Bonjour Bonjour,
Well this week has been a crazy week...as usual. Somehow I feel like every week has some sort of build-up, climax, and happy ending...maybe weeks in normal life work like that too...we just never take the time to report to our families what happened in the past week haha.
Well this week the climax was zone conferance. We had zone conferance with Elder Teixiera, of the seventy, and his wife. Naturally, going into a zone conferance with a general authority you expect something great. And we got what we were expecting!
Elder Teixiera started out with two stories.
The first was about a flea. He told us fleas are magnificant animals. You see, fleas know how to do one thing very well. They know how to jump. And no matter what situation they find themselves in...they jump. Their brains are programed to jump. So, let's say you take a flea, and you put it in a jar. Then you hold the jar very close to your ear. What are you going to hear?
*ping*.
What would that noise be? That's right, the flea jumped, and hit its poor little head on the lid of the jar. Now, you would think as small as the little flea's brain is, maybe they would just keep jumping and hitting their head. BUT fleas will suprise you. No, they don't stop jumping...they just jump a little lower. Therefore, they continue to fulfill their one purpose in life, jumping, without hitting and hurting their poor little heads. The magnificant thing is, even if you remove the lid of the jar, the flea will continue to jump within the jar, completely captured by its own will.
The second story was about an elephant. Elder Teixiera had traveled to India and seen domistacated elephants. But how do you domesticate an elephant? Apparently, when elephants are very young, their owners will take them and chain them with a metal chain around their ankels to metal stake in the ground. The baby elephants will pull and tug and attempt to get away...they will hurt themselves...they will cry...and eventually...they give up. They stay very close to their little stakes. As the elephant grows, he learns that if feels something around his ankle, to stay put and avoid injury. And thus, you can go to India and see grown elephants tied to whimpy sticks with whimpy little ropes.The elephant could choose to just kick out his foot and run off- but again is tied down by past experience and choice.
So how do missionaries relate to the smallest of animals and the largest of animals. You see...we also do many things that hurt. We fix goals...only to report zeros to our leaders after a week of really trying. We contact thousands of people, only to be rejected over and over again. We fix rendezvous...only to be stood up. We study a language...only to be told we can't be understand. I could go on and on...we'll just leave it with the fact that being a missionary hurts.
So sometimes we choose to jump a little lower. We fix lower goals. We talk to less people. The less we try, the less we can get hurt. Elder Teixiera's message was that there are no limits on the Lord...we just need to jump as high as we can...and even when it hurts, the Lord will provide miralces. We just have to have the faith to jump.
So leaving zone conferance, we were just 'jumping' to get to our areas. So here we are ready to change the way missionary work is done in Lille. When we hit the lid preatty hard. The lady we contacted a couple weeks ago that fixed a rendezvous with us, canceled and was rude about it. Another person we found and had started teaching, dropped us. Out of faith, one morning we decided to contact a certain amount of people before lunch...we'll just say it was more people than we normally contact in one day. One by one, every single contact rejected us. Until...the very last person gave us a phone number. I know I should have been excited...it just seemed like such a little thing, a phone number, after all the great blessings promised in zone conferance if we would just keep jumping.
One other thing mentioned in zone conferance...perservance. President Poznanski reminded us, it would still take lots of work and disappointment. Still lots of jumping and hitting our heads. Well come Sunday, I was tired. I won't lie. I wanted to go back to jumping just a little bit less. Especially when our ami called us right before church and told she wouldn't be able to come.
Well church came and went. We talked with lots of members and had a good day, and Soeur McGhie and I were ready to go home and break our fast. Just as our lunch was coming out of the oven...we got a call from the elders. They were still at the church and this lady had shown up asking for Sister Smith. I spoke with her on the phone, and remembered she was someone we had contacted on Monday night. She was fed up with other religions and was open to learning about ours despite all the horrible things she had heard about us. She had told us that she would come to church, she even knew where it was. But she refused to give us a phone number or an address-so I thought it would be a miracle if we every heard from her again. We'll just say when she wasn't at church I wasn't to shocked. Well... she showed up at the church 3 hours after meetings and only could remember my name, because its the same as Joseph Smith's. You better believe we left our lunch and ran to the church. We had an amazing rendez-vous, she's excited to read the book of mormon, and we are seeing her again on Wednesday.
So at the end of this week, my head is feeling a little bruised and broken...but I also have a whole new testimony in the quote "shoot for the moon, if you miss you'll land in the stars"...or however it goes. In other words...we'll keep jumping.
I love you and miss you.
à la semaine prochain!
Soeur Smith
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