3-20-17

Hello one and all!!

Welcome back to Soeur Rogers' adventures in Mulhouse!! This week featuring: an absurd number of trains, sleeping on floors, miracle coordinees, 4 boxes of copies of the Book of Mormon, driving through the mountains, and baptismal dates for ALL THE AMIS!! 

So this week we spent the first two days in our own cher Mulhouse, and then we took trains Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. In our days of actual missionary work, we were able to meet with our amis Lina, Marie Monnin, and Edmond! Lina is a coordinee from her cousin who is a member in Grenoble. She came to church and then we had a killer rdv and talked about the Restoration! We also set a baptismal date with Marie-- she's going to be baptized the 6th of May!! And we also had an awesome lesson with our ami Edmond. He'd been looking at mormon.org, so he had a lot of questions for us!! It was awesome because it's been hard for us to know what he's thinking in the past, but now he's really opening up to us and asking good questions. He's going to pray this week about a baptismal date, so if you guys could also pray for him to help him receive inspiration, that would be awesome!!

We had to go to Nancy once for zone conference on Friday, come back for half a day of work on Saturday, and then come back for Stake Conference on Sunday morning. We stayed with the Nancy soeurs both Thursday and Saturday nights (sleeping on the floor) and also with the STLs! Hooray for sleepovers! On Saturday we managed to carry 70 copies of the Book of Mormon from the tabac where they had been left all the way back home. Not an easy feat, but we succeeded!! 

We managed to avoid a fourth train on Sunday by catching a ride home with the Appasamy family, and thus were treated to beautiful windy roads through the mountains, random waterfalls, breathtaking views, and a tad bit of carsickness. This week was exhausting but so much fun!! Soeur Kitchen and I bond more every day, and discover the varied ways that we are basically the same person. This week we discovered that we have the same spirit animal (an elephant)

Thanks for all your prayers and support. Remember that missionaries love emails, and that I love you!! Have a great week!

Soeur Rogers 

1-3 Soeurs pics from Zone Conference

4-5 My lovely comp and I!! (We are both being elephants but I was a little slow on the draw)

6-7 Hauling 70 books back from the tabac

8 After planning on Sunday night

3-13-17

Hello everyone!!

This week was still pretty hard, but I'm certainly on the uphill. One of the things I was really grateful for this week was the people around me, both the ones I already know and the ones we just barely met. I know that my Heavenly Father put people in my life and in my path this week so that I can overcome the many challenges that came my way, both mentally and emotionally. The first person that I'm so grateful for this week is my companion, Soeur Kitchen. She was at my side during all my difficult moments this week, and I am so grateful to have her with me :) So besides my wonderful companion, let's take a tour through the amazing people I got to meet and teach this week!

The biggest miracle this week happened when we taught our ami Marie Monnin. She's been an ami for more than 2 years and it's been hard to pinpoint the reason she hasn't yet been baptized. Ultimately we think it was more of a mental block. We spent the last couple lessons with her talking about the temple, and Saturday we went over the baptismal interview questions. There were no soucis, so I just asked her, "Marie, what is keeping you from being baptized? You're completely ready!!" She told us that she didn't think her husband was okay with it, and she wanted to respect him. Her husband had been walking in and out of the room during the entire lesson (we were in the kitchen) so Soeur Kitchen leaned back and yelled, "Pierre? Can Marie get baptized?" He came into the kitchen and asked what that means, so we told him that when Marie gets baptized she'll make a promise with God, she'll receive the Holy Ghost, etc. and he said, "Marie, you can do what you want! If that will make you happy, do it!" So Marie said she wants to get baptized!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited for her, it's been such a long road but she's almost there, and she's so happy!!

I was having a really hard time with finding this week (thanks again to Soeur Kitchen for her endless patience) but Heavenly Father blessed us to meet some really amazing people. We had a really hard day on Thursday, but right at the end of the day we met this really cute Chinese girl named Cecile. She told us that she believes that it's important to talk to God when we have struggles, but she's not really sure if He's really there or if He loves her. So we told her, we can help you with that!! We also met an amazing woman named Virginie the next morning. She is just full of sunshine and light and love for God, and is really interested in meeting with us and learning more about the Restoration!! She's a widow, but she has so much faith in God, and knows that her husband is not really gone, but just "on the other side". We gave her a Book of Mormon, and she was so happy!!! She brought so much light into my day, and I'm really excited to be able to bring the gospel into her life. 

Other adventures from this week that I don't have time to write about:

-We set a baptismal date with Calista!

-We found real life ROUS by the river and they were gross!

-We spent 20€ on 9 varieties of cheeses at the supermarket!

-We had 5 amis at church!

Well friends, remember that God loves you and wants to talk with you. Prayer is a blessing from a loving Heavenly Father, and it's something that can bring peace, comfort and understanding. It's definitely done that for me this week, and I'm so grateful for the knowledge I have that I am a daughter of God. I love you all, and hope you have a great week!!

Soeur Rogers

3-6-17

Hello friends and family!

Transfer week, transfer week... there's not much else to say. It's a pretty crazy time, my friends. My last day with Soeur Bowman was so crazy packed. We got to see our ami Mireille one last time, had a sweet rdv with our less active Soeur Wuilleme, and even got to see our less active Natalie before a goodbye dinner with the family Mortz. Frère Appasamy left us outside in the pouring rain, we missed countless buses and trams, and we stayed up super late finishing packing, cleaning, and soeur books. I then got to spend a joyful 6 hours on trains on Wednesday with Elder Larson and our old/new comps.

So my new companion is Soeur Kitchen! She is from Vernon, Utah and is the youngest of 7 kids. She is super sweet and we have some great book talks. We are very similar in personality, which makes for some fun moments. We are enjoying taking the time to get to know each other. Fun fact: her cousin served in Mulhouse about 2 years ago! So there are a couple members who have been saying "Kitchen... Kitchen... didn't we already have a Soeur Kitchen?"

We had a fun experience this week with a contact. I contacted an African-lookings man (in French, naturally) and he says, "Sorry, man, I don't speak French." We said, "No worries, we speak English!" So we had a stellar contact with our new ami, Stan Skibby, a musician from Chicago. He believes very strongly in God, and thought that we were "some of the realest people I've met in a long time, and I very much respect what you're doing out here". We got to talk to him about Joseph Smith and offered to give him a Book of Mormon in English, so we traded emails and agreed to set up another time to meet. Stan was a big miracle in the middle of a very hard day, and it was so amazing to be able to share our message with him. So odd to speak to someone in English as well!! Seriously, missionary work in English is the weirdest thing when you speak to everyone in French all the time :)

This week was pretty hard, not gonna lie. A lot of factors, including the stress of transfers, the pressure that I've been putting on myself recently to be the best missionary that I can be, and the difficultly of going through the day with a completely new companion that you don't yet know how to work with, meant that I had several moments when we just had to stop so I could spill everything that was going on in my head. Days of bad weather, canceled rendez-vous and starting out the week super tired didn't really help. But thanks to the endless patience of my comp and a lot of time spent in prayer and the scriptures, I'm doing a lot better. And I'm so glad that the gospel helps me to understand the importance of learning from our trials.

One of the things that I've been learning recently is the importance of having patience in our own process of repentance. Heavenly Father doesn't expect us to become better immediately, and neither should we. Another thing I've been learning is the importance of being your own first convert. When I left on my mission, I didn't quite understand that concept because I thought I was already mostly there. But I have been learning that when we treat our own spiritual progression like that of an ami, it helps to give perspective to the whole process. Just like with any other ami, there will be moments of trial and moments when Satan will try to pull us off the path. And just like we would take the time to help an ami who's struggling, I needed to take the time myself this week to draw closer to my Heavenly Father. 

Bref. I'm grateful for this gospel. I'm grateful to be a missionary, even when it's hard sometimes. I'm grateful for this ville, because the miracles seriously don't ever stop :) And I'm grateful for the support of my comp(s), leaders, and my Heavenly Father. And I'm grateful for all of you! Have a great week!!

Soeur Rogers

Pics: We went to the car museum!!