Time is of the essence and like seriously there is never enough of it to go around in the world. Especially when you are a missionary, you think you have it all under control and some weeks you do and other time the time just slips away before you are finished with everything you need to do!This week flew by and next week will fly by even faster with conference to finish it off! It is so exciting and I cant wait to hear from the prophets! Being in France we haven't watched the woman's broadcast yet and won't
until Sunday which is hard but it will be okay:)We have two new amis with baptismal dates this week! And its really exciting and I hope we can see them progress, we learned at zone training about faith and having the faith that people will be baptized and these two amis are perfect examples of it because they will get baptized, one of them even said she knew it was true which is crazy and exciting but the question now is just when. We will see if It will happen before I leave.... :)This week we kept running into amis on the buses and into just funny people and it was great to see the smiles they would get when they would see us:) We even had one ami buy us macarons which were soooo yummy! I love french patisseries!We also got a new family as amis with FIVE BOYS! Between the ages of 6 and 14 which is crazy but so exciting and I am loving the work! We are working hard and seeing so many miracles and it is amazing.Sometimes all we need to do is open our eyes and everything will just work out how God needs it too.Love you all, have a great week!
Sister Beatty
This week was a nice little testimony to two very big facts about being a member. There is opposition in all things, equal opposition to all the good things and that two just because we are members does not mean we have less problems than anyone else.
This week was crazy and we have had opposition from just everywhere and in between. But at the same time a lot of miracles and its kind of funny to see it all just black and white in the same like not even half hour sometimes.
We have had amis get to sick to come to church, lots of tombe vous, some weirdos, and of course I ended up in the ER for seven hours because french hospitals:p
To start that off I got my finger stuck in a car door but it isn't broken and will heal within the next few days which is a great miracle because it was a pretty shade of black at the beginning but after we taught our lesson that we had been driven too and I looked at it, super swollen but a nice pinky skin color:)
Its funny how Satan and God work at the same time, one trying to stop us and the other helping us. It is crazy to see it all sometimes just happen in front of us and we aren't able to do much except be patient and wait for everything to work out and have faith. Lots of faith.
We have been able to find more people on the streets and in the parks to teach and every single person we talk to is a miracle. Gods hand is like magic and it is amazing to see how he helps each and every one of his children.
One really fun thing we did this week was we went to a Tongan families house to celebrate their birthdays and teach lessons to their nonmember kids:) It was so fun, and I love teaching kids. They have a faith and innocence that is undeniable.
We also started a zumba class this week because my companion is a certified zumba instructor and it has been really fun to the class with members and amis for service and some MANGOS! (For those not in this mission that is an acronym that means something along the lines of work out every morning and get ready for the day:)
That was about it for this week, it went by really fast, we are getting ready for general conference where the prophets talk and I am so excited!!! Conference is seriously the best on a mission and it is amazing to be able to receive revelation from the prophets and apostles and all the other church leaders.
Week two of this transfer will be amazing!!!
Have a great week for yourselves:) And find Gods hand, especially when you see Satan's work, Look for God because he is there lifting us up.
With lots of love,
Sister Beatty
This week went by so so fast and because it is a new transfer I don't have my planner so I am going to do the best I can off my own memory, sorry if its a little discombobulated but c'est la vie en tant que missionaire. Literally if we don't write it down we forget it! There is just too much to know! Haha but it is great:)
This week we had lots of rendezvous and I am loving it! I also am loving the fact it is the school year again because everyone is home and falling back into their routines and has time now! And students!!!! The older French generation is pretty set in their ways but the students always ask us questions, if they are Buddhist or atheist they want to know how God is there and how we know God is there. And the fact we are closer in age makes them slightly more open.
Sometimes they think we are Jehovah Witnesses though and they yell at us and then its sad because 1. We aren't but even if we were 2. Be human. If two young girls walked up to you on the street you don't yell at them, people see our badges sometimes and they get real mean and its really sad. We are all living hard lives and all we want to do is try and make that life a little easier with what we know, and if they are content then we will leave them alone but sometimes they don't even give us a chance. Haha we call it the french finger wave because they will shake one finger at us angrily and sometimes it's kind of funny;p
This week on Wednesday literally everything fell through so we walked for four hours. We ended up porting this nice little mini mountain and we just ended up laughing so hard because every time we hit the doorbell someone would open a window like three stories up and stick their head out at us and would yell and be like they couldn't
hear but that they weren't coming down and for real we were staring almost straight up because of how French houses are built and Sister Merrill and I just kept laughing it was so hysterical and comical the way we were yelling our purpose straight up haha and all those lazy people xD
This week we now have two forever families that we are working with and it is great:) Their kids have baptismal dates and the less active parents are coming back and it is such a blessing:)
I am staying in Poitiers for the next six weeks and I am super excited to see whats going to happen this transfer:) The transfer goes up until my birthday so I will turn 20 here which is super strange.... Haha time... It doesn't ever make sense and it is so weird but that's life;p
This week we went to a bistro which was so so so yummy and good and french which was cool, and its fun to be able to understand what the waiter is actually saying to me when trying to explain the food xD
Other things that happened this week is I fell again. It was so dumb. It was Friday after calls we were outside for 20 minutes and I fell and just landed in the dirt. I was so mad I almost cried. Luckily it wasn't as bad as before but I am done taking the chance on my ankle because I don't know when it will give out so I am just going to wear
this brace everyday from now on because I cant fall again. With each one it makes my ankle worse.
We also went to the hospital this week because Sister Merrill sliced her hand trying to cut an avocado but luckily it didn't need stitches and it was a clean cut:) We had to cancel a rendez vous but it was good because a member was coming and that member was able to take us to the hospital which was super far away! Her hand is healing good though and there will probably only be a small scar soon in a little bit.
Poitiers is still so hot but its finally cooling down a little bit and I cant wait to start wearing my sweaters again! and scarves! I bought a big french scarf and I love it:)
Have a great week! Love you all:)
Sister Beatty
So this week we worked like crazy and slept really good each night haha it was great:)
We have had a big push in the mission to teach when you find and we took that and ran with it and thanks to my fearless blue for stopping everyone under the sun we were able to double the amount of lessons we had, almost tripled actually and it was incredible:) we worked really really hard, and we were even out Thursday because we had district meeting:) But the push was to reach our standards of excellence and we did and it was so amazing:)
When you are able to hit everything in missionary work, working with members, less actives, recent converts, and finding, those are the best days/weeks:) It is cool to see how it all works out! We have three miracle less active part member families that we are now working with and hopefully by the end of next week 6 kids engaged to
baptism!!! Between the ages of 9 and 15. It is absolutely insane! We have the family we have been working with, and the other two on their own initiative showed up at church and called us asking to fix rendez vous so we could start teaching their kids because they said they know they need to come back to church! It was so sweet:) We haven't been able to contact either of these families for years now and all of a sudden the miracle of them just coming up to us was insane! I couldn't believe it at first haha but I am so excited they are there:) This week is transfers and one big reason I want to stay is to continue and start working with these families but I have been in Poitiers for what feels like forever now so I don't know... We will see Friday!
This week the office elders drove up and brought us the rest of the furniture we needed and the sweet elders stayed for six hours to put everything together for us, we helped of course but the heavy and big stuff they needed to do. They were here until almost midmight! They were exhausted but they are seriously the best:) Although we were exhausted because the next morning we had to get up at 5 to catch our first out of two trains to go to district meeting and that was really hard but great because district meeting was amazing:)
At district meeting we talked about rising to our call and finding those lost sheep that are in our sectors. Because we are the only missionaries for hours it is completely our responsibility to find those who are ready and to work with them. But if we don't find them it is on us. We played a silly blind fold game where we had to find the sheep but blindfolded because we hadn't sincerely prayed for the lords help and then we did it again like we had prayed with our eyes open and there were signs pointing the way to the sheep;p it was pretty funny because they were playing the sheep noise from the Joseph Smith video but it didn't really sound like a sheep haha I will send
it home to you so you can hear and just listen to it without looking at the screen because it is funny xD
This week something cool that happened while we were contacting was we contacted into a slack liner (like tight rope walking) and his mom and we started asking him questions about it and he let us try! It was super fun:) haha xD I want one when I get home:) Joe and Josh you would love it!
Thats it for this week I think, have an amazing labor day:)
Love,
Sister Beatty
