July 4, 2011

Bonjour à tous!

How are you?! Hopefully your enjoying your holiday weekend!!! It is boiling hot here AGAIN and I am craving some lake time... ah well next year next year lol. Just to get in the spirit of things Soeur Pearce and I may or may not look like an obnoxious American Flag! She is wearing red, Im wearing blue and together we scream AMERICAN... good. Tonight we have a mangez vous with some American members so we are hoping they appreciate it even if it means we have to get the stink eye from all the french people today :)

Well every week I feel like I start my email with the feeling of 'oh nothing exciting happened this week' and then by the time Im done with my email Im like 'woah its been a crazy week' haha. This week pretty much follows that pattern. We started of this week feeling like Lou was ready to set a baptisimal date. So when we brought it up with her she said...'let me call my mom' and we both got terrified looks on our faces as she called her mom at work and asked if she could get baptized. Her mom said sure, but call your aunt first! Well the aunt didn't answer... so we are still waiting to actually set a date with her...but she came to church for the second time this week and has made a friend in young womens so hopefully she is serious about wanting to get baptized this time! And hopefully it works out for this summer... we will see. Mostly I love seeing that she wants to have good friends at church and that she really does love us missionaries. Last week at church she took my planner and scheaduled herself into our days...and this week we had a tender moment of sitting and talking for like 20 min. This is a miracle a. because it was in french and b. she like sat for 20 min straight hahah... bless her hyper heart. I really do love this girl and want her to know how special she is! We are working on it...

As President Staheli advised in the last Zone Conferance 'there is nothing more exciting than a blank planner, because then the Lord can direct things' well this week the Lord had a lot of time to direct. Tried as we did to fill up our time...we also got stuck in situations like when we found out AFTER we arrived at the home of a less active that she is in the hospital, and so we just shrugged our shoulders and went contacting down the street from Moulin Rouge... good. Or when we spent lots and lots of time practicing for the missionary concert this week!!! Some of elders want to get a concert series going here in Paris, where people perform classical music (perferably about Christ) and we can have another way of inviting people into our church where we can trap them and convince them they want eternal life! Jk...but lets be real thats what missionaries motivation behind everything is. So for this concert a majority of the performances were by missionaries... including my Soeur Pearce! And despite just getting over a sore throat and extreme stage fright, she sang and was so great! And although our numbers were few there are now a couple people meeting with the missionaries from the that concert...so hopefully with time this project can really turn into something cool!

I think the most exciting part of the week was meeting our new mission president and his wife!!! President and Soeur Poznanski are truly going to do great things directing this mission! He is the first french mission president of the Paris mission...and I think its going to be helpful having a frenchman directing us how to get into the homes of the french people! We had interviews with the President and his wife...and before all of our meetings were in english they now want everything to be in french! So our interviews, training, and even our distrect meetings are now going to be in french! Which I think is going to be helpful but difficult at first! Good news: I survived an interview for french... ok fine it was only for 5 minutes and he talked really slow for me...but I survived! He did switch into english however to tell me I need to be like a 'vampire and suck all the knowledge out of Soeur Pearce while I have her' haha... Im trying to take that to heart. Their trainings were great and Im so excited for the things to come here in the mission! With that we also had a mission merge! Our mission took in some of the french part of the Geneva mission and the country of Luxumbourg... so we now have 3 countries in our mission! So much change in one little week...

Now for the big finalé of the week...we set a baptismal date with someone! So this guy is named is Zdrafko. Let me describe him for you. He is from Bulgaria and speaks better franglais than anyone Ive ever met. Yup... we understand each other great...oh wait except that I don't know any Bulgarian! His curly hair stands about six inches from his head. His mom has been coming to english classes for about a year and is a member. She knows Soeur Pearce. The first time Zdrafko came to church she introduced him to Soeur Pearce and said 'here is my son... make love and conversation' Yup... apparently she doesn't quite understand the role of sister missionaries. Anyways we didnt think much of him other than it was a funny story until he showed up at church a couple weeks ago. We talked to him just after church to see if he is actually interested in the church and he gave us this long complicated reason of why he is not ready for the church... after he has a better job and has moved to Canada and has a family... then he will be ready for the church. We tried to explain, but the gospel can help you now with all of those things! Well this week he showed up at church and asked if he could ask us a question (Im not going to lie in my head I was thinking oh no he is going to propose to Soeur Pearce) Well then he said 'Ive been thinking about that question you've asked me... and I would like to get baptized... this month' Yup you can imagine our shock. Well we talked to him after church and his intentions really are good... he doesnt care if the sisters or the elders teach him (aka marriage proposal not a motivation) and he doesnt want his mom to know he's meeting with the missionaries ( so he's not being pressured into it) but he wants to get baptized because as he puts it 'Je build ma future famille à God" aka I want to build my future family towards God... cute I know. So the elders don't have time to meet with him and we have a member willing to meet with us with him... So we now have a baptisimal date. Zdrafko from Bulgaria... yes Im still working on how to say his name.

Well that pretty much somes it up. Other than that we are just living by the wise words of Mikey...the homeless man that comes to all the church meetings (Soeur Pearce pawned off her Philipinio desert on him... I think I wrote home about that) Well when leaving the church one night Mikey yelled 'Hey be careful... your too pretty to get raped' Good... we will take that into consideration when planning where to go contacting, grace à Mikey. I love you all and I hope your having a good 4th of July!!

Soeur Smith