Mini-Mission: Week 3

June 7-13, 2010

7 juin 2010 (Day 279)

The zucchini cake I made last night was AMAZING! Toda we had a fun P-day. We went into Paris and met up with Sister England (from America) and Sister Fischer-Laudenbach, my new hero. Sister Fischer is like in her 70s and from Germany and off on a mission. I guess her husband died and she decided to go and she is so amazing and so spiritual and she has learned English on her mission and is just such a great example to me. Together we saw the Opera Garnier that The Phantom of the Opera was written for. It is the largest opera house in the world and it is in a palace filled with gold, chandeliers, paintings, and everything is made of marble. It has a library and a gorgeous grand staircase. Funny thing is the opera only seats 2,000 people. We also bought scarves and went to L’Al du Fallafel and got some amazing falafels and talked to a nice couple from Australia. Sister Hulet almost ate her fork…the prongs broke off and it was just hilarious. I introduced her to strawberries with crème fraiche and brown sugar…she’s addicted.

8 juin 2010 (Day 280)

Today we had a really fun district meeting. We talked about the scriptures and then we were just talking after and found out that Elder Rogers has a crush on Miley Cyrus and that Elder Ingram does a great Jonny Cash impression.

We went over to Windy’s today to drop off some pasta because she had a miscarriage yesterday. She is doing okay, all things considered. We also did some mailers and a pass by and missed our appointment with Nathalie because of the bus…fun stuff!

9 juin 2010 (Day 281)

Today we went and visited Fran and Stan, our cute older black couple who started learning the gospel while on vacation in Martinique from one of Sister Hulet’s friends. They are so smart and we had a great discussion about Moroni 10. You could see them getting lighter and lighter as the lesson went on. We also did some porting (door to door contacting). We didn’t end up contacting anyone. It was really rainy but we had fun going around. We had soup and cookies and Sister Hulet had a lot of caffeine in her (she had a migrane) so she started waking up and being goofy around bedtime.

10 juin 2010 (Day 282)

Hilde cancelled on us today so we went around and contacted this lady that we first passed but then both had the prompting to go back and talk to her; it was pretty neat. We also had a great lesson with Sabrina in which we watched Finding Faith in Christ. The spirit was so strong during the movie and Satan was trying to interrupt those spiritual parts (telephone ringing multiple times) but Sabrina just ignored it. The spirit was so strong after the movie that we didn’t say anything for a while.

Sister Hulet decided that there was an angel there during the lesson because little 2 year old Lenny went for the tv to press some buttons when the movie started and he looked like he bounded off an invisible wall and stumbled back about a foot before he reached the TV set.

Sister Fran “bouffed” or “fruged” us as the missionaries say (aka cancelled). We were still able to see Laurence and Lorent though, our reincarnation friends. We were prompted to show them the Finding Faith video as well and they were visibly touched. It was neat to see how the spirit emphasized different parts because they were like Simone in the film and he had all the same questions as them and they weren’t listening to the responses! They told us that they couldn’t understand why God would let men kill Jesus and that they wouldn’t believe him unless they saw him so we “broke up” with them. I actually knew that I was going to be bearing my testimony to them about the truth of the film and then them that we were at a crossroads and that they needed to choose if they were going to have faith and continue taking lessons or stay in their own beliefs—all about 10 minutes into the film before we even knew their reactions to the film and such. It was pretty neat to see that the spirit knows all. It was really sad though to have to “break up” with them because you really do learn to love the people and they were sad to see us go as well.

11 juin 2010 (Day 283)

Today I was ridiculously tired and wanted to sleep in so my run was pretty lame. We had to cancel our meeting with Dew, a less active young adult because we would have had to wait 30 minutes for the bus and then we’d miss our meeting with a potential investigator Dan who we were meeting at the metro. We were there but somehow never found each other so we called after 15-20 minutes and he said that he had waited and then left. We rescheduled for Sunday and then went out and passed out flyers for the concert that some of the sisters are performing tomorrow.

Hilde cancelled on us again about 10 minutes before our meeting but it worked out because we were distracted reading about the world cup and missed our stop. We ended up talking to this lady and getting her information though at the stop to take the train back. We went home and I started calling everyone who had ever met Sister Wilson and invited them to the concert since she was playing while Sister Hulet made cookies for Windy. We took them over because Sister Hulet felt that we just had to see Windy today and she was right…it was Windy’s birthday!

We then met Ingram and Terry (who were on exchanges) at the church to get more flyers and Elder Terry told us some great stories about getting pulled over and going to Australia for a year to surf while he was a sophomore in high school…without telling his parents! He is such an awesome kid, I love him dearly and will probably write him since it is his first transfer and he is just so hilarious…he bought his ticket to Australia with the money he won street racing and just did his courses online so he didn’t really “miss” school. Sister Hulet has a newfound respect for our greenie.

12 juin 2010 (Day 284)

We passed out more flyers today and had more magical meetings after people cancelling on us. You can really see that it is God getting us in the right place to meet the right people. We met a couple today. One was a woman named Nana who was very interested and took a Book of Mormon and the other was a young adult, Claudia, who was with her mom. She was actually the one who contacted us and is coming to church next week since she has to drop her mom off at the airport tomorrow.

We got some desserts before we went to Stake Conference. I got this amazing giant St. Honore with really good whipped cream on it and it was yummy. Conference was really nice but the concert blew it out of the water. All the sisters were incredible. Sister Elizabeth Smart played some fantastic Spanish pieces on her harp and Sister Wilson played the piano & violin, composed some of the pieces, and sang! She was fantastic and they just all did so amazing.

13 juin 2010 (Day 285)

You will never guess who we saw on the bus this morning…Claudia taking her mom to the airport! We talked to them for a second and then went to the station to get “fruged” again, but this time by Dan. It was kind of okay though because we had technical problems so we didn’t really get to hear the broadcast from Salt Lake. Instead they had the EQ President give his talk from Priesthood and the RS president read an old talk from Sister Beck. They then got the written version (no idea how) of two of the talks from Salt Lake, Bednar’s and Packer’s. They were both really good and both told the story about the 20 marks Elder Bednar gave President Packer in Germany when Bednar was on his mission. Afterwards we talked to Nathalie, who had an answer to her prayer from the talk by the EQ president, about the law of chastity and repentance. She comes from a church where you can’t date, hold hands, kiss, dance, etc. so it is a pretty important topic for her because she doesn’t like the whole idea of if you like someone you are supposed to go into your room and pray about it and then if God tells you, you just go propose…no dating or even knowing the person required. It went really well.

We came home and ate some avocado chick pea cous cous and then went off to do two passbys, but neither of them were home. We helped by watching two men try to change a tire…it was pretty hilarious.

We went to the YSA family home evening with Nathalie. It was really good and I loved the spiritual thought that one of the boys gave. I translated it for this cute costume design major, Shelby, from BYU who is doing research about modest wedding gowns here in Europe. She is pretty cool. The YSA played the French version of red light green light (un deux trois soleil!) in the parking lot and then had treats. We then came home and had pasta and planned our next Pday!

Things are doing great and I am perfectly peachy. It is humid but it has stayed relatively bearable, especially with the rain. We got “fruged” a lot this week, but we met some awesome people, people who we will hopefully be teaching and baptizing. The church is true, I love it so must. I really do have a testimony that it is the same church that Christ established when He was here on the earth…it is so incredible!

Lots of love,

Soeur Lindstrom