Another week bites the dust

February 28, 2011
Dear family,

this last week was going to be filled with TONS of different meetings and what not. It was a pretty eventful week.

Monday, we went to the Arc de Triomphe. Best view of Paris in my opinion. Then we went to a young adult meeting with Yue. Elder Hallstrom of the presidency of the 70Q and Elder Teixira who is also 70Q and in the area presidency for Western Europe. I forgot young adult meetings were all about getting married. Sister Hallstrom had a very interesting talk on the tree of life and how Christ's way is always clear and straight and simple, Satan works by confusion and grandeur. Very good and it gave me a lot to think about.

We left the meeting early in order to make it home on time. Occasionally during train rides certain people like to come up and start teaching us about the "real" gospel of Christ. That is what happened on this particularly evening. A gentleman who thought that he was well-educated in the bible decided to come and teach Soeur Edgerly about the trinity. In these circumstances I have learned that it is best to just not really say anything, the other party is not interested in listening. While he is instructing us, a woman came up and asked to join our conversation and we said sure and she sat down and said "if God and Jesus Christ is the same person, are you saying that the world was without a Lord for 3 days when Jesus Christ was dead?" The man said that Jesus Christ was not really dead and just kept digging doctrinal holes. Occasionally I would jump in with a "we believe this" and the woman would agree with us. Eventually the man got off the train and we were able to talk to the woman, Monica. She told us that she is TJ, however, she wasn't offended by the articles of faith card that we gave her with the picture of Christ and had no idea who we were. I talked to her yesterday and we fixed a rendez-vous for tomorrow :)

We had a missionary meeting with Elder Hallstrom and he talked about being instructed and edified and how everything we do as missionaries should instruct and edify. It was a very good meeting.

We had leadership training and oh boy did that make me feel prepared to serve another mission! I learned so many things that I could do to be a better missionary and to help my amis! At first I was a bit bummed because I thought "oh man, I only have 2 more weeks!" but then it hit me, "nope, you have longer than that as you have your whole life to be a missionary and to help the missionaries!" It made me more excited to come home and teach with the missionaries! I gave a talk on helping our amis pray to receive revelation and I feel that I learned a lot more on that topic and more fully understand it!

On Saturday, we had a rendez-vous with Yue in the visitor's center and were able to watch Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration with her. I think a lot of time when we teach amis we tell them about all the sacrifice that it took in the beginning, but they don't really understand. I think certain parts of that movie really touched her. At the end we asked if there were any questions, there was another set of missionaries there with an ami, and Yue asked why Heavenly Father didn't help Joseph Smith like he had helped all those other people in the movie. It was a very interesting conversation with her where we talked about the Lord's will and how that is what we are here to do. She did say that she has a greater appreciation and understanding in Joseph Smith's role in the restoration.

On the train to come home and there was a group of boys, probably 17-19 sitting in the seats behind us. There were some magazines for another faith on the seats and one of them said he would read it if it wasn't in another language. I turned around and asked them if they liked reading religious material and they were kind of startled.. I told them we were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and they asked what that was. I told them a restoration of the church that Christ had established when He was on the earth. There was one of them that understood what that meant. They asked if I was from England and I said, America and one of them turned to the one I was talking to and said "you speak English, speak English with her" to which he responded "no, she speaks good French, we'll speak French." sadly we didn't get his contact info, but we gave him our's. I wish that he wasn't with his friends. Another day :)

I am looking forward to this week, lots of rendez-vous, plus I get to go to Brussels for exchanges :)

have a good week, I love you all!

camille