Monday, October 28, 2013

Missing Soeur Bernhardt
  
Worst transfer day ever. Soeur Bernhardt is getting moved. She has 3 more weeks to wait for her visa so she's going to another ville with a sister, and then when she leaves there wont be an equipe there anymore. Isn't that so dumb? We are all pretty upset about it. Its kind of setting off the whole p-day. Worst news, we might have called the mission president and asked if it was real, and then when he said yes somebody might have gotten on and told him how she felt about it. But I said it all in French, so maybe he was proud.......
So....I just don't have much to say at this moment, we are all in shock. And me and Soeur Walker are staying here. Its so weird. Its just the icing on the cake for my week.
Another random weird thing. I finally saw a car fire, it was HUGE. They happen quite often here in France.
Also I finally went to a French wedding. The bride was American and the groom French, so there were some Americans at the wedding. And man you could pick them out so easily, they were hilarious. And they were picking at there food like they didn't know what to do with it, and then one came running in 'I found one with just cheese!' It was hilarious. French eat weird sandwiches, but not that weird. And I don't think they appreciated they portions sizes. It was pretty funny.
The bright side to the week is we have this inactive member, Stephanie. She went totally inactive right after her baptism 7 years ago. She says she just got baptised for the missionaries. Anywho, I met her a few weeks ago and we just kind of clicked really well, I just love her. So we taught her a lesson and Soeur Walker said she never prayers. But she prayed at the end of the lesson. And the next lesson I got her reading the book of mormon. And then the next lesson she told us that she believes Joseph Smith was a prophet, and then this week we got her to go the a FHE with a member. It was sweet. To just see her progress little  by little. She says she's still not ready for church, but she told me we can set a goal, and she will work towards going that day. I'm not going to lie, I think she likes me. :) Her two little girls are adorable!! With there curly black hair, and the youngest, her nickname is Shesha. If that isn't a sign I don't know what it. So that was good.
So lots of random stuff this week. Sorry. But I hope you guys all have an awesome week. LOVE YOU!!!! Miss you guys.
And hey, i'm hitting my 7 month mark. Weird right? I know.

So random cool thing. We went this little place by Notre Dame to eat before Sacré Cœur, and to meet up with Sœur MacKay (my MTC comp) so that she could talk, and there were other sister missionaries there. So we got to all eat together, 8 sisters missionaries. It was pretty awesome. We had lots of fun, and the food was pretty awesome. Its like the missionary hangout in Paris, because you can get a panini and crêpe and drink for 5 euros, so its pretty awesome.
This week was pretty good, learning to teach with 3 in an équip is not easy though. So we are still all adjusting, and Sœur Bernhardt is getting up the courage to actually talk. There are actually shy French people, who knew? But we are slowly but steadily getting into synch. Although let me tell you, I already knew French people do things different, but I didn't realize to what extent, man French people are so different from Americans. haha And transfers are next week and we have no idea what will happen since we have Soeur Bernhardt, so it will be interesting to see.
We had some cool experience, and some sad ones this week. One of the awesome ones was I was teaching Nalde. She is one of our amis with a baptism date. She's super awesome.....but she doesn't speak French or English really, so sometimes is hard, we always need a translator. So I was teaching her with a translator, and Soeurs Walker and Bernhardt were somewhere else teaching. Anywho, we got to the end of the lesson and I finished explaining and bore my testimony and invited her to be baptised, AND SHE UNDERSTOOD!!! So awesome. The translator didn't even need to say anything. And Nalde said yes. And we have had tons of lessons where when the spirit is really strong she understands what we are saying without someone translating. Its really really cool you guys. She's super awesome, just having a really hard time right now, but I love her.
So that's my cool story for the week. Keep being strong and awesome, love you guys so much, and miss you.
Sarah.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Changes
 
    0/14/2013  
Its true you guys, sometimes the Lord brings us lower to make us bigger....although I don't know that i'm getting bigger.....at least not physically, which would be really really nice.
Anyways, we got our bleu! Her name is Sœur Bernhardt. She is from France of course, but also (and you will all laugh at this) German. But she's cool, its been interesting. Her mission call is to temple square, but she doesn't want to speak English because she thinks its 'moche', or in other words ugly, pretty funny. So we've been doing A LOT in French. I don't know that I feel like my French is improving, I just feel like my head is going to explode by the end of the day. And its totally weird being in a trio. And just in general living with a French person, sometimes French people are weird you guys, and have no idea what a grilled cheese is, and then your like 'how do you not know?!' And on top of that we had a VERY LONG conversation about Emu's. She didn't believe it was real because the translation wasn't in the dictionary, she thought I was making it up. And we just kept trying to describe it, and she's like 'a black ostrich? (snort) Yeah like a unicorn'. Pretty funny, when we finally got a picture to her she was like 'oh,yeah, i've seen that'.
 
Anywho...what else could have happened this week that I could write home about?....I don't know...maybe that WE ARE GOING TO HAVE 3 BAPTISM DATES!!!! Okay well we are already have 2, and the third one will happen in the next week or so. AWESOME!!! Its kind of super amazing how they each worked out, so i'll have to tell them each another time because it would take a long time, and I don't have that time. One of them will be a bit more difficult to get done then the others, because they might be here illegally (and oddly enough you can't baptise them). But we will see.
We're not emailing a ton today because were going to Paris to see Sacre Cœur. So sorry this is a short one, but I want to spend more time doing personal e-mails today too.
We finally got to hear Elder Ballards talk about missionary work, you all better be doing what he told you to, and share the gospel with someone before Christmas! If not this little missionary will be very dissappointed.
And Haley, its against the rules, but i'm trying to get permission to go to Disneyland so that I can check it out, and see if its Worth it. I'll let you know how that works out. I think eventually i'll break one of the AP's into letting me go. One of them played a prank on me, so he owes me.
Love you all! Have an awesome week. :)

Monday, October 7, 2013

 Snails and frog legs
This week we have enjoyed a lovely conference, as I sat and watched it with 4 elders I couldn't help but pointing out, it was very much directed about how women are pretty awesome....And I loved Thomas Monsons talk, I don't know what session it was for you guys, but it was pretty good. I spent most of the time finding talks to use with non-pratiquants that we have, so I have to go back and re-read them. Plus I wasn't able to watch all of them here, so we still have to see them.
But alas, the wonderfulness of conference was all an illusion, heavenly father gives you some awesome spiritual experience just to prepare you for something horrible. It would appear that the Lord has mistaken me for another missionary, as I specifically asked to never train, or at least wait until the end of my mission. But alas, the president has spoken. She will arrive this Thursday, but shouldn't be here long, she is waiting for a visa, so Evry just gets her for a few weeks. Hopefully I wont have to do the 12 week program again, because that was a rough 12 weeks. Anywho, she's French, which means that it will be French 24/7, so excited... Me and Soeur Walker are pretty bummed out, we really like our companionship and don't want it to change, but unforutunately as a missionary it is always changing. The Elders just think its hilarious. Elder Hall (our district leader who just got done being AP) just laughed, apparently I was on the list to be a trainer, but I told him that Lord isn't that foolish, and then 2 hours after this conversation we got the phone call.
Bright side, we got to go to the Arch de Triomphe today, so you know, thats cool. :) I'll get pictures to you guys.
Also on a French note, I have officially had snails and frog legs. I am very ashamed to say that I actually really liked the snails, I think if you like clams then your going to like well made snails.