Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Bon Courage; I forgot which week it is


Hello from Goyave for a third transfer aka PRAYERS ANSWERED! Thats right Sister Tenney and I will be staying here in Goyave for goyave season.

Okay so this week was great and the best part was our shadow with the zone leaders on friday. It was great because in this mission there are just no sisters so we are kind of paving the way for new sisters coming, so there are minimal sisters to look up to and see their success. It was nice to see how missionaries who have been out for a while (in fact one of them leaves tomorrow) teach with boldness and are so focused. Anyway, the shadow was friday and we taught Max which was super stressful because I just want him to get baptized. Its crazy how these people just become your friends and you want them to see eternity! Anyway, Elder Tolman and Elder Santos taught with us about obedience and although he didn't commit to get baptized an hour later, as I had hoped, he did share his testimony of the Book of Mormon, the spirit, and how the gospel has changed his life. It was real life! not just the MTC teachers!
We also taught Jimmy who is this awesome guy who struggles to read daily. By the end he was so excited about reading! It was amazing how the spirit testified of the importance of the Book of Mormon. Thats the thing, there are just no reasons good enough for not reading the Book of Mormon, it changes lives!
We have discovered that our morning jog has been rather effective, in fact we contact someone almost every day because gaudeloupians are just out really early and go to bed really early. This week was kind of funny though because this random dog followed us all the way home and we had to run away from it so it wouldn't
come in the house
also yesterday was this big celebration for the Relief Society and everyone at church wore yellow and blue, which was pretty cute, and we ate some coco cake (these people LOVE their coconut) The branch is great because they all just do silly things like that all the time and its so cute.

So excited for this transfer because we are going to baptize and some people are going to have eternal life and that just makes me so excited!!! Eye single to the Glory of God!

love
abs

Monday, March 10, 2014

BON COURAGE 17, March 10th, 2014

Bonjour mes amis! Another great week out here in Paradise. Sister Tenney and I are doing well and loving working hard together. This week we got BIKES which was like Christmas and I realized I really missed my daily bike ride down to Newport, so I am glad to have that back, it is rather pleasant and you'll be happy to know much safer because we can just speed away from creepers! win win! But really the bikes help us get around so so much faster and we can just be so much more effective, love it!

Also fun fact about this week I received many a picture email from Avis,  so that was fun.

So M. Let me just tell you he is sooooo ready to get baptised, like he is best friends with all the members and feels like a part of the branch the only thing holding him back is his Girlfriend. "copine" en francias. Its really frustrating because that is actually a theme here, men are always really interested but their wives are always like no. We are really trying to focus on the priesthood and how he can be an example to his family. He wants an eternal family so badly! Its crazy to look at our teaching record for him and see like how much he has learned, like he even keeps the word of wisdom and just offers everyone rides to church and Im just so excited for him to be baptised but this one little thing is holding him back.

We also found this miracle lady last night, when we were trying to track down E, copine of M. We went over to where Max described but couldn't find her and we ended up finding this lady who is just so prepared! She has studied with the missionaries before and has family in the church so we are super excited to teach her.

Also this week Sister Tenney and I are planning a Soiree Familale (FHE) for the branch and inviting all our amis! If you think of any fun games to play we would love to hear them.

Over all things are going well and we are teaching a lot of really cool peeps, the hard part is just getting them to take the next step of Baptism. Sister Tenney and I were talking about the importance of our mesage and our calling and how short we have to do the best we can, and I just really want to use this time in the best way I can, because in the grand scope of things it is really so so short!

Sure love ya, gotta go baptise!

Soeur Abs

Monday, March 3, 2014

Bon Courage 16 I love it I love it I love it! March 3rd, 2014

HELLLLOOOOO

The title of this email this week is "i love it i love it i love it" because there were a couple times this week when I was honestly so happy to be here! Im usually pretty happy here but for some reason I really felt the spirit this week through joy. I love that. Sometimes the spirit can just be so strong when you are loving the work and actually enjoying it.

One funny thing that I keep forgeting to tell you every week is that the singing in Sacrament is really a treat. Everyone in the branch is just a little off key and they all sing as loud as they can. It kind of reminds me of that part in the glupps when they are on their way to san fransiscy but they randomly get trapped at that school with the mean teacher and she makes them sing, because thats exactly what it sounds like! ahaahah i think i just realized how weird the glupps is.

Anyway, This week started out with us being a little frustrated because we had a lot of random things we had to do that were cutting into our work time; stuff like going to the city with the senior couple to sign stuff and other things like that. I think one of the big lessons the Lord is teaching me is to be patient. Patent with others, patient with people taking a long time to get baptized, patient with myself and french, patient with my lack of teaching skills. Anyway, we just decided after all of the housekeeping things were out of the way for the week to work hard and accept that some things are out of our control. This is a lesson I am taking a very long time to learn.

M our Hindu priest friend is really progressing and has made church a part of his life. He goes every week for all three hours now! He will hopefully be baptized by the end of the month, but people here sometimes think it takes like years to prepare for baptism so thats kind of hard. I think its because there is this religion here where you pay a bunch of money and you grow your hair out for 3 years in preparation for your baptism. classic west indies. But the miracle this week with him was that he called us on friday and was like I have something to do sunday morning so I cant come to church, which kind of made us super worried because we had just committed him to keep the Sabbath. We were fasting this week for him to feel ready for his baptism and then a miracle happened!  Saturday night he called us and was like "I did all the things I needed to today so I could go to church and rest on Sunday" Fasting=miracles!! I now the spirit touched him so he would feel he needed to do that.

The other miracle this week was that we reconnected with P! We had kind of half dropped him because he kept missing appointments and stuff like that, he is a little up and down. BUT after about a week and a half of avoiding him we felt prompted to call him. We finally had another lesson with him, and he wanted us to come back the next day and the next day. Last night he asked us if he could set a baptismal date! So things are looking up for him.

We also started trying something new this week that I am really excited about. A lot of times people just want to talk to us to talk about religion and not really to hear about our church, so we decided to just point them towards the Book of Mormon. There is this great story from President Hinkley where he had this investigator with some question and President Hinkely said " all the answers are in the Book of Mormon" after the ami had read through 2 Nephi he still hadn't found the answer, so President Hinkley said "just keep reading" finally when he finished the book of Mormon the question didn't matter because he had gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon. Chouette!

so overall it has been a great week and the first half of this transfer has been setting us up to hopefully find some miracles in the next few weeks.da da da da da Im Lovin it.


soeur eyre