November 14, 2016

Bonjour tout le monde!

We have had so many adventures this week! There really is no order or sense to the fun and awesome experiences we had this week, so let's get started!

Friday was a holiday which means buses are SUPER sketchy and trying to get anywhere is a nightmare. Our first rendez-vous of the day got canceled, but we decided to leave anyway and then randomly got on the C1 bus at Republique. Soeur Tasso sat down and started talking to the girl sitting next to her. Her name is Cathy, and she is super chouette! She's heard of our church before (weird for France) and the Book of Mormon (even weirder) and has friends who have shown her passages in it before (SO WEIRD AND AWESOME)! So we get to see her this Saturday and explain even more about our church and we are way excited :)

Tuesday night we had an awesomely Spirit-led lesson with Magali. In the middle of the lesson we had this slightly awkward silence where we were all just thinking for a moment, so she opened up her BoM- right to 3 Nephi 27, which is an AWESOME chapter to lead into our main topic for the evening, baptism! Later on in the lesson she flipped to the index and it opened up to the Gift of the Holy Ghost! Such a good lesson and she came to JA soirée (Family Home Evening with the young adults) the next day!

So we met this super chuette girl named Viviane last week when we were street contacting near Le Blosne (which is kind of a ghetto area of town). Turns out she was on her way to her office at her internship to do some work, so she invited us to come with her and we taught a quick first lesson. She was interested so this week we visited her for a first planned rdv at her apartment. And when I say apartment, it's quite an exaggeration- she lives in a single room about the third the size of a normal hotel room, with just barely enough space for her bed, a teeny kitchenette, a little table, and a wardrobe. But it's on the 8th floor of a building in the middle of Rennes, and her view is GORGEOUS!!! So naturally I had to take a picture. It was a really solid rdv and we finished explaining the Restoration with our favorite JA (young adult) member presence Melanie.

We got to see Marie and her daughter Myriam this week! We watched a 20 min film of the Jospeh Smith story with them, explaining the First Vision and the Book of Mormon. Myriam asked about one of the scenes in the film where Joseph's father is baptized, so we jumped on that opportunity and talked about baptism with them, and asked them to pray about it. It was so helpful to teach them together because when Myriam had questions, Marie would answer them. Ultimately it was Myriam who was the one pushing them to come to church, so yesterday they came! They both loved their experience, especially Myriam, who had SO much fun in Primary! We have stake conference in Nantes next week so it will be more difficult for them to be able to come, but we'll make sure that they can come back to church the week afterwards :)

We had a super fun soirée with a couple in our ward, the Taies. We were supposed to have an ami come but at the last minute she cancelled because she couldn't find a babysitter for her tired kid :( So instead it was just us. We had an awesome jam session, ate some delicious Tahitian food, and we did a test run of an idea our zone leaders had- to present a Book of Mormon and ask the family to fast and pray about whom they should give it to. They really loved the idea, and Frère Taie said he was going to write his testimony in the front of the book. The other soeurs in our apartment did it with another family in the ward, who were also thrilled with the idea. I love the members here in France! They are so excited to do missionary work. We always get really awesome support from the members, we just need to figure out a better way to channel that enthusiasm :)

Last adventure! So we went to Fougères today to see the gorgeous massive chateau they have there. Rode an hour on the bus, got there and were promptly awed by how beautiful the chateau is... and then discovered that because French people hate Mondays even more than Americans, the chateau is closed EVERY MONDAY! So we didn't get to see the inside of the chateau, but we did take some very pretty pictures of the outside and of the town... and then took the next bus straight back to Rennes. Haha, whatever. We got some really good pictures out of our adventure :)

Thank you all for your support and love! Have a great week! Bisous,
Soeur Rogers