Monday, August 29, 2011

Week 46: It's the end of the world as we know it...or at least it looks like it

Well, it's transfer week and Soeur McClaine is leaving me to go to Luxembourg for good this time. My new companion is Soeur Ingraham, she was in Paris before. This will be her second transfer so she will still be blue, I am a little nervous but really excited, I want her to start out her mission well and her trainer is amazing, so I hope she's not disappointed.

So I was pretty sure the end of the world was happening on Tuesday. We were having studies when the sky got really dark, it was about 8:30 or 9 so it was pretty light, then in about 4 minutes the sky was black and it looked like it was night time, the clouds were super low and menacing and it was pretty creepy. We were expecting something to happen but after about ten minutes or so the sky lightened again and everything was back to normal. It was so weird and nerve wracking. It has been pretty stormy lately there was a huge downpour with hail about a week ago and there was an outdoor music festival and five people died because of the hail and everything falling down from the rain and wind, crazy! I think that is what made Tuesday so scary is because we were expecting some huge deluge and than nothing happened. I am glad the end hasn't happened yet in any case.

This week was a bit of an up and down kind of week. We had a ton of rendez-vous set, but every single on of them either was cancelled or didn't show up. It was kind of frustrating, luckily we have Rusty who isn't really doing anything at the moment, we were able to see him a couple times this week. He is so interesting, we've started giving him specific chapters to read and then we discuss them. Everything he has read so far he has really liked. We talked about God having a body and that was a little hard for him to accept, we asked him to pray and meditate about it, because it is a very different concept from his belief about God right now. We asked what his mother thinks about him meeting with us and he said that she was not very happy about it at all. Please pray for him.

We had our first Zone conference with President Poznanski on Wednesday, it was all in French and so good. He talked about his vision for the mission and the goals we have set as a mission. He wants us to increase the work we do with members, to build trust and to teach with them. He shared a quote that I really liked by Elder Richard G. Scott "To reach a goal you have never before attained, you must do things you have never done before." It really make me think about the things that I am doing now and what I need to change to be better and to reach our goals as a mission. One of our goals is to teach 20 lessons a week and to try and to teach half of them with a member. The most lessons I have ever taught in a week was twelve, so 20 lessons is going to take some effort but I feel confident that we will get there if we work hard enough. The Holy Ghost is the key to missionary work, if we are obedient and humble we will be lead to the people that we need to find, I have high hopes for this next transfer, I feel like there are so many miracles waiting to happen.

I met an amazing member this week, her name is Bernadette she is from the Congo and is one of the most incredible women I have ever met. She is less active but she did come to church this week. She was had a really hard life, she has had so many horrible things happen to her but she has an amazing faith in God. She loves God and has so much charity for others she prays and fasts for everybody and just wants to do what is right and to find peace. She is an artist as well and has some really beautiful paintings on her walls. I am constantly amazed at the people that I meet, to hear their stories and to see how God has touched their lives. I think that is one of the most precious things about a mission, meeting people and talking to them about life and God and about the things that really do matter.

Love and gross bises

Soeur Gaelin Turney

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