We started off the week with eating at the family Tessa's house. They are members of our ward and they have a daughter about my age who says she is going to make me "a perfect French woman." I told her I only have 16 more months in France so that probably won't be enough time but she says she likes challenges.. haha. The ward here is super great and treat the missionaries really well. This week we spent a lot of time helping and visiting members of the ward. There are a lot of less actives here so our goal is to help strengthen them and bring some of them back to church. In fact, we had a less active call us because she had a tragedy happen in her family. She needed someone to come over and comfort her so she wasn't alone. We were in a middle of an appointment so we called the Elders and all 4 of them immediately went over to her house. She was so touched that they came over that she came to church on Sunday. She probably doesn't even remember the last time she went to church before that! We were all super excited. We had a lot of trouble this week having lessons with amis because they either didn't show, didn't answer our calls, or said they were too busy. We also had a day that the bus never showed up so we couldn't get to where we needed to be. We had a lot of setbacks when it came to teaching amis this week. However, I realized that missionary work is more than just helping bring new members into the church. I think it is really important to strengthen those that are already members.
 |
| Catholic Cathedral |
Nobody showed very much interest this week while we were contacting. We did contact a couple people on the street that had actually met with missionaries before. The one lady said she believes everything she was taught about the church but can't be baptized or meet with the missionaries anymore because it creates a big problem in her family. We did hand out "pass along" cards to a couple people so hopefully we are at least planting seeds for them to be prepared to hear the gospel later! We decided this next week we need to increase the amount of contacting we do so that we can find some new amis. Most of our proselytizing comes in the form of street contacting and mettro contacting. My "go to" method of mettro contacting is to start reading "The Book of Mormon" and then lean over and ask the person sitting next to me how to say a word or two or even a whole verse.. haha. Some people are nicer than others but it is a good way for them to start asking questions and for me to try to explain why I am learning French. It also gets them to read the Book of Mormon so that is definitely always a plus! We also do door knocking or what we call "porting." We usually have to set out a block of time to do that because we have to travel a little bit to even get to anywhere that has houses.
 |
| "Celebrating the rain" with Soeur Proudfoot |
I would say the highlight of this week was last night when we visited a lady named Dominique. She isn't a member but her daughter is 14 and recently got baptized. We have been trying to set up an appointment with her so we can start teaching her the lessons. She said she is super busy and can't meet with us until March... We decided that every week we were going to stop by and bring her cookies until she can meet with us. Last night we felt like we should go see her so we made cookies and just stopped by her house. She actually let us come in and we gave her the cookies and chatted with her for a minute. She seemed really appreciative and we were able to leave her with a prayer. We are really excited to eventually be able to meet with her because she is amazing. She is a really good potential ami! Every week is a different adventure here and miracles are happening. They don't always happen in the way I imagine but I know everyday that we all receive many tender mercies...We just have to learn to recognize them. Thank you for all the love and support!
Love, Soeur Johnson
No comments :
Post a Comment