time is whipping by. i can't believe this transfer is over! this week, soeur smith and i were freaking out and hoping and praying that we would stay together for another transfer. we did! we are so excited. I'm so so happy... I will get to serve in paris for three seasons! I can't wait to see the city in the fall.
life is good, as usual. vacances is winding down, thank goodness! we had a little miracle this week: we received five referrals. that's a LOT. usually, we are lucky if we get one. the Lord is finding so many little ways to bless us and help us along. we are so grateful!
We met one of the referrals at the visitor's center on wednesday night. Her name is Marcellina and she's Polish. We gave her the tour of the center, explaining the Joseph Smith story. I gave her a Book of Mormon in Polish at the end. She was really impressed we had it in her language! Afterwards, she wandered over to a touchscreen display with the "Special Witnesses of Christ". I switched the language to Russian since we didn't have Polish. I didn't know which testimony to pick for her to watch, so I went with the first one that popped into my head: President Uchtdorf. We both stood there watching it, me having no idea what he was saying. At one point I looked over at her and she was smiling. She told us she was interested to learn more, so we fixed a rendez-vous for wednesday night, then she left. Soeur Smith and I dashed back over to the screen to watch President Uchtdorf's testimony in english. It was perfect for her... He talked about how the gospel is for everyone, no matter where you're from, what your background is, or what language you speak. Dieter never lets us down! I was grateful for that little prompting. I'm sure any of the testimonies would have been great, but that one seemed to fit her just right. we're excited to see what happens with her!
we had our second exchange of the transfer this week. since there are an odd number of sister villes and they want to give everyone the chance to do an exchange, they sent the Villeneuve D'Ascq soeurs down to Paris and Paris Lilas. I ended up going with Soeur Ingraham, Soeur Didier's companion. We went and had a lesson with Anbu! It was SO good to see him again. I've missed my little Indian man! We talked to him about eternal marriage. He told us he is going to go back to India and marry a "mormon lady". So cute. I explained to him about temples, then he said "no, I don't want to marry in the temple. I want to marry in the church." what? after a few minutes, we figured out that he associates the word "temple" with Hindu temples. After I explained that we have mormon temples, he was excited again :) that darn language barrier is funny sometimes.
we had a rendez-vous with Anne-Sophie, a recent convert, on friday. She is SO good. We went over the Plan of Salvation and she basically taught the whole thing to us. She is a sweet little (or not so little... she's six feet tall!) Parisian girl, about 23 years old. we l-o-v-e her. We were talking about the five principles of the gospel (faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, enduring to the end) and I asked her what comes next after repentance. She couldn't remember, so Soeur Smith made a little hand motion of going in and coming out of the water. Anne-Sophie looked at her kind of funny and said, "going to bed?" hah. no, going to bed is not a principle of the gospel (but it's pretty high up there on my list).
that night on the way home, there were piles of brown leaves on the sidewalks. first sign of autumn! Soeur Smith and I each picked a leaf and talked about our lesson, blissfully making our way home through the paris streets. I know I probably say this every week, but sometimes i still can't believe I get to live here.
sending love from the city of light.
La Parisienne.
No comments:
Post a Comment