The Fellowship of the Ring

Sister Yvars

I don't know if I've shared this one before or not, but French people are very surface level. We have to really push people to think. Questions of the soul don't really matter for them. I say this in relation to a rendez-vous that I had this week with Soeur Yvars. We have been talking to her about love and forgiveness because she struggles with that with her mom and her daughter. We were kind of pushing her to agree to pray to ask for more love and randomly she had this epiphany. She said, Oh my goodness, I bet my daughter is mean to me because I always told her that I hated her and that I loved my son a lot more. In the words of my dad, Hello! McFly! Anyways, we are making some serious headway with her and even spent a while brainstorming things she likes about her daughter so that she could write a nice note to her. Sheesh. 

Now that there are four STLs in Lyon, we have become a Fellowship. Soeur Luthi is an elf, because she just looks like one. Soeur Bentley is a hobbit, because, well, she looks like one. Turns out she's a legal midget. But her feet aren't hairy, so ne vous inquietez pas. 

We had to bring some suitcases to the office Elders late Monday night right outside our apt for the sisters going home. Quote from Elder Asay: It's so weird to see sisters in their PJs....If I was a Muslim man and I saw sisters in cheetah pants...That's all I have to say. Thank you, Elder Asay. Get to your trio in Gap. 

Tuesday, we taught Frere Girard about temples and tried to emphasize the joys of this gospel and how when we do missionary work, we need to tell people about all the good stuff. He is a very fire and brimstone if you don't repent kind of a guy. Which I like, but it also offends people and is kind of a problem. We also met with Fatima and taught her about prophets. Near the end, a guy came in her house who I thought was her husband, so I yelled to him and asked if he wanted to come. Turns out it's just her friend and he does want to learn. Sweet. Bienvenue.

 We went to a dinner with the trainers, so I got to see Soeur Swenson again. We had a good time and rushed them home. The new missionaries are all not from the U.S. One is from France speaking Spanish, one is from Spain speaking French, and one is from France speaking French. Also, does anyone know the old mission president Hutchins in this mission? I don't, but everyone always asks me if we're related.

 

Lui Jing

We had a meeting with Frere Léporé to talk about the geneology activity and plan the next one. We also started meeting with Zhifan pretty regularly. He is awesome. He reads one chapter in the BOM and tells us what happens in every RDV. We've taught him Retab, modern prophets, and word of wisdom, because it turns out he smokes. But he wants to change so bad. The problem we have is that we like to teach with Liu Jing because she can translate into Chinese if we need her to, but she is going back to China pretty soon. 

We met with Christine Cholet, our eternigator. She thinks the church is true, but doesn't want to be baptized. But she's been coming for 20 years. So we're trying to get her interested again through family history work. 

We went to the office so my comp could get her butt shot from Soeur Povar. FYI she beat cancer and whatnot, so it's all pretty legit stuff.  We had a great visit with Pascale and then on the way home I talked with the bus driver who has five daughters and loves God. And we saw a hoard of roller bladers. 

In other news, this week all Lyon missionaries were a test group for a new contacting technique President used to use. He developed a few quizzes that we can use as an excuse to talk to people about gospel subjects and they can see that we're normal people and not just weirdos. That's nice. As President says, nobody likes religious zealots and that's kind of what we are. But it works really well actually. You kind of just have to be bold with people, which I'm really good at. So that's the news. A bientot.