pday.

It's amazing what you can make from just a few ingredients.

Mikayla is so happy with the food in France.

The Sisters went to do service on Saturday.

1st Sunday in Ecully.

The sisters went shopping and had their rolling bag to get everything home on the bus.