A lot of things have happened in the last few weeks. I'm just going to bullet point them for now in order of how important they must be to my memory.
-Elder Neil L. Anderson of the quorum of the twelve apostles came to visit and all the missionaries in the whole mission were in the Versailles chapel to listen to him. He has the same authority as John or Thomas or the other apostles of Jesus Christ in the new testament, so this was a really exciting day for us. He was a missionary in France, then directed a mission in France, so he has a very unique understanding of how missionaries work here and gave some amazing insights that I wish I'd known my whole mission. I got to shake his hand and he made jokes about Bountiful, Utah, where he's also from.
-It snowed a LOT that day and this part of France is confused and distressed by snow. Everything shut down again. Just for a few days, instead of a week like last year, we had no busses and couldn't drive to Mantes so we made a lot of cookie dough and called lots of people.
-We've tried a new approach to visiting members which is "we have American cookies and we're in your neighborhood, would you like us to come now or in an hour?" and it's been very successful so far.
-Related: Using this approach, we had an awesome "Come Follow Me" lesson with the Bishop's family, using the new program for home study that the church made to help us spend more time together and get a more personalized understanding of the scriptures, and it was super cool watching the kids put it together. Their daughter was a hundred times more excited to scripture chase when she got to use the missionary phone. The bishop liked it so much that he asked us to visit a few other families with kids to help them get excited about this program!
-A year ago, soeur Oulès and I met this cool security guard at the mall who walked right up and said "hey, you're missionaries! You've got Jesus Christ on your name tag! I want my daughter to meet you!" and he gave us his phone number and name but was too busy to meet so we paused talking to him. Now soeur Oulès are together again, in a different city, and we got a referral... For the same guy! He actually lives in our new area and we're still going to get to teach him and his daughter!
-An Austrian company was doing some detailing on the temple buildings and we ran into two of their workers in the grocery store. They didn't recognize us but we talked to them and they said they've been working at "the Jesus temple down the street!" and they'd also worked on "other Jesus temples that are being built, or the one in Frankfurt, and Lisbon," and went on for a while. It was awesome. They suggested we go visit "the Jesus temple" sometime and we're happy to hear we were already serving there. Honestly, it seems like the random people invite more people to the temple than anyone else.
-Last preparation day I didn't write because we had our district activity, with all the missionaries in our local group, and we played ultimate Frisbee with one of the Mandarin speaking companionship people they're teaching. Afterwards he showed us this random Pho restaurant and we eventually made it to Sacré Cœur, which is always my favorite thing in Paris and where I find my second favorite stained glass. Since it's a church they have signs asking us not to take pictures, and I didn't, but if you get the chance to look up the stained glass for Joseph it's my favorite. The lilies are beautiful!
-Yesterday we were knocking on doors to talk to people in apartment buildings and met a very nice and confused man who spoke Arabic, Dutch, German, and Spanish, and who did not speak French or English. I know roughly 10 words in Spanish and most of them relate to food or testifying, but I was able to say we were missionaries and somebody at our church speaks Spanish, but he kept talking to us and called his Dutch friend to speak English to us and held the phone in front of my face. Eventually we got things cleared up and apparently he was really concerned about us because it's a neighborhood where little American girls with nerd glasses don't typically knock on doors talking about church so he was worried we needed help and he didn't want to turn us away if we did. It was super sweet and we thanked him before we left.
-related: we've learned to go to the bakery first in a new neighborhood and ask the girl at the counter if it's a safe neighborhood. Her verdict in this place is that people wouldn't necessarily be interested in talking to us but we'd be totally safe, they're all proud of taking care of people.
-still related : a family in the same building a few doors later said they'd love to talk to us again next week!
-I just figured out to make American pizza crust and we're having veggie pizza for lunch
-My favorite local dog was so excited to see me yesterday that she lay down on her side so her dad couldn't walk away until I walked past, and she licked my hand. I typically talk to her female owner so the man was a little confused, to say the least, but it was awesome. She's a tiny goofy looking Yorkie. Dogs are one of my favorite things about living on earth.
-We visited a family and felt like the topic we should talk about it the Christlike attribute of Humility, and let me tell you, that was a tricky thing to plan. How do you even approach that? We decided to be totally honest and start with "so we always pray about a topic and this time we felt we should talk about Humility and we're as confused as you are, basically, but here goes." We got humbled real quick but it went pretty well, aside from still being confused. Then their teenager gave a talk this last Sunday about Humility and said he'd been assigned that topic just before our lesson and had been stressing out and wasn't sure what to do, and then the sisters came over, and he knows missionaries are inspired because we looked as confused as we felt but we talked about it. That was a cool moment.
-I met a dog named Utah.
And there's so many other stories I don't know where to start, so you'll just have to ask me about them after my mission!
MISSIONARY INVITATION: Go invite someone to spend time with you. You can do a gospel related thing, or just something positive. Like, go walk in a garden with somebody who's been stuck inside, call a friend, something that's specifically interacting with somebody.
Song suggestion: If you could hie to Kolob, the Lower Lights. It's a really good one! I think it's just music, no words, at least in the version I heard.
I have a favorite talk and it's called "remember how merciful the Lord has been" from Elder Maxwell. I've probably talked about it before, but I love how it's little stories and pieces from his life that don't connect until the very end. That's a lot like how Elder Anderson's message went. It was a huge pain for Soeur Oulès to translate, but we got a lot out of it.
God doesn't often talk to us in one single huge, clear, defining, road-to-damascas moment. He wants us to learn and grow for ourselves, and talk with him on the way. We teach a lot of people that don't want to believe in God or themselves or anything else until they see physical and undisputed proof that they can hold in their hands, but what would the point of that be? I am grateful that God loves us enough to let us be confused sometimes, and that he doesn't always give us the answer in the way we want it. I'm grateful for the snow, and the cold, and the people that are waiting it out with their families or their dogs. I'm grateful for people that don't understand yet but they keep meeting with us because they want to understand something, even if they don't know what it is. I'm grateful for peace in clouds and that we can follow light by light, like on the road back into our city in the thick white January fog, and that nobody is asking us to see the whole picture right now. I'm grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ and that I get to share it with people I love so much.
And I'm grateful for baguettes which I need to go buy, so I've got to end there, but I love you all and hope you have a great day and week and year!!!
From Aunt Chris-fun surprise!
cutest diner with the worst "nachos"
artistic district
tasty water from the viking spring
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