Week 26: An Italian Kind of Week

Bongiorno!!!

Yes I realize it is Italian but I spent two days with one this week so I figure I can say it at least once. This has been a good week, though the start was a bit rough. Stephanie, the lady that contacted us on the bus home from church wasn't there for the rendez-vous we set with her, we called her and there wasn't and answer, which made us sad. We passed by on Thursday and she wasn't there either, we will keep trying though. Our lesson with Christiane was on Wednesday, we had planned to watch a talk with her online, but of course the one time we want to use the internet it was down. So, we read a chapter with her from the Book of Mormon and scheduled another Rendez-vous for Saturday night. Stay tuned for it, it is exciting.

We visited Isabelle on Thursday, we made it to Visé without incident. You would think that it would be easy to get to and from a town that only has one train that stops there, but experience says otherwise. Isabelle was in a pretty good mood, we decided that we are going to start teaching her all the missionary lesson even though she is an active member. It will be good practice for us, and she sometimes asks us strange questions that I think a lesson about the Plan of Salvation will clear up pretty well. The lesson went really well, there is something about the story of Joseph Smith and the restoration of the gospel that brings the spirit. I love talking about it, and I love it when people share their testimony that Joseph was a prophet.

Sister exchanges were this week, we hosted the Nogent Soeurs. Nogent is a suburb of Paris, like Evry, its a 30 minute RER ride from Paris too. Soeur Woyak and Soeur De Santis came up Friday and left Saturday afternoon. Soeur De Santis is Italian and Liège was the first city she served in so she was really excited to be back. Soeur Woyak only has French Legelity so this was her first and probably last time in Belgium on her mission so she was excited to be here too.

Soeurs De Santis, Williams, Woyak & Turney in Liege

 I went with Soeur Woyak to pass by a Young Single Adult, Andrew. His little sister Indiana answered and said he was at work, so we went outside and tried to figure out how to get to the next place. While we were sitting on the steps Andrew's mother came home, she is also a member but I didn't recognize her. Her name is Fabienne, she asked why we were there and we told her and asked if she had time to talk to  us. She said yes, but she didn't let people in her apartment because it is too small, so we all stood in the hall and talked. It was different but kinda fun. She has a really strong testimony, and she has sleeping problems which is why she doesn't come to church every week. We had a mini lesson with her and it was really good. What is even cooler is that she was at church on Sunday!

Soeurs Woyak and Turney. They look like cousins or something!

All four of us went to English class Jacqueline was the only one there but she loves Soeur De Santis and Italian too so it worked out quite well. Institute is also on Fridays so Soeur De Santis got to say hi to lots of people, it was funny to watch everyone's faces when they saw her. We found out that night that the Zone Leaders had bought us our new stove top and that is was being delivered the next day, Saturday. So, Soeur Woyak and I stayed and waited for the stove people to come and Soeur De Santis and Soeur Williams went to the church to pick something up and to be there for Samedi Sports even though they didn't play. Our old stove was about 50 years old and only one of the elements works. The ovne works fine, and because of the way it is wet up you can replace just the stove part and leave the oven. When the installation guys saw our stove they were slightly horrified at how old it was. We asked tham if everything was okay and they said we hope it works. One of them kept cracking jokes about it, "it was made fifty ago, fifty years before Jesus Christ! I think your stove is from the dinosaur era..." It was funny. After a bit of struggling they finally got it installed. It is the flat top kind, it is shiny and black and was made in Italy. There are buttons and it lights up, and flashes H so you know the burner is still hot even after you turn it off, it is very fancy. The first thing we made on it was stir fry and rice, it was very exciting to be able to cook the rice AND the vegetables AT THE SAME TIME!!!!!

Any time is Gaufre time. Oooh, what a beautiful new sweater!

Soeur Williams and I had a Rendez-vous with Stephan Saturday afternoon, after we took the Nogent soeurs to the train station. We asked how he liked general conference and he said he learnezd a lot and that he liked it. He said your churc is all about Jesus thats good. We asked if he had any questions about Conference. He said no, but he did want to know more about Joseph Smith, the other missionaries had talked about him and he wanted some clearification. We were more than happy to oblige. We explained about the restoration and the preisthood and he was like "oh, so the reason that God said for Joseph to not join any of the churches was because they didn't have the authority." "Yes!" He then said "So, when you use the priesthood you are doing what Jesus would do, you can't use the preisthood for yourself you have to do what Jesus would do with it." "Yes!!!" It was such a good lesson. The things to say just flowed, it was such a good experience. It made us both super excited about missionary work. We gave him the  Restoration pamphlet and he said, I am going to read all of this, yes!! He is golden and I am excited to be able to teach him at least for now, he is actually in the Elders area, but we are going to teach him a few lessons before we turn him over to them.

Saturday night was a little crazy, We had a mangez-vous with Christiane and her kids. We got to the apartment before they did, Christiane was just getting back from picking the kids up from their dad's and the new dog up from her mother's house. It was a little bit of a zoo. She prepared seafood pasta for us. We knew it was coming, she showed us the package of mixed shellfish she was going to use while we were at her house on Wednesday, she bought it Monday. So, it was quite potent having been sitting in her frigde all week, but don't worry no food poisoning occurs in this story. The pasta was a bit fishy flavored but pretty good all things considered. The exciting part of the story is that Soeur Williams ate a fourth of a mini shrimp!!!! It took her seven minutes to work up the courage but she did it!!! You should all write her letters of congratulations, this is a feat. The first fish she has eaten in her life and I was there to see it! Simply splendid. We sort of had a lesson, the dog was all over the place and the kids were quite distracted but they did like the Ammon cutting off arms part, as I knew they would. So they will probably remember that part if nothing else. 

I am out of time, but I love you all have a wonderful week full of happiness and spiritual experiences!

Love,

Soeur Gaelin Turney 

The famed curtains in the Liege apartment