Chargé means loaded in french and that was my past week. We had so many things to do and not enough time to do it all it was crazy!
One of the things I was able to do this week was get a french license and that is pretty sweet because we went in and were out in like 20 minutes which almost never happens ever! And in a month I will get the real hard little license haha, but until then just a temporary paper one:) But its still cool!
We also had a LOT of mangez vous....we ate so much this week! We went to a family in this wards house for food and they cooked it on a stone right on the table, it was soo good but there was like four courses of various meats, a giant rice salad course, and homemade amazing chocolate mousse for dessert(I totally got the recipe!) And it was all so amazing! We also picnic-d this week with a family from senegali and it was so fun, the food is so simple, healthy and quick! The meal for all ten of us was done in like 30 minutes!! It was amazing! They use
this spice called curcumen... I don't know if it is the same in English, but with a little salt, garlic, onion, and ginger mixed with it, it is an amazing flavor punch!
I don't remember everything we did this week and sadly I don't have my planner because I didn't want to bring it to me to lyon because this week I found out that I AM TRAINING! So I am waiting in Lyon and will get my bleu tomorrow:) I am super excited and already made her planner and everything, cleaned for her too so it will all be good when we go home because since we live so far away, it will actually be only five weeks of the transfer that we spend in our area because it will take forever to get home! The trains don't come super often because its
summer hours so if she is american and we have to stay for legality we might not get home until Friday so we will see:)
This week the biggest miracle happened and it left Sister Takotua in tears and I could not smiling, we have worked with this Senegali family for four months now trying to help them be more united and reactive the half of the family who are less actives and teach the other half that are not members. It has been super difficult but we finally have started to teach the whole family, and they pray and read their scriptures and this Sunday Four of them walked into sacrament meeting after we had started and it was the first time ever....well in forever and sister Takotua just started crying it was amazing...they have an 8 yr old and a 14 yr old who aren't members and they both on Sunday said they want to get baptized! So as soon as I get back we are heading right over to engage them for a date and
it is so exciting and just truly marvelous... I am so grateful for the softening of their hearts and the willingness they have to just follow Christ. It is beautiful and I am so grateful that the spirit touched their hearts:')
I love you all, have an amazing week! Pray I get out of Lyon in a timely fashion;) And that everything goes well for the blues, the poor blues plane got cancelled from Paris to Lyon because of a strike but the Paris mission went to pick them up for us and put them on a direct train to Lyon in first class so hopefully it all goes well because most of them will have never taken a train ever... Haha but it'll be good, maybe they need to meet someone on that train who needs the gospel!
Love you:)
Sister Beatty
Hey everybody, how is your summer vacation going?
Mine isn't a vacation and its really just hot..... BUT we found a fan tucked away in a closet in our apartment so at least we aren't dying anymore at night!
So this week we explored castles, Had a ton of rendez vous, and met soooo many Portuguese!
Last pday we went up to Chauvingy which is like an old French village where there are six castles just all right next to eachother so we explored them and then tried to go see a bird show but when it was time for it to start the manager came out and said the show was cancelled because it was really hot and there were only 15 people so
it wasn't worth it to get the birds out:p sorry we weren't important enough....super lame But it was okay we were allowed to see all the birds anyways and got a full refund.
Afterwards since it was hot and we had to wait until the only bus came to come pick us up (the catch with these far away villes, is there is only one bus that goes and leaves that ville each day!) so we got on this little tour bus car
thing and just rode in it for two hours driving circles and talking about the gospel and cheesecake with the driver. It was pretty fun:)
The rest of the week we were running from rendez vous to rendez vous with amis and less actives and members. Its so bad because the buses are running on summer hours so we have to time them just right and sometimes there is only one certain bus once or twice an hour and if we miss it, all of our rendez vous get off track, but we managed to stay on top of it this week and it flew by:) It was great to have so much to do and then on the buses we did lots of contacting and ended up contacting into a Portuguese person like every day, so we dubbed it the week of the Portuguese, it was crazy!
This week also instead of having district meeting we did a mission wide summer cleaning of the apartments but we didnt have much to do since we clean every week so we made a cheesecake like we were planning to make for district meeting and ate that while we waited for cookies to bake for one of our less actives:)
Life is flying by and this is the last week of the transfer!! It is crazy but it is good. We work a lot and are almost always tired but its a good tired because we know we worked hard. Enjoy your summers because its not like that all the time where you can just play and play;p
Love you all:)
Soeur Beatty
This week flew by and this next week will fly by even faster! We had zone conference, a miraculous exchange, and found some new amis!
Mission life flies by the smoothest when you have amis and rendez vous and things to do! (You know I can't remember what a rendez vous is for normal English speaking missionaries anymore....they don't call them meetings but I was trying to translate that the other day and gave up...loosing my english!) But anyways it is seriously the best when the work starts picking up:)
We have finally found a new ami and we were able to get in touch with an old ami AND we found two less
actives! Who went less active where they lived before so we don't have their records but through miracles we have rendez vous fixed with them and it is wonderful:) And one is a part member family, the only curveball is it is Summer so everyone is traveling and so I really hope that we can keep in touch with them to make it through the
Summer, it is one of the biggest reasons we loose contact with our amis, we are still here working on helping them find happiness and salvation but they have their normal lives and its the season where everyone just disappears and you don't know when exactly they will come back! But fingers crossed:)
At zone conference we talked a lot about our feux de joies (joyfires!) and spiritual experiences and helping our members recognize them. The thing about this is it isn't another program the mission has created to try to get the members to do more, it is a program that the area presidency created for the members that coincides already with their normal lives, and our job is to help them realize all the spiritual experiences they already have and show them how they can turn them into missionary opportunities. It isn't our goal to have them do more but to see already that the spirit is working everyday in their lives, and they know it but sometimes we forget that that coincidence from early in the day when you just called up someone to talk and it just happened that they needed help isn't just a coincidence.
Or when you have been able to find ancestors or achieve something you weren't able to before, the spirit is always there helping us and we need to see it! :) And each Sunday we take an hour to work on this plan for ourselves to understand exactly how to help the members, even something as small as writing in a journal to preserve your thoughts is an experience with genealogy that can help your future family understand your thoughts and feelings when you were such an age and that is a spiritual experience you can share because the spirit of Elijah is real and will spread like wildfire if you recognize it and share it! (See what I did there;) That's the idea! And I have no sense
of humor its sad;p )
But at zone training we played again with water balloons but this time it was a little different and they just were throwing the balloons at us from all sides and we had to try and catch them, it was crazy, a few of the elders and sisters got SOOOO wet! Like balloon popped on them wet, it was so funny x) It is also perfect because it is hot here in France!
After zone training we had an exchange with the STLs which was wonderful:) And one of the best parts of it was we were contacting in the park and we turned down this little path and at the end of it was a bench with this scaryish looking man but we started walking down the path and he looked up and lifted up his sunglasses and said "Bonjour les filles! Comment ca va chez les mormons?" With a giant kind smile! Literally, "Hey sisters, how are you doing at the Mormon church!" It was insane, we then had a lesson with him where he talked with us about how he has met with lots of missionaries on the street before and how he loves how we always brighten up his day, he had even seen us the night before when we started our exchange but was across the street so he didn't say anything but we found him the next day and it was great! Up until my companion started coughing really bad and so he was like I KNOW WHERE THERE IS WATER! And he ran to this water spout and started turning it for her to get a drink and afterwards she was good but it was so funny I had to take a picture, he offered me a
drink too but I was good x) It was an amazing lesson on the plan of salvation and I hope he starts taking the lessons:)
This upcoming week we have a lot of rendez vous but it is great! We are busy every night this week and on Thursday we have district meeting in Limoges:) So that will be fun! I hope you all have a tremendous week:)
Love you,
Sister Beatty:)
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| Mikayla and Soeur Grant |
