October 24, 2011 "Hitting the Ground Running"

Bonjour (if you extra emphasize that RRRR at the end, then you'll sound belg ;))

 

I thought it would be appropriate to start of this week with a Harry Potter analogy. So, last week I apologize if my email sounded pretty scattered and crazy. I feel like I grabbed onto a portkey and was whirling around being pulled in every direction, but today I think I hit the ground when we came out of the metro and had the feeling like 'hey..I actually recognize this place!'...well then I was sent whirling when we had to talk to the nice man at the library and I could not understand his french. Dang it, when france decided to spread its language it should have spread its accent too!

 

Anyways, things here in Bruxelles have been pretty crazy and busy! I love whitewashing...we have an excuse to call everyone in the ward and say 'hey..we're new...can we come over?' ...works wonders. This week we've met with alot of members and its been really good. We've gotten more of a feel of how the ward functions and how the members actually feel about the unity in the ward. (apparently it used to be alot worse...I guess thats a good sign haha) Anyways, we've had a miracle week (although that's kind of starting to feel normal...I know...Im in a missionary bubble)

 

This week our DMP (ward mission leader) and his family came up with a plan with us to get the work going in this ward. We prayed every night at the same time and fasted one day this week for the work. But rather than pray that we can find those people who are ready, we've been praying that those who are ready will find us or the members. When we visit members homes we've been challenging them to join us. Its been an amazing experience. We've passed by several members/ old amis and have been able to get into homes that other missionaries haven't been able to in a few years. We've identified several part member families and hopefully will begin to start to teaching them this week.

 

Then on Sunday, we had probably the most obvious miracle. We were heading out of our apartment building and said hi to a man walking by. He stopped us and said 'do you have a message for me?' .......Ya......it took Soeur Murray and I about 30 seconds to stop gapping and say 'yes a matter of fact, would you like to come to church?' Imagine how we were even more shocked when he said yes! He told us he needed to go home and shower and then he would come...and he actually came! Despite awkward amis class with the type of lesson you dont want amis to be there for and the wierd english/french translations going on...he loved it! It was the primary program...and he said afterwards he really felt the spirit in our church and it was amazing to see children with such a strong belief in Christ! I was so grateful for the simple testimonies those children had offered. Anyway, our new friend Richard asked ever so politely if he would be allowed to come back next week AND bring his dad!!! Ya...Soeur Murray and I are still recovering from the shock.

 

We've had some adventures as well. Like the time we were trying to find a members home, got off the metro at number 200 on the street...she lives in the 700...that was a nice jog. And after she showed us the 'closer' bus to her home...that required wandering through some swampy woods and waiting for a bus to pop out of nowhere like the knightbus (haha cant stop with the Harry Potter). I got to go on exchanges in Liege with Soeur Woodward, we were in the MTC togther and it was SO fun! (understatement) And I got to see a little bit of the Belge countryside and try 'real' gouffres...apparently they are originally from Liege. And I hit 8 months! So crazy ...starting to feel like Ill always feel like Im a 'new' missionary. Then one day its over. I guess its like when my mom tells me she was 'just' in high school... I guess Im hitting the 'middle age' of my mission years...and it just keep getting better!

 

Well...I love you all. And apparently Tin Tin or something like that is originally a Belge thing ...(Steven Spielsburg was here this week for the permier...we tried to contact him...but you know those Hollywood guys...just not interested..jk jk) so watch that movie and maybe it will let you know what my little home in Brussels is like (maybe not...I honestly know nothing about it haha) Miss you!

 

à tante tôt!!

Soeur Smith

 

 

October 17, 2011 "muzighakjgdqszchzh (no I didnt just hit random letters...thats dutch silly!)‏"

Well Bonjour à tous!

 

I'm not exactly sure how to describe this week. It started in Paris and ended in Bruxelles. Ya Im still wrapping my mind around it. I would describe the lengthy, messy process of leaving Paris...but I think I'll just leave it at... well, it was emotional.

So now Im here in the land of Belgium! To add onto my list of languages that I've encountered on my mission, lets add dutch and flemish! (yup there is a sign hanging above me right now that says...Overzicht van de hoofdrubeiken... go ahead.. google translate. Im in a library so Im assuming it has something to do with books...)

 

Remember in elementary school they would teach you that America is a melting pot?? Well they lied....Belgium is the current boiling soup of the world. I seriously don't even know how many languages I hear in one day. I wish I could say a dominant one was french, but its not. Its a little discouraging because I've gone from one very-American ward to the next. President Poznanski told me before I left Paris to 'forget I even know english, only function in french'...and I'm trying but it sure is hard when the Bishop, 2nd counselor, Relief Society President, Elders Quoram president, Primary Presidency, the Ward Mission Leader, and most of the youth and children are all american. Or at least not french speaking haha.

 

The ward is... curious. Im going to try not to be obnoxious and compare everything to Paris...but I need to in this circumstance to make my point. In Paris our Bishop anounced one Sunday that there were currently 27 different nationalities represented in our ward. Yet somehow it was a very high functioning ward. However, here there are countless nationalities and its a very divided ward. Its definately lacking unity. The Americans stick to themselves. Most are here because of jobs with NATO and so they live in American communities, with American schools and stores. The Belg are annoyed with all the Americans. The other countless nationalities have there own groups. Its very different. Seems kind of like a hostile environmen to bring amis into. SO before you think Im all discouraged and annoyed by all this... guess again! When Soeur Murray and I left church she asked me what I thought...and she was a little shocked when I said Im so excited for this ward. After being in Paris with Soeur Wiliams the work was a little slow because of uncontrolable circumstances, Im so excited to be here because we have SO much work to do, and I kind of feel like a brand new missionary and I seriously can't sleep at night because of the things we have to do and Im so excited for it all.

 

So I guess this is my really long way of telling you that I LOVE BRUSSELLS already. Our ward mission leader told us that the ward is ready to burst, it has alot of potential ( we have lots of amis in progress...still working on meeting all of them) but this ward needs entheusiastic missionaries...so I'm determined to give it all the entheusiasm I've got!!!

 

Donc, things are going great...really! I feel such love and excitement for the area already. I cant really express it through email...but I am 'très content'.  Ok random things you guys asked about. Apartment is tiny, but has a seperate bedroom and only two of us living there so it feels like a step up from Paris. We went around to meet our neighbors and explain who we are...we had some interesting run-ins haha but also got a rendezvous with one of our neighbors! SO yes mom I am safe and warm. Soeur Murray is great! She is from Mapleton, Utah and is an elementary school teacher...aka really patient and sweet. She helps me alot with french. We are determined to speak french all the time because we are not really immerssed it in here...and I can feel it helping already. Whitewashing has been an adventure...its definately resulted in lots of laughter and adventures. But its fun to discover the Ville together.

 

I wish I could tell you something about Brussells but I literally know nothing! I know that Grande Place is cool...we are going to go see it this afternoon. I know NATO is here. I know we live in a french neighborhood...but Im currently in a dutch library down the street so who knows how that works. (the guy at the front desk was very offended when we tried to speak french to him...) I don't really know where the ward/mission boundaries are. I think we share this area with the Dutch mission...when we asked about mission boundaries and we were kind of told 'dont worry about..go as far as public transportation lets you'. Our ward boundaries definately go into the dutch mission...as in when went to the Ward Mission leaders house last night Im pretty sure we left our mission...but stayed in the ward boundaries...ya its complicated. I just smile and nod lots... haha. So if you guys back home want to google things about Brussells and tell me about...that'd be great because Im just figuring it out one day at a time haha.

 

Well if this email seems totally scattered and all over the place, I think its because I'm still figuring out which way is up here in Brussells. But to sum it all up we have TONS of work...aka Im grinning from ear to ear.

 

Love you and miss you!!

Soeur Smith

October 10, 2011 "My quick tour around Europe"

Well I don't really know where to start for this week...so I guess I'll start in Spain!!!!!!!!
CHRIS!!! YOUR GOING TO SERVE IN MADRID!!!! HOLY COW!!!!I dont really know how to explain all of my feelings!!! I definately was crying and so overwhelmed with just pure emotion when I read your call!! Im so sad I don't get to be there to send you off...but I can't wait till you join me out here in the field AND on this side of the ocean!! Your going to be such an amazing missionary...I can't wait! Oh and everyone here in Paris that I've been annoying because of my excitment about your call says congrats :D

Then from Spain...I guess I'll move to Belgium...because that is where I am being transfered to this week!!!! I am leaving my dear Paris after 6 months and heading north for the winter to Brussels!!! Alot is changing in our mission. President Poznanski has started to put a real push on finding young, french families. He feels that sisters are going to be able to reach out to families in smaller villes better. Donc, ALL sisters are being taken out of Paris and elders are being taken out of smaller villes and put in the cities. So this transfer was insane and alot is changing. Almost everyone is either training or whitewashing (meaning you and your companion are both new to the area). So our mission kind of feels like we were thrown into a blender and pushed 'frappé!!! (and with four sisters moving out... that is just about what our apartment looks like as well!) And in all this craziness ... I'm headed to the land of frites and goufres!!!

But for right in this moment...I'm still chillin in Paris! We've had a crazy week. Two new amis (a chinese girl and a russian man...sound familiar??) Soeur Williams finally recieved a diagnosis AND treatment for her ankle!!!! (tenaonitis...was that really so hard to figure out??) I turned 22...birthday in Paris! When did I get so lucky?? Soeur Williams and I found out we are going to seperated (she is headed to Blois... dont ask how to say it...I just know its on the complete oppisite end of the mission than me!) AND we got to leave Paris with a bang.

Our concert that we have been planning for the entire transfer was last night and if I do say so myself...it went amazing! Seriously...we were rehearsing up untill the last moment and it sounded horrible. But we were blessed and somehow everything came together.Either angles came down and put magical earmuffs on everyone so we sounded good or they just sang for us because by the end of the night there was not a dry eye in the audience. The spirit was so strong and I think all the missionaries in our zone felt like we got to have a very satisfing and dramatic farewell to Paris.

Not that I would ever dream of being nostalgic and dramatic about leaving Paris- the work goes on even if you may or may not feel like your leaving a piece of your heart in a ville. People will probably forget my name by Sunday...but they played a key role in my mission and one day in heaven I'll be able to thank them in proper angel talk rather than stuttering french. And now Im off to a new ville to stress, laugh, and cry with new amis! Besides.. Paris has been here for awhile...I'll come back one day ;)

Love you and miss you!
Soeur Smith 

October 3, 2011 "Les Meilleurs Moments"

Bonjour everyone!!!
This week I've decided to sum up our crazy missionary lives into 'top 10 moments of the week'...so here we go

Les meilleurs moments de la semaine:

10. Exchange in Caen
Beautiful town in Northern France. Sun was shining and the town is so CHILL compared to Paris. Met a RECENT convert of 97 years old, and her dog made noises like it was dying the entire rendez vous.
Best part: when she started singing...and the sister I was with couldn't keep from laughing so I was left singing all on my own...all of those who have heard my singing voice knows that this was not the ideal situation....yup...Im sure the angels watching were having stomach pains from laughing.

9. Personal revelation rocks.
 Especially when it comes through the scriptures. Just saying I had some good moments with Jacob 4 this week...
we'll just saying Im trying to be more grateful for my many apparent weaknesses. Eventually it means Ill have many strengths...eventually.

8. Sitting next to an Elder during Sister Dalton's talk.
He literally wrote "Be my daughter's Moroni"
I know... Im tearing up its so adorable.
PS. Dad...thanks for being my Moroni

7. New Conferance Traditions:
From Soeur Williams: I enjoyed some fluffy apple pancakes Sunday morning
From Elder Dick, from England, we learned the importance of 'session sweeties'...we were well stocked for all the sessions

6. This world is very small.
Sunday night we were all coming back from Versailles (its the stake center) from watching Conferance. We had just seperated from the elders to take our seperate metros when our phone rang and their name appeared on the caller ID. Apparently, when they got on the metro three women had approached them and asked if they knew a 'Soeur Smith'! It was Grandma Beard's neighbor whose name escapes me right now, and her daughters Margaret, who is mom's friend from 6th grade, and her other daughter, whose name is also escaping me, who used to babysit me when I was little. So they borrowed the elders phone and wished me Happy Birthday! Even though they are kind of strangers...it felt like a small birthday wish from home!

5. Elder Uchtdorf's 'forget-me-not' talk to the relief society
Enough said.

4. Hanging out with Soeur Williams after a long hard day.
Background story: we were wallowing in self pity because people aren't lining up at the fonts for us. Then we went to a mangez-vous with a recent return missionary. She is a nanny for an American family in the ward. One child is deaf and we had fun making up our very own sign names. Then we discussed missionary work and she told us this analogy.
Before your mission your like a caterpillar. You are kinda of lazy and are just bumping around enjoying life.
During your mission your in a cacoon. Rigid rules and lifestyle don't leave much room for moving around. But its also the biggest growing period in your life.
Then you emerage, a beautiful butterfly, matured and ready to take on life.
I'll just say, it cheered us up, and ended with a lovely nighttime chat in PJs about how really missions (or life) never work out how your want them to. But thats ok.

3. Richard G. Scott's talk about 'packets of light' starting off conferance.
A. He is so tender
B. My new best friend are the scriptures....
C. Since when is conferance THIS good!?! I feel like I've been missing out all these years...or maybe they just decided to become amazing when I set apart as a missionary.
Thats probably it...

2. This week we got a call from Dr. Guglielmi
If you don't remember him...he was the doctor that took the book of mormon from Soeur Williams during one of her appointments.
He said he hasn't had a chance to read it, but he is determined to know for himself if its true or not, and we set a date to call him back in two weeks and hold him to that promise.

1. TEMPLE
Before all you debby-downers tell me that it was kinda only half announced because the plans are still in the work..well I dont want to hear it.
Yea- President Monson thinks he's hilarious pausing after Star Valley, Wyhoming. But- honestly as he spoke about Paris, France temple. Everyone in the room SCREAMED.
After, talking to one French elder, he said 'I imagine that was the same scream we all made when we read our mission calls'.
True.
So ya, obviously, we have alot of work to do to get the temple here. But its coming...I don't think I can describe what the means to me. Or Anne Sophie, or Lou, or Zdravko, or the many other faithful saints in France. or the saints who don't know they are saints yet. So we'll just leave it at...that was a very good moment.

Love you and miss you all!
Hope you have a good week

September 26,2011

Bonjour!

How are you? Sitting on pins and needles from waiting for Chris's call? I mean...not like Im anxious or anything. Thank goodness things in Paris are busy enough to keep my mind off of it....at least as much as possible.

To start the week off we had interviews with the president. It was so good! The zone leaders did a training about spiritual finding and being more committed to talking to EVERYONE. It was a really good training. Soeur Williams and I were so inspired we decided to do some contacting while waiting for our interview times. haha. We chose a random metro stop and got off. However it ended up being in a bussiness area; so we got on a bus and just rode around and talked to people who sat near us. Nothing come of it...till later (yup Im keeping you in suspense). Anyways, so we went back to the church for our interviews with President. They went really well- he talked to both of us about ways we can keep the work going despite our 'ankle situation'. We both have felt really inspired this week to find new ways we can do contacting and keep things going. He also asked how our companionship was going, and after listening to us gush and giggle he asked us if was possible to love each other too much...yup we are that obnoxious. Oops....

So, because of our inspiration from interviews we've been doing lots of contacting this week. We've tried different approaches...like the 'bus approach' or the 'RER approach' (thats a type of train), and 'the bench approach'. Basically, we find ways of just sitting places where lots of people come and go...so that we can contact without Soeur Williams having to walk. We've also been just doing small little bits of street contacting...and as soon as her ankle starts to hurt we stop. Its been working! The night of interviews we were on the metro and started to talking to a lady (ps when people have really cute kids with them...such an easy contact!) and turns out she had just come from the neighborhood we had been contacting in early that day. (ok suspense over...) Apparently we were meant to talk to her one way or another. We also talked to another lady who was actually a really awkward contact. But when we called her a couple days later she said she had been telling her family all about us...we are pretty excited!

But contacting always brings some interesting stories too...this week during district contacting, Soeur Williams contacted a guy who seemed very normal at the time. He had lost his phone so we had no way of contacting him, but we were pretty excited when he showed up at church. Well...we're pretty sure we smelled some suspcious things on his breath...we will just say he and another investigator kept amis sunday school class pretty exciting as they were the only ones commenting about the word of wisdom...and neither one of them have been taught it yet. The poor teacher did a very good job at tying in some random stories about racism and the creation to the lesson. Good.

This week one of the Elders' amie, Cheriff, from egypt made us all an egyptian dinner. Brought me back to my good 'ol Jerusalem days (minus the fact that we didn't actually eat much in Egypt because its all pretty sketchy...so at least now I know what all the meat at those buffets would have tasted like if we had eaten it. Ya...we were missing out for sure) Cheriff's catchphrase is 'Allahs, c'est fini!' haha I think thats Araçais (arabic + french...ya I tried ok)  We kind of use it for everything now. He's become pretty famous here in our little corner of Paris and we enjoyed getting to taste a little bit of his corner of the world.

This Sunday was our big activity that Soeur Williams and I have been planning for the ward. The idea for the activity was to challenge the members to 'set-a-date' in which they would introduce a friend to the missionaries. (ya not original I know...definately stole it from the thousands of missionaries that have challenged our family to do the same thing...but hey its worked a couple times for our family so I thought we could try it here) Anyways, we had different 'stations' that we had the membres rotate between. In the first one we had a recent convert panal, in which the recent converts described the role of members in the conversion process. Then we had a 'jeu de rôle' aka role play...in which we had the members act as non-members, while the members were themselves, and the members had to find ways to bring up the gospel in every day situations. Finally, we watched a conferance talk by Elder Nelson that talked about member missionary work and had a discussion about it. It went really well... at the end the Bishop gave the challenge to everyone to 'set a date' and become more committed to member missionary work. I'm not going to lie...I'm glad it went well...but I'm also kind of glad its over haha. Planning, delegating, and organizing elders (it literally took us 15 minutes to get them all in the same room) is exhausting. I am so grateful to say 'allahs, c'est fini' to the activity. (although we are hoping the results aren't over...)

Phew...but our organizing skills are still needed in Paris for the next concert. Soeur Williams and I have taken to bribing the elders to be on time to practices. Last week we made them brownies...which were apparently so good that Elder Dick was inspired to write a song about them. This week, we wanted to make chocolate chip cookies for them. But FYI french ovens are retarded...so when it came time for practice I had to annouce to them all that we were really sorry, but the cookies weren't working and so all we had for them was a giant bowl of cookie dough...as you can guess they were all ok with that haha. At the end of the night, we were looking for our bowl, when an elder came up with spoon in hand from scraping off the last bits of cookie dough and said 'umm I cleaned it for you..' haha...it was definately 'Allahs, c'est fini'.  Whatever gets them there on time....

The weather here continues to stay pretty nice...so Im enjoying the last warm days before the long, cold winter settles in. And with the sun shining, its hard not to just keep falling in love with this city more and more!

Love you and miss you!
Soeur Smith