Hello friends!! This week has been fabulous as it has started to be wonderfully sunny outside and almost warm enough to not wear a coat!! France in the springtime is beautiful, even in this random little corner of nowhere. As I'm writing this email we are sitting outside on the grass outside the church and I'm not wearing a coat or shoes and there are daisies all over the grass and this tiny little breeze blowing... I'm basically in heaven (except for that it's too bright to see my screen!!) So voici some of our adventures from this week!!
We taught our ami Nadege for the second time on Saturday. We had set the rendez-vous for noon, but we weren't able to confirm with her and she didn't respond to her sonnerie (intercom system). Through a couple miraculous humans who happened to be coming and leaving at the right time to open various doors to us, we got into her building and were able to teach! We had taught the Restoration the last time we came, but she didn't really remember any of it- not surprising, given that it had been 4 weeks and she hadn't understood a lot the first time. So we reviewed it with her and she understood it so much better! She really felt the Spirit when we talked about Joseph Smith's vision, and she said right away that she knew it must be true. The Spirit was so strong and she is so excited to keep learning and to read the Book of Mormon! I also had a moment in this rendez-vous where I realized how much I have really grown in my teaching skills over the last 9 months of my mission. It was one of the best and most customized lessons on the Restoration that I have taught, and I could literally see her growing in understanding. What an amazing calling I have!!
In addition to this big confidence booster, I had a learning opportunity this week. On Thursday morning we contacted a blind woman named Anne-Marie. She is from Brazil but speaks perfect French, and even though she can't read like normal people, she has an amazing knowledge of the Bible just from listening to the text-to-speech on her computer read it out. She was so happy to invite us to come to her apartment and talk about God, but ultimately she was not open to our message. She has such a wonderful knowledge of God and the Bible, but didn't think it was possible to have more prophets or scriptures, and was very closed to the things we tried to share with her. We left feeling very frustrated, but mostly just sad that this wonderful woman that we had only known for a day but had come to love didn't want to accept this wonderful message. We took a moment afterwards to talk about it, and I realized that although I was frustrated that the lesson didn't go like we wanted it to, and although I was sad that she didn't want to accept our message, mostly I just had this overwhelming feeling that Heavenly Father loves me and is proud of the work that I am doing. As a missionary, and especially as a missionary in France, there are a lot of people that don't want to listen to us. I have been learning to rejoice in the successes in life and to not allow the failures to get me down.
Last thing!! The missionaries here in Mulhouse are so excited about our new project based on the tree of life in Lehi's vision (if you don't know what that is, check out 1 Nephi 8 and 11!). We've been working to inspire the members to share the fruit of the gospel with their friends and family members, so we created this tree in the hallway of the church. You can't really see it in the picture, but we wrote engagements on the fruit like "invite a recent convert to your family home evening" "read ___ conference talk about missionary work" or "bring a friend to church". We'll be adding more engagements later on, things like inviting friends to come to missionary activities or inviting them to take the missionary discussions. We had a little bit of a rocky start this week because we didn't have time to announce it in church and next week is general conference, but hopefully the week afterwards we'll be able to really get things rolling with the members!!
Our week this week has been pretty full, between meeting with our amazing amis and going porting in French Catholic neighborhoods (which involved a lot of us awkwardly standing at the gate and shouting at the nice people who then very quickly shut their doors). I'm loving my time here in Mulhouse, and I feel like I learn new things every day!! I'm so glad that I have this opportunity to share the things that are important to me with other people and grow my personal relationship with God. I love you all and I hope you have a great week!!
Bisous,
Soeur Rogers
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