Week 5: Aw, That's so Cabbage

a note from Paige: I have no idea what the title means, it was just the subject of her email and too hilarious to pass up.


Bonjour!!!

This week has been awesome, as usual. Soeur Neumiester's birthday was so great! Mom, thank you so much for sending the package and all the presents they were perfect. We have been having Nutella at breakfast ever since, she is so happy about it. Our teacher was sick that day so Sr. Wiseman and I went and decorated Sr. Neumiester's bed and bought her some little things at the bookstore. We had a party in our room at the end of the day, and it was perfect. Apparently in Sr. Neumiester's family they always give socks to each other, she almost cried when she saw them, and everyone thought the scarf was awesome, good choice mom. All in all it was quite the successful birthday.

Every week we have a Large Group Meeting (LGM) where several zones of missionaries get together and have a lesson about key missionary things. This last weeks was about baptism and how it is central to a missionary's purpose. Helping people be baptized is the main reason we go on missions. I was chosen to be part of the object lesson because I am going to a place where it is "hard to baptize." I stood at the front and was given 3 balloons, yellow, orange, and green. The teacher asked me what my hopes were on my mission and said the balloons were those hopes. He then had me say all the negative things that people had said about missionary work in Paris. And then said, "What are those people who say those things doing...?" And then he starts stabbing the balloons with a pen "...they are bursting your hopes!" Well being the person that I am as soon as he starts stabbing my balloons I pull them away and stop him from stabbing all of them. I think he was a little taken aback by the fact that I wouldn't let him pop all of them. He tried a couple more times but I kept instinctively pulling the remaining balloon away. I suppose that's what comes of having an older brother. The teacher let me keep the balloon. So I had a green balloon of hope, I was a little sad that the orange one got popped but that's okay I guess. After it stopped floating I put it in my journal so I will always have at least one hope. 

Tuesday night i had the coolest dream. If Ben doesn't read this you have to tell him because he will appreciate it. In my dream I was learning how to become a Jedi and going through all the training. Except that the rules I was learning to be a Jedi were the missionary rules. And that was my dream. I just thought it was really funny that in the MTC I am not training to be a missionary but rather I am being trained as a Jedi of the Lord. 

This week we started teaching lessons/discussions in French as well as starting 3 new Progressing Investigators (PI). A PI is generally one of the French teachers that pretends to be a particular person that we teach all the lessons to. They are nice so we can practice teaching all the lessons and and learning how to prepare lessons for specific people and their problems. So now we have 4 and we are teaching all of them in French. It is a bit of a struggle at times but it is so good. It does make me realize how much vocabulary I don't know and how much I need learn.

I love you all very much and I know that the Lord is a part of our lives every day.

Love,

Soeur Turney