Week 23 - A Week Full of Miracles

"Dominos Pizza - Sauce Tomate au Basilic"

FAM!

Like in theory I know that a lot of stuff happened this week, but in practice I have NO idea what to write. So I guess I'll just do the lame day by day thing and we'll see what I find! 

Monday. Soldes [sales] shopping! I didn't really find anything:( a little disappointed but then we had soiree familial that night and "S" came! She is the woman I met in October like a week after I got here and was the first one I taught the First Vision to! And then we didn't set a return RDV ["rendezvous" - appointment] (bleu [rookie] mistake) and have been trying to get a hold of since. It was so so cool. Never give up on anybody! 

Tuesday. Went out into the country to do visiting teaching for Soeur Taylor. Super fun, but a really long trip out, like half hour train ride followed by half hour in the car, and there was only one train to return so we ended up having like 20 minutes at the house before we had to turn around and get back to the gare. That night we taught "E" the plan du salut [plan of salvation]. Went well! 

"Soeur Anderson in the beautiful French countryside"

Wednesday. District meeting, saw some people did some things. It was good. I think... it was like 5 days ago I don't remember. 

Thursday. Miracle day. We'd been praying so hard that the people we'd set up to go see would be there (one of them has frudged [cancelled on] me/sr hopkins/sr bradley like 6 or 7 times) AND THEY WERE ALL THERE. It was absolutely amazing. Those are the days you work for. Like everyday should feel successful and good because you're doing missionary work but when you actually get to teach and things go right, that's the best feeling in the world. 

Friday. CRAZY. We cleaned the chapel that morning with a member who'd brought us these amazing chocolate beignets (but we were fasting because we were going to teach "E" the law of chasity so we didn't get to eat them until later) then went to our RDV with "E"- it went SO well. We did l'evangile [the gospel] and law of chasity together so it was a lot, and it was the first time I'd taught either of those so it was definitely not perfect and could have absolutely gone better but "E" was just so prepared. She told us she'd been feeling a little overwhelmed because we had all the RDVs set, and talked to her about how there's some steps to baptism but she was reading in the Book of Mormon and found a verse that brought her comfort. What do ya know, 1 Nephi 3:7. Oh my gosh this lady is acutally made of solid gold. She's INCREDIBLE. 

But Friday doesn't end there. ohhh no. After that we broke our fast (we'd started it after lunch on Thursday) with Dominos pizza. We thought we'd have time to go home/the church before our next RDV so we each bought a whole one (like for lunch and dinner). Yeah.... we didn't have time. So we each ate the WHOLE thing. And it was cold outside so we didn't want to sit on a bench so we went in this little mall place and ate standing up inside. The most AWKWARD half hour of my life. I'm sure people were giving us some super weird looks but honestly we were both trying to focus on not puking up our 6 euro pizza. It was bad. But so so yummy. But I don't think I'm going to be able to eat Dominos again anytime soon. 

Friday - still. That night we spent pretty much the whole night on the tram getting directions over the phone from an Armenian lady. Who we didn't actually end up finding :( more memorable experiences. 

Saturday. Planning. woot. 

Sunday. Church, did some batting [contacting in apartment buildings]. We prayed with 4 people in the same bat! It was SOO cool. And it was in an area that's super Muslim so I definitely did not think we were going to pray with anybody. But it was a really really good day. 

So yeah. That's EVERYTHING I can think of from this week. 

Basically to tie it all together I guess, I really really have seen the power of prayer. In the MTC and my first two transfers, I really felt like I learned a lot about prayer for helping yourself and strengthening that personal relationship with Heavenly Father. But this week I got to see the power of prayer in affecting others and outside circumstances. We'd been praying that "E" would continue to progress and take the law of chasity well, and that absolutely happened. We'd been praying that our RDVs would happen and that was a miracle day. And that day too all our amis asked us to pray for them (totally out of the blue) for their health, work, family. It was really really cool. 

Another really cool experience with prayer this week- Sr Anderson has an old ami in Versailles who's getting baptized on Saturday and we're going to be in Paris on Friday for a Soeur Conference (it's going to be SWEET and all the elders are jealous) so we asked President if we could stay for it and he said yes! But then we got a text that night that it was off. We were SOO sad, but we were praying SO hard for her all that day that something would change and she would realize she didn't need to wait. And that night we got a call from the Versailles soeurs that the baptism is back on!!! 

I know that we don't get everything we pray for. I know that it's not our will, but Heavenly Father's. But I also know that when we pray and ask for things anyway, trusting and being okay with His timing, that when those things happen it is absolutely a miracle and a beautiful experience. 

Love you guys SOOOO much. 

like so much you don't even know.

Maren