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