11-13-17

Welcome welcome to a brand new transfer in the life of Soeur Rogers! This week we said goodbye to Sœur Biggs and Elder Hidalgo (Elder Eyring was long gone to Versailles) and we welcomed some old missionary friends, Sœur Potter and Elder Schultess, along with Elder Kiene, a blue!

On Thursday we got to live the VIP life and we went to the European Parliment to attend Women in Faith!! It was a really cool event. Jean Bingham spoke, as well as other members of the European Parliment and other distinguished speakers that are super cool. We weren't allowed to wear our missionary tags (because they didn't want people to think that we were going to proselyte) but there were several people that tagged us as missionaries anyway ;) it might have had something to do with my beat-up boots, hahaha. 

We were allowed to put our plaques back on for the little sandwiches afterwards, and we got to meet and talk with Jean Bingham for a moment and with Sharon Eubank for several minutes. It was so cool!! Sister Bingham's comments were really inspired. Many of the speakers took a more political or general view, but her talk was a lot more about how women of faith are strengthened in moments of trial. It was super inspiring and really cool to be there! More information about the event is on mormon newsroom, and if you look closely, you can see Soeur Peterson and I in one of the crowd shots :)

We taught Meredith several times this week. She continues to progress really well, and is on track to be baptized in December. We taught her more about the Atonement and about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we have noticed that she really applies the things she learns. In the words of Boyd K. Packer, “True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior. The study of the doctrines of the gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior.”

Sunday was stake conference! Our mission president asked us to be there several hours early so we could have a mini-conference about the Venez et Voyez (come and see) sacrament meeting we'll be having on December 24. The stake president asked every man, woman, and child to invite someone to that special sacrament meeting. We're so excited to just keep encouraging the members to do missionary work! The missionaries are going to be very minimally involved in this effort, we will literally just be there to support the members.

However, Soeur Peterson and I actually heard about all of that secondhand. Just before the missionary conference started, a woman walked in the door asking about a family history center! Soeur Sorensen (the mission president's wife) immediately started talking to her, and then she turned to us and asked if we had a family history center. We were like, "um, we have a computer!" So we got Mariza set up with a FamilySearch account and showed her how to use FamilyTree to search the records of her ancestors. She was looking for the marriage record of her great-grandparents. Unfortunately we weren't able to find it, but we got her phone number, gave her the number of the family history consultant, and invited her to come back to church next week! Just as we waved her out the door, the other missionaries came out of the chapel, and we realized that we had missed the whole thing! Whoops!

Anyway, the rest of stake conference was super inspiring. Elder Sabin and Jean Bingham spoke, as well as their spouses. Afterwards, there was an event for all the women ages 12+ and Jean Bingham spoke to us again. 

Sooo it was a cool week! Be on the lookout for pics to come! I love you all, 

Sœur Rogers 

  The Basilica is sooo pretty!

 We visited this super cool cathedral! It's called the Petit Sablon and it has the most beautiful stained glass I've seen in my life. The rest of it was gorgeous too :)