December 19, 2009

Dear family
Sad news, we lost our car. They combined 2 areas this transfer and those missionaries have a greater need than us so it is back to trains and buses and walking. That’ll be ok.

On Sunday, it snowed, but only a little. Soeur Roberts was a bit sad, wishing for more, but I was just fine. However, Thursday and Friday it snowed a lot more and has stuck around. Wonder how much Soeur Roberts will love it now that we are walking around in it.

Jess, oh how my heart rejoices! On Sunday she came to church. Relief society was great. Ami class was good, taught by the missionaries on faith. After ami class I noticed Joy, her daughter, wasn't with us or her grandmother, but then we walked into sacrament meeting and Joy was with her dad who has never been interested in the church! He came to church! So stoked! I loved seeing their little family together at church! They ended up staying at the church the whole day, watched the Christmas devotional and listened to the stake choir concert. Sadly, the English translation thing wasn't working so I had to listen to it in French. However, all was great, Jess loved church and is going to come tomorrow with her whole family again! We taught her the plan of salvation and she said she felt like it answered all the life questions. This week she is going on vacation to visit her family and we are making her a little card with scriptures about Jesus in the book of Mormon to read everyday.

Justine, we met with her last Saturday night and taught the restoration. She accepted everything we taught and didn't think having visions or seeing angels was weird. She didn't come to church last Sunday because she had some family stuff, but is coming tomorrow and we are meeting with her after church to teach the plan of salvation. We will try to extend a baptismal commitment probably next week.

I don't know if I told you about the missionary Christmas choir, but there is one and I am in it. We have a concert tonight about 2 hours away from where I live and tomorrow night one in Versailles. The woman in charge was saying that her husband who is a movie producer may film it and put in on you tube for all of the moms. So yeah, I'll let you know how that goes.

I got a card from Melba Wilkins yesterday. She said that the primary program was the best ever this year. I forgot I was a bishop's kid until I got that card and she talked about dad as a bishop.

Thus far our Christmas plans have yet to be finalized. All we know for sure is that we are going to mass on Christmas Eve and on Christmas day. I am planning on chilling on the couch and reading Jesus the Christ. Oh, we are going to the mission home for breakfast. I told dad about my baby book of Mormon. I am halfway through Mosiah and decided next time through I am writing a commentary.


France and Christmas. Everyone buys really tiny Christmas trees and uses blue lights. Everywhere has blue Christmas lights because of the European Union. There is this thing called raclette that everyone eats that we will eat.

Yesterday on the train we met a woman named Annie and she works at the museum d'orsay and offered to get me in for free! She gave us her phone number and said for us to call her when we want to go. I think we may try to get permission to go in like 2 weeks so we can go while she still remembers us and we get to work on teaching her! That would be great!

I love you all and can't wait to talk to you!

Camille

December 12, 2009

Dec 12, 2009

Famille,

Good news! Soeur Roberts and I are still in Versailles! All is well, all is well!

We met with Jess again this week and it was AMAZING! She just loves the gospel and feeling the Spirit. The only problems that we foresee is that she lives with her boyfriend and may possibly be pregnant with their second child....however, she said she would come to church on Sunday and we plan on trying to include her boyfriend in the lessons more.

On Monday we went around Versailles looking at cathedrals and trying to contact people. We found an ad for a meeting at a catholic church that they plan on discussing the purpose of life and nature of God. We plan on going, but it is in the next transfer and one of us will most likely be gone since a lot of the sisters have been in their areas for 4 transfers. We went to Alida's and I was able to hold her daughter who is a week younger than Westin because she was crying in the lesson. It is always interesting with Alida she has interesting questions with the safest doctrine.

On Wednesday we met with our TJ friends and boy, it got interesting. Basically, they believe that in the Garden of Eden, Adam was given contradicting commandments to prove to God that he loved him. However, by disobeying, that proved he didn't, so the purpose of our life is to try and show God we love Him. They could not believe it when
Soeur Roberts told them that eating the fruit and these hard experiences we have were part of the plan. His mouth literally dropped.

Thursday we had transfer planning. It took us 4 hours, but we have great plans for this transfer and our amis, recent converts, and inactives. We have also changed the focus of our finding efforts.

Friday Soeur Roberts had to go to mission council in Paris because she is the coordinating sister. The other coordinating sister is Soeur Wilson, the companion of Soeur Gifford so we got to go on exchanges for a day! It was so fun to be back with her and just awesome! When we went to Paris to meet up with our companions we met an elder named Elder Vardeau. He trained Elder Easton who was in my mtc group. Anyway, he walked straight up to us and said "Elder Easton says hello and Soeur Pobst, that picture of you I sent it for Christmas." He is from Italy and didn't learn English until his mission. I had no idea what he was talking about and didn't know what picture or where he sent it. In the mtc, when we would be working on stuff in French, our books would be all over the place. I got in the habit of resting my dictionary on my head, open, so that I could easily access it. One day, elder Easton took a picture of that and I guess Elder Vardeau thought that was so funny and he sent it into the assistants for the mission slideshow for Christmas. Oh bother. Last night we drove home with the assistants and it took 3 hours, normally a 40 minute train ride. Just craziness.

Last week in Paris, we went to the Rodin museum and then the Marche on the Champs-Elyse.

This morning we went to the house of Morris Ravel with a woman named Kristina that we teach English to. It is out in the middle of nowhere, a 30 minute train ride and a 4 KM walk, but it was cool. After emails we are going to a laundry mat because our washing machine has been broken for about a month and the one they replaced it with is broken...Soeur Roberts and I are pretty much out of clothes. Today is very cold, 0 degrees celcius. But not that bad. When Soeur Roberts told me it was 0 I had Rexburg flashbacks, but then I remembered that it is celcius and was ok. 32 isn't that bad.

So this one day I saw strange things. Here they have these scooters with boxes on the back for like pizza delivery and such. Anyway, I saw one that delivered BLOOD! Couldn’t believe it! Then, I saw a woman riding her scooter with her dog. It wasn't a small dog, it was like a Labrador. So weird.

Tell birdie I say congrats, em's b-day plans sound fun. McDonalds is the cool place to go here. I'd rather get a kebab honestly. I am trying hard not to be a present sneaker, but I snuck a glace at 2 presents. No more until Christmas.

Tonight we have a rendez vous with an ami we got last Sunday. Member reference. She’ll probably get baptized end of this transfer. Her name is Justine and she is from Cote d’Ivoire, So cool!
Anyway, love you all! Miss you all!

camille

December 4

Dec 4

Famille,

This week had some really GREAT moments!

Monday with Alida was good! She really liked the preach my gospel study and we were there when her daughter was napping so no interruptions! We hope she will start coming to church soon!

Tuesday we went to an appointment with Valerie a recent convert. We watched Joy to the World...not a particular favorite of Soeur Roberts and me now. I much prefer Luke 2 and was wondering if you could get that to me somehow? I wished I had known before you sent my package. We went to missionary choir and that was pretty much our whole day. Oh, not to forget we locked ourselves out of our apartment, that was great fun.

Wednesday we met with Colette a recent convert. She has two sons and a husband that joined the church before her. She is probably the strongest recent converts. She studies the gospel everyday and is always at church with her family. Such a great family! We met with our friends the TJ's again and they taught us this time. We decided that next week we are teaching the restoration and if they don’t want to learn more where we are just the teachers we are done teaching them. We also met with a family that is pretty less active, the mom is pretty active but not the daughter’s ages 13 and 17. We are going to continue meeting with them in hopes of helping the daughters and we plan on inviting the young women’s president to go with us.

THURSDAY was the BEST day EVER. We had exchanges where 2 sisters came in and stayed with us. We were supposed to separate, but we pretty much stayed together. Soeur Roberts and I wanted to go to Martine’s together. Martine’s was very interesting. At first she was really hard, demanding to know why bad stuff and we would start to explain and she would shake her head and go off on a tangent. Then she would be really nice like our friends. There were definite moments when I could tell she was feeling the Spirit, but she would shake it off. It is interesting, when we are teaching people, when they feel the Spirit, they either embrace it or they physically shake, their head not their whole body, and get all hard. She did the shake a lot. She said that she felt she had learned enough, but we know she hasn't. We are going to stay in contact with her. After that, we went to Marta’s because we cancelled her on Wednesday due to overbooking.

I didn't tell you about this experience because it didn't pan out, but a couple of weeks ago we went to Marta’s and her son's girlfriend was there. Soeur Roberts said that sometimes she'll be there but she never sits in on lessons. However, on this day she did and she was a little interested and we set up another rendezvous, but she wasn't there. However, on Thursday night she was and the lesson we had planned was the gospel of Jesus Christ [faith, repentance, baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost, and persevering.] Each of us took a part and I had persevering. The lesson was wonderful and she was so into it and embracing the Spirit. When Soeur Lund was talking about the gift of the Holy Ghost the thought came in my head "you need to extend a baptismal commitment." I brushed it away, thinking I was just being over-zealous, but it came back and I realized I was being told that, I wasn't thinking it. When it was my turn I said a bit about persevering, but then I asked her if she wanted the gift of the Holy Ghost? She said yes. I told her we wanted to teach her more and said "after you receive a witness from the Holy Ghost that this is true, will you get baptized?" she said yes. Oh man, the Spirit was so strong in the moment, the strongest in my life. That was easily, the best moment of my mission.

Today we are in Paris, just chilling' and taking pictures. We also find out about transfers today and I have this feeling that I may leave Versailles. If anyone sends me letters this week, send them to Le Vesinet. Also, take the Versailles address off of things and put Le Vesinet. It is only one day to mail from Le Vesinet to other places in France. The joke for transfers is that I'm going to Paris and asked to speak Chinese.

Glad to hear that phoenix is getting the temple! Still don't know who dad's counselors are. When do you get released?

I can't think of anything else, this week I've been studying the Sermon on the Mount and that chapter in Jesus the Christ, and very good stuff. My goal for the rest of my life is to be a peacemaker.

Soeur Roberts and I got a Christmas tree. It’s the best.

Love and miss you all! Depending on transfers you may hear from me next Monday, but let's hope I stay in Versailles! There are so many things that I want to see through!

Soeur Camille

November 28

Cher famille,
There was a slight miracle this week. I don't know if I mentioned it, but a couple of weeks ago Soeur Roberts and I went contacting in this random little area. We were walking in this neighborhood and there was a lady putting Christmas stuff up. We started talking to her and asked if she was Christian. She said she doesn't believe in God because of all the death in her family and that she has a disease that sounds a lot like ALS to me. Anyway, she told us to get lost and good luck in France. You can imagine how enthusiastic Soeur Roberts was when I told her I wanted to go back. After weeks she finally gave in and told me that we could go back. So, on Tuesday, we went back. We rang her doorbell and she came out. Soeur Roberts asked if she remembered us. She did. We were so nervous; this is exactly what soeur Roberts said. "We were sent to you and we have a message for you. If you have the courage to listen to us this message is for you." We scheduled an appointment for the next day. Sadly, she wasn't home when we went. We decided to go back today and we caught her on her way out. She said that she was sorry she wasn't home that one day, she had been called into work. We got her phone number to call and schedule another rendezvous. Pretty excited about that! Pray for Martine!

Sadly, Zeinabe has fallen off the map. She didn't come to church last week and we keep leaving her messages. Hopefully she will turn back up.

On Monday I feel like we kinda had a break through with a less active. She has a hard time understanding the scriptures, so we gave her a preach my gospel. We assigned her a section to study this week and she seemed really excited about. Hopefully she will come to church, she said she would try!

Thanksgiving....oh goodness. Never have I missed my American Thanksgivings more. We did pot luck with our zone and Soeur Roberts and I were assigned pies. I make two sort of mistakes with the mousse. I accidentally bought the French version of sour cream for the heavy cream. It isn't sour, but the whipped cream didn't form like it should have. I knew we had chocolate at our apartment so I didn't buy any and it turned out to be hazelnut chocolate, so my pie had sort of a tangy taste. I made my graham cracker crust, but dropped it on the way, so I used more butter to reform it and rebake it which kind of made it crispy. Elders loved it. My soupy, tangy, crispy pie. The sisters didn't really like it. We played football and then ate cold chicken, potatoes, and stuffing. Luckily Soeur Roberts and I got lunch before.

My French; I can understand most conversations and lessons. I definitely need to speak it more. If I don't really think about it, I can speak it fairly well. Pretty interesting.

So there is a joke that I am going to be asked to learn Chinese after this next transfer. I put one of my goals was to live in China and in my first interview with president he said, "so, you want to live in china." now one of the assistants is always like " We need Chinese speaking sisters and Soeur Pobst is going to head that up!"


On to the bishop! All day I just would randomly say "whoa, my dad is going to be a bishop!"

Dad, I got a little Book of Mormon, the ones for the people in the military and plan on reading it six times before I leave the mission, highlighting different things each time. this time it's anything about the Holy Ghost.

Hope all is great family! Love and miss you all!
Soeur Camille