This week President and Soeur Babin came to our district meeting so we could have interviews. We spent the morning doing interviews and afterwards had our meeting about the importance of helping our amis build a good spiritual foundation. I seriously love the mission president and his wife! They are both from France so they have a lot of good advice on how to adjust to the culture and be an effective missionary. They would literally doing anything for the missionaries. I feel so blessed to have such great people leading this mission!
After our district meeting we started exchanges with the STL's (Sister Training Leaders). When you go on "exchanges" you typically have to travel to the area where your STL's live and become companions with one of them for the day. Our situation is a little unique because we live with our STL's so we don't have to travel anywhere. It has actually been really fun because we get to meet a lot of sister missionaries that come stay with us for exchanges! I went on my exchange with Soeur Proudfoot who is from England. We get along really well and she is such a good missionary!
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| You can always find me at the bakery! |
Soeur Proudfoot only has one more transfer left in her mission and she says most of her miracles have come through door knocking! You get rejected the most but you have the most success once someone lets you in. We wanted to find a miracle so we spent most of our exchange door knocking. The first door we knocked on told us we would be better off going home, being warm and drinking some coffee... A little while later when my toes felt frozen it didn't seem like such a bad idea... Good thing we didn't listen because we ended up having a really cool experience! We had knocked doors for probably 1 1/2 hours and no one had been interested. Towards the end of the night we knocked on a door and this women named Catherine answered. I introduced us and told her that we were here in France for 18 months to share a message of how we can find peace and comfort through Jesus Christ. At first she wasn't very receptive but just wanted to be nice so she kept listening. We asked if we could say a prayer with her and she said no. As we started testifying she began to become more curious. She started asking questions and we started to have a better conversation. She talked to us about how one of her daughters died in a motorcycle accident. She said she wanted to talk to us more but we couldn't come in because her other daughter was home. She went inside and got her coat. I didn't quite understand what she said so when she closed the door I started walking away... Good thing for companions that understand French so they can yell at you to come back when you're half way down the street She came back out and the first thing she asked is why each of us decided to serve a mission. She asked how old we were and if we were going to college. She couldn't believe that at our age we would willing stop what we were doing in life and leave to go share this message with other people. She kept asking, "Wait this was your choice? Nobody made you do it? The church isn't forcing you?" She told us she wanted to come to church because our message must be pretty important if we came all the way to France to share it with her. THANK YOU CATHERINE! I would say it is a pretty successful day when someone tells you they are coming to church and you haven't even invited them yet! We talked to her outside for about 40 minutes. We were going to be late for curfew so we had to tell her we needed to leave. We gave her a Book of Mormon and asked again if we could leave her with a prayer. This time she said yes! She invited us inside to say a prayer and we said hi to her daughter. It was such a cool experience! That was the first time I have been let inside a house while proselyting.
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| The Cathedral by our apartment. |
It was a good reminder that serving a mission is well worth the sacrifice because it can make a difference in someones life. It takes being rejected from a whole lot of people here for someone to finally listen. However, when those moments come it makes them so much better because they don't happen often. I am grateful for opposition because it makes the good things in life so much sweeter. We consider it a tender mercy if anybody even stops and listens. I am so grateful to be in France because I love the challenge, I love the people, and I love the pastries. Church is true. Have a wonderful week!
Love, Soeur Johnson
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