Home For The Holidays

Joyeux noël ! Joyeuse saison ! 

I hope everyone is icing cookies and wearing thermals !!!
Well, this letter is going to be interesting, I felt impressed that it need to be done. I have returned early from my mission. I have had many thoughts running through my mind about what to say, but I will start with a simple phrase: I served as long as I was called (:
For the majority of my mission I struggled with some personal health problems. After discussing the matter with my mission President and his wife, we felt that it would be better taken care of if I went home. As you can imagine, this was a very hard decision we made together. I did not want to go, However, I learned that in order to help others, I have to help myself. My mission president, President Sorensen reassured me that many people often think that a faithful mission is composed of a span of time or time limit. However, I have graciously realized that a faithful mission is composed of the work and earnest desire you put forth, and thanks to the design of God's plan,  is not given a  measurement of time.
With that said. I will admit that I am sad to leave. I am extremely saddened to have left my france ! But I know that I served with all my might, honorably and faithfully. The lord just has other plans for me in my life a this given moment.

So. This is still a weekly, so i will tell you about my week. It was crazy !!! Full of caroling, christmas tress decorating, driving, singing, eating etc. It was really fantastic. To start, our district and us went caroling at this maison de retraite, or retirement care. It was super !!!!! Honestly.  We started on the top floor, we sang about 5 songs, because no one really told us to stop. The lady running the organization goes, well shall we do the whole building ? You can imagine our faces, BUT we were serving so nous-y-allons !! It was so gratifying and tiring . We went to the last floor where i stood next to this tiny blue eyed woman. I gave the note for everyone to sing, and she stood up and starred at me with a smile. Once i started singing, i looked back at her with a smile too. Through out the song we kept complete contact, she inched herself towards me and then grabbed my hand. I started tearing up as all i could think was WOW. she is a beautiful daughter of God. She couldnt speak and she wasnt very comprehensive with her small mumbling, but i knew she knew. I knew she felt the spirit.  It was super.

Then we went on exchanges. Which was another fun round of caroling !!!!!!!! I was with a different Soeur Peterson, ( there are three on this mission and god wanted me with all of them) and we were going to an amis house to hang up a "christmas tree" on her wall. It was out of green paper and cut outs of jesus christ. But she LOVED IT. J is her name. And J is exceptional. I actually taught her in the beginning of october on another exchange, and asked her to baptism. Well, she got baptised this saturday !!! Wow !!!! Incredible !! It was crazy because i was apart of the beginning and the end.
For our lesson, it was so awesome because we had her grand daughter there as well, and she loved the message. I have her facebook so i will continue to look after her (;
We had a ward christmas party where soeur petersen and i taught the ward a Christmas song to sing!! It was so fun, M. Came and he even wore a santa hat ! We had a défi des gouteaux or cake challange. Soeur petersen and i were extremely ambitious in a cookie christmas tree with the dough dyed green. I will have a photo to show as it was a not a very measurable goal. Anyways, the party was so fun and the spirit was just evident. M even wore a Santa  hat. 

When i found out i was going home, soeur petersen and i immediately took action with our amis. We needed to make sure they would be taken care of. Our ward made extraordinary efforts to help us. On our pday, we were both frantically packing, and soeur petersen and i both felt we needed to get M. A Christmas tree. He hasnt had a christmas in years. So before we left we said goodbye. I brought him some presents my mom gave me that i could not fit in my suitcase. It was heartbreaking but i know he will continue to progress. 

Well, I am a bit tired. So im signing off, but thank you to everyone who has ever supported me in this decision to serve. I can say that it was the best 9 months of my life. I remember in the midst of my transition, i was feeling discouraged. However someone very special shared with me a promise. Its found in 1 nephi 13:37

 " And blessed are they who shall seek to bring forth my Zion at that day, for they shall have the gift and the power of the Holy Ghost; and if they endure unto the end they shall be lifted up at the last day, and shall be saved in the everlasting kingdom of the Lamb; and whoso shall publish peace, yea, tidings of great joy, how beautiful upon the mountains shall they be. " 

My I truly believe that this message we teach is a message of peace and joy. This message counteracts any thought of negativity. I advise anyone to read the Book of Mormon, and pray for yourself if this message is true. Because i guarantee that you will find the internal peace youre looking for. God bless you all and je vous aime. 

Soeur Dunkley

 

Email me if you want my fellow missionaries!!

Deck the Halls!

Bonjour Bonjour !!! 

Merry Christmas to one and to all !!! Well you've heard it here first folks, Soeur Dunkley is in her element. I am ready to be emerged in garland and tinsel. 

So this week, VERY cool stuff happened. 

I will begin with our night in PARIS. What a ride, so Wednesday, we met with H., another one of our amis, she and her sweet husband R. Are trying to decide the truth of our message. Their situation is different because he is a paraplegic. But man is he hilarious. Anyway, we were going to show them éclairez le monde and just invite them to church, but i was told by the spirit to read in Ether. I chose ether 12: 23-27, here basically Moroni is feeling depressed about his writing, his capabilities of creating another book, he compares himself a lot to the brother of Jared. Well, after praying to the Lord, he finds out that God gives us weaknesses to make us better ! He gives us weaknesses to make us value progress and persevere through difficulties. Anyways after sharing that, H and R were hooked, but wouldn't except the book of Mormon!!! They just said come back again.... well ok. 

Anyways the best part, was that at the end of the rdv, i testified to them of the truth of this message, and about us having strengths out of our weaknesses. After I said the prayer, he looked at me and went to shake my hand. He has one working hard, He didn’t let go for about 1 minute or so, he just stared kind of and wouldn’t let go. It was extremely touching. 

Afterwards we were off to Paris. After three hours of trains, we had to take 2 extra hours of trains by ourselves. This was AFTER we arrived at 20h30. We were panicked because this meant we would get in after curfew.

 Well we managed and we actually had a missionary miracle !!! 

We met this woman, C. on one of the many trains we had to take, she let us use her phone because our phone died. Basically she traveled all the way to Versailles with us to make sure we were safe and sound. She was so interested in our church, especially the Temple. She mentioned that she was getting married in 8 months but didnt know where, she said this is a sign from God. After getting off the train at 23h00 ( 11h00) our tickets stopped working and we were locking in the gate. So she re-scanned her card and shouted "désolé seigneur !!!!" It was hilarious. Anyways, she is going to meet with the other Soeurs of Versailles (: 

The conference was amazing, we had a huge Christmas meal with ham and potatoes and it was just divine. We also had Elder Johnson come and speak to us about how to see miracles. Very important notes were taken. 

Another highlight of the weak M PRAYED WITH US IN A RDV. it was amazing. We had a meeting about baptism and repentance, and I asked him to pray at the end. He said no again... but i persisted, I asked him M will you pray with me? He paused and said "allez s'y " which means go for it. So we did, we prayed a simple prayer of truth and love from Heavenly Father. He said every word iI said. It was so amazing I cried from the overwhelming power of the Spirit. Keep praying for him. Ok other miracles... 

We had English class where 4 new amis came !!! Even a guy we just met on the street, we just asked him to come. Anyway, we opened Soeur Petersen's package from her mom. We had all our students try gushers and pop-tarts. It was hilarious their reactions. Mamadou said it exploding with flavor in English and i almost dropped to the floor laughing because this old, cynical man described a pop-tart so perfectly. I will say though they weren’t as big a fan of gushers, that was too much for them. We will try someone different next week. 

ITS LIGHT THE WORLD PEOPLE. THAT MEANS SERVICE ALL AROUND. everyone should be doing more this holiday season for others. Find ways to make someone smile. That’s your goal for this week. We are doing everything we can. We are having our members write their testimony in the Books of Mormon and then we are going to wrap them to give to people. So excited !! 

This holiday season is truly the BEST. What a better way to spend the holidays than serving you know ? It truly is the best remedy. When we are feeling obscure, or low on self-worth, or perhaps a bit selfish in our thoughts, turning outward truly softens the heart, and  clears the image in the mirror. I invite you all to read 1 Corinthians 13, tell me what you are going to do this week to be better, and to serve more genuinely (: 

Also feel free to send snail mail !! 

Les soeurs missionaires soeur Dunkley 

94 Rue de lorraine 

49300 Cholet 

France 

Je vous aime ! Joyeux noël ! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Turkey day !!!! 

 J'espère que vous avez passé une bonne fête de reconnaissance ! Hello et bonjour toute le monde ! I am very happy to report to you from the good 'ol Cholet. 

Well this week was WILD. Not not really, however we had a lot of opposition. ALSO- recently found out, can't use ami's names, so from now on I will use abbreviation for names until I receive permission. 

This week in France, we have had many strikes because of the gas prices. So roads have often been blocked off and yes your Soeur Dunkley here had to PUT IT IN DRIVE this week in order to pass all these hooligans. Soeur Petersen would hold up Restoration pamphlets because they would try and stop our car, after seeing Christ, most of the strikers let us go through. It was so funny. 

But on other news, scandal… 

Our church was broken into :( and vandalized. It was awful, Soeur Petersen and I had a rdv with a very sweet man named Amar, who wanted a church tour, and when we entered in, one of the back doors was completely shattered, the ladders to the attic were all down, every bureau was thrashed with destroyed cabinets. Papers and tithing slips were scattered everywhere, Soeur Petersen and I were devastated. It was awful really, we had to tell our ami to reschedule. But nonetheless, we cleaned and cleaned !!! 

So, second catastrophe, we might be moving apartments haha. Allow me to explain, our sweet, feisty neighbor ( we will call her M.A- her initials- ) is helping us fix our apartment because we now have no electricity, a leak, our windows don't shut, no heaters, and cockroaches.  We also found out that our apartment was rented at a decrepit state in 2011, so if that doesn't explain how it is now, I don't know what does. Haha 

But anyways, she took us to our agency Thursday to get someone to help with this. She was so funny, she would say, these sweet girls do not know a lot of terms about leasing Apartments, so I am here as their mediator. Anyways, we went over the problems and they said they couldn't get to us quickly, so we left and she goes, we're going to go to their competitor. We were dying, we were thinking, she is doing so much for us and it's not even her house ! 

After complaining to the other agency, she looks at us and goes, well... is your kitchen made? We said well no. And she took us out to this beautiful French cuisine. IT WAS A THANKSGIVING MIRACLE because we had no food. So we had this beautiful 3 course meal of French cuisine. 

But we weren't going to let this missionary opportunity go to waste, so we taught her about the Temple. She was super interested in genealogy. We are planning a meeting with our specialist for family history (::: 

She is amazing. I love her so much, this woman will literally drop everything to help us. And I think she likes finding someone to take care of. Because today she calls us to ask if she can come and help us clean, we said yes, afterwards, she sends us this ENTIRE list of appliances that she's bringing, it made us laugh so hard because she probably saw our apartment and was like I have to do something about this. She goes, okay I will be there at 14h00. We ended up having to help her carry all of her supplies because she had too many things she wanted to clean. What a woman. There are pictures at the bottom. She's also going to teach us more French. 

So yes either we can fix this apartment, or we will be moving. I will keep you updated that's for sure. 

So our other ami, he's going by M. M will not pray, but he is now living the word of Wisdom. He shows his faith every day but he just doesn't realize it. It's astounding. If anyone has suggestions on how we can help him I would love to hear. In fact please send them in. Because we can't seem to move past this. He comes to church and reads all the time, but he is not feeling the Spirit. How can we help him with that? 

We are planning a Temple trip this upcoming Saturday, so that should be enlightening on his part.

That night we gave a surprise church tour to all of the architect students and it was really funny because they were taking pictures of our building, Soeur Petersen and I thought they were the people who vandalized the place haha. Anyways the Spirit was so strong and we exchanged contact with one of the students !! 

Saturday was so fun, we went to Rennes for interviews and Stake conference and we spent the night at the other Sister’s house, I once again saw my beloved Soeur Bakly, always a pleasure to see that woman. We also had an amazing miracle happen that night. Soeur Petersen and I wanted to go finding, so we packed up and headed just to the Apartments next to the church, we found two new amis!! Not for us but for the missionaries at Rennes, of course haha. But what was cool was this family. They were from Venezuela, and they spoke English, they were so interested in our message and in genealogy, that they CAME TO STAKE CONFERENCE the next day !!!!!! his name is O. And his son, D. When we saw O, he gave us a bar of chocolate from Brazil, it was so tender. And it was so inspired because we had a member of the 70 come and speak. And he was Brazilian. He could only speak English, so O and D Understood the entire meeting, otherwise they wouldn't have understood. It was so amazing. 

I felt the Spirit so strongly this week. We had small moments during finding or lessons where I was felt really really guided. And it made me feel so honored and content to be led by the 3rd member of the Godhead, to be led by that Holy Spirit on a day to day basis is SUCH a blessing. Because it shows you, the work is moving. 

I have narrowed the purpose of my mission to be a more refined disciple of Jesus Christ. Because I have realized that I myself have to be filled with his characteristic in order to help others recognize and apply them in their own lives. 

We had a Soeur give us a little turkey that we could decorate. I wrote trials. My mission has tested and tried me like no other point in my life. But I cannot tell you how much it has refined me in a matter of months. It's true that God is no respecter of time. Change can occur after years and can occur in days. It is what YOU make of it.  I invite you all to read the General Conference talk, 70 x 7, by Elder Robbins April 2018. We will not be able to see our progression without the atonement of Jesus Christ. It is mandatory. I love you all, I know this church is true. I am so grateful for this mission (:

SD

Luyanna's Baptism!!

Hello everyone (: 

I'm happy to be here in lil Cholet for THANKSGIVING AND CHRISTMAS. yup you heard here it first ! Soeur Petersen and i are taking on Cholet like no tomorrow!!!! 

We have some BIG plans. 

We have witnessed many miracles in the work. Cholet always has a silver lining at the end of every finding session. We had our baptism for Luyanna yesterday !!!!! 

It was amazing, the whole ward was so proud of her especially her primary teacher, as she expressed to us that before Luyanna started meeting with us, she hated coming to class, and she always had a negative attitude and now She looks forward to the lessons, she repeats a lot of the things we tell her especially about the important promises she made with God ! It was fun because she had us both sing at her baptism which was a good time that's for sure, we sang a child's prayer, classic. Mamadou came to the baptism. He absolutely loved it, his favorite song is " Souviens-toi" - I highly recommend looking it up, iI sang it for Oresti's baptism, it’s super powerful and gentle. I was conducting and I would glance over every so often during the song, and he would just look at the words and smile.

 

So last week we met with Mamadou, we were on our exchanges with the soeurs of Rennes, Soeur Crosby and I went to his house to pray with him for his health, he has been having serious issues with asthma and diabetes. The blessing was offered by our second counselor, who happens to also be a good friend to Mamadou. Afterwards, he felt the Spirit so strong. And he just didn't know how to explain himself. But he held his hand over his heart for the duration of the rdv. Very powerful. 

Later on that week we actually gave him a call about baptism. We decided to see if we could set a date for the 15 December, he said, I will let you know after the baptism... WELL OK. 

Fast forward back to assisting the baptism, we followed up with Mamadou on his question. 15 December is what we felt. He thought about it and said no I'm not ready. You have to remember this is a very old stubborn man who has just started his belief in God. So as we were walking out of the church, he stopped us and said, ok. I WILL pray sincerely this week, for this date, because If I'm being honest I have not done that. But I will pray. We were thrilled !!! We will be following up with that soon. We also have arranged to go to the temple next week. Once we solidify a date. 

Miracles  

Within this last week we have received 8 new amis. And many. Many. Miracles in our missionary work. God TRULY has blessed us by keeping us busy that's for sure. For example, Thursday morning our first contact of the day was a man named Amar, we told him we have a message about Jesus Christ, he goes ok, je vous écoute, we took the initiative and sat down on a parc bench to teach him a bit of the plan through the Book of Mormon, specifically in 2 Nephi 2. The spirit was so strong. He texted us last night and asked if he could come to our chapel Tuesday or Wednesday! Then, on that very same day, we went finding for the last remainder of time. The first two doors we knock on we received two new amis. And the second contact turned into a 45 minute lesson with a family ! A young couple, bruno et Corelia. He said he is NOT believing in God but his wife is believing. What was so crazy is that she was also in the middle of having contractions and she still wanted to hear our message ! We are looking forward to meeting with them next week. They were extremely interested in our plan and the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

We also did service this week (; . We came home, Thursday night, to this couple trying to haul a couch in the elevator, we stopped and helped. Unfortunately we came to the conclusion that we had to take the stairs. They live on the 12th Floor.. ... so needless to say we gained a lot of strength from that. 

When we made it to the top floor the woman started shouting "super sisters!!!!! " I sat down immediately on the floor to catch my breath. They were super funny. We're inviting them to the venez.

We also had our neighbor come and inspect our apartment because there are a lot of things that need to be fixed that's for sure, well she came to look at the circuits in our lights and she accidentally shocked herself and burnt out all of our power, so now carry around this small lamp wherever we go. 

We have started decorating for NOËL. So so excited. Cannot wait. 

This week I have really been focusing on one verse. Luke 21:19 "in your patience possess ye your souls" 

Just by putting God's will first, we have been able to witness his hand in our work. With patience comes peace, that is if we are actively patient. 

I know that God refines us to become his disciples. And with refinement, comes patience. 

I am so grateful for this gospel, it's weird to think that It is already thanksgiving, everyone do me a favor and tell me what you're grateful for !! I would love to hear. 

I love you all so much. Thank you for your support. 

Soeur Dunkley

Blessings in the Rain...

Oh my Bonjour tout le monde!! 

I’m sorry about last week. My email apparently never sent. 

Last week for Halloween we bought the BEST croissants of all time, they are called Feuillettes and they are dipped in caramel. It was so freesing!

Yes I also wore my deathly Hallows earrings. 

"Puy de Fou"

We have had so Many, Miracles!

One thing about Cholet, is that there are a lot of people that say no, but TOUJOURS, there is ALWAYS some form of a silver lining. We always have something that makes the work seem like its pushing forward. Which is a big blessing. 

So, two weeks ago, we had such a lovely miracle. MAMADOU FINALLY PRAYED. YES! IT HAPPENED. He is progressing so well I cannot believe it. He still says things like I don’t pray i cant pray with others.

But in fact, every time we call him he says well yes i prayed tonight and now I’m reading in the Book of Mormon. ASTOUNDING.

What else happened ? Oh yes of course, Zone Conference !!! 

Wow so much inspiration. It was amazing because we got to talk about the importance of the Temple. President described it as a Monument of the Plan. That is going to be our focus, to get as many people as we can to that monument. 

So we had some interesting issues happen at Zone Conference. Basically, we had our train for 16h30. We had predicted an hour and a half of time in between the times. Well, Zone Conference went just a bit over, so we ended up missing our train, due to the unproductive bus system here in France. So we got on another train with the Elders, passed about 2 hours, and then.... got off on the wrong STOP at Angers, thank you Elders (: 

Our next train was scheduled in 20 minutes. So, we ran 7 blocks to catch our train, that made by the way !! But it was a miracle that’s for sure. Imagine 4 missionaries sprinting through the city. Good times. 

Thursday was an amazing day. We had a rendez vous with this ancient amie, lucie. We knew nothing about her but were eager to teach. Anyways, as soon as we entered her apartment, we were blanketed with smoke. It was very difficult at first to find the spirit. However as we taught and got to know this sweet angel, we saw how much heartache she had gone through in her life. She had her three girls taken from her. She said that she turns to God when she’s lost, we told her how do you feel now? She responded that she feels found. 

We told her that no matter what has happened. If you want to, Lucie, you can be happy. You can be more. 

She started crying, and we found the Spirit. 

We invited her to say a prayer, she prayed with so much gratitude and hope. 

Lucie agreed to be baptized, it will be tough as many French people have addictions, but it is possible with the atonement. Please pray for sweet Lucie. She has the most beautiful blue eyes by the way. 

We have had many days of finding in the rain here in Cholet. And it has been a bit discouraging, some good though ! Like we contacted this one girl on a horse!  She was super fun and her horse's name was toes. 

Anyways, Sunday afternoon we had another great finding session, here comes the silver lining !! So we were set to go to this ville about 25 minutes away from us. As we were driving on the freeway, I had a pull on my chest to turn and go back to Cholet. It was one of the biggest promptings I have ever had from the Spirit. As we exited, i took us to a random neighborhood and we began. Lots of no's. Pas intéressé. Well, soeur Dunkley, was it the Spirit ? YES! IT WAS 

After about 2.5 hours, we decided to knock on one more Porte. This sweet, old woman opened it, and said oh well come on in !! I was freezing so without hesitation, i bolted into her house. We felt so much love in the home, her name was Huguette, and she was wholesome. Her husband, Rouger, was paralyzed. She whispers to him, okay Rouger I’m going to talk about God with these sweet girls in the other room okay? 

So we went to her kitchen and began le plan du salut. She was completely in love with the idea of resurrected bodies. It brought so much light in her eyes. She said come back as soon as possible. So we will give updates on that (: 

I just want to close and say how incredibly grateful I am for Christ. This week I had a powerful experience with the atonement. And because of that experience, we were so blessed. It was amazing. 

This week, my companion and i studied the question, what is a shepherd? And why do we need a Shepherd  ? Why do we a shepherd? 

Let me know what you find. 

Souer Dunkley

Alma 36...

Bonjour tout le monde ! 

I hope youre doing amazing today!! I will tell ya, today it is absolutely FREEZING. and RAINING. Could possibly SNOW.... not prepared that’s for sure. And in fact, today for P-day we are going to Puy de Fou again !!! So we will be spending our day outdoors! I am really pumped, it’s okay because it is so worth it to be quite honest. But in any case, this week was spectacular. Lots of highs and lows, but it really made me recognize the veracity of my calling. 

First off, we had exchanges. This was awesome because we spent them in my favorite city of all time, Rennes (: 

They started off really strong. I was with Soeur Pischer, and right when we arrived, we had a rdv with this sweet 19 year old named Noa. She wanted to be baptized !!! Only problem was, was that she wanted to wait until NEXT YEAR, this was due to her contract at work which made her work on certain Sundays. Soeur Pischer and I knew that she could be baptized earlier. So we went in, taught a lesson and launched the idea of baptism, she was taken back and defensively said "nope sorry can’t so that. I need to be fully committed before I can be baptized", we paused for a moment -this was a running problem within their previous lessons- and I prayed a bit, then asked, "well Noa, avez vous prié Dieu pour cette réponse?" Have you prayed to god for this answer? 

She looked at me, super perplexed and said no actually, I haven't included him at all. Hmmmmm.. Soeur Pischer and I grinned. So we gave her that as her engagement. AND GUESS WHAT. SHE IS NOW GETTING BAPTIZED November 10th!!! MIRACLES OF EXCHANGES. So amazing.  

On our way back from exchanges, Soeur Petersen and I had lunch in a park. There are some fun pics to see (: 

As for a low, that very same day I received a message from Eric say that he is no longer interested in the missionary lessons. He no longer wants to be baptized. This honestly ripped my heart into pieces. He was doing so well, and because of that, he has been absolutely tormented by the adversary. We met with him Friday night to discuss why he felt this way, he said I have simply lost the need for this, he said he believes he will be better off without it. We read in Alma 36 from the Book of Mormon, and we honestly felt the spirit so strongly. I bore a very sincere testimony of repentance. I know it registered to him because he agreed that it’s important we keep coming. So from now on, we will just meet with the family. Hopefully he accepts the gospel. He would be so much happier with it. 

As for sweet Mamadou, he is doing so well. We had dinner with him at a member’s house Friday, and he was just thriving. He writes down all of his questions from the Book of Mormon on a little piece of paper. Then he shows it to us and says well I hope you can read this. Lol

Keep praying for him. He is coming around. 

Anyways, I just want to say that I so love this gospel. I realize that my happiness is a choice, and it is a choice trusted upon the atoning sacrifice of our Savior, I am so grateful for all He has done for me, my amis and my family. I invite all of you to go read Alma 36. The power of the atonement is real! And applicable to everyone!! I love you all !! 

Oh and as for Halloween, there are some families that do it here but it is not that huge. We will still be celebrating that's for sure. Send pictures of yall’s costumes they love to see that stuff!! Bye!! 

Soeur Dunkley. 

An American Bishop was called....

Bonjour tout monde ! Another week of work and miracles ! Today we are working on our skirts again with soeur Ako, so i will keep you up to date on how those turn out (:  

As for this week, nothing super grand happened. Mais we worked super hard and had a BALL at the end of the week. It was loads of fun. 

So this week we had tiny miracles throughout the week, i will try and run through them. One funny thing that happened was, we were finding in Chemillé  and there was this one house with a cool window, i wanted to take a mirror picture. Now as missionaries we arent really supposed to be taking pictures willy nilly, and after a long day of having people say no, i wanted to take a funny photo. Just after we took this photo, the man came out of the house and i just stood there with the biggest grin on my face and said well hello we are missionaries, and he looked at me and said missionaries for what..... i saw you take that photo. I was DEAD. It was a big slap in the face for me to not do that again lol. Will work better on that. But we still have the photo so thats fun (: 

We have our amis Eric and Mamadou who are our best progressing amis, and it's funny because they were originally atheist. But as we have met with them We have seen and ENORMOUS change in their character and in their desire to change their habits for God. 

So to start, we met with Eric to talk about his fast, he was actually super discouraged with what happened. He had a goal to not smoke at all this week, but he unfortunately didn't completely reach his goal, he did succeed for the most part!! But not all. Anyways he was really upset with not accomplishing his goal, I then asked him if he prayed during the days that he smoked, and goes well no not really, and then I asked him okay and when you prayed, what did you pray for? And he said well I prayed to God for strength. I asked okay, well. Did you pray for the healing power of the Atonement ? He starred at me and was like I didn't think at all about Jesus Christ. And we all three raised our hands and said ohhhh wow ok!!! Well let's assess this souci, or problem. So we had a beautiful lesson on re-teaching the atonement of Jesus Christ. It was extremely touching. I was in absolute ah with the feeling of the spirit. We gave him the option to choose the 17 November for his baptism, he raised his eyebrows and said hmm. That sounds nice. SO WE WILL BE VERY RELIANT ON THE LORD !!! (: 

We're having a family home evening with them tonight so that's exciting. And Anaïs is here !!!! His daughter, the one that cut my hair. She's visiting for a week,  we are really wanting to instill more of the gospel into her heart. 

We met with Mamadou this week multiple times, we taught him the importance of the temple and family history work. He was SO INTERESTED in learning about the temple, he was like Okay well how do I get started?? This is a man who used to deny completely the idea of God. Now every time we mention prayer or God, he gets this funny smile that comes on his face saying I hope so. It's the cutest. 

At the end of this week we had a BALL chez notre eglise. Oh my gosh it was so fun. Our French teacher came and she got to talking with the people there, she said that she wants to go to the Temple !!! This is huge because she has rejected the church for so long. Hopefully this is our shot. 

We also set a baptismal date with a 9 year old named Luyanna! Her mom is a less active and her dad is a non-member and she has agreed to be baptized !! It was honestly a really spiritual lesson that we had. Teaching children really does bring the Spirit. 

The weather here is super fun, it's super cold in the morning and really beautiful during the day. I'm not going to lie I am really starting to love it here. Even though the work seems slow, and super difficult, I have developed so much love for these members and our amis (friends). It's amazing to see what love can compensate for. 

We gave talks this week in church, we had a new Bishop who served his mission here,  he's from Utah. He's super awesome but always tells me to stop speaking to him in French lol. Anyways he asked us to give talks. I talked about how the Book of Mormon has allowed me to recognize the reality of Jesus Christ. I have truly come to know him as my Savoir all because of the Book of Mormon. I am definitely and eternally grateful for what it has brought me in my life. I have taken the initiative to restart the Book of Mormon and highlight all the references of the Savoir. It's been such an eye opener to me even in just the first few chapters. I especially love chapter 11 and 13. 

Sorry don't have a ton of time left. But I'm very happy and grateful to be here (: feel free to send an email if you are rereading the book of Mormon too!!! I would love to hear about your experiences. 

Love you all (: