French Fact: In celebration of today, this comes straight to you from at least one street sign in every single ville in France. That is, Rue de Onze Novembre. Or Rue Victor Hugo. But, yes, there is always a Rue 11 Novembre in any ville you visit. The date is significant probably because it was the end of the guerre or something like that. I need to brush up on my French history.
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| Hungry? |
We now have two amis with dates for baptism and the other equip has an engagee as well. We jokingly told our DMP that we need to find at least two more because we want to have five baptisms on the same day. Well, rumor has spread and apparently it's already set in stone, so we better make it happen! Unfortunately, we just found out that one of our engagees, Claudia, is not married to her boyfriend. That poses a bit of a problem. Yves, however, is doing great and loves meeting with us. Turns out he was married, had two children, and then got divorced five years later. He wants to marry is ex-wife in the temple once she dies and he wants a triple combination set of scriptures. People keep telling him about things before we get a chance to explain anything. But he reads the scriptures for two hours a day and watches the Retab video on repeat, so I won't complain.
This week was "M Week", the M being an abbreviation for whatever you feel like: Monster, Miracle, Missionary, Mormon, Monkeys, whatever. It's a week where we all study specific things each day and have a goal associated with them that should make us work harder. Unfortunately for our equip, we pretty much work at max capacity, so there isn't a huge margin between our normal work and this. I did, however, enjoy the goals they gave us. Things like give out five BOMs or 15 Retab pamphlets. It did help us to make sure all of our time was used efficiently, especially when we were out of town for district meeting all day. Honestly, I could give out 10 BOMs each day, but I've been reprimanded for that a few times. Not that it really stops me, let's be honest. We also tried something cool. We called members right before we were going out contacting and asked them to pray for us to find someone to give out the books to. I will testify to you that this works. Each time, we quickly found people who were ready to receive them and it really built the faith of the members in us as missionaries. Late that night, we left the house of Jeanette, an old ami whose birthday we celebrated with the Spirit, and we had one book still to give out to accomplish our goal. We called up Frere Landre and asked him to pray for us. Then, our new Zone Leaders tried to call us, but we got disconnected. We started walking home and I finally get a signal on the phone, so I started calling the ZLs, hoping it was nothing grave, when two people walk up. The ZLs answered and I said Hang on! and we contacted the couple and were able to testify to them and place a Book of Mormon into their hands. It was funny because our ZL listened in on the whole contact and it made us look a lot better than we are. The couple was prepared and we couldn't have planned it better. So that was our ZL's first impression of us-set the bar high, I like to say.
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| Training her well... |
Soeur De Oliveira stepped in poop this week. Didn't even last a week. Good news is, the obedient missionaries that we are, we made sure to get a pastry. (The addendum on the Missionary Handbook states that if you step in poop, you have to get a pastry). We had a Zone Training meeting this week that was super fun. Always. Elder Stanford and Elder Boegearts told us about the "Building Troll", who is normally the janitor, but can also be any grumpy person. Our job is to eradicate all building trolls by turning them into normal people. Great. The Millers fed us lunch. I hope it doesn't seem like the highlights of my week are when I'm fed by the Millers. But I do enjoy it. We had a lesson with Yves at the church and Frere Dougy was walking on the street and saw us and joined in. I don't know how he does it, but this is the second time he's randomly helped us out in a lesson! Then, afterwards, we were talking to Frere Dougy and a guy shows up and starts reading the sign on the door. Of course, I wave to him and motion for him to come in. Turns out he's the first person the other sisters taught here in Chalon! His name is Frederic, but he's read the first two books of Nephi and now prefers to go by his second name, Ismael, because the daughters of Ishmael marry the sons of Lehi. We got his info and made sure he would be at church. Speaking of church. My companion was warned in advance that she would probably be speaking, by Elder Miller, but the other two sisters had to give surprise talks as well. I have one scheduled for next week apparently, don't worry. We also only had 36 people show up since all of the families were sick or something. Six of those people were missionaries. And ten amis. Yes, you read that right. Here in Chalon, our amis bring amis. And none of them speak the same language. Don't worry, the Italian/Albanian/Greek father came up to me after my lesson and told me in broken French that it doesn't matter that we can't communicate because we can feel the truth in our hearts. Amen, brotha. Later we met a guy roller skating and I saw him jump on a bench, so I cheered. (Like almost anything I do, this is to the embarrassment of my companion.) But we got his number and are going to give him a Book of Mormon too. He reminds me of Kevin Rigby. He's very dancey and graceful. And he has crazy hair. And he loves God. And so do I. Have a good week.
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