Well....
here it comes. The dramatic ending. THE LAST TRANSFER.
So since training Soeur McGhie, I've been very obnoxious about celebrating all her first-milestones as a missionary. You know- first pasterie, first zone conferance, first rendezvous with someone smoking in your face, first time having a crazy person yell at you on the metro, first time being called a Jehovah's Wittness, first time someone tells you about thier dream when Jesus visted them- you know, all the normal things like that.Well this week was a momenteus first for her...first time with her name on the transfer email.
And my last.
Bah. So this is my first time I get to have momenteus freakout on my mission. OK I wish it was this first...but starting my very last planner spured all sorts of emotions I wasn't expecting. And while I normally favor the 'rip of the band-aid' style goodbyes...somehow I feel like saying goodbye to a mission is a much more gory, painful process. So I appologize now for whatever sappy and overdramatic emotional carnage slips into my emails over the next six weeks.
So all gory-emotions aside- this week has been another typical rollercoster. We showed up at Rositta's appartment on Tuesday and she wasn't there. The thing with Rositta though, is that she is an older lady with lots of health problems, including diabites and lots of other medical stuff I don't understand in french. She never leaves her house, her nurses and nurmeous other people come to her house to help her out. So when she isn't there...it can only mean one thing. She is in the hospital. So after much help from the ward (calling french hospitals still scare me) we were finally able to track her down and visit her. I guess she had complications with her diabites, she is doing fine, but for now her baptismal date is postponed until she can come to churcha again.
So that was disappointing- but we had really good rendezvous with a lady we contacted a couple of weeks ago. We've taught her once before and we had given her a Book of Mormon. In our rendezvous this week, the first thing she said when she sat down was 'so, I started reading...and I like it!'. I love hearing that! Its like seeing the sun in northen France. We taught the Joseph Smith story, and after we had finished she said "so once I pray and know, I'm going need to join this church!". Oh its so wonderful when people put that together themselves! She still has alot of worries about the church, and her husband still thinks we are a cult...but I just love it when you start to see the light and people and they see that the gospel JUST MAKES SENSE.
And this week we got to work with a young women in our ward. Her family are all recent converts of about two years. Her mom is now the relief society president, and her dad is in the bishopric. They are basically just an amazing family. Well this weekend she asked if she could hang out with us- well on the way to a rendezvous we were getting out of the metro and walking down the stairs, and she turned to us and said "oh how I want to be like you, I just want to have a nametag with Christ's name on it".
Oh gosh. You cannot say things like to emotional, dying missionaries. So the rage of emotions that suddenly tried to leak out of my eyes were bottled by saying "Yes Tracy, keep that goal, you CAN be like us". Not the most inspirational thing that's ever come out of my mouth...but I was fighting from becoming a blubbering puddle in the middle of the metro.
So really, this week was a typical missionary week. Some ups, some downs. But also a little bit of realization that my time to be a full-time missionary actually has a time limit. But we won't talk about that for another six weeks.
Love you all!
Soeur Smith
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