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