May 16, 2011

Bonjour ma chére famille!

How are you doing? Thank you for writing! For some reason this week felt extremely long inbetween emails and it felt extra good to read how you are all doing! This week in Paris has been as amazing as usual....we have been busy busy with all sorts of things!

Anne Sophie continues to do great! At one point this week we planned on teaching her the law of tithing and fasting. Well we told her what we were going to teach her and she goes "oh yes the law of tithing thats when you give a tenth of your money to the church and the law of the fast is when you go with out food but its not just about not eating its about praying and feeling the spirit and sharing your testimony..." and she went into detail about the two laws... ya she is pretty much perfect.We pretty much just closed the scriptures, bore testimony, and called it good for the day haha She is so excited about her baptism and has given great deal of thought about who will be speaking at her baptism and what songs we are going to sing. Its been so fun to see how excited she is.... and to be excited too! Only 12 more days.... yes we have a countdown haha.

Let me tell you last P day was lame however...it was our zone leaders birthday and we wanted to do something as a district... and the elders planned this party and guess what the best they came up with!? BOWLING!!!! Seriously... you celebrate your birthday in Paris and you want to go bowling... as you can tell Im a little bitter about having to spend one of my precious Pdays bowling in Paris! I mean thats the kind of thing you do in Rexburg Idaho to celebrate a birthday not Paris! Oh well Im over it.... kinda

The rest of this week ended up being pretty entertaining. We FINALLY had time to do our transfer planning (three weeks into the transfer) but it was good. We made goals to talk to more people and that has definately provided some entertainment.... mostly because once I get past the exchange hellos with people I cant understand a thing they are saying. For example we had an appointment in the 18th arrondissement (Paris is split into 20 neighborhoods called arrondissements) And this neighborhood happened to particularly.... adventerous? We will just say as missionaries we stuck out...but we got there on time for our appointment when the lady we were meeting with texted us and said she was going to be a half hour late. So we decided to try some contacting. First of... the 18th stinks! Like raw fish, wierd foods, and unkept streets...so wandering around is just a pleasure. After a couple contacts my companion told me the next one was mine. So we found this really nice looking African women and as she gets closer I start to get all flustered and once she is near us I kind of burst out "bonjour madame...comment....comment...com...com" and totally froze... haha yup it was great. So my companion jumped in and saved me and goes off on our little schpill about how we are missionaries... well then the lady looks at us and says "sorry I dont know french".... phew sure had her fooled with my really great intro! haha Later on in the same day Soeur Pearce stopped a young mom with her daughter and started to introduce The Family Proc...when her husband walked up... and her sister...and another family member... and another... untill all of the sudden she was trying to contact one person with seven other people watching haha. It was just a tad bit awkward. After an hour appointment finally showed up. Ava is a reccent convert...we have visited her before during my first week here, but this time she had her 3 nieces over as well as her two daughters. And of course we were like great we can introduce these kids to the gospel. Well we get them to sing I am of a Child of God with us and read a passage out of the book of mormon talking about prayer. Soeur Pearce then asked them if they felt like could pray to God and get an answer and they all nodded and were like ya! But then Ava was like "well...they are muslim" hahah yup we just made 3 little muslim girls read from the Book of Mormon... OOPS!

We have had a few awkward teaching moments this week. When we were teaching english class this week Soeur Pearce had this great idea that everyone would share a story so that the students could practice speaking in past tense. Well it just so happened that everyone who showed up that day were women so Soeur Pearce suggested we all tell our first kiss story (real missionary like I know haha) Well the first lady goes and starts to tell us how she was a child bride at 15 and how her first kiss was with her husband... so then another lady started crying because she just got married a couple years ago and apparently its still a fresh wound that none of her family was at the wedding because she is from the middle east and she got married in France. So now we have once student crying and one telling us about her african child bride wedding when in wanders Amil... who Im not exactly sure who he is... but is a member who apparently has no job because he always at the church and always proposes to the sister missionaries because he is looking for a way to the states (yup dodged that bullet by being canadian haha) Well he comes in and starts hitting on/ consoling the lady who is crying AND married haha. Me and Soeur Pearce kind of just looked at each other and were like well "Whoops guess we wont ask for first kiss stories again". Another great story is we met with Marine, a recent convert who moved into the ward and is going through a rough time, well she asked us what our first names are and I told her Courtney (ya french people cannot say courtney...most dont even try...they kind of just nod and smile at my name) So I tried to explain to her that when I WAS a child and lived in montereal people couldnt pronounce my name... yup well mixed that verb up and told here when I HAD a child... hahahah Soeur Pearce turned around real fast and fixed that miscommunication haha. As well during district finding we did the chalk plan of salvation thing again and I decided I wanted to branch out and try talking to someone. So Me and Elder Liao, who is from Taiwan and called mandrin speaking and has picked up a little french just from being here, decided that with our french skills combined maybe we could talk to someone. So we approached this old man and try to ask him if had any question about the plan of salvation. He said no. So we asked he is believing aka christian (it sounds funny in english but i swear its normal in french haha) and he said no. So then just Elder Liao and I kind of just stood there and nodded and smiled because we didnt know how to say anything else...so then we started over haha "so are you believing" (yup im sure a ton chaged in those 30 seconds...our presence is just that strong haha)So then he goes on some rant about how I have faith so Im believing but he doesnt have faith so why would he believe and me and Elder Liao just kept nodding and smiling till he finally just walked away... oops hope his salvation was not determined because of my lack of french skills. It was adventure... you cant imagine how excited I was when a lady from New York wanted to talk about what we were doing.

We also had some funny mangez vous this week. There are two Philipino ladies in our ward who wanted to make dinner for all 10 of the missionaries in our ward but wanted to have it at the church because their apartment is too small. So they made this meal and it was...manageable. Until they brought out desert. Apparently their desert is similar to our Chinese desert a couple weeks ago...as long as its cold and has a milk product involved it counts as ice cream. So they cut up sweet potatoes and put in this crushed ice with milk mixture and told us it is ice cream. We all were trying to swallow it when Mikey walked in. Mikey is the church's number one bum that hangs out in the church and comes to the english classes and loves the missionaries. So here he comes in with his shirt completely unbuttoned and announces to all of us that he took a shower today (congratulations Mikey) and then he kind of just stood there. So Soeur Pearce, being the genius that she is, says " Mikey would like something to drink?" and naturally he says yes... and she totally pawned off her "ice cream" to our neighborhood bum! hahah Oh Paris... our other mangez vous was the complete opposite. we were invited over by an american family to eat with them and the meal was SO normal...but the only thing was Brother Hardy is Pediactric Gastroenterologist and she is some crazy scientist who graduated from MIT and whos dad invented the catalist convertor thing thats in the invention hall fame for revolutionzing cars and the world.... yup Soeur Pearce and I had ALOT to contribut to that conversation...NOT! But they were great people and we appreciated being fed haha.

Today was an amazing P day! Our district leader came up with a scavenger hunt to do around Paris... so fun! What other city in the world can you have such great things such as world famous monuments ( eiffel tower, notre dame, arc de triophe etc.), world famous museums (the Louvre), so many different people ( take a picture of a jewish person, someone wearing a burka, Mikey, and with a mormon tourist), and manage to find crazy people singing in metro with high class people getting off the metro to go shopping at Louis Vuitton. Yup it was great running all over Paris. We may or may not have made a fool out of ourselves singing the mission song complete with actions underneath the Eiffel Tower and may or may not have gotten sworn at for asking a guy if we could take a picture with him (he screamed tourist alright!). Oops my bad....haha. I would just like to say that the sisters kicked butt and we totally beat all 8 of the elders by a long shot! Our reward...one of the elders gave me the Dr. Pepper that was on the scavenger hunt list... and he actually found it! You cant imagine my excitement (its impossible to get here!) haha...we finished the day  with eating Paninis in the Latin quarter

This week also had its spiritual moments. This Sunday our ward had 4 baptisms! Two of which are these chinese girl twins who I am in love with, they are so adorable! They have been so excited for their baptism its been so exciting to countdown the days with them and finally see them get baptized! They were crying before and smiling so big after...as well another chinese YSA and a french man was baptized. It was amazing to watch our elders be able to translate things from french to mandrin and from mandrin to french... that alone was a miracle to me. But also just to see all these people changing their lives and becoming so much happier. Ive noticed the difference in Anne Sophie as she has become happier and happier and its so fun to see the work in Paris going to well. There was a girl visiting our ward this week whos dad served in this ward 25 years ago and said the ward used to meet in the attic. Its so cool to be here now and see our huge very multi lingual ward functioning and ever growing. The language continues to be difficult and frustrating...but going to baptisms seems to remind me of why we are here and how important the work really is.

Well I love you all and cant wait to hear from you next week!