August 25, 2014

Salut tout le monde.  This week was another long and great one:) 

Here is one cool story from this week: There is a young woman in our branch named Mathilde Morel who is 15 and her family is less active.  We invited her to do a mini-mission but she was super nervous about working with because she is shy.  She is friends with Meil-lyn who told her about the incredible time she had working with us and last week when we were at their house for a family home evening she said she would like try it out for a full day first-starting with the studies in the morning-and then decide if she wanted to do more.  We accepted happily and last Tuesday we had the most incredible time!  We learned a lot about her and about her testimony and it really was a wonderful experience for all of us.  In the morning we saw our investigator Thierry who has been having a hard time coming to church because he doesn’t want to force his kids to come to church and he doesn’t want to leave them at home alone either.  We had decided to talk about the importance of a father’s example for his children and asked Mathilde to bear her testimony about her own father. My heart felt like crying with her as she bore her testimony for him, with silent tears rolling down her cheeks, about how her father had always been her strength and her example in the gospel, but then a few years ago he became inactive.  She kept coming to church for almost a year and prayed every day that her dad would come back because she knows he still has a testimony, but eventually she became discouraged and now comes infrequently with her father and rarely with her whole family.  Thierry was really touched by listening to her and we all felt a very strong spirit.  She did an amazing job with the people we visited that day and really overcame her fears and her shyness.  She also got a new idea about what it is like to be on a mission and saw that we have a great time working hard and laughing and smiling and has now signed up to do a mini-mission in December:)  I love having days like that where I really feel like we made a difference in someone’s life.  She didn’t want to go home at the end of day and I did not want her to go either. 

Another thing that I think might make you smile is that we really know no shame or bounds and I love it.  We met a very nice gentleman named Gil last week at a new little fruit stand across the street from brother Domitin (we were buying bananas:) and he was super interested in the message of the restoration.  We exchanged numbers and asked him when we could have a lesson and he said it would be hard because he works all day every day and the weekend he tries to spend time with his lady.  We said okay, and then formed a secret plot to go back the next week and just try to teach him right there at his fruit stand because he has a lot of free time just waiting in between costumers.  We went back this week with brother Domitin and asked him if we could take a bit of his time right then and there.  He said okay as long as there weren’t costumers.  There weren’t chairs so we just plopped ourselves down on the ground, prayed and started talking with him.  Unfortunately about halfway through some people came so we quickly got up and pretended like we were looking at fruit.  Once they were gone we sat back down and talked some more.  We were pretty amused with ourselves and he said we can come back next week:)

Also I found the street that I will live in if ever I move to la Reunion;) "rue des licornes" which translates into "street of the unicorns":D  there is also "street of the parakeets" and "street of the capuchin monkeys" nearby:D

We have a TON that we still need to work on to be better and more effective missionaries but we realize that we have made some great progress and seen some miracles this week. For one thing we had 11 lessons where we had members from our branch accompany us (which is super important because it helps our investigators to make friends):DDDDDDD  And we are going to try and do it again this week:) Also, we have four baptismal dates now, three in October, and one in march. Also, our investigator sacrament meeting attendance this week was not up to par, but for the less active families that we work with we had the entire van loon family there, the Morel family, Fr and Sr Celeste (it was the first time Fr celeste had come in years and we have been working with him for months!), and the family Sinien:) It was super!

Hope that you all have a fantastic week:) 

love,

 Sister Wilson